Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra13141884roya).pdf/288

 the thermometer will often stand as low as 68°, while the keen, cold air blowing down from the black towering summits that cut the eastern sky-line, invigorates the frame and braces the muscles for the coming labours of the day. It would require a poet's pen to do anything like justice to the gorgeous scenic effects and grand transformation scenes, as the orb of day rises behind the jagged mountain barrier. The whole country is so well opened up, that the monsoons have free play, and fever should be comparatively unknown. The soil may be described as sandy near the sea, but of every quality as one proceeds inland. Kina Balu bears about E.S.E. from the plain near the river mouth.

An hour's walk brought us back to Brungis, where we had left our pakerangan, or native boat, and some five hours more brought us to Gaya island, whence a start was effected early on the ensuing morning for the mouth of the Putatan river.

The Putatan river has two months—the Patâgas mouth, which lies a little to the E. of S. of the most southerly point of Gaya island at a distance, in a direct line, of about five miles, roughly estimated, and about half that distance south of Tanjong Aru; and its main mouth, Telîpuk, which lics a short distance to the southward of Tanjong Togorongon. The former is the most accessible entrance, the main kuala having a very gradually shoaling foreshore, and but little depth of water on it at high water. The Patâgas mouth opens to the westward and has a depth of about one fathom at low water. A short distance from it, to the northward, off Tanjong Aru, there is good anchorage close inshore for prahus and small boats, completely sheltered from both monsoons by an outlying sand-bank. The Putatan river is an appanagc of the Sultan of Brunei, and of Pangeran Muda family.

A paddle of little over a mile and a half, passing en route, on the true right bank, the confluence of the little river Munglab, brings one to a small Bajau village, the head of which is Datu. From this point the Patigas flows more from the S.E., and becomes very narrow and tortuous up to its divergence from the main Putatan, rather more than a mile further on, where (and situate therefore at the apex of