Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/201

Rh A number of interesting liverworts were collected at Kuching, but, as is usual in the tropics, these are more abundant at higher elevations.

Every season in Sarawak is a "rainy season" but the official rainy season includes the months of November to March, and I can testify from experience that this is a rainy season. During the months of December, January and February (1912-13), over one hundred inches of rain fell in Kuching.

As might be expected, this great rainfall contributes to an extremely rich and varied native flora, and Sarawak offers an especially inviting field to the botanist.

Not the least serious problem that confronts the traveler is that of transportation. Except in the town and in the immediate vicinity of Kuching, almost the only means of transport are the streams or else forest trails which are not feasible for either saddle or pack animals, and especially in the low lands are often largely under water. This makes expeditions into the magnificent forests anything but a pastime, and involves not only great fatigue, but also incidentally the discomforts of swarms of mosquitoes and leeches, the latter being especially numerous and voracious in the Bornean forests.

The various native tribes. Land and Sea Dayaks, etc., are of great interest to the ethnologist, but as my interests were chiefly botanical, and my time very limited, I was obliged to leave Sarawak with only the most cursory observation of these interesting savages.

One of my principal objects in visiting Sarawak was to secure specimens of two rare ferns, Matonia sarmentosa and Macroglossum alidæ, as yet known only from this country, and the first collecting trip undertaken was in search of these.

Through the kindness of Mr. J. C. Moulton, director of the Sarawak Museum, who accompanied me on this trip, I succeeded in accomplishing my object in a highly satisfactory manner.

We left Kuching before daylight in one of the launches of the Borneo Company, and watched the dawn come up behind the dense jungle reflected in the glassy surface of the broad river. In the delicious coolness of the early morning our launch plowed its way up stream, breaking the mirror-like surface of the river, in which were reflected the brilliant tints of the eastern sky. A dense wall of verdure, spangled here and there with white, yellow and purple flowers, bounded the stream on either side.

By eight o'clock we reached our landing place, and after a good breakfast, proceeded by "trolley" for about half an hour to the government bungalow, where we had arranged to camp for a few days while making our collecting trips.

The Bornean trolley is rather a different affair from what one associates with the word in America. The track is an extremely narrow