Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/98

   from Polynesia, very little is known of the interior, which is the exclusive domain of the great family of Dyaks, which is itself divided into several tribes. It was of the Punan and Olo-ot, who are fairly pure, that my employer wanted specious information.

"I had taken with me one white man, oddly enough a tourist, a New York lawyer named Lynch, whom I had met in Singapore—a gentleman who had inherited a little money and was taking a trip around the world. A great explorer was lost in that man, Doctor—and there are too many good lawyers already.

"As a rule, I prefer to go into a savage country with no other white man, as once or twice it has been my misfortune to have all of my work undone by the single careless or tactless act of a companion; in the present case I needed an assistant, as I had just come down from the Irawady and was running a temperature which I thought possible the hills of Borneo might develop into a sharp attack of fever. [ 82 ]