'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight and sombre, and faces a misty¹ ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts² of rust³ streaming under the dark-green foliage⁴ of bushes and creepers clothing the low cliffs. Swampy⁵ plains open out at the mouth of rivers, with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling⁶ shapes, stand out in the everlasting⁷ sunlit haze⁸ like the remnants of a wall breached⁹ by the sea.

'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch of the estuary¹⁰. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then, and Stein's little schooner¹¹, in which I had my passage, worked her way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from "irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me (the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan Jim and the tone of his references was made remarkable¹² by a strange mixture of familiarity and

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