CHAPTER V.BORNEO--JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR.
(NOVEMBER 1855 TO JANUARY 1856.) As the wet season was approaching, I determined to return to Sarawak, sending all my collections with Charles Allen around by sea, while I myself proposed to go up to the sources of the Sadong River and descend by the Sarawak valley.

As the route was somewhat difficult, I took the smallest quantity of baggage, and only one servant, a Malay lad named Bujon, who knew the language of the Sadong Dyaks, with whom he had traded.

We left the mines on the 27th of November, and the next day reached the Malay village of Gudong, where I stayed a short time to buy fruit and eggs, and called upon the Datu Bandar, or Malay governor of the place.

He lived in a large, and well-built house, very dirty outside and in, and was very inquisitive about my business, and particularly about the coal-mines.

These puzzle the natives exceedingly, as they cannot understand the extensive and costly preparations for working coal, and cannot believe it is to be used only as fuel when wood is so abundant and so easily obtained.