ers high up appear like silvery spider webs. Of course there were
recesses overhead where the light could not penetrate, and these were
the homes of millions of small bats, of which more presently. As
for the birds themselves, this was one of their nesting seasons,
and the cave was full of myriads of them. The twittering they made
resembled the whisperings of a multitude. The majority of them kept
near the roof, and as they flew to and fro through the shafts of light
they presented a most curious effect and looked like swarms of gnats;
lower down they resembled silvery butterflies. Where the light shone
on the rocky walls and roofs one could distinguish masses upon masses
of little silver black specks. These were their nests, as this was a
black-nest cave. Somewhere below in the bowels of the earth rumbled
an underground river with a noise like distant thunder. This cavernous
roar far below and the twittering whisper of the swallows far overhead,
combined to add much to the mysteriousness of these wonderful caves.

On the ground in the guano I picked up several eggs, unbroken. How
they could fall that distance and yet not get smashed is hard to
understand, unless it is that they fell in the soft guano on their
ends. We were told that when a man fell from the top he was smashed
literally into jelly. I also picked up a few birds which had been
stunned when flying against the rocks. This saved me from shooting any.

Spread out on the ground in the cave and also drying outside, raised
from the ground on stakes, were coil after coil of rattan ropes and
ladders used for collecting the nests. These always have to be new
each season, and are first carefully tested. The ladders are made
of well twisted strands of rattan with steps of strong, hard wood,
generally "bilian."

On our return to the village we bathed in a shady stream of clear
water, the banks of which I noted were composed chiefly of guano. In
the afternoon we started off in search of the upper eaves. After
a short, stiff climb amid natural rockeries of jagged limestone,
we passed under a rock archway or bridge, under which were perched
frail-looking raised native huts of the watchers. As we stood under
this curious archway we looked down a precipice on our left. It was
very steep at our feet, but from the far side it took the form of a
slanting shaft, which terminated in a little window or inlet into the
lower cave we had visited in the morning. In our ascent we h