eing almost a complete blank,
though possessing one natural feature which is conspicuous by its
absence in the more recent and trustworthy one, and that is the large
lake of Kinabalu, which the explorations of the late Mr. F. K. WITTI
have proved to be non-existent. Two explanations are given of the origin
of the myth of the Kinabalu Lake--one is that in the district, where it
was supposed to exist, extensive floods do take place in very wet
seasons, giving it the appearance of a lake, and, I believe there are
many similar instances in Dutch Borneo, where a tract of country liable
to be heavily flooded has been dignified with the name of _Danau_, which
is Malay for _lake_, so that the mistake of the European cartographers
is a pardonable one. The other explanation is that the district in
question is known to the aboriginal inhabitants as _Danau_, a word
which, in their language, has no particular meaning, but which, as above
stated, signifies, in Malay, a lake. The first European visitors would
have gained all their information from the Malay coast tribes, and the
reason for their mistaken supposition of the existence of a large lake
can be readily understood. The two principal pioneer explorers of
British North Borneo were WITTI and FRANK HATTON, both of whom met with
violent deaths. WITTI'S services as one of the first officers stationed
in the country, before the British North Borneo Company was formed, have
already been referred to, and I have drawn on his able report for a
short account of the slave system which formerly prevailed. He had
served in the Austrian Navy and was a very energetic, courageous and
accomplished man. Besides minor journeys, he had traversed the country
from West to East and from North to South, and it was on his last
journey from Pappar, on the West Coast, inland to the headwaters of the
Kinabatangan and Sambakong Rivers, that he was murdered by a tribe,
whose language none of his party understood, but whose confidence he had
endeavoured to win by reposing confidence in them, to the extent even of
letting them carry his carbine. He and his men had slept in the village
one night, and on the following day some of the tribe joined the party
as guides, but led them into the ambuscade, where the gallant WITTI and
many of his men were killed by _sumpitans_.[28] So far as we have been
able to ascertain the sole reason for the attack was the fact that WITTI
had come to the district from a tribe with w