You can try
them now if you wish."

"But I don't see a single Paddy to try it on."

"Here is one on your left."

"I don't see anything but a field of rice."

"That's a paddy in this island."

"A field of rice!"

"Achang will tell you that is what they call them in Borneo."

"Bad luck to such Paddies as they are! But it looks as though there
might be some Paddies here, for the houses are very neat and nice, just
as you see in old Ireland."

"Certainly they are; but I never saw any such in Ireland," added Louis.
"You remember the old woman on the road from Killarney to the lakes who
told us she lived in the Irish castle, to which she pointed; and it
looked like a pig-sty."

"Of course it didn't have the bananas and the cocoanut-palms around it."

"I admit that we saw many fine places in Ireland, and very likely your
mother lived in one of them. But, Achang, is there any game in the woods
we see beyond the paddies?"

"Sometimes there is plenty of it; at others there is scarcely any. You
can get squirrels here and some birds."

"Any orang-outangs?"

"We found none when we came up the river, for this is not the best place
for them. If we run up the Sadong and Samujan Rivers, you will find
some," replied the Bornean. "I don't think it will pay to go very far up
the Sarawak, if it is game you want; but you can see the country. There
is quite a village on the right."

The party were very much interested in examining the houses they saw on
the borders of the stream. Like those they had seen in Java and in
Sumatra, they were all set up on stilts. A Malay or Dyak will not build
his home on dry land, as they noticed in coming up the lower part of the
river, though there was plenty of elevated ground near. The dwellings
were all built on the soft mud.

The village ten miles up-stream was constructed on the same plan. The
houses were placed just out of the reach of the water when it was higher
than usual. The material was something like bamboo, as in India, with
roofs of kadjang leaves, which abound in the low lands. In front of
every one of them was a flat boat--sampan; and one was seen which was
large enough to have a roof of the same material as the house. The boats
were made fast to a pole set in the mud.

"There is a bear on the shore!" shouted Morris, with no little
excitement in his manner, as he pointed to the woods on the shore
opposite the houses, to which the attention of all the rest of the party
ha