before an
audience. In the evening landed again more to the westward. Shore
skirted by rocks; timber noble, and the forest clear of brushwood,
enabling us to penetrate with ease as far as caution permitted. Traces
of wild beasts numerous and recent, but none discovered. Fresh-water
streams, colored as yesterday, and the trail of an alligator from
one of them to the sea. This dark forest, where the trees shoot up
straight and tall, and are succeeded by generation after generation
varying in stature, but struggling upward, strikes the imagination
with pictures trite yet true. Here the hoary sage of a hundred years
lies moldering beneath your foot, and there the young sapling shoots
beneath the parent shade, and grows in form and fashion like the
parent stem. The towering few, with heads raised above the general
mass, can scarce be seen through the foliage of those beneath; but
here and there the touch of time has cast his withering hand upon
their leafy brow, and decay has begun his work upon the gigantic and
unbending trunk. How trite and yet how true! It was thus I meditated
in my walk. The foot of European, I said, has never touched where
my foot now presses--seldom the native wanders here. Here I indeed
behold nature fresh from the bosom of creation, unchanged by man, and
stamped with the same impress she originally bore! Here I behold God's
design when He formed this tropical land, and left its culture and
improvement to the agency of man. The Creator's gift as yet neglected
by the creature; and yet the time may be confidently looked for when
the axe shall level the forest, and the plow turn the ground.

"_6th._--Made sail this morning, and stood in for an island called
Talang Talang, anchoring about eight miles distant, and sending a
boat to take correct observations for a base-line.

"Our party found Malays of Sarawak on the island, who were civil
to them, and offered to conduct us up to-morrow, if we wanted their
assistance. The pirates, both Illanuns and Dyaks, have been gone from
the bay but a few days; the former seaward, the latter up the rivers.

"_7th._--Morning calm. In the afternoon got under weigh, and anchored
again near the island of Talang Talang; the smaller one a conical
hill bearing south. The Bandar [2] of the place came off in his canoe
to make us welcome. He is a young man sent by Rajah Muda Hassim to
collect turtles' eggs, which abound in this vicinity, especially
on the larger island. The tu