less marshy places. Of herbs and
underwood there was nowhere any trace.

"During the river voyage we saw now and then single
green-coloured kingfishers flying about, and a honeysucker
or two, but they were not nearly so numerous as might have
been expected in this purely tropical zone. We saw some
apes leaping in pairs among the trees, and Palander
succeeded in shooting a male. Alligators from one to one
and a half metre in length, frightened by the noise of the
propeller, throw themselves suddenly into the water. Small
land lizards with web-feet jumped forward with surprising
rapidity on the water near the banks. This was all we saw
of the higher animals.

"After a run of two hours, during which we examined the
banks carefully in order to find a landing place, we lay to
at the best possible place for seeing what the lower fauna
had to offer. It was no easy matter to get to land. The
ground was so muddy that we sank to the knees, and could
make our way through the wood only by walking on an
intermediate layer of palm leaves and fallen branches. The
search for evertebrates did not yield very much. A
half-score mollusca, among them a very remarkable naked
leech of quite the same colour-marking and raggedness as
the bark of tree on which it lived, was all that we could
find here. It struck me as very peculiar not to find a
single insect group represented. The remarkable poverty in
animals must be ascribed, I believe, to the complete
absence of herbs and underwood. Animal life was as poor as
vegetation was luxuriant and various in different places.
Over the landscape a peculiar quietness and stillness
rested.

"During our return we visited one of the two Malay villages
mentioned above. It consisted of ten different houses,
which were built on tall and stout poles out in the water
at the mouth of the river, about six to ten metres from the
shore. All the houses were built on a common large platform
of thick bamboo, which was about a man's height above the
water. At right angles to the beach there floated long
beams, one end being connected with the land, while the
other was anchored close to the platform. From this
anchored end a plank rose at a steep angle to the platform.
Communication with land was kept up in this way. The houses
were nearly all qu