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Show 1884.] BIRDS'-NEST CAVES OF BOBNEO. 537 how short a distance in a direct line, only some 20 miles, I had actually come from Elopura : it had taken some 13^ hours' continuous travelling by launch, boat, and walking to reach this point. On the highest part the Malays have built a house, into which I was invited, and inspected a quantity of very fine white nests, gathered from a small opening close by, which is however 116 fathoms deep, and is connected, as I afterwards found, with Simud Putih. I then commenced to descend by another track, and found it much easier work than going up. About 200 feet below the summit a large opening is reached ; this looks exactly like a railway-tunnel. Lighting candles and attaching them to the lower part of the staves each of the party carried, the gloomy portal was entered, and daylight was soon lost sight of, the path becoming steeper and more slippery the further it descended. About 500 feet below the entrance it became unpleasantly warm and the atmosphere stifling, the guano giving out a most disagreeable smell. I was here shown a small beam of light from the small opening at the top of the rock, 696 feet above. The footing became here very precarious, single poles being laid on the surface of the soft guano, upon which I found considerable difficulty in balancing myself. The guano exists in enormous quantities in this cave; a fifteen-feet pole, thrust down into it, does not touch the bottom. Just when matters were getting unbearable the cave turns to the right, and the path commences to ascend, and I was very glad to find Simud Putih had been reached : after a slippery climb I merged into daylight, very much dazzled. All the roof of the dark parts of the cave was occupied by the nests of the Swifts, the birds keeping up an intermittent twittering, sounding, from the immense quantity assembled, like surf breaking on a rocky shore. In this cave I saw the nest-gatherers at work getting in their crop. A thin rattan ladder was fixed to the end of a long pole and wedged against the rock ; two men were on the ladder-one carried a long four-pronged spear, a lighted candle being fixed to it a few inches below the prongs. By the aid of this light a suitable nest is found and transfixed with the prongs ; a slight twist detaches the nest unbroken from the rock ; the spear is then withdrawn until the head is within reach of the second man, who takes the nest off the prongs and places it in a pouch carried at the waist. The nests of best quality are bound up into packets with strips of rattan, the inferior being simply threaded together ; the best packets generally weigh one catty (lj lb.), averaging forty nests, and are sold at $9 each- the annual value of the nests gathered being about $25,000. _ These caves have been worked for seven generations without any diminution in the quantity: three crops are taken during the year, and unless a considerable number of black nests is gathered, the supply of white nests falls off. Accidents to the men employed very rarely occur, notwithstanding the dangerous nature of their occupation. There is also an almost inexhaustible supply of guano in these caves ; and the number of bats and birds in them is so enormous that if proper care is taken not to disturb them, a regular quantity may be taken out yearly without fear of exhausting the supply. These caves are |