|
|
|
|
| |
| Location: |
Asia - South East Asia - Malaysia - Sarawak |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Sumatran Rhino |
 |
|
|
After about sx or seven days walk we followed the Lupin River up unto the highlands forming the barrier between Sarawak and British North Borneo. Two days walk brought us out onto a ridge as flat as a board, but narrow and between 3000 and 4000 feet high with some of the thickets jungle and biggest thorns I have ever encountered. Here the rhino lived not long ago, but there is no sign of him now. After two days very slow walking something went wrong and we found ourselves away down in British North Borneo for team and couldn't get back for supper. Next morning we got lost but in another day arrived again on the watershed at Paya Maga, a large and absolutely flat plain across which we walked for two days. From the hills at the sides this area appears as a marshy 'bah' which a purist would doubtless give to British North Borneo whence the Maga River runs. However, there is still a large piece of Sarawak and the basin is anything from five to six miles wide, and two days' walk along, or about six to fifteen miles; the vegetation is thick scrub with masses of orchids, in places pure stands of ground orchids, and the soil sandy and water-logged. The whole is so far from human habitation that it is a perfect rhino haunt. Their old 'wallow' and runs are numerous, and so, unfortunately, ate the Dayak 'sulaps' and as I estimate, the plain at over 4000 feet high, the surrounding tips must be over 5000 feet.
|
|
|
Rum and rhinos
File available
details
Original text on this topic: