At 4 o’clock in the morning the anchors were hoisted and we now steered through the Api passage passing the island of Merunduny at a distance of 2.5 sea miles, followed by a small steam boat that
At 4 o’clock in the morning the anchors were hoisted and we now steered through the Api passage passing the island of Merunduny at a distance of 2.5 sea miles, followed by a small steam boat that had also spent the dark night awaiting daylight and now used our wake.
The North-western coast of Borneo was very close to us and offered a strange image much different from the islands we have seen before: along the coast and also in the interior of the land, as far as one could see, there were low-lying plains out of which abruptly rose hills and mountain ridges some of which were of respectable height and mostly in grotesque shapes. Thus some mountains had the form — to use culinary terminology in spite of all deference shown to the science of geology — of a „Gugelhupf“ others those of a sugar loaf. Other parts of the mountain ridges appear, like many Alpine mountain ranges, as an irregular mountain land with steep slopes and faces whose parts do not queue up as in a regular range or even are connected to a continuous ridge line but instead stand there alone as if they were dispersed over the area. A mirage made water appear in place of the low coastal areas so that the mountain giants rose as if they emerged out of the water and looked like a maze of tall islands — a picturesque and original illusion. Among the heights we saw produced by the mirage, Cape Datu and Sipang were especially conspicuous.
Both capes are alread