Indeed they did so, but only with the thought of avoiding them; for the minds of all--the Malay not excepted--were filled with apprehensions respecting the Dyak and other savage tribes, which report places in the interior of Borneo, and to whom long accredited, though perhaps only imaginative, stories have given a character alike terrible and mysterious.

They could think of them only as savages--wild men of the woods--some of them covered with hair, and whose chief delight and glory are the cutting off men's heads, and not unfrequently feasting on men's flesh! No wonder that, with these facts, or fancies, acting upon their imagination, our travellers set forth upon their journey determined to give a wide berth to everything that bore the shape of a human being.

It was a strange commentary on man's superiority to the lower animals, and not very creditable to the former, that he himself was the thing they most feared to meet with in the wooded wilderness.

And yet, humiliating as the reflection may appear, it depressed the minds of the castaways, as, looking their last upon the bright blue sea, they turned their faces toward the interior of the forest-covered land of Borneo.
For the first day they pursued a course leading along the bank of the stream at whose mouth they had been sojourning ever since their arrival on the island.

They had more than one reason for keeping to the stream.
It seemed to flow in a due easterly direction, and therefore to ascend it would lead them due west--the way they wanted to go.