From the boughs yards-long clusters of one species hung in garlands and the ground was carpeted with the tiny delicate orchid-like plants.
Bertilla was hoping to see a honey bear, which was Sarawak’s only dangerous animal or a mouse-deer, the hero of many legends.
But she had to content herself with a glimpse of an Angus pheasant.
She was particularly looking out for the hornbill, which she knew with its long yellow beak surmounted by a strange projection of brilliant scarlet was one of the most extraordinary-looking birds in the world.
Some of them, she had read, were the size of turkeys, but the ones she saw in the distance flitting amongst the towering trees were smaller.
But if the birds were an excitement, the large colourful butterflies were an enchantment. In the forest their c
