Arrival in Kuching, Sarawak

Francis Farrington Boult arrived in Kuching from Singapore on the ss Vorwarts on January 11, 1902. What Francis thought of the first glimpse of the land which would be his home for the next 31 years has been lost to time but it probably was not much different from those of Ranee Margaret in her autobiography "My Life in Sarawak":

  " ... It was the most beautiful I had ever seen. The tide was on the turn, and the morning mist was still hanging about the watery forests on the banks and about the high mountains of the interior, and as it swept across the river it brought with it that curious, sweet, indefinable smell, half-aromatic and half-sickly, making one think unaccountably of malaria. I remember I felt very cold, for everything I touched was dripping with dew. I could see the high mountain of Santubong, a great green cliff rising almost out of the water to a height of about three thousand feet, covered to its summit with luxuriant forests. At the foot of the mountain was a great expanse of sand, over which enormous brown boulders were scattered, as though giants had been disturbed at a game of ninepins. At the back of the sandy shore grew groves of Casuarina trees (the natives call them "talking trees" from the sound they make when a breeze stirs their lace-like branches), looking as though the slightest puff might blow them all away in clouds of dark green smoke."