The climate, too, is
bracing and wholesome, and the boisterous afternoon wind, which sweeps
letters and papers irreverently away, keeps off the mosquitoes.
I. L. B.
LETTER XX
Novel Circumstances - The Excitements of the Jungle - Eternal
Summer - The Sensitive Plant - The Lotus Lake of Matang -
Elephant Ugliness - A Malay Mahout - A Novel Experience -
Domestic Pets - Malay Hospitality-Land Leeches - "A Fearful
Joy" - The End of My First Elephant Ride - Kwala Kangsa
BRITISH RESIDENCY, KWALA KANGSA, February 16.
This is rather exciting, for I have had an unusual journey, and my
circumstances are unusual, for Mr. Low, the Resident, has not returned,
and I am not only alone in his bungalow in the heart of the jungle, but
so far as I can learn I am the only European in the region.
"Of all my wild adventures past
This frantic feat will prove the last,"
for in a fortnight I propose to be at Pinang on my way to conventional
Ceylon, and the beloved "wilds" will be left behind.
At 4:30 this morning Mr. Maxwell's energetic voice roused me, and I got
up, feeling for the first time in Larut very tired from the unwonted
dissipation of another "dinner party," and from having been kept awake
late by the frantic rushes of the lemur and the noise of the "trumpeter
beetle," besides being awoke in a fright at 2 A.M., by the noise made
in changing guard, from a dream that the Sikhs had mutinied and were
about to massacre the Europeans, myself included! We had bananas and
chocolate, and just at daybreak walked down the hill, where I got into
a little trap drawn by a fiery little Sumatra pony, and driven by Mr.
Gibbons, a worthy Australian miner who is here road-making, and was
taken five miles to a place where the road becomes a quagmire not to be
crossed. Elephants had been telegraphed for to meet me there, but the
telegraph was found to be broken. Mr. Maxwell, who accompanied us on
horseback, had sent a messenger on here for elephants, and was dismayed
on getting to the quagmire to meet the news that they had gone to the
jungle; so there was no means of conveyance but the small pachyderm
which was bringing my bag, and which was more than two hours behind.
There was nothing for it but to walk, and we tramped for four miles. I
could not have done the half of it had I not had my "mountain dress"
on, the identical mud-colored tweed, in which I waded through the mud
of Northern Japan. The sun had risen splendidly among crimson clouds,
which, having turned gray, were a slight screen, and the air is so
comparatively dry that, though within 5 degrees of the equator, it was
not oppressively hot.
