After This, Alligators Were So Common, Singly Or In Groups,
Or In Families, That They Ceased To Be Exciting.
It is difficult for
anything to produce continuous excitement under this fierce sun; and
conversation, which had been flagging before noon, ceased altogether.
It was awfully hot in the launch, between fire and boiler-heat and
solar fury.
I tried to keep cool by thinking of Mull, and powdery snow
and frosty stars, but it would not do. It was a solemn afternoon, as
the white, unwinking sun looked down upon our silent party, on the
narrow turbid river, silent too, except for the occasional plunge of an
alligator or other water monster - on mangrove swamps and nipah palms
dense along the river side, on the blue gleam of countless kingfishers,
on slimy creeks arched over to within a few feet of their surface by
grand trees with festoon of lianas, on an infinite variety of foliage,
on an abundance of slender-shafted palms, on great fruits brilliantly
colored, on wonderful flowers on the trees, on the hoya carnosa and
other waxen-leaved trailers matting the forest together and hanging
down in great festoons, the fiery tropic sunblaze stimulating all this
over-production into perennial activity, and vivifying the very mud
itself.
Occasionally we passed a canoe with a "savage" crouching in it fishing,
but saw no other trace of man, till an hour ago we came upon large
cocoa groves, a considerable clearing in the jungle, and a very large
Malayan-Chinese village with mosques, one on either side of the river,
houses built on platforms over the water, large and small native boats
covered and thatched with attap, roofed platforms on stilts answering
the purpose of piers, bathing-houses on stilts carefully secluded, all
forming the (relatively) important village of Permatang Pasir.
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