I Have Had Two Days Of Supposed Quiet Here After The Charming
Expedition To Langat.
The climate seems very healthy.
The mercury has
been 87 degrees daily, but then it falls to 74 degrees at night. The
barometer, as is usual so near the equator, varies only a few tenths of
an inch during the year. The rainfall is about 130 inches annually. It
is most abundant in January, February and March, and at the change of
the monsoon, and there is enough all the year round to keep vegetation
in beauty. Here, on uninteresting cleared land with a featureless
foreground and level mangrove swamps for the middle distance, it must
be terribly monotonous to have no change of seasons, no hope of the
mercury falling below 80 degrees in the daytime, or of a bracing wind,
or of any marked climatic changes for better or worse all life through.
The mosquitoes are awful, but after a few months of more or less
suffering the people who live here become inoculated by the poison, and
are more bothered than hurt by the bites. I am almost succumbing to
them. The ordinary pests are bad enough, for just when the evenings
become cool, and sitting on the veranda would be enjoyable; they begin
their foray, and specially attack the feet and ankles; but the tiger
mosquitoes of this region bite all day, and they do embitter life. In
the evening all the gentlemen put on sarongs over their trousers to
protect themselves, and ladies are provided with sarongs which we draw
over our feet and dresses, but these wretches bite through two "ply" of
silk or cotton; and, in spite of all precautions, I am dreadfully
bitten on my ankles, feet, and arms, which are so swollen that I can
hardly draw on my sleeves, and for two days stockings have been an
impossibility, and I have had to sew up my feet daily in linen!
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