I Am Always Afraid Of Being Startled By His Tearing Through My Room In The Depths Of The Night, For Here, As In Many Other Houses, Instead Of Doors There Are Screens Raised A Foot From The Ground.

This morning I got up before daylight, and went up a hill which is being cleared, to enjoy the sunrise, the loveliest time of the tropic day.

It was all dew and rose color, with a delicious freshness in the air, prolonged unusually, because the sun was so slow to climb above the eastern mountain tops. Then there was a sudden glory, and birds, beasts, and insects broke into a vociferous chorus, the tuneless hymn which ascends daily without a discord. There are sumptuously colored sunsets to be seen from this elevation, but one has no time to enjoy them, and they make one long for the lingering gold and purple of more northern latitudes. I have really been industrious since I came here, both in writing to you, and in "reading up" the native states in blue books, etc.

I. L. B.

LETTER XIX

The Chinese in Larut - "Monkey Cups" - Chinese Hospitality - A Sikh Belle

BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT.

I am remaining here for another day or two, so have time to tell you a little about the surroundings.

Larut province is a strip of land about seventy miles long, and from twenty-five to forty-five broad. It was little known, and almost unexplored till 1848, when a Malay, while bathing, found some coarse, black sand, which, on being assayed, proved to be tin.

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