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!
