On Either Side Of The Road The Ground Is Densely Carpeted With The
Sensitive Plant, Whose Lovely Tripartite Leaves Are Green Above And
Brown Below.
It is a fascinating plant, and at first one feels guilty
of cruelty if one does more than look at it, but I have already
learned, as all people do here, to take delight in wounding its
sensibilities.
Touch any part of a leaf ever so lightly, and as quick
as thought it folds up. Touch the centre of the three ever so lightly,
and leaf and stalk fall smitten. Touch a branch and every leaf closes,
and every stalk falls as if weighted with lead. Walk over it, and you
seem to have blasted the earth with a fiery tread, leaving desolation
behind. Every trailing plant falls, the leaves closing, show only their
red-brown backs, and all the beauty has vanished, but the burned and
withered-looking earth is as fair as ever the next morning.
After walking for four miles we came upon a glorious sight at a turn of
the road, a small lake behind which the mountains rise forest-covered,
with a slope at their feet on which stand the cocoa-nut groves, and the
beautiful Malay house of the exiled Mentri of Larut. I have written of
a lake, but no water was visible, for it was concealed by thousands and
thousands of the peltate leaves of the lotus, nearly round, attaining a
diameter of eighteen inches, cool and dewy-looking under the torrid
sun, with a blue bloom upon their intense green.
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