I Had Not Heard That These Were
Pests In Perak, And Feared That They Were Something Worse; But The
Elephant Driver, Seeing My Plight, Made Some Tobacco Juice And Squirted
It Over The Creatures, When They Recoiled In Great Disgust.
Owing to
the exercise I was obliged to take, the bites bled for several hours.
I
do not remember feeling the first puncture. I have now heard that these
blood-suckers infest leaves and herbage, and that when they hear the
rustling made by man or animal in passing, they stretch themselves to
their fullest length, and if they can touch any part of his body or
dress they hold on to it, and as quickly as possible reach some spot
where they can suck their fill.
I am making my narrative as slow as my journey, but the things I write
of will be as new to you as they were to me. New it was certainly to
stand upon a carpet of the sensitive plant at noon, with the rays of a
nearly vertical sun streaming down from a cloudless, steely blue sky,
watching the jungle monster meekly kneeling on the ground, with two
Malays who do not know a word of English as my companions, and myself
unarmed and unescorted in the heart of a region so lately the scene of
war, about which seven blue books have been written, and about the
lawlessness and violence of which so many stories have been
industriously circulated.
Certainly I always dreamed that there must be something splendid in
riding on an elephant, but I don't feel the least accession of dignity
in consequence.
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