MALAY SKETCHES
and the magnificence of tropical jungle, and look down on the land for the last time.
Our callous eyes—surfeited with years of gazing on brilliant colours, great stretches of sea and forest, huge trees, a bewildering luxury of foliage, beasts measured by the elephant and rhinoceros, birds by the argus pheasant and the peacock—are blind to the infinite beauty of our surroundings. This path, by which we slowly rise to cooler altitudes and a new flora, would excite in the stranger feelings of wonder and rapturous delight.
The road itself is cut through soil of a deep shade of terra cotta, the colour all the more vivid by reason of the hues of green by which it is environed. The sunlight strikes in rays of brilliant light across this path, falling on red soil, granite boulder and massive tree-trunk, intensifying colour and deepening shadow. Here and there are seen glimpses of the plains below, the distant sea, the peaks and valleys of other hill ranges, and the ear constantly catches the delightful sound of falling water, the voices of numerous streams dashing down the steep mountain sides in cascades of sparkling foam.
The path twists and winds, often by sharp zig-zags, up the face of the hill, across a narrow saddle
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