EVENING
and then by an even steeper ascent, till at last we gain the summit of the mountain.
Stand here. The limit of vision is wide; you will scarce find a grander spectacle in this Peninsula. We are nearly 5,000 feet above the sea, and from north to south the eye travels over a distance not far short of two hundred miles. Eastward, those distant hills are fully a hundred miles away, and soon on the western horizon the sun will meet the sea in a blaze of glory, as though kindling at the touch of loving arms long waiting for his coming.
That faint blue peak in the north, hazy and indistinct, is Gûnong Jerai in Kedah, and the island to the westward, which smiles through a golden veil, is Penang. A grey streak of water shot with gleams of sunlight divides it from the mainland, and the forty miles of country thence to the foot of this hill, and far south again to those blue islets off the Dinding coast, lie flat and fertile, a feast for the eyes. Vivid green patches mark thousands of acres of sugar-cane and rice-field, but the general effect is an unbroken expanse of dark jungle, mostly mangrove, for all this land from hill-base to sea-shore is of comparatively recent formation, the erosion from the hills carried down seawards and covered with a
wealth of foliage ever renewed by the excessive
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