EVENING
the setting in which these jewels lie has turned to purple. They are fragments of estuaries, deep waveless lagoons winding through the mangroves, and showing to the distant spectator only broken reaches, glimpses of bay and headland.
The shore-line is a ribbon of glistening light, bordering the wide expanse of forest trees, whose roots stand deep in water when the tide is high. The mangrove cannot live beyond the reach of the brine from which it seems to draw the sap of life, and these mud flats, in their gradual accretion, are as yet scarcely above the level of the sea.
Turning to the north-east, a deep valley lies beneath us, the source of a long river, the Kurau. Miles and miles beyond rise range after range of lofty mountains, Biong and Inas and Bintang, running into the heart of the Peninsula. Further eastward is the country near the sources of the Perak River, and across the narrow valley, through which its upper waters dance in a succession of rapids, may be discerned peaks of the main range which look down on the China Sea.
Now we are facing the south-east and the valley of the Perak River. The ridge on which we stand divides it from the Province of Larut, and surely
there are few fairer sights in the East than this
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