And yet quite close to the haunts of these champions in savagery, always on the look out for blood and carnage, live other quiet and harmless animals. I will say nothing of the wild boar (that in comparison with the sladan, might pass for a lamb) of the wild goat or of the deer which are in great numbers, but there are little rodent quadrupeds of every sort, size, and fur, besides perfect crowds of monkeys of different kinds. They belong to the herbivorous order and go about by day in search of food, hiding themselves when the first shades of night call forth from their dens the heroes of nocturnal tragedies.
A garrulous population of birds enliven the forest; they are insectivorous, granivorous, and omnivorous but all are beautiful in their rich and wonderful variety of colour. Amongst these the pheasant for its oriental plumage and the cockatoo for its querulous voice are remarkable as the largest.
A gay concert is given in honour of the dawning and the dying day but long before the birds of prey have unfolded their wings and soar, like phantoms, through the darkness, the pretty carol-singers hush their warblings and hide themselves from the horrors of the night.
A collector of butterflies would go into ecstasies over the splendid varieties that flutter and flit in the air, and the countless multitude of different insects would be well worth special study; amongst the latter are verified the most curious mimetic facts that ever the unprejudiced mind of a man of politics could imagine!
And yet, in the midst of so many contrasts, in the midst of so many dangers which exact exceptional presence of mind and strong nerves, life in the forest is full of charm and allurements.
The spirit is strengthened and elevated by this continuous warfare, open and pronounced, so unlike those depressing struggles against narrow minds, and tiger-hearts, which distinguish town-life.
It is very rare that one meets a man in the Malay forest. You may walk on for weeks without encountering a soul. I happened once, though, to fall in with one who was a primitive being in the strictest sense of the term.
