The few days here have been a real rest, I have been so much alone. There are no women to twitter; and when Mr. Maxwell is not at work he talks of things that are worth talking about. The climate, too, is bracing and wholesome, and the boisterous afternoon wind, which sweeps letters and papers irreverently away, keeps off the mosquitoes.
I. L. B.
LETTER XX
Novel Circumstances—The Excitements of the Jungle—Eternal
Summer—The Sensitive Plant—The Lotus Lake of Matang—
Elephant Ugliness—A Malay Mahout—A Novel Experience—
Domestic Pets—Malay Hospitality-Land Leeches—"A Fearful
Joy"—The End of My First Elephant Ride—Kwala Kangsa
BRITISH RESIDENCY, KWALA KANGSA, February 16.
This is rather exciting, for I have had an unusual journey, and my circumstances are unusual, for Mr. Low, the Resident, has not returned, and I am not only alone in his bungalow in the heart of the jungle, but so far as I can learn I am the only European in the region.
"Of all my wild adventures past
This frantic feat will prove the last,"
for in a fortnight I propose to be at Pinang on my way to conventional Ceylon, and the beloved "wilds" will be left behind.
At 4:30 this morning Mr. Maxwell's energetic voice roused me, and I got up, feeling for the first time in Larut very tired from the unwonted dissipation of another "dinner party," and from having been kept awake late by the frantic rushes of the lemur and the noise of the "trumpeter beetle," besides being awoke in a fright at 2 A.M., by the noise made in changing guard, from a dream that the Sikhs had mutinied and were about to massacre the Europeans, myself included! We had bananas and chocolate, and just at daybreak walked down the hill, where I got into a little trap drawn by a fiery little Sumatra pony, and driven by Mr. Gibbons, a worthy Australian miner who is here road-making, and was taken five miles to a place where the road becomes a quagmire not to be crossed. Elephants had been telegraphed for to meet me there, but the telegraph was found to be broken. Mr. Maxwell, who accompanied us on horseback, had sent a messenger on here for elephants, and was dismayed on getting to the quagmire to meet the news that they had gone to the jungle; so there was no means of conveyance but the small pachyderm which was bringing my bag, and which was more than two hours behind.
There was nothing for it but to walk, and we tramped for four miles. I could not have done the half of it had I not had my "mountain dress" on, the identical mud-colored tweed, in which I waded through the mud of Northern Japan. The sun had risen splendidly among crimson clouds, which, having turned gray, were a slight screen, and the air is so comparatively dry that, though within 5 degrees of the equator, it was not oppressively hot.