companions, and each seemed to have gained a fresh force.

It was a relief to be out in the fields again after the foul odors of
the night, and the travelers were off before dawn. The country looked
more familiar to Mackay this morning, for they passed through wheat and
barley fields. It seemed so strange to wander over a man's farm by
a footpath, but it was a Chinese custom to which he soon became
accustomed.

The sun was blazing hot, and it was a great relief when they entered
the cool shade of a forest. It was a delightful place and George Mackay
reveled in its beauty. Ever since he had been able to run about his
own home farm in Ontario his eyes had always been wide open to observe
anything new. He had studied as much out of doors, all his life, as he
had done in college, and now he found this forest a perfect library of
new Things. Nearly every tree and flower was strange to his Canadian
eyes. Here and there, in sheltered valleys, grew the tree-fern, the most
beautiful object in the forest, towering away up sometimes to a height
of sixty feet, and spreading its stately fronds out to a width of
fifteen feet. There was a lovely big plant with purple stem and purple
leaves, and when Dr. Dickson told him it was the castor-oil plant, he
smiled at the remembrance of the trials that plant had caused him in
younger days. One elegant tree, straight as a pine, rose fifty feet in
height, with leaves away up at the top only.

This was the betel-nut tree.

"The nuts of that tree," said Mr. Ritchie, standing and pointing away
up to where the sunlight filtered through the far-off leaves, "are the
chewing tobacco of Formosa and all the islands about here. The Chinese
do not chew it, but the Malayans do. You will meet some of these natives
soon."

On every side grew the rattan, half tree, half vine. It started off as
a tree and grew straight up often to twenty feet in height, and then
spread itself out over the tops of other trees and plants in vine-like
fashion; some of its branches measured almost five hundred feet in
length.

The travelers paused to admire one high in the branches of the trees.

"Many a Chinaman loses his head hunting that plant," remarked Mr.
Ritchie. "These islanders export a great deal of rattan, and the
head-hunters up there in the mountains watch for the Chinese when they
are working in the forest."

Mackay listened eagerly to his friends' tales of the head-hunting
savages, living in the mountain