des through the changing fortunes of war, the
royal line retained Johore at the foot of the Peninsula, up to the
present day, the last scion of the old-world dynasty now accepting the
suzerainty of England.

A tribe of Klings (the Malay corruption of the word Telinga), sailing
from the Coromandel coast, were the first immigrants under British
rule. The half-breed Indian Malays, or _Jawi-Pekan_, followed, and the
Chinese, finding a new outlet for their commercial genius, soon secured
a firm footing on the fairy isle, a cone of emerald set in a sapphire
sea. As the rickshaw wheels away from the noisy wharves of busy
Georgetown into green aisles of areca and cocoanut, the spice-laden
breeze blowing from the heights, and mingled with the breath of a
thousand flowers, suggests Penang as "the mountain of myrrh, and hill
of frankincense," described in the Canticle of Canticles. Present
surroundings atone for the lack of life's amenities in the Dutch
dependencies. The ripple of the sea, and the rustle of swaying palms,
just stir the silence of the wave-washed terrace above the glassy
straits. The gloomy blue of the Kedah mountains on the peninsula of
Malacca, with black thunderclouds gathering round their serrated
crests, heightens the brilliant loveliness of immediate surroundings,
steeped in the ruby glow of the magical evening. Every road is an
over-arching avenue of gorgeous foliage--dark tunnels of interwoven
cocoa-palms, huge Amherstias alight as with lamps of fiery orange,
tremulous tamarinds, and, more wonderful than all, a wide highway
roofed by a continuous aisle of ansena-trees, the golden canopy of
blossom overhead rivalled by the thick carpet of yellow petals, which
deadens every sound, for the prodigal bounty of tropical Nature quickly
replaces the loss of falling flowers. Exquisite lanes, smothered in
glorious vegetation, surround the picturesque Racecourse, that
_sine-qua-non_ of English occupation. Stately emperor palms, kitools
with crimped green tresses, fan and oil palms, with the slender areca
in countless thousands, vary the shadowy vistas branching out in every
direction, with huge-leaved creepers and glossy rattans garlanding the
gnarled trunks of forest-trees. The sculptured outlines of the splendid
traveller's palm adorn the green lawns of European bungalows, embowered
in torrents of trailing creepers, the scale of colour descending from
white and pink to royal purple and burning crimson. Snowy arums a