nd
golden lilies choke the brooks, overflowing from the constant showers
combining with a vertical sun to foster the wealth of greenery, the
incandescent scarlet and yellow of hybiscus and allemanda glowing with
the transparent depth of hue, beside which the fragile fairness of
European flowers, is but a spectral reflection of those colour-drenched
blossoms fused into jewelled lustre by the solar fires. Night drops her
black curtain suddenly, with no intervening veil of twilight to temper
Earth's plunge into darkness. Great stars hang low in the sombre sky,
and the open interiors of Malay huts, aglow with lamp or torchlight,
produce Rembrandtesque effects, revealing brown inmates cooking or
eating their "evening rice."

Georgetown, loyally named by British pioneers after a monarch eminently
incongruous with any ideas belonging to a tropical fairyland, possesses
neither architectural beauty nor salient character; wooden warehouses,
Malay shanties, and white-washed streets being merely attractive from
the ever-changing scheme of colour painted by varieties of race and
costume. Tamils of ebon blackness drive picturesque teams of humped
white oxen in red waggons laden with purple sugar-cane. Noble-looking
Sikhs, in spotless linen, stride past with kingly gait. Brown Siamese,
in many-coloured scarves and turbans gleaming with gold thread, chaffer
and bargain at open stalls with blue-robed Chinamen, and the bronze
figures of slim Malays, brightened by mere wisps of orange and scarlet
added to Nature's durable suit, slip through the crowds, pausing before
an emporium of polished brass-work, or a bamboo stall of teak wood
carving. The sloping black mitre of a stout Parsee merchant,
accompanied by a pretty daughter in white head-band and floating _sari_
of cherry-coloured silk, varies the motley headgear of turban and fez,
straw hat and sun-helmet, worn by this cosmopolitan population, the
pink headkerchiefs, tinselled scarves, and jewelled buttons of the
beautiful Burmese dress, drawing attention to the energetic bargaining
of two astute customers for cooking utensils; these elegantly-attired
but mahogany-coloured dames, rivalling the Sumatran women in business
capacity, and equally determined on securing the _quid pro quo_. The
long esplanade between town and sea borders a series of green lawns,
where carriages draw up round a bandstand, and the youthful element of
European Penang plays tennis with laudable zeal in the atmosph