jungle, each turning point bringing a whiff of cooler air, as
the evening gold flickers through the velvety fronds of tree-ferns, and
the green feathers of spreading bamboos. From the white hotel near the
summit, the blue Straits and the flats of Province Wellesley, the
English portion of the Malay Peninsula, stand out against the frowning
ridge of mountains, for black thunder-clouds continually brood over
Malacca. Monkeys caper and chatter in the teak-trees bordering a
circular terrace, and an ideal sylvan path leads to the Signal Station,
Hospital, and Post Office, on an opposite height, dotted with the
bungalows of summer visitors. A palm-shaded plateau beneath the hotel
offers an ideal resting-place, but the impenetrable jungle covering the
Penang Hills makes expeditions on foot or by chair, impracticable, and
the wild deluges of rain, with terrific thunder peals bursting in
uncontrolled fury on this exposed peak, minimise the delights of a
mountain sojourn. The invasion of an army of jungle rats, behind the
walls and above the ceiling of a room sodden and dripping with the
afternoon's flood, completes the disillusion, and compels a hasty
descent to the warmer damp of the lowlands, for the Equatorial climate,
and the general absence of bed-coverings, causes a rheumatic stiffness
on rising, which has to be steamed out by the atmospheric vapour-bath
of the tropical island. A long rickshaw ride to Tanjong Bungah
("Flowery Point") completes the day's cure in a sweltering heat, which
on the return journey at 8 a.m. causes even the Chinese coolies to stop
perpetually at wayside stalls, for the coloured syrups and sticky
sweetmeats on which they perform prodigies of endurance and speed. An
English planter, in his solitary cacao-garden on the edge of the sea,
hails his compatriots with delight, and leads the way through the rocky
ravines bordering his solitary bungalow. The glories of the tropics
seldom alleviate the sense of exile, and cloudy England, with her
"green fields and pastures dim," remains dearer than all the pageantry
of Nature elsewhere to most of her absent sons.

The Buddhist temple of Ayer-Etam, built in ascending tiers on a steep
acclivity, varies the natural interests of Penang, with the marvels of
Chinese architecture elaborated in the deep seclusion of mountain and
forest. The dewy areca-palms throw a dark network of interlacing
shadows across the red road, winding for miles through the sylvan
scenery,