d so many hours of agony, and yet it was necessary for me to
move as soon as possible.

The jungle was alive with gay voices; all the harmless, innocent
creatures, that populated its hospitable region, hailed the new day with
noisy acclamation, and their joy found an echo in me, for its
thousand-fold blessed light would show me my road to safety.

I afterwards learnt that my bad luck had guided me to a rock, close to a
spring of hot water, where the kings, queens, princes and princesses of
the forest were accustomed to hold their soirees!

* * * * *

I had to repose for some days before recovering from the physical and
moral shocks of that awful night and for some time afterwards I made my
faithful little Sakai accompany me on my tours of inspection round
Perak, as with him there was no fear of being lost.

[Illustration: Three types of tatooed Bretak Sakais.

_p._ 110.]

One day we got as far as the summit of the Berumbum where we passed the
night among some families that had taken refuge up there. I was
enchanted with the starry sky, the quiet air and mild temperature I
found upon that height and which made my thoughts fly across oceans and
continents to the sea which reflects my Liguria. Up there the nocturnal
silence is not rent by the blood-thirsty cries of wild animals, and
after having been lulled to sleep for so long by their distant clamour,
and especially after the strong emotions I had quite recently
experienced, that profound calmness was to me so full of sentimental
suggestion that instead of sleeping my spirit wandered into the past,
recalling with pleasure and sadness those evenings of sweet intimacy
once enjoyed in the bosom of my family, then a numerous one but now
reduced by death and other events.

When at last I fell asleep I did not awake till morning.

As soon as I had got up my young Sakai servant took the pillow I always
carried with me, and began to shake it, but he shrank back with a
frightened cry as a little snake of about a yard long, belonging to a
very poisonous class, fell from under it.

The dear little beast had slept upon the same pillow as I, perhaps to
prove to me that his sort is very much maligned and that if you leave
them alone to do what they like, without giving them any disturbance,
they will never think of biting you.

Ten Sakai families were encamped up there and I exhorted them all to
come down from that height of 5000 feet and oc