getation blotted out any recognisable landmarks; not even
the ribbon of a road was visible to the eye. But the top was reached,
and believing we were now on the level road for Penandjaan we tried to
open up conversation with our guide.

It is not easy to carry on a connected conversation with a native of the
Teng'ger when one's Malay vocabulary consists of about twenty words--and
half of these numerals--and the native's knowledge of the English
language, as one soon learned, consists entirely of "Yes" and "No." Yet,
it is wonderful what one will attempt in the dark--the loneliness was
so overpowering that one felt compelled to break the awesome silence.

[Illustration: ROAD TO TOSARI.]

But the conversation soon flagged, and one was thrown back upon one's
own thoughts. And as the road once again shaped for another crater-like
ravine, plunged in inkier darkness and shrouded in solemn stillness,
thoughts surged rapidly through one's mind. The first thing that had
attracted our attention as we mounted our pony was the delicious smell
of roses in the grounds of the Tosari Hotel. Since nothing could be
learned from the syce, nothing could be seen, nothing could be heard
except the occasional bark of a dog from a remote hut on the hillside or
the tuneful tingle of a bell on the neck of the uneasy occupant of an
unseen cow-shed, one tried to learn something by the sense of smell. At
first, the morning air was snell and sharp; there was an earthy aroma
which suggested nothing but decaying vegetable matter, but soon it was
succeeded by a pungent penetrating odour which made one wonder whence
its source. This pungency remained for the remainder of the morning's
ride, almost to the top of the mountain pass, some 9000 feet above
sea-level, and we ascertained on our return that it proceeded from the
enormous cabbages grown by the mountaineers for the markets on the
plains of East Java.

As we plunged deeper into the forest, it was impossible to make out more
than a dull outline of a white jacket and the white shoulder of our
piebald pony. Had we not known that the guide was there, we might have
wondered how the wonderful jacket succeeded in floating through space.
The pony had no head to our sight; the reins we held in our hand might
have been dispensed with so far as they acted as a guide to the pony,
who picked his own foothold and followed the white jacket. With painful
persistence, he picked the edge of the precipitous decliv