Page 298 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES
and the magnificence of tropical jungle, and look
down on the land for the last time.
Our callous eyes surfeited with years of gazing
on brilliant colours, great stretches of sea and
forest, huge trees, a bewildering luxury of foliage,
beasts measured by the elephant and rhinoceros,
birds by the argus pheasant and the peacock are
blind to the infinite beauty of our surroundings.
This path, by which we slowly rise to cooler alti-
tudes and a new flora, would excite in the stranger
of wonder and
feelings rapturous delight.
The road itself is cut through soil of a deep
the colour all the more vivid
shade of terra cotta } by
reason of the hues of green by which it is environed.
The sunlight strikes in rays of brilliant light across
this path, falling on red soil, granite boulder and
colour and
massive tree-trunk, intensifying deepen-
ing shadow. Here and there are seen glimpses of
the plains below, the distant sea, the peaks and
valleys of other hill ranges, and the ear constantly
catches the delightful sound of falling water, the
voices of numerous streams dashing down the
mountain sides in cascades of
steep sparkling
foam.
The path twists and winds, often by sharp zig-
zags, up the face of the hill, across a narrow saddle
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