Page 299 - Malay sketches

EVENING
and then by an even steeper ascent, till at last we
the summit of the mountain.
gain
Stand here. The limit of vision is wide ; you
will scarce find a grander spectacle in this Peninsula.
We are nearly 5,000 feet above the sea, and from
north to south the eye travels over a distance not
far short of two hundred miles. Eastward, those
distant hills are fully a hundred miles away, and
soon on the western horizon the sun will meet the
sea in a blaze of glory, as though kindling at the
touch of loving arms long waiting for his coming.
That faint blue peak in the north, hazy and
indistinct, is Gunong Jerai in Kedah, and the island
to the westward, which smiles through a golden
veil, is Penang. A grey streak of water shot with
gleams of sunlight divides it from the mainland, and
the forty miles of country thence to the foot of this
hill, and far south again to those blue islets off the

Binding coast, lie flat and fertile, a feast for the
Vivid mark thousands of acres
eyes. green patches
of sugar-cane and rice-field, but the general effect is
an unbroken expanse of dark jungle, mostly man-
grove, for all this land from hill-base to sea-shore is
of comparatively recent formation, the erosion from
the hills carried down seawards and covered with a
wealth of foliage ever renewed by the excessive
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