Page 300 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES
heat and excessive moisture of this forcing tropical
climate. No rocks, no bare hills, no arid plains,
everything covered with vegetation : new graves look
of a for all their
old in a month, the buildings year,
seeming, might have stood for half a century.
Only at our feet does the hand of man make any
mark on the landscape. There, amid trees and
gardens, nestle the red roofs of Taiping. You might
cover the place with a tablecloth for all its many
inhabitants, its long wide streets, open spaces, and
public buildings.
And those pools of water all around the town,
what are those?
They are abandoned tin-mines, alluvial workings
from which the ore has been removed, and water
mercifully covers, in part, this desolation of gaping
holes and sand.
upturned
The shore, due west and distant some twenty
miles from the foot of the range on which we stand,
is deeply indented by three great bays. They are
the mouths of three rivers, short, shallow and insig-
nificant in themselves ; it is difficult to understand
why they should make such an imposing entry on
the sea. A mile or two inland from the coast the
eye is caught by twenty little lakes, on which the
sun loves to linger, burnishing them to gold when
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