Page 35 - Malay sketches

Ill
A FISHING PICNIC

I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
Filled the river full of fishes
LONGFELLOW

come to a Malay picnic.
NOW
Again, it is early morning, the guests have
been invited overnight and warned to come on their
"
elephants and bring rice and salt." By the time
the sun is well up there are fifty or sixty people (of
whom about half are women), mounted on twelve or
and some and followers are
fifteen elephants, boys
prepared to walk.
The word is given to make for a great limestone
hill rising abruptly out of the plain, for, close
round the foot of this rock, eating its way into the
unexplored depths of subaqueous caves, flows a
clear mountain-bred stream, and, in the silent pools
which lie under the shadow of the cliff, are the fish
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