And so with the names of these flowers of the East, they seem to glow like the flowers themselves or the skies above them: Bougainvillea, Flame of the Forest, Hibiscus, Alamander. The last only lacks an S to prove my theory conclusively.

This morning by unparalleled exertions we were up by five o'clock, and had walked as far as the trigonometrical station, a sort of gigantic beehive thatched with palms on the tip-top of the mountain. The ground has been cleared-over an acre-of all but bracken, and gives an uninterrupted view of the two great mountain-ranges to East and West; ours being but a stepping stone between the Kinta valley we live in to the east, and the empty Western valley with its grey waste of tree-tops, and reaches of the Silver River shining ten miles away. Over these there hangs a perfect rainbow in a perfect semicircle, beginning and ending in the clouds high above the faint blue distances. The

Kinta valley lies between us and the dawn. It has been bearing half the world's output of tin for several years, and its smooth denuded surface is pitted with flooded mine-holes. There is also an artificial Serpentine to irrigate the rice-fields, and loops of the winding river are visible. All these patches of water are as silver in the dark-blue haze with a pink flush round their margins, when the grey clouds overhead turn quickly to rosemadder. Away south the sea lies narrow as a ribbon; and where the Eastern range descends abruptly towards the coast its base is washed by a

mist of brilliant whiteness. There, from behind the last steel-blue buttress of the mountains, we saw a sudden ray thrust like a spear across the silver level: brighter than crocuses in snow the sun had risen. And then the mist that ebbs and flows about our own hillside came rolling up through the tree-tops like a mirage of the flood-tide among the rocks, leaving us stranded on an islet in grey ocean, in unutterable solitude.

Have you ever had the desire to be for once so isolated and untrammelled as to be able to shout and sing your loudest and none to hear? It is best for dignity, I find, to make sure the isolation is real before gratifying this harmless fancy— which we did not. Out of the encircling gloom came a pattering of naked footsteps and answering cries of assistance. We saw the shadowy forms of the coolies who keep up the bridlepath, and fled from our gallant rescuers. The glory had departed: breakfast-time was at hand.

After breakfast there are many things to while away the time,-early lunch, lunch, tea, late tea, and finally dinner, for the mountain air is appetising. In the intervals you can smoke cigarettes and sit about listening to the orchestra of the jungle.

From a dozen directions in the greenwood sea below there floats a sound most strange, most musical. Now it is the deepest resonant note of an organ; now a repetition of high clear whoops; then it is the two sounds alternating rapidly; then bursting sud

denly into a wild triumphant Yo yo yo yo! something like the chorus of hounds in full cry. That is the jödel of the Siamang. Do you care for monkeys? Personally, I know two kinds only, and detest them both the Brok and the Kra. The Brok is a big, brown, fatuous baboon, of the familiar lowcomedy pattern, for ever sputtering and scratching himself, and fidgeting with hands and feet and making faces. Should you desire to please him, you will squat (just beyond the length of his chain) in front of him, and similarly scratch your person, make faces, and sputter. Then in high good-humour he will amble round his post in as big a circle as his chain permits, clutching at your hair with an adroit high kick as he passes. Such are his low delights. The Kra is a small grey person of passionate appearance, with close set fiery eyes, very like my friend Brands, who keeps one. The tastes of this little fiend are still more primitive— namely, to fly straight at you with his tail sticking out and his crest sticking up, and bite you again and again: he is worse than Brok.

Far different is the gentle Siamang; but then he is a gibbon, and no monkey. In assemblies on the tree-tops live the Siamang, whooping through the octaves, calling to their friends from miles away, and swooping off to meet them, racing steeplechases with the winds. I have seen, and hope to live and see again, a pack of the Siamang going through the jungle- -a long black arm and a small crumpled body swing

ing wildly from it like a pendulum run mad, then a suicidal fling, a crash in the covering green, and so they are gone,

Tame, they are the gentlest creatures. The Malays catch young ones and bring them to our doors, knowing that buy we must. It is not among the possibilities for a Mem to resist the forlorn small speechless thing, when it winds its long long arms and fingers round her neck, and hides its black wrinked face of an old woman, with round unhappy eyes, in the softness of her morning gown. Or it lurches across the verandah on a pair of very bandy little legs, balancing itself with outstretched arms. But they always die. They who have weathered torrential rains under the open heaven die in captivity of consumption, and cough out their ill-comprehended souls like Christians, huddled in a blanket.

All day long the Siamang are calling, omnipresent though invisible. The Malays firmly believe that the utan rimba, the heavy jungle, is inhabited by a Folk Whose Voice We Hear, a race of audible though unseen fairies; and I too am of the faith, because the more you sit quiet and watch with eyes and ears, the more surely you will know that the great precept of the rimba (very different from what we are taught in the nursery) is this: Little beasts should be heard but not seen. There are shady paths all about the bungalow, where you can sit all day without fear of sunstroke. If you care to do so, perhaps once in a moon you may become aware

NOT easily would you have found a girl more winning in a tender sort than Giovanna Scarpa of Verona at one-andtwenty, fair-haired and flushed, delicately shaped, tall and pliant, as she then was. She had to suffer her hours of ill report, but passes for near a saint now, in consequence of certain miracles and theophanies done on her account, which it is my business to declare: before those she was considered (if at all) as a girl who would certainly have been married three years ago if dowries had not been of moment in the matter. In a city of maids as pretty as they are modest-which no one will deny Verona to be there may have been some whose charms in either kind were equal to hers, while their estate was better in accord; but the speculation is idle. Giovanna, flower in the face as she was, fit to be nosegay on any hearth, posy for any man's breast, sprang in a very lowly soil. Like a blossoming reed she shot up to her inches by Adige, and one forgot the muddy bed wondering at the slim grace of the shaft with its crown of yellow atop. Her hair waved about her like a flag, she should have been planted in a castle; instead, Giovanna the stately calm, with her billowing line, staid lips, and candid grey eyes, was to be seen on

her knees by the green water most days of the week. Barearmed, splashed to the neck, bare-headed, out-at-heels, she rinsed and pommelled, wrung and dipped again, laughed, chattered, flung her hair to the wind, her sweat to the water, in line with a dozen other women below the Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the better-at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, whose toil fed seven mouths.

Her father was Don Urbano, curate of Santa Toscana across the water. This may very easily sound worse than it is. In Don Urbano's day, though a priest might not marry, he might have a wife a faithful, diligent companion, that is to seethe his polenta, air his linen, and rear his

children. The Church winked at her, and so continued until the Jesuits came to teach that winking was unbecoming. But when Can Grande II. lorded in Verona the Jesuits did not, and Don Urbano, good easy man, cared not who winked at his wife. She gave him six children before she died of the seventh, of whom the eldest was Giovanna, and the others, in an orderly chain diminishing punc