play her a trick some night by hiding behind the curtains."

At this moment they were in the hall, and Etta was bending her little head to a careful examination of the lock and fastenings of the front door. "Were you going to bar me out again, Miss Lacy?" asked Ernest.

The sudden sound of a voice behind her made her start, and the loose extinguisher in her candlestick fell to the ground with a rattle.

"I am sorry that I frightened you," said Ernest, hastening to pick it up.

Ernest, in the most courteous tone he could command. "Is there no one to whom you can commit the office of locking up and going the rounds? With two able-bodied men in the house it appears somewhat disgraceful to us to let it be done by a young lady. Allow me another time to act as your substitute."

"Thank you," replied Etta, curtly. "I have been taught that what you want well done you should do yourself. One night Lizzie left the drawing-room window open; a huge toad got in and was found on the carpet in the morning

You know it might have been a robber just as well."

"Nevertheless, I hope you will allow me to spare you an office so unsuitable, at least while my visit lasts."

The concluding words were diplomatic, thrown in to prevent her feeling alarmed by any contemplated infringement of her duties of ownership.

"Thank you. I would rather not give you the trouble."

Ernest could only bow in acquiescence, and wish her "Good night.

"It is a pity that master does not take more kindly to her, and train her like for what she is to be, but he never did-not even in madam's time," said Merry, when they were out of hearing. "I think he was jealous of her. Madam spoilt and petted her, and always put her first. But she is a nice little thing if you know how to manage her. Now if Miss Matty would take a little pains with her, and try to find a little amusement for her, instead of always going her own way, leaving Miss Etta to do the same, the young lady would be more like others. She has got through the summer, but when the winter comes I don't know how she will get on."

"Perhaps as well as she does now," suggested Ernest.

"She will play and sing a little, I suppose, and dream about what she is going to do, but she can't be as much out of doors. She mostly spends her time gardening or running over the parish, interfering with the poor, giving them medicine and advice, which they don't take amiss because they like her and know she will be mistress here by-and-by, but that is not the life for a young lady. Won't Miss Rivers exert herself to make it more cheerful-like for her? You can't, I know, you have something else to do, but Miss Matty might persuade master to let her see a friend or two now and then. She has but just left school, and must know some nice young girl that would be very glad to come-or Miss Matty might herself help to make the days pleasanter for her.

So Miss Matty said when I once talked to her about it, and also that master had no objection to her going away as often as she liked if her friends wanted her, but he could not have visitors here. Miss Matty, you know, does not find it dull. It was her home, and she knows pretty nearly every man and woman born in the neighbourhood for the last fifty years, as well as every brick in the wall. She can't stir without meeting some one or something to interest her in the histories of all these people, and she sits and talks with master whenever she has a mind to it and is not afraid of him, and there is a good deal in that. Something ought to be done to make that other happy, I am sure of it," said Merry, strengthening his assertion by a sagacious nod of the head, and well satisfied that he had seized this opportunity of accompanying Ernest to his room to relieve his mind on Etta's behalf.

"Miss Etta looks happy enough; she always seems to have some scheme or business in hand. Her head is continually at work," observed Ernest. But when Merry was gone, he thought over what he had just heard, and realised for the first time that a life like Etta's, with no other occupation than what she could create out of the scantiest of materials within her reach, could not be a very bright one. It was much to her credit that she made anything of it, and Etta, with all her childishness, rose many degrees in his estimation.

"Poor little thing! I should really like to make her life a little more gay," he said to himself, giving perhaps undue weight to his good intentions.

BY

British Residency, Serambang, Sungei Ujong,
January 26th.

Y the date of my letter you will see that our difficulties have been surmounted. I continue my narrative in a temperature which, in my room-shaded though it is-has reached 87°. After hearing many pros and cons, and longing much for the freedom of a solitary traveller, I went out and visited the tomb of a famous Hadji, "a great prophet," the policeman said, who was slain in ascending the Linggi. It is a raised mound, like our churchyard graves, with a post at each end, and a jar of oil upon it, and is surrounded by a lattice of reeds on which curtains are hanging, the whole being covered with a thatched roof supported on posts.

The village looks prosperous, and the Chinaman as much at home as in China-striving, thriving, and oblivious of everything but his own interests, the sole agent in the development of the resources of the country, well satisfied with our or any rule under which his gains are quick and safe.

There are village officers or headmen, Pangalus, in all villages, and every hamlet of more than forty houses has its mosque and religious officials, though Mohammedanism does not recognise the need of a priesthood. If one sees a man, with the upper part of his body unclothed, paddling a log-canoe face forwards, one is apt to call him a savage, especially if he be dark-skinned; but the Malays would be much offended if they were called savages, and, indeed, they are not so. They have an elaborate civilisation, etiquette, and laws of their own, are the most rigid of monotheists, are decently clothed, build secluded and tolerably comfortable houses, and lead domestic lives after their fashion, especially where they are too poor to be polygamists, though I am of opinion that the peculiar form of domesticity which we still cultivate to some extent in England, and which is largely connected with the fireside, cannot exist in a tropical country. After the obtrusive nudity and promiscuous bathing of the Japanese, there is something specially pleasing in the little secluded bathing sheds by the Malay rivers, used by one person at a time, who throws

a sarong on the thatch to show that the shed is occupied.

Babu made some excellent soup, which, together with curry made with fresh coco-nut, was a satisfactory meal, and though only in a simple white Indian costume, he waited as grandly as at Malacca. Mr. Hayward's knowledge of the peculiarities of the Malay character at last obtained our release from what was truly "durance vile." He sent for a boatman apart from his fellows, and induced him to make a bargain for taking us up the river at night; but the man soon returned in a state of great excitement, complaining that the villagers had set on him, and were resolved that we should not go up, upon which the police went down and interfered. Even after everything was settled, Miss Shaw was feeling so ill that she wanted to stay in the police-station all night at least; but Mr. Hayward and I, who consulted assiduously about her, were of opinion that we must move her, even if we had to carry her, for if she were going to have fever, I could nurse her at Captain Murray's, but certainly not in the verandah of a police-station!

This worthy man, who is very brave and used to facing danger-who was the first European to come up here, who acted as guide to the troops during the war, and afterwards disarmed the population-positively quailed at having the charge of these two fragile girls. "Oh," he repeated several times, "if anything were to happen to the Miss Shaws I should never get over it, and they <don't know what roughing it is; they never should have been allowed to come." So I thought too as I looked at one of them lying limp and helpless on a Malay bed; but my share of the responsibility for them was comparatively limited. Doubtless his thoughts strayed, as mine did, to the days of travelling "without encumbrance." There was another encumbrance of a literal kind. "They had a trunk! This indispensable impediment had been left at Malacca in the morning, and arrived in a four-paddled canoe just as we were about to start!

Mr. Hayward prescribed two tablespoonfuls of whisky for Miss Shaw, for it is somewhat of a risk to sleep out in the jungle at the rainy season, for the miasma rises twenty feet, and the day had been exceptionally hot. Our rather dismal procession started at seven, Mr. Hayward leading the way, carrying a torch made of strips of palm branches bound tightly together and dipped in gum damar, a most inflammable resin; then a policeman; the sick girl, moaning and stumbling, leaning heavily on her sister and me; Babu, who had grown very plucky, a train of policemen carrying our baggage; and lastly, several torchbearers, the torches dripping fire as we slowly and speechlessly passed along. It looked like a funeral or something uncanny. We crawled dismally for fully three-quarters of a mile to cut off some considerable windings of the river, crossed a stream on a plank bridge, and found our boat lying at a very high pier with a thatched roof.

The mystery of night in a strange place was wildly picturesque; the pale, greenish, undulating light of fireflies, and the broad, red, waving glare

of torches flashing fitfully on the skeleton pier, the lofty jungle trees, the dark, fast-flowing river, and the dark, lithe forms of our half-naked boatmen. The prahu was a flattish-bottomed boat about twenty-two and a half feet long by six and a half feet broad, with a bamboo gridiron flooring, resting on the gunwale for the greater part of its length. This was covered for seven feet in the middle by a low circular roof, thatched with attap. It was steered by a broad paddle, loosely lashed, and poled by three men, who, standing at the bow, planted their poles firmly in the mud, and then walked half-way down the boat and back again. All boats must ascend the Linggi by this laborious process, for its current is so strong that the Japanese would call it one long "rapid." Descending, loaded with tin, the stream brings boats down with great rapidity, the poles being used only to keep them off the banks and shallows. Our boat was essentially "native."

The "Golden Khersonese" is very hot, and much infested by things which bite and sting. Though the mercury has not been lower than 80° at night since I reached Singapore, I have never felt the heat overpowering in a house; but the night on the river was awful, and, after the intolerable blaze of the day, the fighting with the heat and mosquitos was most exhausting, crowded as we were into very close and uneasy quarters, a bamboo gridiron being by no means a bed of down. Bad as it was, I was often amused by the thought of the unusual feast which the jungle mosquitos were having on the blood of four white people. If it had not been for the fire in the bow, which helped to keep them down by smoking them (and us), I at least should now be laid up with "mosquito fever."

The Miss Shaws and I were on a blanket on the gridiron under the roof, which just allowed of sitting up; Mr. Hayward, who had never been up the river before, and was anxious about the navigation, sat, vigilant and lynx-eyed, at the edge of it; Babu, who had wrapped himself in Oriental impassiveness and a bernouse, and Mr. Hayward's police attendant, sat in front, all keeping their positions throughout the night as dutifully as the figures in a tableau vivant. And so we silently left Permatang Pasir for our jungle voyage of eighteen. hours, in which time, by unintermitting hard work, we were propelled about as many miles, though some say twenty-nine.

No description could exaggerate the tortuosity of the Linggi or the sharpness of its tortuosities. The boatmen measure the distance by turns. When they were asked when we should reach the end, they never said in so many hours, but in so many turns.

Silently we glided away from the torchlight into the apparently impenetrable darkness, but the heavens, of which we saw a patch now and then, were ablaze with stars, and ere long the forms of trees above and around us became tolerably distinct. Ten hours of darkness followed as we poled our slow and tedious way through the forest gloom, with trees to right of us, trees to left of us, trees before us, trees behind us, trees above us, and, I may write, trees under us, so innu

merable were the snags and tree trunks in the river. The night was very still; not a leaf moved, and at times the silence was very solemn. I expected, indeed, an unbroken silence, but there were noises that I shall never forget. Several times there was a long, shrill cry, much like the Australian "Coo-ee!" answered from a distance in a tone almost human. This was the note of the grand night bird, the Argus pheasant, and is said to resemble the cry of the "orang-utan," the jakkuns, or the wild men of the interior. A sound like the constant blowing of a steam-whistle in the distance was said to be produced by a large monkey. Yells hoarse or shrill, and roars more or less guttural, were significant of any of the wild beasts with which the forest abounds, and recalled the verse in Psalm civ., "Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move.' Then there were cries as of fierce gambols, or of pursuit and capture, of hunter and victim; and at times, in the midst of profound stillness, came huge plungings, with accompanying splashings, which I thought were made by alligators, but which Captain Murray thinks were more likely the riot of elephants disturbed while drinking. There were hundreds of mysterious and unfamiliar sounds great and small, significant of the unknown beast, reptile, and insect world which the jungle hides, and then silences.

Sheet lightning, very blue, revealed at intervals the strong stream swirling past under a canopy of trees, falling and erect, with straight stems one hundred and fifty feet high probably, surmounted by crowns of drooping branches; palms with their graceful plumage; lianas hanging, looping, twisting, their orange fruitage hanging over our heads; great black snags; the lithe, wiry forms of our boatmen always straining to their utmost, and the motionless white turban of the Hadji-all for a second relieved against the broad blue flame, to be again lost in darkness.

of

The Linggi above Permatang Pasir, with its sharp turns and muddy hurry, is, I should say, from thirty to sixty feet wide, a mere pathway through the jungle. Do not think of a jungle as I used to think of it, as an entanglement or thicket of profuse and matted scrub, for it is in these regions at least a noble forest of majestic trees, many them buttressed at their roots by three buttresses, behind which thirty men could find shelter. On many of the top branches of these other trees have taken root from seeds deposited by birds, and have attained considerable size; and all send down, as it appears, extraordinary cylindrical strands from two to six inches in diameter, and often one hundred and fifty feet in length, smooth and straight until they root themselves, looking like the guys of a mast. Under these giants stand the lesser trees grouped in glorious confusioncoco, sago, areca, and gomuti palms, nipsh and nibeng dwarf palms, tree ferns fifteen and twenty feet high, the bread-fruit, the ebony, the damar, the india-rubber, the gutta-percha, the cajeput, the banyan, the upas the bombax or cotton-tree, and hosts of others, many of which bear brilliant flowers, but have not vet been botanised; and I

could only give such barbarous names as chumpaka, kamooning, marbow, seum, dadap, and, loveliest of all, the waringhan, a species of ficus, graceful as a birch; and underneath these again great ferns, ground orchids, and flowering shrubs of heavy delicious odour are interlocked and interwoven. Oh that you could see it all! It is wonderful; no words could describe it, far less mine. Mr. Darwin says so truly that a visit to the tropics (and such tropics) is like a visit to a new planet. This new wonder-world, so enchanting, tantalising, intoxicating, makes me despair, for I cannot make you see what I am seeing! Amidst all this wealth of nature, and in this perennial summer heat, I quite fail to realise that it is January, and that with you the withered plants are shrivelling in the frost-bound earth, and that leafless twigs and the needles of half-starved pines are shivering under the stars in the aurora-lighted winter nights.

But to the jungle again. The great bamboo towers up along the river sides in its feathery grace, and behind it the much-prized Malacca cane, the ratan, creeping along the ground or climbing trees and knotting them together, with its tough strands, from a hundred to twelve hundred feet in length, matted and matting together; while ferns, selaginellas, and lycopodiums struggle for space in which to show their fragile beauty, along with hardier foliaceous plants, brown and crimson, green and crimson, and crimson flecked with gold; and the great and lesser trees alike are loaded with trailers, ferns, and orchids, among which huge masses of the elk-horn ferns, and the shining five-foot fronds of the Asplenium Nidus, are everywhere conspicuous. Not only do orchids crowd the branches, and the hoya carnosa, the yam, the blue-blossomed thunbergia, the vanilla (?),* and other beautiful creepers conceal the stems, and nearly every parasitic growth carries another parasite, but one sees here a filament carelessly dangling from a branch sustaining some brighthued epiphyte of quaint mocking form; then a branch as thick as a clipper's mainmast reaches across the river, supporting a festooned trailer, from whose stalks hang, almost invisibly suspended, oval fruits almost vermilion coloured; then again the beautiful vanilla and the hoya carnosa vie with each other in wreathing the same tree; or an audacious liana, with great clusters of orange or scarlet blossoms, takes possession of several trees at once, lighting up the dark greenery with its flaming splotches; or an aspiring trailer, dexterously linking its feebleness to the strength of other plants, leaps across the river from tree to tree at a height of a hundred feet, and, as though in mockery, sends down a profusion of crimson festoons far out of reach. But it is as useless to attempt to catalogue as to describe. To realise an equatorial jungle one must see it in all its wonderment of activity and stillness-the heated, steamy stillness, through which one fancies that no breeze ever whispers, with its colossal flowering trees, its green twilight, its inextricable involvement, its butterflies and moths, its brilliant but harsh-voiced birds, its lizards and flying foxes, its infinite variety of monkeys-sitting, hanging