luxuriantly; and over all, during the long hot hours of the day, hangs a silence as
of the grave. Though these jungles teem with life, no living thing is to be seen,
save the busy ants, a few brilliantly-coloured butterflies and insects, and an
occasional nest of bees high up in the tree-tops. A little stream ripples its way
over the pebbles of its bed, and makes a humming murmur in the distance; a
faint breeze sweeping over the forest gently sways the upper branches of a few
of the tallest trees; but, for the rest, all is melancholy, silent, and motionless. As
the hour of sunset approaches, the tree beetles and cicada join in their strident
chorus, which tells of the dying day; the thrushes join in the song with rich trills
and grace-notes; the jungle fowls crow to one another; the monkeys whoop and
give tongue like a pack of foxhounds; the gaudy parrots scream and flash as they
hunt for flies;
And all the long-pent stream of life
Bursts downwards in a cataract.Then, as you lie listening through the long watches of the night, sounds are
borne to you which tell that the jungle is afoot. The argus pheasants yell to one
another as the hours creep by; the far-away trumpet of an elephant breaks the
stillness; and the frightened barking cry of a deer comes to you from across the
river. The insects are awake all night, and the little workman bird sits on a tree
close by you and drives coffin nails without number. With the dawn, the tree
beetles again raise their chorus; the birds sing and trill more sweetly than in the
evening; the monkeys bark afresh as they leap through the branches; and the
leaves of the forest glisten in the undried dew. Then, as the sun mounts, and the
dew dries, the sounds of the jungle die down one by one, until the silence of the
forest is once more unbroken for the long hot day.
Through these jungles innumerable streams and rivers flow seawards; for so
marvellously is this country watered that, from end to end of the Peninsula, no
two hills are found, but there is a stream of some sort in the gut which divides
them. Far up-country, the rivers run riot through long successions of falls and
rapids, but as they near the coast, they settle down into broad imposing looking
streams, miles wide in places, but for the most part uniformly shallow, the
surfaces of which are studded with green islands and yellow sandbanks. These
rivers, on the East Coast, form the principal, and often the only highways, many
of them being navigated for nearly three hundred miles of their course. When
they become too much obstructed by falls to be navigable even for a dug-out,
they still serve the Malays of the interior as highways. Where they are very