head, much to the amusement of my attendants.
Four thousand feet below, to the east, stretched the silver sheen of the Indian
Ocean. The smoke of a passing steamer lay like a dark stain on the blue and
white of the sky. Close into the shore was the little capital town of Bander
Maharani, connecting itself with us by a long, snake-like ribbon of shimmering
light,—the great river Maur.
To the north and west successive ranges of hill and valley, divided by the
glistening river, and all covered by an interminable jungle of vivid green, fell
away until lost in the cloudless horizon.
For a moment I stood and gazed out over the vast expanse that lay before me,
my mind filled with the wild, unwritten poetry of its jungles and its people; then
I turned to my companion.
“It is beautiful!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“But not equal to the view from our own Mount Washington.”
“Then why take so much trouble to secure it? Mount Pulei is as high, and there
is a good road to its top.”
I laughed. “Mount Pulei or Mount Washington is not Ophir.”
“True!” he answered, opening his eyes in surprise at the seeming absurdity of
my statement. “He that told you they were speaketh a lie.”
We spent the night on the summit, and watched the sun drop into the midst of
the sea, away to the west. It was cool and delightful after the moist, heat-laden
atmosphere of the lowlands, and a strong breeze freed us from the swarm of tiger
mosquitoes that we had learned to expect as the darkness came on.
Where the Ophir of the Bible really is, will ever be a question of doubt. To my
mind it embraces the entire East—the Malay Peninsula, Ceylon, India, and even
China,—Ophir being merely a comprehensive term, possibly taken from this
Mount Ophir of Johore, which signified the most central point of the region to