Among the Gods. Scenes of India: with legends by the way, etc

Front matter

AMONG THE GODS A GOPURA OK THE GREAT PAGODA, MADURA. AMONG THE GODS SCENES OF INDIA : WITH LEGENDS BY THE WAY BY AUGUSTA KLEIN WITH FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXCV All Rights reserved En memcrtam SORORIS NOSTRAE QUAE OLIM NOBISCUM PEREGRINATA NUNC D01II NOS EXSPECTAT. CONTENTS. CUAF. PAGE I. FROM LONDON TO THE ISLE OF GEMS ... 1 II. KANDY AND NUWARA ELIYA ..... 16 III. CHRISTMAS IN SOUTHERN INDIA .... 38 IV. TINNEVELLI ........ 62 V. THE CITY OF SWEETNESS ..... 70 VI. TRICHINOPOLI ....... 80 VII. TANJOR ........ 93 VIII. MADRAS AND THE SEVEN PAGODAS .... 103 IX. FROM MADRAS TO CALCUTTA ..... 126 X. DARJILING ........ 145 XI. THE CITY OF FLOWERS . . . . . .165 XII. THE TEMPLE OF THE BODHI TREE .... 175 XIII. BENARES ........ 191 XIV. MOTHER GANGES . . . . . . .210 XV.

THE CITY OF AKBAR ...... 226 XVI. GWALIAR ..... ... CONTENTS. 267 XVII. THE PEACOCK CITY AND THE FOREST OF VRINDA XVIII. THE POOL OF IMMORTALITY ..... 284 XIX. PESHAWAR AND THE KHAIBER PASS . . . 300 XX. FROM SIMLA TO JAIPUR ..... 312 XXI. BOMBAY THE CAVES OF ELEPHANTA . . 329 XXII. BOMBAY THE TOWERS OF SILENCE . . . ILLUSTRATIONS. i'\<.r Frontispiece A GOPURA OF THE GREAT PAGODA, MADURA ON THE GALLE ROAD, COLOMBO ..... 10 BUDDHIST MONKS, KANDY ...... 22 THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH, KANDY .... 24 THE NAZARETH MISSIONARY, WITH FOUR NATIVE PRIESTS AND THE CHOIR OF S. JOHN'S ..... 48 THREE TAMIL GIRLS, NAZARETH ..... 56 PILLARS IN THE HALL OF A THOUSAND COLUMNS, SHRIRAN- GAM PAGODA ........ 88 THE RATHS AT THE SEVEN PAGODAS .... 122 THE GREAT BANYAN TREE, BOTANICAL GARDENS, CALCUTTA 142 BHUTIA MEN AND WOMEN, DARJILING .... 152 THE GOSAIN TEMPLE, BENARES ..... 208 RIVER-SIDE TEMPLES, BENARES ..... 214 THE MEMORIAL WELL, CAWNPORE ..... 228 THE DIWAN-I KHAS, AGRA FORT .....

X ILLUSTRATIONS. THE TAJ MAHALL, FROM THE TOP OF THE GATEWAY . . 244 JAINA SCULPTURES IN THE URWAHI VALLEY, GWALIAR . 264 THE TEMPLE OF GOVIND DEO, BINDRABAN . . . 274 THE GOLDEN TEMPLE, AMRITSAR ..... 294 VIEW FROM JAKO, SIMLA ...... 312 HALL OF THE WINDS, JAIPUR ...... 316 TRIMURTI, ELEPHANTA ....... 332 ONE OF THE TOWERS OF SILENCE, NEAR BOMBAY . .

Chapter I. From London To The Isle Of Gems

It is a cold and melancholy November morning in the year 1891. London never was smokier or smuttier in all its dingy life. A drizzling rain comes down unceasingly from the low and colourless sky, and the gloom of a chill and clinging fog is in the ends of the muddy streets. On a shadowy platform in Charing Cross Station, hard by the train for Dover, stand a father and his three daughters and his daughters' Welsh maid, — " an English family," saith a critic of their former travels, "whether real or fictitious we know not." This is really too bad ! Pray, Mr Critic, how would you like to have it insinuated that you were a figment of your own imagination ? The travellers are already known to such as have perused their Palestine wanderings,1 and their introduction need not be a lengthy one. There is Irene the tender-hearted, and Philippa the business-like, and Sebaste, who gathers much 1 See "Sketches from Eastern Travel," 'Blackwood's Magazine,' 1892.

A wool in the course of every day. There, too, presiding over a small mountain of rugs and handbags, stands Elizabeth of cheerful countenance. And now they have bestowed themselves in their train and set forth on their six months' journey. Overland they travel as far as Brindisi, where lies beside the quay the good ship Britannia, looking very proud indeed of her 6000 tons. And late on a Sunday night she steams out to sea, carrying our travellers with her. Now, forasmuch as the business of this present scripture is to describe the travellers' adventures in India and Ceylon, the sea-voyages thither and thence might with great pro priety be omitted. But though sea-voyages in general may be but tedious things to write about, yet these particular specimens of that kind are so prosperous and so delightful that to pass them over in silence would be ungrateful indeed.

Ungrateful, and, moreover, untrue ; for the mental picture of India which, when the journey is done, will hang in Memory's echoing hall, must, with its brilliant hues, be framed for ever in the shining blue of foam-flecked seas and the radiant, cloudless glories of boundless and sunlit skies. " Very poetical, no doubt," says Philippa dryly ; but the tropics are too warm, I think, for such soaring flights of eloquence. How the flying - fish can go on as they do, I cannot imagine. Look at that little twinkling constella tion of them. They have kept up with the ship for two minutes at least, and we are making sixteen knots an hour ! " Under the cool shade of a double awning the travellers reclining in their deck-chairs, are looking languidly forth on a world of golden sunshine and bright-blue sea and sky.

Truly a region of peace and quiet is the Arabian Sea on a hot December day ! All through the glowing hours of sun light the mind reposes in a delightful inactivity, revelling in the dreamy sense of having left far, far behind all the complicated problems and the intricate life of the land, and of having floated forth into boundless freedom where space and time are not. But when evening comes, it brings with it awakening and reviving, and then our travellers' eyes, gazing no longer on vacancy, are intent on the gorgeous pageant of a tropical sunset at sea, the like of which, even in Egypt or Nubia, they have hitherto never dreamed of. It is not till after the sun has vanished below the horizon that the real splendours begin. Then a haze of luminous purple hangs from above, and beneath is an expanse of daffodil sky, and on all sides are gauzy veils of crimson and gold, now piled in folds of deepening colour, now wav ing and floating and dissolving in clear and rosy light.

Gradually the arc of colour contracts, growing ever more intense, ever more definite in form, while from the central light stream forth great pencils of coloured rays. The daffodil hue is a glowing gold, and the gold is rose-colour, and the rose is crimson, each mirrored in turn on the burnished surface of the deep and waveless sea. The purple haze has dissolved into the clear, deep blue of the night-sky, wherein swims the new moon's delicate crescent, the radiant rim of the disc that the bright earth-shine completes with a soft, clear light unknown in northern climes. And now the. great stars shine forth, and all the brightest of them cast each a distinct path of light across the shadowy waters. To watch on such a night the rising of Sirius is to see a vision never to be forgotten. Like a flaming lamp he hangs over his own shining reflection, shooting forth his bright beams of prismatic light, a marvel to behold.

Well may the Zarathustrian scripture call him " the bright and glorious star " x whom Ahura Mazda the Holy One hath " established as a lord and overseer above all stars." North of him shines forth Procyon, while Castor and Pollux preside in state over the hosts of the north-east heavens. Capella darts her coloured rays from far above the horizon ; away to southward glows and scintillates the glorious Aldebaran ; and Canopus casts his calmer beams in a gleaming path along the sea. It is a scene that calls to mind that strange similitude of Indian wisdom, which tells how the Supreme Being " having prepared all created things, hath inserted and united Himself to them, but is at the same time distinct from them all. Just as the figures of the stars appear in water, but, if any one seeks to extract a star from thence, it is absurd.

Such is his essence." 2 Strange and unnatural look the brilliant constellations ; for many are new, and the familiar ones are fantastically out of position. Orion reclines on his back, Cassiopeia stands on her head, and the Great Bear, that generally well-conducted beast, is balancing itself on the end of its tail. But there are other things which make the night stranger yet. Contending with the splendour of the planets Venus and Jupiter shines the faint radiance of the Zodiacal Light in the west, and below in the water are the balls and streaks of soft, bright phosphorescence which float and dance backward from the prow of the ship ; and there is that mysterious, starlit distance stretching away and away like a vast gleaming pavement whereon rests the mighty dome of the dark-blue, starry sky ; 1 From "TheVendidad," translated by James Darmesteter.

Sacred Books of the East. 3 From Halhed's ' Slieeve Pouran.' while the summer lightning from beyond the utmost horizon runs and gleams and flickers in weird and elfin light. Long, long ago the shores of the western lands sank down beneath the horizon. They are like some far-off dreamland now, and what was once the land of dreams will soon rise up from the sea, and will prove itself, for many a month to come, brilliantly and dazzlingly real. But we have had enough of the frame. Let us come to the picture itself. It is early on a Sunday morning, and the sun is rising in a glow of liquid gold, when our travellers awake to find them selves floating at anchor on the smooth waters of Colombo harbour. All around them is an expanse of sparkling blue, and beyond, against the background of the golden sunrise light, lies the coast of that Fairyland of ancient story, Simhala, the Island of Gems.

Thickly fringing the water's edge stand deep groves of coco-nut palms, luxuriant and graceful beyond the imagination of those who draw from rainless Egypt their notions of southern vegetation. Not all growing perpen dicularly, as is the manner of date-palms, but bending and crossing one another in curving lines, the coco-nut palms are a thousand times more beautiful and fairy-like. Truly it is an alluring land, an enchanted island just risen in freshness and beauty from the depths of the shining sea. This is that Kingdom of the Lion round which are gath ered so many wonderful myths of immemorial Buddhist tra dition. Of old, in the long-past days, no human beings lived therein, but spirits and serpent-princes ; and theirs was all the countless wealth of this the Sorrowless Land. Here, in their great iron" city the Rakshasi demons dwelt; and when merchants came to traffic with the friendly spirits, then would come forth those demon-women to the sound of the sweetest music, holding flowers and scents in their hands.

But those whom they enticed within the walls of their city they " shut up in an iron prison," and devoured them every one. After those days the island was inhabited by men not wholly human, the fierce descendants of the Lion King, a savage and cruel race who knew nought of mercy or pity. They were small of stature and of black complexion, in form like human beings, and having the hearts of lions. But already our travellers are rowing ashore in a quaint and curious boat propelled by oars which are poles terminat ing in discs of wood ; and presently they find themselves in good time for Service in the Fort Church, where even the sweep and flap of the punkahs cannot dissipate the com fortable sense of home, latitude and longitude notwith standing. The travellers establish themselves in the Grand Oriental Hotel.

Grand it is not (except so far as mere size goes), but Oriental it may fairly be called by virtue of its cool and comfortable absence of furniture, its multitudes of amiable lizards and majestic beetles, and the outlandish human figures which haunt its airy corridors. With a view to coolness, the bedrooms have no ceilings, and one gazes upward to the roof of the house, which roof is so constructed as to let in welcome air while excluding the terrible sun shine. Instead of a window are folding-doors, always wide open, and leading into a shaded balcony. Thus one sleeps almost out of doors, and is awakened in the morning by the soft balmy air blowing across the coco-nut palms, from whose leafy crowns the rising sun is just disentangling himself. When the glorious sunrise has been sufficiently admired, one claps one's hands for chota hazri, which presently appears.

Chota hazri (which signifieth Little Breakfast) is the daintiest refection of the day, consisting of Ceylon tea and fresh bananas, with other local delicacies. It is brought by one of the white-robed Singhalese folk, — a strange figure that, with its bare brown feet, makes no sound at all as it softly glides along. The face is dark brown, with a silky black beard and quick, shining eyes. The fine black hair is glossy with coco-nut oil, and, being long like a woman's, is twisted up into a neat little knob behind, while the top of the head is encircled by a narrow tortoise - shell comb of which the ends touch the forehead. Now is the time for sightseeing, for later in the day the sun will be too powerful to be braved out of doors ; and accordingly the travellers sally forth to see the town of Colombo.

Walking in this heat is neither pleasant nor prudent, and, they therefore patronise the jinrickshas. Now a jinricksha is a light chair on wheels furnished with two small shafts between which runs a native, pulling the con veyance after him at a fabulous and exhilarating rate of progress. There are always dozens of these men hovering about the hotel door and anxiously waiting to be hired, so that there will be no difficulty in getting about the town ; but to find the town is very difficult indeed — in fact, through out their stay in Colombo our friends cannot honestly say that they ever have found it at all. With the exception of a small nucleus of native shops, it is so widely scattered as to be altogether intangible. Colombo extends over 6415 acres of ground, and consists chiefly of coco-palms, including also a lake and other natural features.

Here and there one comes upon a house in wide grounds of its own, or a few native cottages, or a large park with a public building in it ; but everything is miles away from everything else, and no two points of interest lie in the same direction. The travellers give up the town in despair, and console themselves by visiting the Cinnamon Gardens instead. As they approach the part of the Gardens devoted to cinnamon growing, a spicy fragrance 1 fills the air that is everywhere and always strangely balmy and sweet. The cinnamon-plant is cultivated as a bushy shrub, every part whereof has a strong and delicious scent. In the Gardens is an excellent Museum containing speci mens of all the animals known in the island, — quaint, un canny-looking beasts, and unfamiliar birds, and brilliant butterflies; gigantic buffaloes, and turtles, and sea-creatures innumerable.

One can travel all over Ceylon within the Museum walls. Here are many skeletons of elephants, of whom the personal history is related by the intelligent Tamil Christian whose duty it is to do the honours of the Museum to visitors. One of the skeletons is that of a faithful and trusted elephant who spent thirty-seven years of his life as a Carrier in the service of Government, and died esteemed of all, at the age of fifty. Another is that of a " rogue " elephant — that is, an unfortunate beast afflicted with a monomania which impels him to make for any human creature who comes in his way, and immediately trample him to death. Well-conducted elephants are ac customed to go about in herds, but the furious " rogues " are excluded from all circles of jungle society, and rampage through the world alone, a terror to encounter.

More interesting than outlandish beasts are the models 1 Bishop Heber was perfectly correct about the " spicy breezes " notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary by contentiouslyminded travellers unblessed with poetical noses. representing types of the island's various native races with their proper costumes ; and especially attractive are some resplendent specimens of native jewellery, among which is conspicuous the wedding-necklace of gold, which is fastened by the bridegroom on the bride's neck, and must never be removed so long as he lives. The strangest objects in the Museum are the masks of native "devildancers" who are called in to dance before the sick, and who wear different masks (each more hideously grotesque than the others) for the different demons to be propitiated, and the various diseases to be cured.

When the disease is hatred of an enemy, the " devil-dancer " covers his face with the appalling effigy of a demon whose terrific teeth and claws are in the act of crushing to death little human figures of wretched and helpless aspect. He then dances before the vindictive patient, and sticks pins into diminutive effigies of the ill-fated enemy in question. Leaving the Museum, our friends pursue their way under the towering coco-palms with their far-off crowns of foliage overhanging the giant bunches of slowly maturing fruit. A very brown little boy waylays them with a couple of unripe coco - nuts, and the travellers, having purchased the same for two coppers, refresh themselves with the so-called milk, which is in fact a sweet juice not unlike that of a melon. At length they return to the hotel for breakfast, and become initiated in the mysterious delights of prawn and pumpkin curry seasoned with chutnee and grated coco-nut, while overhead the great punkahs sweep to and fro, and all around a multitude of white-robed Singhalese waiters scud noiselessly over the polished floors, proffering in obsequious silence all kinds of dainties to everybody.

Every day spent in Colombo and its neighbourhood brings to our travellers fresh impressions of the profuse and ex uberant beauty of this wonderful hothouse country. The roads, made of the red loamy soil, are of a rich crimson colour, which contrasts picturesquely with the lively green of the luxuriant vegetation. By the roadside grow Indian tulip-trees (vulgarly so called) with their delicate yellow flowers blushing crimson just before they fade ; while here and there is a flaming mass of the lettuce-tree's yellow-green foliage, good to eat as well as to look upon. Everywhere are thick groves and forests of stately coco-palms, with a rich undergrowth entangled with bright flowering creepers which hide the bushes with trailing veils of crimson and purple blossoms. Gayest of all are the shoeflower-bushes covered with large, lily -like blooms of the most luminous carmine hue that heart of man can imagine.

Here and there the darker foliage of the bread-fruit tree relieves the dazzled eye, and contrasts with the vivid groups of bananas that shade with their broad drooping leaves great clusters of crowded fruit. As they wander day after day among such surroundings of enchanting and unfamiliar loveliness, the travellers find themselves haunted by clouds of innumerable butterflies of large size and many colours. Their assembling at this season (when their life is nearly finished) is preparatory, saith native tradition, to their taking flight for Adam's Peak in the interior, whereon they will worship the footprint of Buddha, and thereafter die content. For the Buddha came, in the days of old, to visit the Isle of Gems and to war against the spirits therein and the wicked serpent-princes. And when he was come to the island he " planted one foot to the north of the royal city," and the other many miles away on the summit of Adam's Peak.

To this day at the top of that high mountain a footprint is seen in the rock ON THE GALLE ROAD, COLOMBO. more than five feet long and about two feet and a half in width. The Muhammadans deem it the trace of Adam's foot, — of Siva's the Hindus fancy ; but the Buddhists aver and the butterflies know it to be Buddha's most sacred footprint. Perhaps the most beautiful road in the neighbourhood of Colombo is the highroad to Point de Galle. Here and there by the wayside are palm-thatched native cottages surrounded with tall bananas; and overhead the thronging coco-palms bend far across the road, making a welcome coolness of sun flecked shadow through which pass brightly clad natives, — white-robed Singhalese ; Muhammadans of Arab descent with caps of plaited silk ; turbaned, grave - faced Tamils ; and stately Buddhist monks clad in their graceful robes of the sacred golden colour.

Through many centuries, through age long changes, those yellow robes have endured, ever since, in the third century B.C., the teaching of the Buddha was brought by Mahendra, the mighty Arhat, from the far-off land of Magadha to Simhala the Island of Gems. A Prince was he of the royal house of Pataliputra, a younger brother of the great Asoka ; but he banished from his heart all worldly desires, that he might gain in their stead the " six spiritual powers," together with the " eight means of libera tion," and the excellent fruit of Arhatship. In a moment of time from distant Magadha he came to the Lion King dom ; and here he taught to all the people the Buddha's sacred doctrine. Then there fell on those that dwelt in this island a true and believing heart, so that they builded an hundred monasteries that were filled with 20.000 monks " distinguished for their power of abstraction " and for their eminent wisdom.

From that day to this their order has continued ; and still, in their graceful robes of yellow, they walk through the sun-flecked shadows of the road to Point de Galle. All things are strangely dream-like in these enchanted regions, — always excepting the vigorous and interesting Church - work which is carried on in Colombo with no small measure of success. Tamil and Singhalese Services for the many native Christians are a matter of course ; and there is much pastoral and evangelistic work, where in it is necessary to use no less than four languages — English, Singhalese, Tamil, and Portuguese. The inmates of the prisons are not neglected, nor those of the pauper and leper hospitals ; and special attention is given to work among the Tamil coolies. Open-air preaching, begun under Bishop Claughton, is still carried on by the Clergy, and is found to be a very valuable agency in gaining the attention of the heathen folk who would never enter the churches.

Perhaps the most important branch of Mission ary enterprise in Colombo is the educational work carried on by various institutions, whereof one or two are visited by our inquisitive friends the travellers. Close to Christchurch Cathedral, surrounded by great tropical trees and undulating lawns of rich verdure, stands S. Thomas's College. It was founded by the first Bishop of Colombo in 1851, and in 1864 was affiliated to the University of Calcutta. Its object is the education of high -class natives; and the foundation includes, besides the College proper, a Divinity School for the training of candidates for Holy Orders, and a Collegiate School which contains1 300 pupils. There is also, in connection with the College, a native Orphan Asylum for the plain Christian education of twenty orphan boys.

The boarders 1 1892. number more than 100. Pupils are prepared every year for the Cambridge Local Examinations, and for those of the Calcutta University. The Divinity School is doing a most important work in training candidates for the Native Min istry, which is found to be as needful and as invaluable in Ceylon as in every other Missionary Diocese. It seems to be from the formation in the island of a Native Minis try that there dates that steady and progressive advance which has bronght the number of Christians in Ceylon to 150,000. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel alone supports in the Diocese eight Native Clergy as well as 200 lay agents. S. Thomas's College owes much to the liberal support of that Society,1 and so do I know not how many other beneficent and useful institutions in Colombo and the rest of the island.

Thanks to the S.P.G., a distinctly missionary character has been impressed on the work of the Ceylon Church, so that the labours of almost every Chaplain and Catechist have now their Missionary counterpart. Yet so unobtrusive are the Society's doings that one hears not much about them, seeing that in every place it identifies itself with the Church organisation already existing, and is content to be, according to its unvarying rule, " the handmaid of the Church, not a substitute for it." "We owe it to the S.P.G.," wrote the Bishop in 1881, "that we not only have Missions, but are a Missionary diocese." The help which the Society has given to S. Thomas's College is in itself an important contribution to the Church's work in Ceylon ; for it is impossible to estimate the amount 1 That other most useful and admirable institution, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, also contributed £2000 to the endowment of S. Thomas's College. of the widespread Christian influence emanating from this one centre of high and efficient education.

All the pupils at S. Thomas's receive a Christian training, and these dark faced students form a large and very reverent part of the congregation at the daily Cathedral Services. Heathen pupils attend the College for the sake of the secular education, but all alike are instructed in Christian doctrine ; and many are thus led to offer themselves for Baptism — a step which often involves the sacrifice of every worldly prospect, and the casting off of the convert by all his heathen relatives. Bishop's College, for high-class girls and for boys under ten, is also doing very good work. The standard of teaching is being raised year by year; pupils are prepared for the Senior and Junior Cambridge Local Examinations, and the school will soon begin presenting candidates for the Matric ulation Examination of the Madras University.

The course includes all the subjects of a complete High School curriculum, as well as careful religious instruction. Our travellers are present at the annual prize-giving, and a very pretty sight, on this festal occasion, is the schoolroom with its decorations of bright-hued flowers and its further adorn ment with the dark -brown, intelligent faces of the pupils and the smiling countenances of all their delighted parents. One of the most charming sights in Colombo is S. Michael's School and Orphanage, over which preside some S. Margaret's Sisters sent out to Ceylon from East Grinstead. Of the fifty six native orphans some are hardly more than babies, little dark-brown things with silky black hair, and wonderful lustrous eyes beaming with happiness and with very un mistakable affection for their kind and devoted "uardians.

Youngest and prettiest of all the brown faces is that of the Tamil baby, christened Dorothea, and now x three years old. " Make a salaam to the visitors, Dorothea," says the Sister ; whereupon Dorothea clasps her tiny brown hands over her face, and then removes them with a bow and a baby-smile delightful to see ; after which the little round arms are held out to " Sister," and Dorothea is rewarded with a kiss. Close by is S. Michael's Church, wherein the travellers are present one afternoon at a Native Confirmation, and are greatly struck with the reverence of the forty or fifty candidates and of the many other Native Christians present. There are numberless other things (including the Tamil boarding-schools founded by the Church Missionary Society) which undoubtedly ought to be described ; but it is time to leave the seaboard now, and to hurry our friends away into stranger and still more beautiful scenes, the interior regions of jungle-forests and towering mountain-peaks. 1 Christmas 1891.

Chapter II. Kandy And Nuwara Eliya

The journey from Colombo to Kandy is seventy -five miles long, and a wonderful journey it is. The railway is an engineering achievement such as is exhilarating for human creatures to contemplate, impressing upon their minds what very clever creatures they are. Kandy is about 1700 feet above the sea-level, and the scenes passed through in rising to that altitude form a succession of the most marvellous pictures, for northern eyes to look upon, that northern minds could imagine or desire. The first part of the way, following the course of the Kelani-Ganga, lies through forests of tropical trees broken by verdant expanses of padi (padi, be it observed, stands to rice in the relation of sheep to mutton) — lake-like glades of soft, vivid green, bordered by exquisite groups of palms that stand out from the deep forest beyond in ever-varyin° combinations of light and shade and majesty of graceful form.

The coco -nut palms predominate, but here and there is a group of slender areca palms, their straight white stems contrasting with the background of luxuriant foliage; and then there is the darker green of the bread- KANDY AND NUYY'ARA ELIYA. fruit trees, and the brilliant colours of flowering trees innumerable. The moist and low-lying plains are left behind at length ; the native cottages, thatched with palm-leaves, appear no more ; bananas and coco-palms become less frequent ; high into the sunlit air tower the rocky peaks of mountains rising from depths of pathless jungle into the shadowy recesses whereof even the glowing southern sunshine can never penetrate, and wherein prowl unseen cheetahs and elephants, and milk-white monkeys have their home, and lizards four feet long. There is a majestic mystery about these jungle-forests, a wild beauty and exuberance of teeming life, a mazy and unintelligible intricacy, not to be described in words.