, 1868-10-02

Nature has put a great block in the path
OF commerce here, as she has also at Suez and
Panama. The Malay peninsula is q narrow
tongue Of land-only twelve miles wide at
one place; but if it did not exist, or ifthere
were a canal across it, vessels bound To or
from China might save one thousand miles
of their voyage. OF the coast lies numerous
islands. This is the enchanted land. You
are never weary of gazing upon the hills and
mountains which rise one after another
some 50 high that lRfHi he dsHRs@Rits are lost in
wave washed rock to the highest peak.
You look into ravines, behold distant vistas.
varying every moment, revealing new beau
ties, which before you have time to admire
them are succeeded by others equally en-
chanting. These are "spice islands of
poesy, of nutmeg, Glove. pimento, and Gin
namon, famed by balmy breezes, laved by
gentle waves, reposing beneath skies ever
beautiful-such islands as have enchanted
US when sailing over the sea of reading in
former years with Moore and Byron, and even
with Shakespeare and sober John Milton.
But there is another side to the picture.
The mercury to-day is 93 in the shade, the
atmosphere steamy aud sticky. Wipe your
SELF thoroughly dry with towel, and in five
minutes you need to repeat the process En-.
ergy evaporates. You feel like doing moth
ing, but you would give anything for cool
place to do it in. The breeze, so balmy over
the poetic page, is hot and penetrating, and
you would give big price if you could take
of your flesh and sit in your bones.
If we were to go on shore we should find
snakes, scorpions, centipedes, lizards, aud all
sorts of vermin in yonder spice groves. There
are wood leeches which creep into your nos
trils when asleep, and make themselves a
comfortable home in your nose, living on the
best blood of your brain; the deadly cobra
comes into the house without invitation, and
makes himself at home in your bed spiders,
with legs three inches long and bodies the
size OF small teacup, spin webs over your
windows or hang on the corners of your
rooms. Swarms of flying ants come into the
dining-room at dinner time and light upon
your roast mutton white ants bore out the
table legs, the pillars of the house, carry off
your best suits of clothes or your books in
single night; bugs, flies, feas, beetles, cock.
reaches, lice-blue bugs, black bugs, yellow
bugs, green bugs, little bugs and big bugs
creeping flying, skipping, hopping, jumping,
runnlng-coming at morning, noon, and night
especially at night, when you are sweating,
tossing, turning, and tumbling, and trying
to get wink of sleep. How nice to have a
great spider straddle over your face, or to
have cockroaches as large as mice run across
the dinner table. If these seem to be exag-
gerations, go into the Museum of Natural
History and see in the wonderful collection
of insects there what sort of company the
people of the tropics are compelled to put up
with. The lands of spice are delightful as
seen BY the poets eye. The natives un,
doubtedly think there are no climes so beau
tiful, and there are some Englishmen who
profess to like these lands better than their
own misty isle. 1t is we'll for the world that
astes differ.