180 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 



sensation of having another scene at one's feet was 

 extraordinary. It was quite different from the feel- 

 ing one has when from a mountain top one sees a 

 valley spread out beneath one; for there, though 

 one says that it is as though the plain were at one's 

 feet, yet the sense of atmosphere and of perspective 

 dispel the illusion even as one gives utterance to 

 it. But in this case the expression was literally 

 true: underneath me I could see Hussein's wife 

 winnowing rice at her door-step amid a number of 

 hens that clucked and cackled at her feet. In the 

 little stream beside the house her children were 

 shouting and splashing. All were very small and 

 far away, though in a horizontal distance they were 

 not very much farther away than one can throw a 

 ball ; and, looking down upon them from the height 

 of the precipitous limestone hill, I felt as though I 

 looked down upon them from such land as grew on 

 Jack's Beanstalk. 



I had a long time to wait before the drive would 

 begin, and screening myself behind a tree I made 

 myself as comfortable as possible. By good fortune 

 a pair of tiny long-billed birds were making a nest 

 in a branch within a few yards of my head, and 

 they would have kept me interested for many hours 

 longer than I had to wait. The joy of these beauti- 

 ful little creatures ^in their building was so intense 

 that no one could fail to be affected by it. Their 

 nest was a hanging one of delicate woven fibre, and 

 it looked as if they had robbed the spiders' webs 

 to make it. As each of the pair flew up with its 

 tiny contribution, it called to its mate to see what 



