THE FOREST. 7 



very green seems almost black. The sheltered air is 

 fresh and cool, and there is an almost perfect stillness. 

 Underfoot, except where the path is trodden bare, is 

 a matting of dead leaves and of sweet damp moss. 

 The track upon which you stand is a foot or perhaps 

 a foot and a half wide, and at the height of your body 

 the width of the open way is perhaps three feet. The 

 daily passage of the Malays keeps back the encroach- 

 ment of brambles and forest creepers. But the track 

 is only wide enough and the opening only high 

 enough to allow a man to pass. You could not ride 

 even the smallest and handiest of ponies along it. 



To right and left of the path the forest appears to 

 be almost impenetrable. The trees grow so thickly 

 together that you are closed in by a small but un- 

 broken circle of tree-trunks. Between the trees there 

 are tangled masses of bushes, briers, and saplings. 

 Rattans and creepers of every kind crawl along the 

 ground and among the trees, sometimes hanging in 

 heavy festoons and sometimes tense with the pressure 

 that they exert. So thick and strong is the mass of 

 creepers that when a wood-cutter has hacked through 

 a tree-trunk it is often kept upright by the ligaments 

 that bind it to the surrounding trees. After an hour's 

 walk along a forest path, a casual observer might say 

 that, so far as he could see, the forest contained no 

 flowers, no butterflies, no birds, no life of any kind. 

 But if you sit upon a fallen tree-trunk and look 

 around, you may see a little more. High in a tree, 

 and almost out of sight, you may see an occasional 

 flower, and lower down perhaps, your eye may light 

 upon an inconspicuous spray of blossoms that a care- 



