IN MALAY FOEESTS. 



THE FOREST. 



To most people the Malay Peninsula is only known 

 as the long narrow strip that, on the map of Asia, 

 runs down into the sea beyond the bulky V-shaped 

 projection of India, and divides the Indian Ocean 

 from the China Sea. 



Passengers by the mail-boats for the Far East, 

 though they approach it at the islands of Penang and 

 Singapore, see of its length during their voyage down 

 the warm smooth waters of the Straits of Malacca 

 but little save a continuous range of distant moun- 

 tains bathed in a haze of purple, blue, and grey. 



He whose business or pleasure takes him on one 

 of the local steamers sees a little more. In the fore- 

 ground there is, on the west coast, an unbroken line, 

 level as that of the sea, of dark-green forest. This is 

 the mangrove belt, which grows on the alluvial soil 

 brought down and silted up by the rivers, and which 

 ends where the sea begins. Behind this line rises a 

 range of heavily-timbered mountains, and behind this 



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