IN THE EYE OF DAY 189 



For two days Scott and I travelled over such a 

 road, winding around hills, through vistas of trop- 

 ical scenery soft and indescribably beautiful; 

 along avenues of palms (most impressive being 

 the travellers' palm with its eighteen inch wide 

 blade) ; under the full power of the sun, whose 

 blazing glory awoke to iridescence the multitude 

 of varying green which reached to the horizon on 

 every hand. We were travelling in the open eye 

 of day, and the natural beauty of Malay, so often 

 shrouded in rain, stood revealed to me as never 

 before. It was a scene to enrapture the most blase 

 traveller. Only occasionally are the wonderful 

 and ravishing mysteries of the jungle exposed by 

 Nature's search light, and the human eye must be 

 swift and retentive, for a glimpse of such tropical 

 beauty is rare and evanescent. 



Amid this tropical gorgeousness and with three 

 relays of ponies, for the grade of the road was 

 severe and our load heavy, we came in the night 

 of the second day to Jelebu— typical of the smaller 

 British residencies. Besides Scott, there were 

 exactly two other white men within a day's jour- 

 ney of his bungalow, yet Jelebu had its club, and 

 its bulletin board on which every day was posted 

 the most important cable news of the world. Here 

 at the very jungle's edge might one keep pace with 

 the fluctuations of the stock market or learn the 



