PREFACE. 



This record of a time spent among the less well- 

 known portions of Malaysia may be interesting to those 

 whom the goddess of travel has wooed in vain, as per- 

 chance to some of those " birds of passage " to whom 

 the islands and continents of the world are as well 

 known as the church-spires and mile-stones of their own 

 land. In the islands of the Malay archipelago the 

 Gardens of the Sun Nature is ever beautiful, and man, 

 although often strikingly primitive, is hospitable to the 

 stranger, and not often vile. 



A voyage of a few weeks brings us to these beauty- 

 spots of the Eastern Seas to an " always-afternoon " 

 kind of climate since they are blessed with the heat 

 and glory of eternal summer to a place where winter 

 is unknown monsoon-swept islands oasis-like basking 

 in a warm and shallow desert of sea. Warmed by 

 perpetual sunshine, deluged by copious rains, and 

 thrilled by electricity, they are really enormous con- 

 servatories of beautiful vegetation great Zoological 

 Gardens inhabited by rare birds and curious animals. 

 In these sunny garden scenes man is the Adam of a 



