AN EXPEDITION TO PENRISEN 259 



the thin mattress. But above all, it was my first night 

 in the jungle, and the mystery and the majesty of the 

 great primeval forest awed and possessed my soul. 

 1 do not think that this feeling of weird mystery ever 

 quite wears off a mind that is at all impressionable; 

 speaking for myself, I can truthfully say that the 

 impression was renewed again and again whenever it 

 was my lot to pass nights in the jungle, and I can 

 even conjure it up now by dwelling on those past 

 experiences. In the daytime the forest is less eerie ; 

 you are conscious that there is glowing and active 

 life all around : much of it you cannot see, but the 

 not infrequent glimpses of Nature's great pageant of 

 animal life are enthralling and reassuring, and the 

 interest of collecting keeps the mind constantly on the 

 alert. But at night you can see nothing ; an almost 

 impenetrable darkness descends on the forest. Teem- 

 ing life is still all around, for you can hear it ; the 

 air is full of the noise made by millions of insects, a 

 noise that, like the roar of traffic in a great city or 

 like the sound of the sea, so permeates everything that 

 in time the ear becomes dulled, and a special effort 

 has to be made to listen .to it. There are, too, strange 

 rustlings in the trees, and occasionally the stillness 

 is rent by some strange cry or weird shriek, at the 

 sound of which, half-scared, you ask your followers its 

 meaning, only to be told that it is some ghost or lost 

 spirit. It may be the despairing yell of some monkey 

 seized by a snake, or the triumphant scream of some 

 night-bird clutching its hapless victim ; who can tell ? 

 If you step out of the radius of your camp-fires you 

 feel that you are brought face to face with forces over 

 which you have no sort of control ; you are sur- 



