4ND THE MALAY STATES 
1 7 
them would give me of their various skin diseases, so I hired the priest 
for a rupee to keep them all at a distance, until we were on our way out, 
which he did. 
The drive to Mount Lavinia was so full of novel scenes that it is 
almost impossible to select even a few that are typical. Through the 
narrow streets, crowded with native houses, from which swarmed half- 
clad men and women, and nude children, meeting Tamils, Singalese, 
Chinese, Moors — indeed all types of black and yellow men, turning out 
for carriages of all sorts, jinrikishas, bullock hackeries and huge two- 
NATIVE METHOD OF TREE CLIMBING. 
wheeled thatched- roof wains, getting a glimpse of a rare tropical garden, 
then of a squalid Tamil hut, by Chinese graveyards, European villas, 
cocoanut plantations, banana patches — all over a road of good hard “cha- 
bok,’’ we went, until we drew up at the little hotel-crowned height of 
Mount Lavinia. Here we had tiffin, with coffee, out on the lawn under an 
umbrella-like tent, where we lay in reclining chairs and watched the 
sapphire sea studded with native fishing boats, their huge brown sails 
swelling with the breath of the northeast monsoon. It was scorching 
hot in the sun, so we waited until late in the afternoon, and drove slowlv 
back to the hotel. 
