EXPERIENCES OF ME, STALE, 
or down. We paused beside a small stream to have a. 
drink of water. Prompt looked down, the course 
of the stream which trickled slowly along free from 
all large rocks and boulders ; its bed presented an easy 
path, with walls of nilu underwood on each side,. 
Says hcj I a,m quite sure this stream runs- in the 
, wrong direction ; what a pitv,. for what a fine easy 
path it would be as compared with toiling through 
this dense underwood. Still,” continues he thoughk- 
fully ‘‘we want to go down, and water runs doum. ” 
Come on,” he cries, “ it will be pitch dark in half an 
hour, and won’t we be in for a night of it.” As Mr. 
Kenneth would say his reasoning was prompt, decided 
and true. Off we both went, as hard as we could 
pe^ along that stream ; it turned and twisted in 
every direction and we frequently called out,. “ Stop,, 
stop, we are just going back again.,” Prompt and 
Decided only replied, “ Come on.” On we go, when 
Prompt suddei ly came to a halt and commenced to 
look fixedly on the ground. “ Do you &eethat?. ” says 
he, pointing to several slumps of sticks and wattles 
that had been cut with an axe. “Yes, well wliat about 
it?” we reply.. “VVe are all right,” says he,.and slackened' 
his pace ; we then came upon a heap of sticks which 
had apparently been cut that very day, and there 
could now be no doubt about it, we were close upon a 
dcari g. Just then the faint beat of* a tomtom, 
struck upon our ears. “Hurrah !” cries Mr Prompt, “in 
for regular luck : just when it is getting dark and we 
cannot seCj. we can make our ears do instead of eyes.” 
Louder and louder beats the drum, the jungle gets 
light and- open, there can be no mistake about that 
chattering and talking that now plainly falls on the 
ear. As we step out into a rough new clearing, we find 
ourselves in the vicinity of a coolie line, just as the' 
&un has sunk down over the western horizon! They 
were merely rude huts constructed of dun tree bark 
and branches of trees, with the roofs so- low that it 
was not safe to kindle a fire inside, so the coolies 
were all sitting’ outside, boiling and eating rice. In this, 
remote wild there were no plantain tree leaves and they 
did not seem to possess^ any. luxury in the form of plates, 
so three or four of them, of course of the same caste, 
sat round a large earthen chatty in which the rice had been 
boiled, and in which it still remained; into* this chatty,, 
alternately, each thrust one of his hands and with- 
drew it filled with rice ; this he made up into a large 
ball, which he thrust into his mouth, and afler a good 
deal of muscular exercise, in the throat managed to 
get it dowm, very much putting us in mind of our 
youthful days in the old country, when we got pos- 
session of a nest of well-fledged sparrows and used to 
feed and gorge, them with cowdAer^. which mear,^ 
