“ HALCYON lays:’ 
145 
before you, with a little filling in of details and addition 
of explanatory information, necessary to my readers, 
but superfluous in my own journal, where I write from 
one day to another with due regard for my memory of 
recorded events and observations. 
About seven in the morning (in these equatorial 
regions it is scarcely light till nearly six) I hear the 
plashing of water in my bath, mingling with the last 
echoes of some fantastic dream—perchance some in¬ 
congruous vision of English life that has come upon 
me in my heavy morning slumber—and I gradually 
awake, with many a sigh and groan, to find my ser¬ 
vant Virapan filling my bath with several kettlefuls of 
warm water and a pail of cold from the stream, whose 
murmur I occasionally hear coming as a second to 
the treble of the cackling hens and bleating goats. 
Ah ! how I hesitate to leave the shelter of my sheets 
and blankets ! Though the slanting morning sun¬ 
beams pierce the crevices of the thatched wall, and 
fall in golden paillettes on the matted floor, the ther¬ 
mometer still marks little over fifty, and the air is 
sharp and keen, even within my sheltered hut. Never¬ 
theless, the steaming bath will soon be lukewarm if I 
dally, and moreover breakfast—and in this healthy 
life I love my meals, and look forward to them with 
tender longing—cannot be laid until the bath is out of 
the way, so with one impetuous bound I am out of 
the sheets, my pyjamas are flung off, and 1 can sponge 
myself with the warm water which, in the tropics, is 
so much healthier and more beneficial than the icy 
douche which strong-minded, generally disagreeable, 
people affect in England. 
I find my pen was leading me into a detailed de¬ 
scription of my toilet, an act so purely superfluous and 
L 
