The tale of these little lives is told. If I have failed to bring you close to the Malay, so that you could see into his heart, understand something of his life, and perhaps even sympathise with the motives that will lead him to acts of high courage and self-sacrifice, then the fault is mine.
The glory of the Eastern morning, the freshness and the fragrance of the forest, the sultry heat of these plains and slopes of eternal green on which the moisture-charged clouds unceasingly pour fatness—these are the home of the Malay, the background against which he stands.
Come, we have done with it all; let us leave the plain, seething in the heat of early afternoon, and ride up this mountain path, through all the wealth and the magnificence of tropical jungle, and look down on the land for the last time.
Our callous eyes—surfeited with years of gazing on brilliant colours, great stretches of sea and forest, huge trees, a bewildering luxury of foliage, beasts measured by the elephant and rhinoceros, birds by the argus pheasant and the peacock—are blind to the infinite beauty of our surroundings. This path, by which we slowly rise to cooler altitudes and a new flora, would excite in the stranger feelings of wonder and rapturous delight.
The road itself is cut through soil of a deep shade of terra cotta, the colour all the more vivid by reason of the hues of green by which it is environed. The sunlight strikes in rays of brilliant light across this path, falling on red soil, granite boulder and massive tree-trunk, intensifying colour and deepening shadow. Here and there are seen glimpses of the plains below, the distant sea, the peaks and valleys of other hill ranges, and the ear constantly catches the delightful sound of falling water, the voices of numerous streams dashing down the steep mountain sides in cascades of sparkling foam.
The path twists and winds, often by sharp zigzags, up the face of the hill, across a narrow saddle and then by an even steeper ascent, till at last we gain the summit of the mountain.
Stand here. The limit of vision is wide; you will scarce find a grander spectacle in this Peninsula. We are nearly 5,000 feet above the sea, and from north to south the eye travels over a distance not far short of two hundred miles. Eastward, those distant hills are fully a hundred miles away, and soon on the western horizon the sun will meet the sea in a blaze of glory, as though kindling at the touch of loving arms long waiting for his coming.
That faint blue peak in the north, hazy and indistinct, is Gûnong Jerai in Kĕdah, and the island to the westward, which smiles through a golden veil, is Penang. A grey streak of water shot with gleams of sunlight divides it from the mainland, and the forty miles of country thence to the foot of this hill, and far south again to those blue islets off the Dinding coast, lie flat and fertile, a feast for the eyes. Vivid green patches mark thousands of acres of sugar-cane and rice-field, but the general effect is an unbroken expanse of dark jungle, mostly mangrove, for all this land from hill-base to sea-shore is of comparatively recent formation, the erosion from the hills carried down seawards and covered with a wealth of foliage ever renewed by the excessive heat and excessive moisture of this forcing tropical climate. No rocks, no bare hills, no arid plains, everything covered with vegetation: new graves look old in a month, the buildings of a year, for all their seeming, might have stood for half a century.
Only at our feet does the hand of man make any mark on the landscape. There, amid trees and gardens, nestle the red roofs of Taiping. You might cover the place with a tablecloth for all its many inhabitants, its long wide streets, open spaces, and public buildings.
And those pools of water all around the town, what are those?
They are abandoned tin-mines, alluvial workings from which the ore has been removed, and water mercifully covers, in part, this desolation of gaping holes and upturned sand.
The shore, due west and distant some twenty miles from the foot of the range on which we stand, is deeply indented by three great bays. They are the mouths of three rivers, short, shallow and insignificant in themselves; it is difficult to understand why they should make such an imposing entry on the sea. A mile or two inland from the coast the eye is caught by twenty little lakes, on which the sun loves to linger, burnishing them to gold when the setting in which these jewels lie has turned to purple. They are fragments of estuaries, deep waveless lagoons winding through the mangroves, and showing to the distant spectator only broken reaches, glimpses of bay and headland.
The shore-line is a ribbon of glistening light, bordering the wide expanse of forest trees, whose roots stand deep in water when the tide is high. The mangrove cannot live beyond the reach of the brine from which it seems to draw the sap of life, and these mud flats, in their gradual accretion, are as yet scarcely above the level of the sea.
Turning to the north-east, a deep valley lies beneath us, the source of a long river, the Kurau. Miles and miles beyond rise range after range of lofty mountains, Biong and Inas and Bintang, running into the heart of the Peninsula. Further eastward is the country near the sources of the Perak River, and across the narrow valley, through which its upper waters dance in a succession of rapids, may be discerned peaks of the main range which look down on the China Sea.
Now we are facing the south-east and the valley of the Perak River. The ridge on which we stand divides it from the Province of Larut, and surely there are few fairer sights in the East than this same valley through which the river, plainly visible twenty miles away, winds in a silver streak. On the right stands Gûnong Bubu, the isolated mass terminating in a needle-like point nearly 6000 feet high. The spurs of this mountain spread out in every direction, north to the Pass from Larut into the Perak Valley, east to the Perak River, and southwards nearly to the coast. In the south-east, across the Perak River, rise five or six ranges of hills of ever-increasing height. Over the first range can be seen the valley of the Kinta, with its many fantastic limestone cliffs standing clearly out; then follow Chabang, Korbu, and finally the mountains dividing Perak from Păhang. Those hills fading out of sight in the far-away south are near the borders of Perak and Selangor.
As we turn our faces back to the setting sun, the great disc, now grown a deep crimson, is sinking through a bank of clouds into a sea of flame. The waters beyond the influence of the sun’s light are a brilliant sapphire, a reflection of the sky above. There is only one long, low bank of cloud, and that is on the horizon.
A moment later and the sun itself has gone, but from the spot where it disappeared is radiating a lurid glow which kindles the clouds into fire and shoots rays of gold over Penang in the north and the Dinding Islands in the south, seventy miles apart. This golden light spreads for a space upward through the bank of clouds, till, paling into a belt of grey that again deepens into blue, and ever gaining in intensity, it rises to the zenith and fills the empyrean.
Meanwhile the darkness which seemed to be settling over the distant eastern ranges is gradually suffused with soft tints of rose dorée, transfiguring peak after peak and clearly defining every ridge and valley. This aftermath of day, wherein the sun returns to kiss the hills with one last lingering caress, fills the whole atmosphere with a rosy effulgence, then fades reluctantly away. ’Twixt western sea and eastern hill lies that great sea-indented plain over which night settles slowly but surely, while still the sky and hills are vivid with colour. But even the plain assumes its night garb with no less grace and beauty. A faint mist has risen from swamp and river, and, spreading itself over the land, takes soft hues of opal and heliotrope deepening into purple, while only the pools and river-reaches shine out, like scraps of mirror stealing borrowed glory from the sky.
Soon this light wanes; purple turns to grey, the colours fade from sky and sea, only the shore-line keeps its sheen. Then this too dies, and great white clouds, coming from out the mines and marshes like a troop of giant spectres risen in their grave-clothes, stalk slowly round the foothills of the mountain, through the Pass into the valley of the Perak River.
Here, at this elevation, the night is not quite yet.
Close around us still the jungle, but the trees are dwarfed, the boughs are covered with moss and lichen, orchids and ferns flourish in the forks, gorgeously blossomed creepers twine round the branches and hang from tree to tree. The air is full of the scent of the magnolia, the moss-carpeted ground is gay with a myriad flowers, some brilliantly plumaged songless birds flit silently between the trees, and a great bat sails aimlessly across the waning light. The shrill scream of the cicada is but faintly heard far down the height, and night comes, like a closing hand grasping in resistless darkness all things visible. The only sound to break the silence is the fitful and plaintive croak of a wood-frog.
If night treads closely on the heels of day, there is no need for regret. The darkness is but for a moment, and over the eastern peaks spreads a silvery sheen, herald of that great orb of splendour which, rising rapidly, clears the mountain and sheds a flood of wonderful, indescribable, mellow radiance over forest, plain, and sea, softening what is crude, pointing with brilliance the most striking features, and casting into a fathomless shadow the dark valleys of the western slopes. There is nothing cold about this Eastern moon. Seen, half-risen, against the dark foliage of the mountain, it glitters like molten silver, dazzling the eyes, and as it soars serenely upward seems the very perfection of beauty, light, and purity.
Strange that the delight and glory of mankind since ever the earth was peopled, the emblem of unattainable longing, should be only a gigantic cinder.