Many people who have business in
Penang live up here, riding up and down morning and evening, for the
sake of the cool, refreshing night air. One of the most curious things
in vegetation which strikes our English eyes is the extraordinary
abundance of the sensitive plant. It is interwoven with all the grass,
and grows thickly in all the hedgerows. In the neatly kept turf, round
the Government bungalow, its long, creeping, prickly stems,
acacia-like leaves, and little fluffy mauve balls of flowers are so
numerous, that, walking up and down the croquet lawn, it appears to be
bowing before you, for the delicate plants are sensible of even an
approaching footstep, and shut up and hide their tiny leaves among the
grass long before you really reach them.
From the top of the hill you can see ninety miles in the clear
atmosphere, far away across the Straits of Perak to the mainland. We
could not stay long, and were carried down the hill backwards, as our
bearers were afraid of our tumbling out of the chairs if we travelled
forwards. The tropical vegetation is even more striking here, but,
alas! it is already losing its novelty to us. Those were indeed
pleasant days when everything was new and strange; it seems now
almost as if years, not months, had gone past since we first entered
these latitudes.
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