the launch. I cannot imagine what the mercury was in the sun, but the
copper sheathing of the gunwale was too hot to be touched. Above
Sempang the river narrows and shoals rapidly, and we had to crawl,
taking soundings incessantly, and occasionally dragging heavily over
mud banks. We saw a large alligator sleeping in the sun on the mud,
with a mouth, I should think, a third of the length of his body; and as
he did not wake as we panted past him, a rifle was loaded and we backed
up close to him; but Babu, who had the weapon, and had looked quite
swaggering and belligerent so long as it was unloaded, was too
frightened to fire; the saurian awoke, and his hideous form and
corrugated hide plunged into the water, so close under the stern as to
splash us. After this, alligators were so common, singly or in groups,
or in families, that they ceased to be exciting. It is difficult for
anything to produce continuous excitement under this fierce sun; and
conversation, which had been flagging before noon, ceased altogether.
It was awfully hot in the launch, between fire and boiler-heat and
solar fury. I tried to keep cool by thinking of Mull, and powdery snow
and frosty stars, but it would not do. It was a solemn afternoon, as
the white, unwinking sun looked down upon our silent party, on the
narrow turbid river, silent too, except for the occasional plunge of an
alligator or other water monster--on mangrove swamps and nipah palms
dense along the river side, on the blue gleam of countless kingfishers,
on slimy creeks arched over to within a few feet of their surface by
grand trees with festoon of lianas, on an infinite variety of foliage,
on an abundance of slender-shafted palms, on great fruits brilliantly
colored, on wonderful flowers on the trees, on the hoya carnosa and
other waxen-leaved trailers matting the forest together and hanging
down in great festoons, the fiery tropic sunblaze stimulating all this
over-production into perennial activity, and vivifying the very mud
itself.