efore the sun was shining in a clear sky,
now in an instant it is obscured as by a thick cloud. You never saw
anything like it! The birds on the Bass Rock are fairly thick, but
here--day is turned to night and the commotion and uproar are wildly
exciting, like the clash of legions in the sky.

Long after we are past we can see them thinning down gradually as some
keep dropping back on to their island home, while the more restless,
nervous spirits still circle and swoop in loops and curves.

A marvellous sight!

Penang itself is an island, and as we swing round to the capital town,
Georgetown, on the inner or land side, we see an astonishing mass of
green, with a great hill clothed almost to the summit rising behind the
town. We can go up there to-morrow if you like, as we have a day to
spend here owing to a change of steamers.

As we come to anchor in the bay a perfect swarm of small boats, called
sampans, dance round the ship, and the owners offer their wares with
astonishing noise. Looking down you can see the yellow faces of the men
who have narrow eyes and pigtails coiled round their heads under
enormous hats. It looks as if we had tumbled into China by mistake, for
these are nearly all Chinamen, and yet the inhabitants of this country
are Malays. The Malay, however, is like the Burman in that he does not
care to exert himself if he can help it, so he lets the Chink, as the
Chinamen are familiarly called, do all the business. The rich earth
yields a hundredfold, and the Malay has only to scratch a very little of
it very gently, and plant or sow a small quantity of something, and he
is provided for for a year! The Chinaman is an industrious soul and an
uncommonly good market-gardener, so he grows vegetables for sale and
makes a good thing out of it; half these boats are full of vegetables
grown by the very men who are selling them.

Soon we are in a sampan, being rapidly rowed shore-wards. The man works
the boat standing up and faces the way he is going; he does it very
easily, with the ends of his long oars crossed over and worked almost
entirely by wrist play. We are right under a high, old-fashioned-looking
trading ship now; do you see that great eye painted on the bows? There
is another on the other side. That shows it is a Chinese ship; the men
have a superstition that the ship cannot see without these eyes. They
say, "No got eye, no can see; no can see, no can savee."

Great rocks stick out from the folia