t the doubtful
meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger were appeased, I began to
make advances to my hosts.

First I produced a palm-leaf bag holding about four pounds of coarse
Chinese rock salt, and bade the Semang gather round and partake. The
whole contents of the bag were emptied out on to a leaf with minute care
lest one precious grain should be lost, and then the naked aborigines
gathered round and feasted. These jungle dwellers lack salt in their
daily food, and look upon it as a luxury, much as a child regards the
contents of a _bon-bon_ box. With eager fingers they clutched the salt,
and conveyed it to their mouths in handfuls. This coarse stuff would
take the skin off the tongues of most human beings who attempted to eat
it in this way, but I suppose that nature gives the Semang the power to
take in abnormally large quantities of salt at one time, because his
opportunities of eating it in small daily instalments are few and far
between. In an incredibly short time the four pounds of salt had
disappeared, and when the leaf had been divided up, and licked in solemn
silence, the Chief of the family, an aged, scarred, and deeply wrinkled
negrit, turned to me with a sigh and said--

'It is very sweet, this salt that thou hast given us. Hast thou tobacco
also, that we may smoke and rest?'

I produced some coarse Japanese tobacco which I had brought with me for
the purpose, and when cigarettes had been rolled, with green leaves for
wrappers, we all squatted around the fire, for the night was chilly up
here in the foothills, and the silence of sated appetite and rested
limbs fell gently upon us.

The eyes of one who dwells in the untrodden places of the earth are apt
to grow careless of the picturesque aspect of his surroundings. He is
often too busy following the track beneath his feet, or observing some
other such thing, which is important for his immediate well-being, to
more than glance at the beauties which surround him. Often, too, his
heart is so sick for a sight of the murky fogs, and drizzle-damped
pavements of London, or for the ordered green fields and hedgerows of
the pleasant English country, that he does not readily spare more than a
grudging tribute of admiration to the scenes which surround him in his
exile. To-night, however, as I sat and lay by the crackling logs, I
longed, as I had often done before, to possess that power which
transfers the sights we see to paper or to canvas. Around us