er places at the end of the game.

Whilst I was passing the time pleasantly, talking with one and the other
I saw a little party approaching that was the object of great respect
from the bystanders.

It was Mr. Wise the District Officer who had received me so politely a
few hours before.

He was on his return from a survey made in order to define the boundary
of some land belonging to two Malays. Without donning any sort of
uniform or insignia, this British delegate had known how to preserve
all the solemnity and dignity of form due to the occasion, a virtue
peculiar to the English who are always and everywhere the most rigorous
observers of social and official etiquette.

Mr. Wise kindly invited me to follow him the Club where he kept me in
friendly conservation, answering all the questions I could not refrain
from asking him in my desire to become better acquainted with the colony
and its method of government.

Now Mr. Wise is no more, but in him his country lost a model functionary
for intelligence, solicitude and uprightness.

He died at the very moment his future seemed to smile its brightest;
when his fondest hopes were about to be crowned by matrimony with the
young lady of his choice.

Let me, through these pages, render to his memory the modest,
affectionate homage of admiration and deferential friendship.

* * * * *

That day, having made my peace with the authorities, I returned with a
clear conscience to the quiet nook I had found in the vast forest; to
that domestic corner reserved for me in Dame Nature's grand and wondrous
saloon: to that rude home so far removed from the generality of mankind,
but so close to the kings and princes of the animal kingdom, commonly
called--wild beasts.

[Illustration: A young Sakai with his inseparable blowpipe.

_p._ 40.]

Keeping tight hold of the receipt which had suddenly made me the owner
of a possible gold mine, I alternately made castles in the air and
meditated upon the simplicity of English administration that in a few
short instants had conceded to me an extensive zone of land with which
to do what I liked, without any need of setting in motion the intricate
machinery of the bureaucracy; without any stamped legal forms, surveys
and expensive reports; the presentation of birth certificate and that of
British citizenship; without digging into the past and the future, into
the state and position of one's family, etc. etc.