Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light,

The dawn had been preluded by the awakening chirrups of songsters in the
wood. A shriller note was struck by some feathered Daphnis piping to his
Chloe. Deep down in the valleys and in the villages perched perilously
on projecting ledges of the mountain, faint twinkling lights began to
appear, and the lowing of the cattle and the answering and re-echoed
crowing of rival poultry-yards sent the thoughts back to Homeland scenes
some 10,000 miles away.

As we stood on the wall of the enormous crater, overlooking the Sand
Sea, and watched the long shafts of golden light shoot up to the zenith
from behind the mountain peaks to the East, we felt that our ride had
not been in vain.

To be abroad at early dawn in the tropics is to enjoy the most
delightful period of the day. An English essayist has well expressed the
exhilaration one feels: "There is something beautiful in the unused day,
something beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled."
Only those who have stood on the hill tops, far removed from the haunts
of men, have any true idea of the grandeur of Nature and the
insignificance of man.

The sun rose speedily in the full power of his golden radiance to paint
the landscape. There was no transition. Out of the darkness there rose a
view, enormous, diversified, impressive.

Miles away on the west, the five summits of the Ardjeono had been the
first to reflect the rays hidden from us. Penanggoenan's sugar-loaf top
soon caught them up and passed them on to Kawi's three lofty peaks. To
the south, was the Semeroe, Java's loftiest volcano; to the east, the
Yang Plateau; to the north, the sea and the island of Madoera. We could
trace the coast-line 9,000 feet below, away westward beyond Sourabaya,
where white-crested surf beat silently upon the streak of yellow sand.
The vast plains of East Java showed a pattern of variegated colour,
which stretched out to the cultivated slopes of the hills. Mountain
hamlets and villages on the plains sent out blue vapours from morning
fires. The rivers were distinguishable by their leafy fringe as much as
by the reflection of the blue sky overhead. Between us and the Yang
Plateau, there were rolling billows of white cloud, tipped by the
colours from the sun's spectrum.

But it was th