Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/99

which stained with every tint of scarlet and purple and gold, showed here and there little inlets of an ethereal azure. Beneath that glory in the skies, the sea, steel- blue under the gathering darkness, heaved gently, mo- notonously, as a weary sleeper draws his breath, a ruddy sheen marking the furrows between wave and wave. To the landward the native town clung to the beach, swarmed up the sides of small conical hills, and fell away into the heavy forest inshore. Near its centre rose a rude stone building surrounded by a wall draped in crowding creepers, but for the rest the place was a hud- dle of thatched roofs, rising at all angles, sloping unevenly, set in all directions without order or arrange- ment, with a blue haze of smoke hanging above them in the motionless air. In the harbour itself junks from China, sharp-nosed prâhus from Java or the Archipelago, and fishing-smacks innumerable lay at anchor, and on the yellow stretch of sand before the town, crowds of men and women strolled listlessly, chaffering with the fisherfolk, and enjoying the peace. and the coolness after the burden of the day and the heats.

That scene had been enacted daily, repeated in this unchanging climate each succeeding evening for years. It may be witnessed to-day down to its last least detail in the capital of Trĕnggânu which, like ancient Malacca, lies upon the seashore, and as I have sat watching it in this former place, whither as yet the tide of the white man's invasion has not yet attained, it has seemed to me that I have looked back through the centuries upon the