To-Day The Mercury Was At 90 Degrees For Several Hours.
The nights,
however, are cool enough for sleep.
I have lately taken to the Malay
custom of a sleeping mat, and find it cooler than even the hardest
mattress. I did not sleep much, however, for so many rats and lizards
ran about my room. These small, bright-eyed lizards go up the walls in
search of flies. They dart upon the fly with very great speed, but just
as you think that they are about to swallow him they pause for a second
or two and then make the spring. I have never seen a fly escape during
this pause, which looks as if the lizard charmed or petrified his
victim. The Malays have a proverb based upon this fact: "Even the
lizard gives the fly time to pray." There were other noises; for wild
beasts, tigers probably, came so near as to scare the poultry and
horses, and roared sullenly in the neighborhood for a long time, and
the sentries challenged two people, after which I heard a messenger
tell Mr. Low of a very distressing death.
February. 18. - Major Swinburne and Captain Walker arrived in the
morning, and we had a grand tiffin at twelve, and Mahmoud was allowed
to sit on the table, and he ate sausages, pommeloe, bananas,
pine-apple, chicken and curry, and then seizing a long glass of
champagne, drank a good deal before it was taken from him. If
drunkenness were not a loathsome human vice, it would have been most
amusing to see it burlesqued by this ape.
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