-•> The Yunzalin
in the still truculent jungle? How it wails through
the forest spaces ! The very cry and embodiment of
solitude.
An hour before thè dawn, my eyes open in obedience
to some primitive instinct, and I find it good to
lie abed and watch the jungle. Bamboos rise up in
graceful forms, their stems making a pattern against
the dense foliage. They are eloquent to me of the
realism of the Japanese artist. Overhead, above the
crowding masses, the new growth shoots out for light
and air. A wind comes by, filling the jungle with
life ; from a tall tree on the edge of the clearing, dying
leaves loose their hold of life, and flutter noiselessly
to earth. Ripe fruit falls with a soft thud on the
mould. There is a strange stillness in this world that
is teeming with life.
Faint washes of colour sweep at last over the face
of the sky ; slowly the dawn comes, and the jungle
wakes. The wail of the peacock echoes through its
solitudes, the wild cock crows, and monkeys begin to
chatter in the dusk trees. The sleeping polers awake
and rout the live embers from the night’s ashes. There
is a simmering of rice in the pot. Down in a long
trough of the forest lies the Yunzalinjj-beautiful, inscrutable,
a mystery asleep. I leave the rest-house
in its clearing in the jungle—a curious exotic. There
is furniture within it, of the kind necessary to Western
life. The house itself lies open and unprotected. I
enter it in the still darkness, and leave it in the
grey dawn. There is no caretaker.
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