Page:Java, facts and fancies (IA javafactsfancies00witarich).pdf/20

rise clumps of cocoanut palms, their dark shaggy crowns strangely massive above the meagre stems through which the distant horizon gleams palely. In open spaces young trees stand out here and there, half strangled in the festoons of a purple-blossomed liana that trails its tendrilled length all over the lower shrub-wood. Thickets of bamboo bend and sway in the evening wind.

To the right stretches a long straight canal, dull as lead under the lustreless sky; the breeze, in passing, blackens the motionless water, and a shiver runs through the dense vegetation along the edge—broad-leaved bananas, the spreading fronds of the palmetto, and mimosas of feathery leafage, above which the silver-grey tufts of bulrushes rise. After a while the jungle diminishes and ceases; and a vast reach of marshy country stretches away to the horizon. We neared it as the sun was setting. Though it had not broken through the clouds, the fiery globe had suffused their whiteness with a deep, dull purple as of smouldering flames. A tremulous splendour suddenly shot over the rush-beds and rank waving grasses of the marshy land; the shining reed-pricked sheets of water crimsoned; and along the canal moving like an incandescent lava stream, the broadly curving banana leaves seemed fountains of purple light, and the palmetto and delicate mimosa fronds grew transparent in the all-pervading rosiness—almost immaterial. Even after the burning edge of the sun, perceived for a brief moment, had sunk away, these marvellous colours did not fade; softly shining on they seemed to be the natural tint of this wonderful land—independent of suns and seasons. Then, all at once, they were extinguished by the rapidly-fallen dusk, as a fire might be under a shower of ashes; and, a few minutes after, it was night.