As we neared the mystic city, the night fell. In this land there is no twilight, no delicious gloaming, no opalescent fading of the glare of day into the soft, loving mystery of night. The darkness came down like a dense black veil upon the jungle: the death of the day was sudden, remorseless. But all at once, out of the gloom there shone a great light. There was no moon, but millions upon millions of fireflies floated gracefully, dancing in the air over the jungle; it was as if the stars which were shining gloriously overhead had sent down shower after shower of dazzling sparks—tiny jewelled morsels of the Southern Cross—to illuminate our triumphant entry into what now looked like the city of some wonder-working magician. We could see the outlines of buildings, temples, palaces, and above all, here and there the great Dagobas, rising out of the plain like isolated hills covered with a pall of dense trees and lianes, piercing the darkness of the night. Once they were noble shrines of brickwork, proudly rearing their tiara-like towers heavenward, built to encase some relic of the Wise One, the Buddha; but centuries of neglect have smothered them with vegetation out of all shape, till only their great height remains of all their former glory. Wonderful are the ways of the jungle! A leaf falls and decays into dust, settling into some chink of a mouldering wall. Little by little other leaves join it and decay into mould. A bird drops a seed; tropical rains wash it into the haven of rest; there, fulfilling its mission, it germinates in the ever moist soil, to which as a pious child it in time adds its tribute of falling foliage. More seeds are borne by other birds, or carried on the wings of the wind. More decay breeds more life, until by degrees all trace of building vanishes, swallowed up by an omnivorous parasitic growth. The work of man’s hand, the record of the ambition of kings and of a priestly caste would be lost and forgotten, but for the inquisitive West, which never rests from digging into the secrets of the East, guarded in vain by the seven-headed cobras, the Nagas of Hindu myth.