It will be fortunate for the traveller if, while he is rowing up the river, night shall overtake him; for, beside the splendor of the tropic stars above him, there will be rival splendors all about him. The night came down on me with startling suddenness--for "there is no twilight within the courts of the sun"--just as I was waiting at the mouth of a cross-cut canal, by which, when the tide should rise a little, I might avoid a long bend in the river. By the time the tide had risen the night had fallen thick and dark, and the dense shade of the jungle, through which the canal led us, made it yet thicker and more dark. Great fern leaves, ten or fifteen feet in height, grew dense on either side, and fanlike, almost met over our heads. Above them stretched the forest trees. Among them rose the noise of night-birds, lizards, trumpeter-beetles, and creatures countless and various, making a hoarse din, which, if it was not musical, at least was lively. But the jungle, with its darkness and its din, had such a beauty as I never have seen equalled, when its myriad fire-flies sparkled thick on every side. I had seen fire-flies before, and had heard of them, but I had never seen or heard, nor have I since then ever seen or heard, of anything like these. The peculiarity of them was--not that they were so many, though they were innumerable--not that they were so large, though they were very large--but that they clustered, as by a preconcerted plan, on certain kinds of trees, avoiding carefully all other kinds, and then, as if by signal from some director of the spectacle, they all sent forth their light at once, at simultaneous and exact intervals, so that the whole tree seemed to flash and palpitate with living light. Imagine it. At one instant was blackness of darkness and the croaking jungle. Then suddenly on every side flashed out these fiery trees, the form of each, from topmost twig to outmost bough, set thick with flaming jewels. It was easy to imagine at the top of each some big white-waistcoated fire-fly, with the baton of director, ordering the movements of the rest. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF BANGKOK.] This peculiarity of the Siamese fire-flies, or, as our popular term graphically describes them, the tropical "lightning-bugs" was noticed as long ago as the time of old Kämpfer, who speaks concerning them as follows: