"Where we left our carriage there was a pretty water-fall, and we saw several little cascades on our journey. They are fed by water from the clouds that sweep over Penang, especially during the time of the south-west monsoon, and every owner of a bungalow on the mountain-side tries to have a stream of water going through his place, and if he can get a cascade in it, so much the better. Some of the residents have bathing-houses at the foot of their cascades, and they go there to get cool; a more delightful bath-house than one we saw it would be difficult to imagine. It had a floor of the solid rock of the island, and the water fell into a natural basin about four feet deep, and then ran off through a channel it had worn for itself in hundreds of years of patient work. [Illustration: A PENANG BUTTERFLY.] "Penang is full of insect life; in some places where we went there was such a buzzing of beetles and other humming things that our voices were drowned when we were twenty yards apart. It reminded us of the buzzing of machinery in a cotton factory, and there was more of it in the early part of the day than later on. There is one beetle they call 'the trumpeter,' that does not rest from making a noise from morning till night unless he is disturbed; when you go near a tree where he is he stops, and does not start again till you go away. There are lots and lots of butterflies, and they are of all sizes and colors; there is one called the 'Saturnia-atlas' that measures ten or twelve inches across the wings, but he is not very abundant, and the only one we saw was in a glass case in the office of a merchant we called on. We saw some beautiful humming-birds, and were told that there are several varieties of these tiny things in Penang. There was a bright metallic lustre all over them, and when we looked at them in a certain light they glistened like a piece of burnished steel. [Illustration: HUMMING-BIRDS.] "How many kinds of trees there are in Penang it is difficult to say, but there are great numbers of them. Some of them are so heavy that they will sink in water; the Chinese and Malays take these woods to make anchors for their boats and junks, and they use the rattans and bamboos for cordage if they cannot afford twisted ropes. Many of the plants live entirely on air, and we saw trees a foot in diameter growing on a rock where there wasn't a particle of soil. The moist air is what they thrive on, and they seem as well satisfied on a rock as in the richest soil. "We asked how many fruits there were in Penang, and learned that they amounted to a hundred, and perhaps more. They have that delicious fruit, the mangosteen, that we told you about when in Java; and then they have the pineapple, custard-apple, pomegranate, mango, banana, and we don't know what else. We tried to eat the durian again, but couldn't get through it; and, as we are not to be very long in the land of this fruit, we don't think it worth our while to learn.