Another writer(100) speaks with the same enthusiasm of the well-kept country roads, and approaches to the houses of residents, where one may travel for miles through unbroken avenues of fruit-trees, or beneath an over-arching canopy of evergreen palms. The long and well-kept approaches to the European dwellings never fail to win the praise of strangers. “In them may be discovered the same lavish profusion of overhanging foliage which we see around us on every side; besides that, there are often hedges of wild heliotrope, cropped as square as if built up of stone, and forming compact barriers of green leaves, which yet blossom with gold and purple flowers.” Behind these, broad bananas nod their bending leaves, while a choice flower-garden, a close-shaven lawn, and a croquet-ground, are not uncommonly the surroundings of the residence. If it is early morning, there is an unspeakable charm about the spot. The air is cool, even bracing; and beneath the shade of forest trees, the rich blossom of orchids are seen depending from the boughs, while songless birds twitter among the foliage, or beneath shrubs which the convolvulus has decked with a hundred variegated flowers. Here and there the slender stem of the aloe, rising from an armoury of spiked leaves, lifts its cone of white bells on high, or the deep orange pine-apple peeps out from a green belt of fleshy foliage, and breathes its bright fragrance around. The house will invariably have a spacious verandah, underneath which flowers in China vases, and easy chairs of all kinds, are placed. If perfect peace can steal through the senses into the soul—if it can be distilled like some subtle ether from all that is beautiful in nature—surely in such an island as this we shall find that supreme happiness which we all know to be unattainable elsewhere. Alas! even in this bright spot, unalloyed bliss cannot be expected. The temperature is very high, showing an average in the shade, all the year round, of between 85° and 95° Fahr. Prickly heat, and many other disorders, are caused by it on the European constitution. [Illustration: VIEW IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.]