III
A FISHING PICNIC
I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
Filled the river full of fishes
NOW come to a Malay picnic.
Again, it is early morning, the guests have been invited overnight and warned to come on their elephants and bring "rice and salt." By the time the sun is well up there are fifty or sixty people (of whom about half are women), mounted on twelve or fifteen elephants, and some boys and followers are prepared to walk.
The word is given to make for a great limestone hill rising abruptly out of the plain, for, close round the foot of this rock, eating its way into the unexplored depths of subaqueous caves, flows a clear mountain-bred stream, and, in the silent pools which lie under the shadow of the cliff, are the fish
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