To return:--tired at last with my exertions and the intensity of the heat, I dispatched my sable attendant in quest of that peculiar Indian luxury, the palanquin; and looking round for some sheltered spot to await its coming up, perceived a wide-spreading banyan tree. Trusting to its friendly shelter, I was soon stretched beneath a canopy of densely-clustered foliage, sufficient to exclude all direct rays of the solar star; and, lighting one of my best Indian pipes, resigned myself to what brother Jonathan terms a "tarnation smoke."
The scene before me was such as that which Johnson in one of his rich and genial moods would delight to portray--the image of beauty reposing in the lap of sublimity was never more aptly applied. The sun had attained its culminating point, and was showering down its fervid rays with a scorching influence; not a breath stirred the forest air: all was hushed in repose, and silent as the last breathings of the departing soul--while a foreboding sensation o'ershadowed the whole, as that beautiful couplet in Campbell's "Lochiel" ominously crowded on my memory,
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before.
I could not account for the oppressive silence, for often before I had reclined at the foot of some forest giant, and experienced widely different feelings; all here seemed indescribably grand and ennobling. The various tribes of baboons, monkeys, and apes, screeching, chattering and grinning overhead, anon leaping from tree to tree, luxuriating in all the enjoyment of freedom and revelry; while the jay, the parrot, the peacock, with minor and sweeter minstrels in every splendid variety of tropical plumage, might be seen soaring or darting amidst the foliage of forest verdure, combined with the beauty and number of parasitical plants and wild flowers. Such a scene of loveliness and life had often enraptured me, till a second Eden seemed realized; when, as if its aspect were too beautiful for sinful earth, the illusion was dissipated on observing the slender and graceful form of a snake gliding swiftly in mazy folds through the long grass--by that curious association of ideas, suggesting at once the primal fall, and the probable vicinity of a cobra couched on the branch of a tree overhead, whose color so closely approximates its tinge, that it is almost impossible, without careful scrutiny, to detect its presence, and if unconsciously disturbed in its leafy cradle, the oscillation is resented by darting its poisoned fang in the invader's face. These insidious foes, and the probability of a struggle with some carnivorous denizen of the glen, suggest strong doubts as to the security of your woodland abode, and damp the pleasure the scene otherwise might afford. And thus surely do we find that, in nature as in life, under the most lovely and entrancing aspects often lurk the most seductive and deadly influences. The prospect loses nothing at night, when effulgent with the pensive moonbeams, and the myriads of fire-flies like living stars broke loose from the dominion of old night, delighted with their new-found liberty, and dancing in a perfect jubilee of joyous light through the embowering arcades, illuminating every note of forest life; and on the one side is heard the amorous roar of the antelope's midnight suitor, as pending to the crashing march of the gregarious elephant; and on the other the nightly concert of a pack of jackalls, resembling so closely the music of those "delightful" babies, that it is only by continuous rehearsals the ear can receive them with indifference--render the whole indescribably magnificent, though rather trying to delicate nerves.