But sunset in this land is not the signal merely for the evidence of
human existence. At the moment that the Islanders, crowned with
flowers, and waving goblets and garlands, burst from their retreats,
upon each mountain peak a lion starts forward, stretches his proud tail,
and, bellowing to the sun, scours back exulting to his forest; immense
bodies, which before would have been mistaken for the trunks of trees,
now move into life, and serpents, untwining their green and glittering
folds, and slowly bending their crested heads around, seem proudly
conscious of a voluptuous existence; troops of monkeys leap from tree to
tree; panthers start forward, and alarmed, not alarming, instantly
vanish; a herd of milk-white elephants tramples over the back-ground of
the scene; and instead of gloomy owls and noxious beetles, to hail the
long-enduring twilight, from the bell of every opening flower beautiful
birds, radiant with every rainbow tint, rush with a long and living
melody into the cool air.
The twilight in this island is not that transient moment of unearthly
bliss, which, in our less favoured regions, always leaves us so
thoughtful and so sad; on the contrary, it lasts many hours, and
consequently the Islanders are neither moody nor sorrowful.
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