Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/185

Rh itself from tree-top to tree-top in proper tropical fashion, as we steamed across the deadly, uninhabitable terra ingrata. Nor had even the first construction gangs of railway-builders met with any such sensational incidents, so the chief engineer of the railways afterward informed us. Seeing our disappointment and dejection, this obliging official racked his memory and at last recalled that he himself had once seen a wild peacock walking the track in the terra ingrata.

"And yes! so there was. I remember now that one of our engineers, who was running a special locomotive along there, did see a tiger sitting on the track. He whistled loudly, and the tiger trotted up the track until he found the engine gaining on him, and then the royal beast bounded off into the jungle, snarling and spitting like an angry cat."

"But there are great snakes in the swamps surely? You must run over them often?" we persisted.

"Doubtless; but we rarely see snakes here in Java. There are many in Borneo, Sumatra, and the other islands that are so wild yet. But you will see them all at the zoölogical garden in Batavia."

Closer questioning could only elicit the statement that, while all the terrible Java snake-stories we had read might be true, we had no need in this modern day to shake the pillows gently each night and morning to dislodge the sleeping cobra or python; nor to draw the bed-curtains closely at sounds like dry leaves blowing over the floor; nor to regard the harmless hop-toad as the certain pilot and advance-guard of a snake. I almost began to doubt, to discredit that standard favorite, that typical tropical snake-story of