Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/186

166 the man who fell asleep on the edge of a Java sawa, or rice-field, and waking with a sensation of great dampness around one knee, found that a huge but harmless sawa snake had swallowed his leg to that point. I was ready even to hear that there never had been any skeleton-strewn, deadly upas-tree valley on Papandayang's slope, since every expected sensation had fled my approach—had removed to Borneo, to Sulu, to more remote and impossible islands.

All travel, though, is only such disillusionment and disappointment, and he who would believe and enjoy blood-curdling things should stay by his own fireside. The disillusioned traveler has but to choose, on his return, whether he will truthfully dispel others' fondest illusions, or, joining that nameless club of so many returned travelers, continue to clothe the more distant parts of the world with the glamour of imagination.