dressed in grey and yellow, and by the Governor’s Madras servants, in white and scarlet.  The Maharajah and his native guests were all in English evening dress, with white waistcoats, bright turbans, and sarongs.  The room was large and open on all sides, and the fresh evening breeze, in addition to the numerous punkahs, made it delightfully cool.  The Maharajah is a strict Mohammedan himself, and drinks nothing but water.  I spent the three hours during which the dinner lasted in very pleasant conversation with my two neighbours.  We returned on board soon after eleven o’clock.

[Illustration:  Maharajah of Johore’s House.]

Monday, March 19th.—­Mabelle and I went ashore at six o’clock for a drive.  It was a glorious morning, with a delightfully cool breeze, and the excursion was most enjoyable.  We drove first through the old town of Johore, once of considerable importance, and still a place of trade for opium, indigo, pepper, and other tropical products.  Nutmeg and maize used to be the great articles of export, but latterly the growth has failed, and, instead of the groves we had expected to see, there were only solitary trees.  After leaving the town we went along a good road for some distance, with cottages and clearings on either side, until we came to a pepper and gambir plantation.  The two crops are cultivated together, and both are grown on the edge of the jungle, for the sake of the wood, which is burned in the preparation of the gambir.  I confess that I had never heard of the latter substance before, but I find that it is largely exported to Europe, where it is occasionally employed for giving weight to silks, and for tanning purposes.

The pepper garden we saw was many acres in extent.  Some of the trees in the forest close by are very fine, especially the camphor-wood, and the great red, purple, and copper-coloured oleanders, which grow in clumps twenty and thirty feet in height.  The orchids with which all the trees were covered, hanging down in long tassels of lovely colours, or spread out like great spotted butterflies and insects, were most lovely of all.  By far the most abundant was the white phalaenopsis, with great drooping sprays of pure white waxy blossoms, some delicately streaked with crimson, others with yellow.  It was a genuine jungle, and we were told that it is the resort of numerous tigers and elephants, and that snakes abound.

On our way back through the town we stopped to see the process of opium making.  This drug is brought from India in an almost raw state, rolled up in balls, about the size of billiard balls, and wrapped in its own leaves.  Here it is boiled down, several times refined, and prepared for smoking.  The traffic in it forms a very profitable monopoly, which is shared in Singapore between the English Government and the Maharajah of Johore.