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A half-hour after a landing of the pilgrims at the outer gates of the fortifications, the hill was swarming with them. The single street of the town was choked with the black gowns and the cobalt-blue blouses. Before these latter took a turn at their devotions they did homage to Bacchus.
He now wore a metal-and-leather harness which was one blaze of precious gems, and a leather belt hung with jeweled weapons replaced the familiar hollow girdle of metal. His right arm, between the wrist and the elbow, was almost covered by six bracelets of a transparent metal, deep cobalt-blue in color, each set with an incredibly brilliant stone of the same shade.
The visible portions of the closed wing and tail are cobalt-blue. This species goes about in flocks and has all the habits of a tit. It utters a cheerful chirrup. Liothrix lutea. The red-billed liothrix or hill-tit, or the Pekin-robin. This interesting bird forms the subject of a separate essay. Ixulus flavicollis. The yellow-naped ixulus. A small tit-like bird with a crest.
I determined to be very civil to the great sheik, Bedden; I therefore arranged with him that the work should be entirely in his hands, and that he should represent the government as my vakeel. At the same time, I gave him a grand cloak of purple and silver tissue, together with a tin helmet, and turban of cobalt-blue serge; also a looking-glass, and a quantity of beads of various colours.
His various hosts and hostesses lived in mortal terror during a sojourn of his; for he carried his jewels with him always; and often, whenever the fancy seized him, he would go abruptly to his room, spread a square of cobalt-blue velvet on the floor, squat in his native fashion beside it, and empty his bags of diamonds and rubies and pearls and sapphires and emeralds and turquoises.
The men's cobalt-blue blouses and their peaked felt hats spotted the landscape with contrasting notes and outlines. After the last peaked hat had disappeared into the farm enclosures, we and the wet landscape had the rain to ourselves. The trees now were spectral shapes; they could not be relied on as companions.
The body and head are black, the throat and cheeks white; while the breast is of a yellow brimstone hue, edged with a line of blood-red. The upper tail-coverts are greyish-white, and the under deep crimson. A large orange circle surrounds the eye, and within it is a second circle of cobalt-blue. A green ring incloses the pupil, with a narrow yellow ring round it.
The bill was yellow, and the feet and legs were of a fine cobalt-blue, forming a striking contrast with the other parts of the body. On each side of the breast, concealed under the wings, were tufts of grey feathers, about two inches in length, terminated by a broad band of deep emerald-green.
The rain was more persistent here in the vicinity of the lower Kayan than in any other part of Borneo during my two years of travel through that country. This beautiful bird has a snow-white tail and its head is adorned with four cobalt-blue appendages, two above and two underneath the head. The Dayaks caught this and other birds alive in snares, which they are expert in constructing.
Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April, 1962 April Fool's Day.
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