M.G.IMPORT60EKHAHDEL
.W.F.SLUYTER
KRABAIA-MALANG
ST^R DAM- CURACAO
Java
The Garden of the East
r
Java
The Garden of the East
By
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore
Author of " Jinrikisha Days in Japan "
New York
The Century Co.
1922
ight, 1897,
By THE CENTURY Co.
Printed in U. S. A.
TO
MY FRIEND
MARY T. COCKCROFT
-5692
PREFACE
AVA is still the most beautiful country
in all the world, and in the twentieth
century is a much more enjoyable
place than during the century when I
paid it my first visit. The Netherlands
officials have greatly relented in their attitude to
travelers, and really welcome them. There are guides
and guide-books, even an official tourist bureau, and
one may be personally conducted or go with his own
coupons everywhere. The hotels have been enlarged
and modernized, and the automobile has made a driv-
ing tour over the beautiful country roads a still more
perfect pleasure. The price of the toelatings Jcart, or
admission fee, has recently been doubled, but it does
not become an American to grumble at anything
Dutch officials or a custom-house may do, after the
extraordinary exhibit of American methods at near-by
Manila.
The Netherlands India government is doing much
to advance the welfare and education of the natives.
ix
T PREFACE I
There is a primary school in every village, with nor-
mal and technical schools at the large towns, and the
missions claim 34,000 Christians as the result of their
labors. Five and six thousand Mohammedans annu-
ally avail themselves of the privilege of making the
pilgrimage to Mecca, and in 1908 experiment was
made of assigning trained members of noble Java-
nese families as officers of native regiments.
The native population has increased by four mil-
lions, or one fourth, in the last ten years, and the
Chinese population of Netherlands India has doubled,
the latter the result of the great development of the
tin mines, of the tobacco and petroleum industries
the export of petroleum from Sumatra wells having
risen from nothing at all to an annual output of
120,000,000 gallons in the decade.
With every wish to avoid errors, one is often mis-
led by accepting as facts the statements of the many
kind but inaccurate people who do most of the talk-
ing in the world; while just as surely as myths,
legends and fairy tales grow with the greatest luxu-
riance in the tropics, so surely do they gravitate to
the stranger's ear. One can only hope to have safely
discriminated now and then. E. B. S.
WASHINGTON, D. C.,
February, 1912.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR ..... 1
II. IN "JAVA MAJOR" ...... 17
III. BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST ..... 25
IV. THE KAMPONGS ....... 37
V. To THE HILLS . 49
VI. A DUTCH SANS Souci 62
VII. IN A TROPICAL GARDEN . . . . . . 79
VIII. THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" ..,.., 94
IX. THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" (Continued) . . 109
X. SINAGAR .126
XI. PLANTATION LIFE .... . 136
XII. ACROSS THE PREANGER REGENCIES . . 147
XIII. "To TISSAK MALAYA!" . . . ,',', .156
XIV. PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR . . 167
XV. BORO BOEDOR . . . . , . . .182
XVI. BORO BOEDOR AND MENDOET .... 203
XVII. BRAMBANAM . . . . % .. V . 216
XVIII. SOLO : THE CITY OF THE SUSUNHAN . . -.240
XIX. THE LAND OF KRIS AND SARONG . . . . 253
XX. DJOKJAKARTA 265
XXI. PAKOE ALAM: THE "Axis OF THE UNIVERSE" . 283
XXII. "TJILAT JAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" . 301
XXIII. GrAROET AND PAPANDAYANG 312
XXIV. "SALAMAT!" . . 324
d
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MALAYS DIVING FOR MONET .... Frontispiece
PAGE
A STREET IN SINGAPORE "
MAP OP JAVA 16
A JAVANESE YOUNG WOMAN 27
PAINTING SARONGS 43
RICE-FIELDS .54
MOUNT SALAK, FROM THE RESIDENT'S GARDEN, BUITENZOR& 63
FRANGIPANI AND SAUSAGE-TREE 74
TROPICAL FRUITS . . . ..... .81
TROPICAL FRUITS . 89
A MARKET IN BUITENZORO ....... 99
SCENES AROUND THE MARKET . / 105
A VIEW IN BUITENZORG ........ Ill
JAVANESE COOLIES GAMBLING 123
JAVANESE DANCING-GIRL 139
A MOHAMMEDAN MOSQUE ....... 159
WAYSIDE PAVILION ON POST-ROAD 177
BORO BOEDOR, FROM THE PASSAGRAHAN .... 183
GROUND-PLAN OF BORO BOEDOR 187
FOUR BAS-RELIEFS FROM BORO BOEDOR .... 191
ON THE SECOND TERRACE 196
THE LATTICED DAGOBAS ON THE CIRCULAR TERRACES . 199
xiii
riv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAOUC
THE RIGHT-HAND IMAGE AT MENDOET 207
TEMPLE OP LORD JONGGRAN AT BRAMBANAM . . . 217
CLEARING AWAY RUBBISH AND VEGETATION AT BBAMBANAM
TEMPLES 221
KRISHNA AND THE THREE GRACES 226
LORO JONGGRAN AND HER ATTENDANTS .... 229
PLAN OP CHANDI SEWOU ("THOUSAND TEMPLES") 233
FRAGMENT FROM LORO JONGGRAN TEMPLE .... 235
GANESHA, THE ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD .... 238
THE SUSUNHAN 243
THE DODOK 249
JAVA, BALI, AND MADURA KRISES 255
THE BRAMBANAM BABY 267
TYING THE TURBAN 279
WAYANG-WAYANG 285
TOPENG TROUPE WITH MASKS 291
TRANSPLANTING RICE .... ?15
JAVA
THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
JAVA
THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR
INGAPORE (or S'pore, as the languid,
perspiring, exhausted residents near the
line most often write and pronounce the
name of Sir Stamford Raffles's colony in
the Straits of Malacca) is a geographical
and commercial center and cross-roads of the eastern
hemisphere, like to no other port in the world. Sin-
gapore is an ethnological center, too, and that small
island swinging off the tip of the Malay Peninsula
holds a whole congress of nations, an exhibit of all the
races and peoples and types of men in the world, com-
pared to which the Midway Plaisance was a mere
skeleton of a suggestion. The traveler, despite the
overpowering, all-subduing influence of the heat, has
some thrills of excitement at the tropical pictures of
the shore, and the congregation of varicolored hu-
manity grouped on the Singapore wharf; and there
and in Java, where one least and last expects to find
i 1
2 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
such modern conveniences, his ship swings up to solid
wharves, and he walks down a gang-plank in civilized
fashion something to be appreciated after the excite-
ments and discomforts of landing in small boats among
the screaming heathen of all other Asiatic ports.
On the Singapore wharf is a market of models and
a life-class for a hundred painters ; and sculptors, too,
may study there all the tones of living bronze and the
beauties of human patina, and more of repose than of
muscular action, perhaps. Japanese, Chinese, Siamese,
Malays, Javanese, Burmese, Cingalese, Tamils, Sikhs,
Parsees, Lascars, Malabars, Malagasy, and sailor folk
of all coasts, Hindus and heathens of every caste and
persuasion, are grouped in a brilliant confusion of
red, white, brown, and patterned drapery, of black,
brown, and yellow skins ; and behind them, in ghostly
clothes, stand the pallid Europeans, who have brought
the law, order, and system, the customs, habits, com-
forts, and luxuries of civilization to the tropics and
the jungle. All these alien heathens and pictu-
resque unbelievers, these pagans and idolaters, Bud-
dhists, Brahmans, Jews, Turks, sun- and fire-worship-
ers, devil-dancers, and what not, have come with the
white man to toil for him under the equatorial sun,
since the Malays are the great leisure class of the world,
and will not work. The Malays will hardly live on the
land, much less cultivate it or pay taxes, while they
can float about in strange little hen-coops of house-
boats that fill the river and shores by thousands.
Hence the Tamils have come from India to work, and
the Chinese to do the small trading; and the Malay
rests, or at most goes a-fishing, or sits by the canoe-
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR 3
loads of coral and sponges, balloon-fish and strange
sea treasures that are sold at the wharf.
A tribe of young Malays in dugout canoes meet
every steamer and paddle in beside it, shrieking and
gesticulating for the passengers to toss coins into the
water. Their mops of black hair are bleached auburn
by the action of sun and salt water, and the canoe and
paddle fit as naturally to these amphibians as a turtle's
shell and flipper. They bail with an automatic sweep
of the hollowed foot in regular time with the dip of
the paddle ; and when a coin drops, the Malay lets go
the paddle and sheds his canoe without concern. There
is a flash of brown heels, bubbles and commotion be-
low, and the diver comes up, and chooses and rights his
wooden shell and flipper as easily and naturally as a
man picks out and assumes his coat and cane at a
hall door. And in their hearts, the civilized folk on
deck, hampered with their multiple garments and con-
ventions, envy these happy-go-lucky, care-free amphib-
ians in the land of the breadfruit, banana, and scant
raiment, with dives into the cool, green water, teeming
with fish and glittering with falling coins, as the only
exertion required to earn a living. Cold and hunger
are unknown ; flannels and soup are no part of charity ;
and even that word, and the many organizations in its
name, are hardly known in the lands low on the line.
S'pore is the great junction where travelers from the
East or the West change ship for Java ; a commercial
cross-roads where all who travel must stop and see
what a marvel of a place British energy has raised from
the jungle in less than half a century. The Straits
Settlements date from the time when Sir Stamford
4 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
Raffles, after Great Britain's five years' temporary oc-
cupancy of Java, returned that possession to the Dutch
in 1816, the fall of Napoleon removing the fear that
this possession of Holland would become a French
colony and menace to British interests in Asia. It had
been intended to establish such a British commercial
entrepot at Achin Head, the north end of Sumatra ;
but Sir Stamford Raffles's better idea prevailed, and
the free port of Singapore in the Straits of Malacca has
won the Commercial supremacy of the East from Ba-
tavia, and has prospered beyond its founder's dreams.
It is a well-built and a beautifully ordered city, and the
municipal housekeeping is an example to many cities of
the temperate zone. Even the untidy Malay and the dirt-
loving Chinese, who swarm to this profitable trading-
center, and have absorbed all the small business and
retail trade of the place, are held to outer cleanliness
and strict sanitary laws in their allotted quarters. The
stately business houses, the marble palace of a bank,
the long iron pavilions shading the daily markets, the
splendid Raffles Museum and Library, are all regular
and satisfactory sights ; but the street life is the fasci-
nation and distraction of the traveler before everything
else. The array of turbans and sarongs gives color to
every thoroughfare ; but the striking and most unique
pictures in Singapore streets are the Tamil bullock-
drivers, who, sooty and statuesque, stand in splendid
contrast between their humped white oxen and the
mounds of white flour-bags they draw in primitive carts.
Tiny Tamil children, shades blacker, if that could really
be, than their ebon- and charcoal-skinned parents, are
seen on suburban roads, clothed only in silver chains,
A STREET IX SINGAPORE.
After photograph hy E. S. Flatt.
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR 7
bracelets, and medals ; and these lithe, lean people from
the south end of India are first in the picturesque ele-
ments of the great city of the Straits. The Botanical
Garden, although so recently established, promises to
become famous ; and one arriving from the farther East
meets there for the first time the beautiful red-stemmed
Banka palm, and the symmetrical traveler's palm of
Madagascar, the latter all conventionalized ready for
sculptors' use. Scores of other splendid palms, giant
creepers, gorgeous blossoms and fantastic orchids,
known to us only by puny examples in great conser-
vatories at home, equally delight one all the wealth
of jungle and swamp growing beside the smooth, hard
roads of an English park, over which one may drive
for hours in the suburbs of Singapore.
The Dutch mail-steamers to and from Batavia con-
nect with the English mail-steamers at Singapore} a
French line connects with the Messagerie's ships run-
ning between Marseilles and Japan; an Australian
line of steamers gives regular communication ; and in-
dependent steamers, offering as much comfort, leave
Singapore almost daily for Batavia. The five hun-
dred miles of distance is covered in forty or forty-
eight hours, for a uniform fare by the vessels of any
of these lines. Before the advent of America into
the Philippines (1898) living and travel in the Neth-
erlands Indies, where the gold standard of Holland is
observed, were two and three times as expensive as
anywhere else in the Far East. American occupation
of the archipelago, with American extravagance and
waste have corrupted the whole neighboring East,
along with the inflation of all silver values. The
8 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
completion of railways across and to all parts of the
island of Java, however, has greatly reduced tourist
expenses, so that they are not now two or three times
the average of similar expenses in India, China, and
Japan.
At Singapore, only two degrees above the equator,
the sun pursues a monotony of rising and setting that
ranges only from six minutes before to six minutes
after six o'clock, morning and evening, the year round.
Breakfasting by candle-light and leaving the hotel in
darkness, there was all the beauty of the gray-and-rose
dawn and the pale-yellow rays of the early sun to be
seen from the wet deck when our ship let go from the
wharf and sailed out over a sea of gold. For the two
days and two nights of the voyage, with but six pas-
sengers on the large blue-funnel steamer, we had the
deck and the cabins, and indeed the equator and the
Java Sea, to ourselves. The deck was furnished with
the long chairs and hammocks of tropical life, but
more tropical yet were the bunches of bananas hang-
ing from the awning-rail, that all might pick and eat
at will; for this is the true region of plenty, where
selected bananas cost one Mexican cent the dozen, and
a whole bunch but five cents, and where actual living
is far too cheap and simple to be called a science.
The ship slipped out from the harbor through the
glassy river of the Straits of Malacca, and on past
points and shores that to me had never been anything
but geographic names. There was some little thrill
of excitement in being " on the line " in the heart of
the tropics, the half-way house of all the world, and
one expected strange aspects and effects. There was
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR 9
a magic stillness of air and sea ; the calm was as of en-
chantment, and one felt as if in some hypnotic trance,
with all nature chained in the same spell. The pale,
pearly sky was reflected in smooth stretches of liquid,
pearly sea, with vaporous hills, soft green visions of
land beyond. Everywhere in these regions the shallow
water shows pale green above the sandy bottom, and
the anchor can be dropped at will. All through the
breathless day the ship coursed over this shimmering
yellow and gray-green sea, with faint pictures of land,
the very landscapes of mirage, drawn in vaporous tints
on every side. We were threading a way through the
thousand islands, the archipelago lying below the
point of the Malay Peninsula, a region of unnamed,
uncounted " summer isles of Eden," chiefly known to
history as the home of pirates.
The high mountain-ridges of Sumatra barred the
west for all the first equatorial day, the land of this
"Java Minor" sloping down and spreading out in
great green plains and swamps on the fertile but un-
healthy eastern coast. The large settlements and most
attractive districts are on the west coast, where the hills
rise steeply from the ocean, and coffee-trees thrive lux-
uriantly. Benkoelen, the old English town, and Pa-
dang, the great coffee-mart, are on that coast, and
from the latter a railway leads to high mountain dis-
tricts of great picturesqueness. There are few govern-
ment plantations on Sumatra, where land-tenures
and leases are the same as in Java. Immense areas
have been devoted to tobacco-culture near Deli, on
the north or Straits coast, planters employing there
and on lower east-coast estates more than forty-three
10 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
thousand Chinese coolies the Chinese, the one Asiatic
who toils with ardor and regularity, whom the tropics
cannot debilitate, and to whom malaria and all germs,
microbes, and bacilli seem but tonic agents.
When the British returned Java, after the Napoleon
scare was over, they retained Ceylon and the Cape of
Good Hope, and sovereign rights over Sumatra, relin-
quishing this latter suzerainty in 1872, in exchange for
Holland's extensive rights in Ashantee and the Gold
Coast of Africa. The Dutch then attempted to reduce
the native population of Sumatra to the same estate
as the more pliant people of Java ; but the wild moun-
taineers and bucaneers, of the north, or Achin, end of
the island in particular, warned by the sad fate of the
Javanese, had no intention of being conquered and
enslaved, of giving their labor and the fruit of their
lands to the strangers from Europe's cold swamps.
The Achin war continued for thirty-three years long
resulting in a general loss of Dutch prestige in the
East, an immense expenditure of Dutch gulden, causing
a deficit in the colonial budget every year, a fearful
mortality among Dutch troops, and partial abandon-
ment, in one decade of trade depression, of the aggres-
sive policy. Dutch commanders were well satisfied to
hold their chain of forts along the western hills, and to
punish the Achinese in a small way by blockading
them from their supplies of opium, tobacco, and spirits.
In one four years of active campaigning the Achin
war cost seventy million gulden, and seventy out of
every hundred Dutch soldiers succumbed to the climate
before going into an encounter. The Achinese merely
retired to their swamps and jungles and waited, and
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR 11
the climate did the rest, their confidence in themselves
only shaken during the command of General Van der
Heyden, who for a time actually crushed the rebellion.
This picturesque fighter, a half-brother of Baron de
Stuers, inherited Malay instincts from a native mother,
and carried on such a warfare as the Achinese under-
stood. He lost an eye in one encounter, and the na-
tives, then remembering an old tradition that their
country would be conquered by a one-eyed man, prac-
tically gave up the struggle to resume it, however, as
soon as General Van der Heyden retired and sailed for
Holland, and military vigilance was relaxed in conse-
quence of Diitch economy. The Achinese leader,
Toekoe Oemar, several times apparently yielded to
the Dutch, only to perpetrate some greater injury;
but he finally surrendered in 1905, was deported, and
there is perfect peace.
It was a picturesque, blood-curdling story of war
with these Achinese; and in view of their indomitable
spirit, Great Britain did not lose so much when she let
go unconquerable Sumatra. British tourists are sad-
dened, however, when they see what their ministers let
slip with Java, for with that island and Sumatra,
all Asia's southern shore-line, and virtually the far
East, would have been England's own.
Geologically this whole Malay Archipelago was one
with the Malay Peninsula, and although so recently
made, is still subject to earthquake change, as shown
in the terrible eruption of the island of Krakatau in
the narrow Sunda Strait, west of Java, in August, 1883.
Native traditions tell that anciently Sumatra, Java,
Bali, and Sumbawa were one island, and " when three
12 JAVA: THE GABDEN OF THE EAST
thousand rainy seasons shall have passed away they
will be reunited " ; but Alfred Russel Wallace denies
it, and proves that Java was the first to drop away from
the Asiatic mainland and become an island.
While the sun rode high in the cloudless white zenith
above our ship the whole world seemed aswoon. Hills
and islands swam and wavered in the heat and mists,
and the glare and silence were terrible and oppressive.
One could not shake off the sensation of mystery and
unreality, of sailing into some unknown, eerie, other
world. Every voice was subdued, the beat of the
engines was scarcely felt in that glassy calm, and the
stillness of the ship gave a strange sensation, as of a
magic spell. It was not so very hot, only 86 by the
thermometer, but the least exertion, to cross the deck,
to lift a book, to pull a banana, left one limp and ex-
hausted, with cheeks burning and the breath coming
faster, that insidious, deceptive heat of the tropics
declaring itself that steaming, wilting quality in the
sun of Asia that so soon makes jelly of the white
man's brain, and that in no way compares with the
scorching, dry 96 in the shade of a North American,
hot-wave summer day.
At five o'clock, while afternoon tea and bananas
were being served on deck, we crossed the line that
imaginary parting of the world, the invisible thread of
the universe, the beginning and the end of all latitude
latitude 0, longitude 103 east, the sextant told. The
position was geographically exciting. We were liter-
ally " down South," and might now speak disrespect-
fully of the equator if we wished. A breeze sprang
up as soon as we crossed the line, and all that evening
SINGAPORE AND THE EQUATOR 13
and through the night the air of the southern hemi-
sphere was appreciably cooler. The ship went slowly,
and loitered along in order to enter the Banka Straits
by daylight ; and at sunrise we were in a smooth river
of pearl, with the green Sumatra shores close on one
hand, and the heights of Banka's island of tin on the
other. A ship in full sail swept out to meet us, and
four more barks under swelling canvas passed by in
that narrow strait, whose rocks and reefs are fully at-
tested by the line of wrecks and sunken masts down
its length. The harbor of Muntuk, whence there is a
direct railway to the tin-mines, was busy with shipping,
and the white walls and red roofs of the town showed
prettily against the green.
The open Java Sea was as still and glassy as the
straits had been, and for another breathless, cloudless
day the ship's engines beat almost inaudibly as we went
southward through an enchanted silence. When the
heat and glare of light from the midday sun so di-
rectly overhead drove us to the cabin, where swinging
punkas gave air, we had additional suggestion of the
tropics; for a passenger for Macassar, just down
from Penang and Malacca, showed us fifty freshly
cured specimens of birds, whose gorgeous plumage re-
peated the most brilliant and dazzling tints of the rain-
bow, the flower-garden, and the jewel-case, and left us
bereft of adjectives and exclamations. Here we found
another passenger, who spoke Dutch and looked the
Hollander by every sign, but quickly claimed citizen-
ship with us as a naturalized voter of the great repub-
lic. He asked if we lived hi Java, and when we had
answered that we were going to Java en touriste,
14 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
"merely travelers," he established comradeship by
saying, "I am a traveling man myself New York
Life." This naturalized American citizen said quite
naturally, " We Dutchmen " and " our queen " Amer-
icanisms with a loyal Holland ring.
After the gold, rose, gray, and purple sunset had
shown us such a sky of splendor and sea of glory as
we had but dreamed of above the equator, banks of
dark vapor denned themselves in the south. A thin
young moon hung among the huge yellow stars, that
glowed steadily, with no cold twinkling, in that intense
night sky ; but before the Southern Cross could rise,
dense clouds rolled up, and flashes, chains, and forks of
angry lightning made a double spectacular play against
the inky-black sky and the mirror-black sea. The
captain promised us a tropical thunder-storm from
those black clouds in the south, and went forward to
give ship's orders, advising us to make all haste below
when the first drop should fall, as in an instant a sheet
of blinding rain would surround the decks, against
which the double awnings would be no more protection
than so much gauze, and through which one could not
see the ship's length. The clouds remained station-
ary, however, and we missed the promised sensation,
although we waited for hours on deck, the ship moving
quietly through the soft, velvety air of the tropic's
blackest midnight, and the lightning-flashes becom-
ing fainter and fainter.
n
IN "JAVA MAJOR"
the earliest morning a clean white light-
house on an islet was seen ahead, and as
the sun rose, bluish mountains came up
from the sea, grew in height, outlined
themselves, and then stood out, detached
volcanic peaks of most lovely lines, against the purest,
pale-blue sky ; soft clouds floated up and clung to the
summits ; the blue and green at the water's edge re-
solved itself into groves and lines of palms ; and over
sea and sky and the wonderland before us was all the
dewy freshness of dawn in Eden. It looked very truly
the "gem" and the "pearl of the East," this "Java
Major" of the ancients, and the Djawa of the native
people, which has called forth more extravagant praise
and had more adjectives expended on it than any other
one island in the world. Yet this little continent is
only 666 miles long and from 56 to 135 miles wide, and
on an area of 49,197 square miles (nearly the same as
that of the State of New York) supports a population
of 30,098,008, greater than that of all the other islands
of the Indian Ocean put together. With 1600 miles
17
18 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
of coast-line, it has few harbors, the north shore being
swampy and flat, with shallows extending far out,
while the southern coast is steep and bold, and the one
harbor of Tjilatjap breaks the long line of surf where
the Indian Ocean beats against the southern cliffs.
Fortunately, hurricanes and typhoons are unknown in
the waters around this " summer land of the world,"
and the seasons have but an even, regular change from
wet to dry in Java. From April to October the dry
monsoon blows from the southeast, and brings the
best weather of the year dry, hot days and the coolest
nights. From October to April the southwest or wet
monsoon blows. Then every day has its afternoon
shower, the air is heavy and stifling, all the tropic world
is asteani and astew and afloat, vegetation is magnifi-
cent, insect life triumphant, and the mountains are
hidden in nearly perpetual mist. There are heavy thun-
der-storms at the turn of the monsoon, and the one we
had watched from the sea the Hallowe'en night before
our arrival had washed earth and air until the foliage
glistened, the air fairly sparkled, nature wore her most
radiant smiles, and the tropics were ideal.
It was more workaday and prosaic when the ship,
steaming in between long breakwaters, made fast to
the stone quays of Tandjon Priok, facing a long line
of corrugated-iron warehouses, behind which was the
railway connecting the port with the city of Batavia.
The gradual silting up of Batavia harbor after an
eruption of Mount Salak in 1699, which first dammed
and then sent torrents of mud and sand down the
Tjiliwong River, finally obliged commerce to remove
to this deep bay six miles farther east, where the
IN "JAVA MAJOR" 19
colonials have made a model modern harbor, at a
cost of twenty-six and a half million gulden, all paid
from current revenues, without the island's ceasing
to pay its regular tribute to the crown of Hol-
land. The customs officers at Tandjon Priok were
courteous and lenient, passing our tourist luggage
with the briefest formality, and kindly explaining how
our steamer-chairs could be stored in the railway
rooms until our return to port. It is but nine miles
from the Tandjon Priok wharf to the main station in
the heart of the original city of Batavia a stretch of
swampy ground dotted and lined with palm-groves and
banana-patches, with tiny woven baskets of houses
perched on stilts clustered at the foot of tall cocoa-
trees that are the staff and source of life and of every
economical blessing of native existence. We leaped
excitedly from one side of the little car to the other,
to see each more and more tropical picture ; groups
of bare brown children frolicking in the road, and
mothers with babies astride of their hips, or swinging
comfortably in a scarf knotted across one shoulder,
and every-day life going on under the palms most
naturally, although to our eyes it was so strange and
theatrical.
At the railway-station we met the sadoe (dos-a-dos),
a two-wheeled cart, which is the common vehicle of
hire of the country, and is drawn by a tiny Timor or
Sandalwood pony, with sometimes a second pony at-
tached outside of the shafts. The broad cushioned
seat over the axles will accommodate four persons, two
sitting each way. The driver faces front comfortably j
but the passenger, with no back to lean against but
20 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the driver's, must hold to the canopy-frame while he is
switched about town backward in the footman's place,
for one gulden or forty cents the hour.
Whether one comes to Java from India or China,
there is hasty change from the depreciated silver cur-
rency of all Asia to the unaltered gold standard of
Holland, and the sudden expensiveness of the world
is a sad surprise. The Netherlands unit of value, the
gulden (value, forty cents United States gold), is
as often called a florin, a rupee, or a dollar the
"Mexican dollar" or the equivalent "British dollar"
of the Straits Settlements, a coin which trade necessi-
ties drove British conservatism to minting, which
act robs the Briton of the privilege of making further
remarks upon "the almighty dollar" of the United
States, with its unchanging value of one hundred cents
gold. This confusion of coins, with prices quoted in-
differently in guldens, florins, rupees, and dollars, is
further increased by dividing the gulden into one hun-
dred cents, like the Ceylon rupee, so that, between these
Dutch fractions, the true cents of the United States
dollar that one instinctively thinks of, and the depre-
ciated cents of the British or the battered Mexican
dollar, one's brain begins to whirl when prices are
quoted, or any evil day of reckoning comes.
No Europeans live at Tandjon Priok, nor in the old
city of Batavia, which from the frightful mortality
during two centuries was known as "the graveyard
of Europeans." The banks and business houses, the
Chinese and Arab towns, are in the " old town " ; but
Europeans desert that quarter before sundown, and
betake themselves to the " new town " suburbs, where
IN "JAVA MAJOR" 21
every house is in a park of its own, and the avenues
are broad and straight, and all the distances are mag-
nificent. The city of Batavia, literally " fair meadows,"
grandiloquently " the queen of the East," and without
exaggeration "the gridiron of the East," dates from
1621, when the Dutch removed from Bantam, where
quarrels between Portuguese, Javanese, and the East
India Company had been disturbing trade for fifteen
years, and built Fort Jacatra at the mouth of a river
off which a cluster of islands sheltered a fine harbor.
Its position in the midst of swamps was unhealthy, and
the mortality was so appalling as to seem incredible.
Dutch records tell of 87,000 soldiers and sailors dying
in the government hospital between 1714 and 1776,
and of 1,119,375 dying at Batavia between 1730 and
August, 1752 a period of twenty-two years and eight
months. 1 The deadly Java fever occasioning this
seemingly incredible mortality was worst between the
years 1733 and 1738, during which time 2000 of the
Dutch East India Company's servants and free Chris-
tians died annually. Staunton, who visited Batavia
with Lord Macartney's embassy in 1793, called it the
"most unwholesome place in the universe," and "the
pestilential climate " was considered a sufficient defense
against attack from any European power.
The people were long in learning that those who went
to the higher suburbs to sleep, and built houses of the
most open construction to admit of the fullest sweep
of air, were free from the fever of the walled town,
surrounded by swamps, cut by stagnant canals, and
facing a harbor whose mud-banks were exposed at
1 See Sir Stamford Eaffles's "History of Java," Appendix A.
2
22 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
low tide. The city walls were destroyed at the be-
ginning of this century by the energetic Marshal
Daendels, who began building the new town. The
quaint old air-tight Dutch buildings were torn down,
and streets were widened ; and there is now a great out-
spread town of red-roofed, whitewashed houses, with
no special features or picturesqueness to make its
street-scenes either distinctively Dutch or tropical.
Modern Batavia had 115,567 inhabitants on December
31, 1905, less than a tenth of whom are Europeans,
a fourth Chinese and three-fourths natives. While the
eighteenth-century Stadhuis might have been brought
from Holland entire, a steam tramway starts from its
door and thence shrieks its way to the farthest suburb,
the telephone "hellos" from center to suburb, and
modern inventions make tropical living possible.
The Dutch do not welcome tourists, nor encourage
one to visit their paradise of the Indies. Too many
travelers have come, seen, and gone away to tell disa-
greeable truths about Dutch methods and rule ; to ex-
pose the source and means of the profitable returns
of twenty million dollars and more for each of so many
years of the last and the preceding century all from
islands whose whole area only equals that of the State
of New York. Although the tyrannic rule and the
" culture system," or forced labor, are things of the
dark past, the Dutch official is still suspicious, and
the idea being fixed fast that no stranger comes to Java
on kindly or hospitable errands, the colonial authori-
ties must know within twenty-four hours why one
visits the Indies. They demand one's name, age, re-
ligion, nationality, place of nativity, and occupation,
IN "JAVA MAJOR" 33
the name of the ship that brought the suspect to Java,
and the name of its captain a dim threat lurking in
this latter query of holding the unlucky mariner re-
sponsible should his importation prove an expense or
embarrassment to the island. Still another permit
a toelatings-kaart, or "admission ticket" must be ob-
tained if one wishes to travel farther than Buitenzorg,
the cooler capital, forty miles away in the hills. The
tourist pure and simple, the sight-seer and pleasure
traveler, is not yet quite comprehended, and his pass-
ports usually accredit him as traveling in the interior
for " scientific purposes." Guides or efficient couriers
in the real sense are all too rare. The English-speak-
ing servant is rare and delusive, yet a necessity unless
one speaks Dutch or Low Malay. Of all the countries
one may ever travel in, none equals Java in the diffi-
culty of being understood ; and it is a question, too,
whether the Malays who do not know any English are
harder to get along with than the Dutch who know a
little.
Thirty years ago Alfred Russel Wallace inveighed
against the unnecessary discomforts, annoyances,
and expense of travel in Java, and every tourist since
has repeated his plaint. The philippics of returned
travelers furnish steady amusement for Singapore
residents; and no one brings back the same enthu-
siasm that embarked with him. It is not the Java
of the Javanese that these returned ones berate so
vehemently, but the Netherlands India officials who
impose so many hampering customs and restrictions
upon all alien visitors and residents. Only the treaty
with Japan in 1896 released foreign bankers and mer-
24 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
chants from compulsory military drill each month.
The fastidious British bank clerk had to " shoulder
arms" on the hot parade ground in company forma-
tion with all other " aliens," of any race or color, until
Japan delivered its subjects from this galling imposi-
tion, and thereby the men of all other favored nations.
Java undoubtedly is "the very finest and most inter-
esting tropical island in the world/' and the Javanese
the most gentle, attractive, and innately refined people
of the East, after the Japanese ; but the Dutch in Java
u beat the Dutch" in Europe ten points to one, and
there is nothing so surprising and amazing, in all
man's proper study of mankind, as this equatorial Hol-
lander transplanted from the cold fens of Europe; nor
is anything so strange as the effect of a high temper-
ature on Low-Country temperament. The most rigid,
conventional, narrow, thrifty, prudish, and Protestant
people in Europe bloom out in the forcing-house of
the tropics into strange laxity, and one does not know
the Hollanders until one sees them in this " summer
land of the world," whither they threatened to emigrate
in a body during the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
Ill
BATAVTA, QUEEN OF THE EAST
HEN one has driven through the old town
of Batavia and seen its crowded bazaars
and streets, and has followed the lines of
bricked canals, where small natives splash
1 and swim, women beat the family linen,
and men go to and fro in tiny boats, all in strange
travesty of the solemn canals of the old country, he
comes to the broader avenues of the new town, lined
with tall tamarind- and waringen-trees, with plumes of
palms, and pyramids of blaming Madagascar flame- trees
in blossom. He is driven into the loiig garden court
of the Hotel Nederlandeu, and there beholds a spec-
tacle of social life and customs that nothing in all
travel can equal for distinct shock and sensation. We
had seen some queer things in the streets, women
lolling barefooted and in startling dishabille in splen-
did equipages, but concluded them to be servants or
half-castes; but there in the hotel was an undress
parade that beggars description, and was as astound-
ing on the last as on the first day in the country.
Woman's vanity and man's conventional ideas evi-
25
26 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
dently wilt at the line, and no formalities pass the
equator, when distinguished citizens and officials can
roam and lounge about hotel courts in pajamas and
bath slippers, and bare-ankled women, clad only in the
native sarong, or skirt, and a white dressing-jacket, go
unconcernedly about their affairs in streets and public
places until afternoon. It is a dishabille beyond all
burlesque pantomime, and only shipwreck on a desert
island would seem sufficient excuse for women being
seen in such an ungraceful, unbecoming attire an un-
dress that reveals every defect while concealing beauty,
that no loveliness can overcome, and that has neither
color nor grace nor picturesqueness to recommend it.
The hotel is a series of one-storied buildings sur-
rounding the four sides of a garden court, the project-
ing eaves giving a continuous covered gallery that is
the general corridor. The bedrooms open directly
upon this broad gallery, and the space in front of each
room, furnished with lounging-chairs, table, and read-
ing-lamp, is the sitting-room of each occupant by day.
There is never any jealous hiding behind curtains or
screens. The whole hotel register is in evidence, sitting
or spread in reclining-chairs. Men in pajamas thrust
their bare feet out bravely, puffing clouds of rank
Sumatra tobacco smoke as they stared at the new
arrivals ; women rocked and stared as if we were the
unusual spectacle, and not they ; and children sprawled
on the cement flooring, in only the most intimate un-
dergarments of civilized children. One turned his eyes
from one undressed family group only to encounter
some more surprising dishabille ; and meanwhile ser-
vants were hanging whole mildewed wardrobes on
A JAVANESE YOUNG WOMAN.
BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST 29
clothes-lines along this open hotel corridor, while others
were ironing their employers' garments on this com-
munal porch.
We were sure we had gone to the wrong hotel ; but
the Nederlanden was vouched for as the best, and
when the bell sounded, over one hundred guests came
into the vaulted dining-room and were seated at the
one long table. The men wore proper coats and clothes
at this midday riz tavel (rice table), but the women and
children came as they were saws gtne.
The Batavian day begins with coffee and toast, eggs
and fruit, at any time between six and nine o'clock ;
and the affairs of the day are despatched before noon,
when that sacred, solemn, solid feeding function, the
riz tavel, assembles all in shady, spacious dining-rooms,
free from the creaking and flapping of the punka, so
prominent everywhere else in the East. Rice is the
staple of the midday meal, and one is expected to fill
the soup-plate before him with boiled rice, and on that
heap as much as he may select from eight or ten
dishes, a tray of curry condiments being also passed
with this great first course. Bits of fish, duck, chicken,
beef, bird, omelet, and onions rose upon my neighbors'
plates, and spoonfuls of a thin curried mixture were
poured over the rice, before the conventional chutneys,
spices, cocoanut, peppers, and almond went to the
conglomerate mountain resting upon the " rice table "
below. Beefsteak, a salad, and then fruit and coffee
brought the midday meal to a close. Squeamish folk,
unseasoned tourists, and well-starched Britons with
small sense of humor complain of loss of appetite at
these hotel riz tavels; and those Britons further
30 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
criticize the way in which the Dutch fork, or most often
the Dutch knife-blade, is loaded, aimed, and shoveled
with a long, straight stroke to the Dutch interior;
and they also criticize the way in which portions of
bird or chicken are managed, necessitating and explain-
ing the presence of the finger-bowl from the beginning
of each meal. But we forgot all that had gone before
when the feast was closed with the mangosteen
nature's final and most perfect effort in fruit creation.
After the riz tavel every one slumbers as one nat-
urally must after such a very " square " meal until
four o'clock, when a bath and tea refresh the tropic
soul, the world dresses in the full costume of civiliza-
tion, and the slatternly women of the earlier hours go
forth in the latest finery of good fortune, twenty-six
days from Amsterdam, for the afternoon driving and
visiting, that continue to the nine-o'clock dinner-hour.
Batavian fashion does not take its airing in the jerky
sadoe, but in roomy "vis-a-vis" or barouches, com-
fortable " milords" or giant victorias, that, being built
to Dutch measures, would comfortably accommodate
three ordinary people to each seat, and are drawn by
gigantic Australian horses, or " Walers " (horses from
New South Wales), to match these turnouts of Brob-
dingnag.
Society is naturally narrow, provincial, colonial,
conservative, and insular, even to a degree beyond that
known in Holland. The governor-general, whose sal-
ary is twice that of the President of the United States,
lives in a palace at Buitenzorg, forty miles away in
the hills, with a second palace still higher up in the
BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST 31
mountains, and comes to the Batavia palace only on
state occasions. This ruler of thirty odd million
souls, who rules as a viceroy instructed from The
Hague, with the aid of a secretary-general and a Coun-
cil of the Indies, has, in addition to his salary of a
hundred thousand dollars, an allowance of sixty thou-
sand dollars a year for entertaining, and it is expected
that he will maintain a considerable state and splen-
dor. He has a standing army of forty thousand,
one third Europeans, of various nationalities, raised
by volunteer enlistment in Holland, who are well paid,
carefully looked after, and recruited by long stays at
Buitenzorg after short terms of service at the sea.
ports. After the Indian mutiny the Dutch were in
great fear of an uprising of the natives of Java, and
placed less confidence in native troops. Only Euro-
peans can hold officers' commissions; and while the
native soldiers are all Mohammedans, and great con-
sideration is paid their religious scruples, care is taken
not to let the natives of any one province or district
compose a majority in any one regiment, and these
regiments frequently change posts. The colonial navy
has done great service to the world in suppressing
piracy in the Java Sea and around the archipelago,
although steam navigation inevitably brought an end
to piracy and picturesque adventure. The little navy
helps maintain an admirable lighthouse service, and
with such convulsions as that of Krakatau always
possible, and changes often occurring in the bed of
the shallow seas, its surveyors are continually busied
with making new charts.
32 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
The islands of Amboyna, Borneo, Celebes, and Su-
matra are also ruled by this one governor-general of
the Netherlands Indies, through residents; and the
island of Java is divided into twenty-two residencies
or provinces, a resident, or local governor, ruling or,
as "elder brother," effectually advising in the few
provinces ostensibly ruled by native princes. A resi-
dent receives ten thousand dollars a year, with house
provided and a liberal allowance made for the extra
incidental expenses of the position for traveling, en-
tertaining, and acknowledging in degree the gifts of
native princes. University graduates are chosen for
this colonial service, and take a further course in the
colonial institute at Haarlem, which includes, besides
the study of the Malay language, the economic botany
of the Indies, Dutch law, and Mohammedan justice,
since, in their capacity as local magistrates, they must
make their decisions conform with the tenets of the
Koran, which is the general moral law, together with
the unwritten Javanese code. They are entitled to
retire upon a pension after twenty years of service
half the time demanded of those in the civil service in
Holland. All these residents are answerable to the
secretary of the colony, appointed by the crown, and
much of executive detail has to be submitted to the
home government's approval. Naturally there is much
friction between all these functionaries, and etiquette
is punctilious to a degree. A formal court surrounds
the governor-general, and is repeated in miniature at
every residency. The pensioned native sovereigns,
princes, and regents maintain all the forms, etiquette,
and barbaric splendor of their old court life, elaborated
BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST 33
by European customs. The three hundred Dutch of-
ficials condescend equally to the rich planters and to
the native princes ; the planters hate and deride the
officials ; the natives hate the Dutch of either class, and
despise their own princes who are subservient to the
Dutch ; and the wars and jealousies of rank and race
and caste, of white and brown, of native and imported
folk, flourish with tropical luxuriance.
Batavian life differs considerably from life in Brit-
ish India and all the rest of Asia, where the British-
built and conventionally ordered places support the
same formal social order of England unchanged, save
for a few luxuries and concessions incident to the cli-
mate. The Dutchman does not waste his perspiration
on tennis or golf or cricket, or on any outdoor pastime
more exciting than horse-racing. He does not make
well-ordered and expensive dinners his one chosen
form of hospitality. He dines late and dines elabo-
rately, but the more usual form of entertainment in
Batavia is in evening receptions or musicales, for which
the spacious houses, with their great white porticos, are
well adapted. Batavian residents have each a para-
dise park around their dwellings, and the white houses
of classic architecture, bowered in magnificent trees
and palms, shrubs and vines and blooming plants, are
most attractive by day. At night, when the great
portico, which is drawing-room and living-room and
as often dining-room, is illuminated by many lamps,
each lovely villa glows like a fairyland in its dark set-
ting. If the portico lamps are not lighted, it is a sign
of " not at home," and mynheer and his family may
sitin undress at their ease. There are weekly concerts
34 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
at the Harmonie and Concordia clubs, where the groups
around iron tables might have been summoned by a
magician from some continental garden. There are
such, clubs in every town on the island, the govern-
ment subsidizing the opera and supporting military
bands of the first order ; and they furnish society its
center and common meeting-place. One sees fine
gowns and magnificent jewels ; ladies wear the heavy
silks and velvets of an Amsterdam winter in these
tropical gardens, and men dance in black coats and
broadcloth uniforms. Society is brilliant, formal, and
by lamplight impressive ; but when by daylight one
meets the same fair beauties and bejeweled matrons
sockless, in sarongs and flapping slippers, the disillu-
sionment is complete.
The show-places of Batavia are easily seen in a day :
the old town hall, the Stadkirche, the lighthouse, the
old warehouse, and the walled gate of Peter Elberf eld's
house, with the spiked skull of that half-caste rebel
against Dutch rule pointing a more awful reminder
than the inscription in several languages to his " horrid
memory." The pride of the city, and the most credi-
table thing on the island, is the Museum of the Batavian
Society of Arts and Sciences ("Bataviaasch Genoot-
schap von Kunsten en Wepenschappen "), known suf-
ficiently to the world of science and letters as "the
Batavian Society," of which Sir Stamford Raffles was
the first great inspirer and exploiter, after it had
dreamed along quietly in colonial isolation for a few
years of the last century. In his time were begun the
excavations of the Hindu temples and the archaeological
work which the Dutch government and the Batavian
BATAVIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST 36
Society have since carried on, and which have helped
place that association among the foremost learned
societies of the world. The museum is housed in a
beautiful Greek temple of a building whose white
walls are shaded by magnificent trees, and faces the
broad Koenig's Plein, the largest parade-ground in the
world, the Batavians say. The halls, surrounding a
central court, shelter a complete and wonderful ex-
hibit of Javanese antiquities and art works, of arms,
weapons, implements, ornaments, costumes, masks,
basketry, textiles, musical instruments, models of
boats and houses, examples of fine old metal-work, and
of all the industries of these gifted people. It is a
place of absorbing interest; but with no labels and
no key except the native janitor's pantomime, one's
visit is often filled with exasperation.
There is a treasure-chamber heaped with gold shields,
helmets, thrones, state umbrellas boxes, salvers, betel
and tobacco sets of gold, with jeweled daggers and
krises of finest blades, patterned with curious veinings.
Tributes and gifts from native sultans and princes dis-
play the precious metals in other curious forms, and a
fine large coco-de-mer, the fabled twin nut of the Sey-
chelles palm, that was long supposed to grow in some
unknown, mysterious isle of the sea-gods, is throned
on a golden base with all the honors due such a talis-
man. The ruined temples and sites of abandoned cities
in Middle Java have yielded rich ornaments, necklaces,
ear-rings, head-dresses, seals, plates, and statuettes of
gold and silver. A room is filled with bronze weapons,
bells, tripods, censers, images, and all the appurte-
nances of Buddhist worship, characteristic examples of
36 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the Greco-Buddhist art of India, which even more
surprisingly confronts one in these treasures from the
jungles of the far-away tropical island. A central hall
is filled with bas-reliefs and statues from these ruins
of Buddhist and Brahmanic temples, in which the
Greek influence is quite as marked, and Egyptian and
Assyrian suggestions in the sculptures give one other
ideas to puzzle over.
The society's library is rich in exchanges, scientific
and art publications of all countries ; and the row of
reports of the Smithsonian Institution, the Geological
Survey and Bureau of Ethnology, are as much a matter
of pride to the American visitor as the framed diplo-
mas of institutes and international expositions are to
the Batavian curator. The council-room contains the
state chairs of native sovereigns, and portraits and sou-
venirs of the great explorers and navigators who passed
this way in the last century and in the early years of
this cycle. Captain Cook left stores of South Sea
curios on his way to and fro, and during this century
the museum has been the pet and pride of Dutch res-
idents and officials, and the subject of praise by all
visitors.
The palace of the governor-general on this vast
Koenig's Plein is a beautiful modern structure, but
more interest attaches to the old palace of the "Water-
loo Plein, the pdlys built by the great Marshal Daen-
dels, who, supplanted by the British after but three
years' energetic rule, withdrew to Europe.
IV
THE KAMPONGS
HE Tjina, or China, and the Arab Ttam-
pangs, are show-places to the stranger in
the curious features of life and civic gov-
ernment they present. Each of these
foreign kampongs, or villages, is under
the charge of a captain or commander, whom the Dutch
authorities hold responsible for the order and peace of
their compatriots, since they do not allow to these
yellow colonials so-called "European freedom" an
expression which constitutes a sufficient admission
of the existence of " Asiatic restraint." Great wealth
abides in both these alien quarters, whose leading
f amilies have been there for generations, and have ab-
sorbed all retail trade, and as commission merchants,
money-lenders, and middlemen have garnered great
profits and earned the hatred of Dutch and Javanese
alike. The lean and hooked-nosed followers of the
prophet conquered the island in the fifteenth century,
and have built their messigits, or mosques, in every
province. The Batavian messigit is a cool little blue-
37
38 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and- white-tiled building, with a row of inlaid wooden
clogs and loose leather shoes at the door ; and turbaned
heads within bow before the mihrab that points north-
westward to Mecca. Since the Mohammedan conquest
of 1475, the Javanese are Mohammedan if anything ;
but they take their religion easily, and are so luke-
warm in the faith of the fire and sword that they would
easily relapse to their former mild Brahmamsm if
Islam's power were released. The Dutch for years
prohibited the pilgrimages to Mecca, since those re-
turning with the green turban were viewed with rev-
erence and accredited with supernatural powers that
made their influence a menace to Dutch rule. Arab
priests have always been enemies of the government
and foremost in inciting the people to rebellion against
Dutch and native rulers ; but little active evangelical
work seems to have been done by Christian mission-
aries to counteract Mohammedanism, save at the town
of Depok, near Batavia.
In all the banks and business houses is found the
lean-fingered Chinese comprador, or accountant, and
the rattling buttons of his abacus, or counting-board,
play the inevitable accompaniment to financial trans-
actions, as everywhere else east of Colombo. The 563,-
449 Chinese in Netherlands India present a curious
study in the possibilities of their race. Under the
strong, tyrannical rule of the Dutch they thrive, show
ambition to adopt Western ways, and approach more
nearly to European standards than one could believe
possible. Chinese conservatism yields first in costume
and social manners ; the pigtail shrinks to a mere
symbolic wisp, and the well-to-do Batavian Chinese
THE KAMPONGS 39
dresses faultlessly after the London model, wears spot-
less duck coat and trousers, patent-leather shoes, and,
in top or derby hat, sits complacent in a handsome
victoria drawn by imported horses, with liveried Jav-
anese on the box. One meets correctly gotten-up Ce-
lestial equestrians trotting around Waterloo Plein or
the alleys of Buitenzorg, each followed by an obse-
quious groom, the thin remnant of the Manchu queue
slipped inside the coat being the only thing to suggest
Chinese origin. The rich Chinese live in beautiful
villas, in gorgeously decorated houses built on ideal
tropical lines ; and although having no political or so-
cial recognition in the land, entertain no intention of
returning to China. They load their Malay wives
with diamonds and jewels, and spend liberally for the
education of their children. The Dutch tax, judge,
punish, and hold them in the same regard as the na-
tives, with whom they have intermarried for three
centuries, until there is a large mixed class of these
Paranaks in every part of the island. The native
hatred of the Chinese is an inheritance of those
past centuries when the Dutch farmed out the rev-
enue to Chinese, who, being assigned so many thou-
sand acres of rice-land, and the forced labor of the
people on them, gradually extended their boundaries,
and by increasing exactions and secret levies oppressed
the people with a tyranny and rapacity the Dutch could
not approach. In time the Chinese fomented insur-
rection against the Dutch, and in 1740, joining with
disaffected natives, entrenched themselves in a sub-
urban fort. The Dutch in alarm gave the order, and
over 20,000 Chinese then within the walls were put
8
40 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
to death, not an infant, a woman, nor an
person being spared. In fear of the wrath of the
Emperor of China, elaborate excuses were framed
and sent to Peking. Sage old Keen-Lung responded
only by saying that the Dutch had served them right,
that any death was too good for Chinese who would
desert the graves of their ancestors.
After that incident they were restrained from all
monopolies and revenue farming, and restricted to
their present humble political state. An absolute ex-
clusion act was passed in 1837, but was soon revoked,
and the Chinese hold financial supremacy over both
Dutch and natives, trade and commerce being hope-
lessly in the hands of the skilful Chinese comprador.
The Dutch vent their dislike by an unmerciful taxa-
tion. They formerly assessed them according to the
length of their queues and for each long finger-nail.
The Chinese are mulcted on landing and leaving,
for birth and death, for every business venture and
privilege; yet they prosper and remain, and these
Paranaks in a few more generations may attain the
social and political equality they seek. It all proves
that under a strong, tyrannical government the Chi-
nese make good citizens, -and can easily put away the
notions and superstitions that in China itself hold
countless millions in the bondage of a long-dead
past. The recent exposure of Chinese forgeries of
Java bank-notes to the value of three million pounds
sterling has put the captains of Batavia and Samarang
kampongs in prison, and has led to wholesale arrests
of rich Chinese throughout the island.,
Native life swarms in this land of the betel and
THE KAMPONGS 41
banana, where there seems to be more of inherent
dream and calm than in other lands of the lotus. The
Javanese are the finer flowers of the Malay race a
people possessed of a civilization, arts, and literature
in that golden period before the Mohammedan and
European conquests. They have gentle voices, gentle
manners, fine and expressive features, and are the one
people of Asia besides the Japanese who have real
charm and attraction for the alien. They are more
winning, too, by contrast, after one has met the harsh,
unlovely, and unwashed people of China, or the equally
unwashed, cringing Hindu. They are a little people,
and one feels the same indulgent, protective sense as
toward the Japanese. Their language is soft and
musical" the Italian of the tropics " ; their ideas are
poetic ; and their love of flowers and perfumes, of music
and the dance, of heroic plays and of every emotional
form of art, proves them as innately esthetic as their
distant cousins, the Japanese, in whom there is so large
an admixture of Malay stock. Their reverence for
rank and age, and their elaborate etiquette and punc-
tilious courtesy to one another, are as marked even in
the common people as among the Japanese ; but their
abject, crouching humility before their Dutch employ-
ers, and the brutality of the latter to them, are a theme
for sadder thinking, and calculated to make the blood
boil. When one actually sees the quiet, inoffensive
peddlers, who chiefly beseech with their eyes, furiously
kicked out of the hotel courtyard when mynheer does
not choose to buy, and native children actually lifted
by an ear and hurled away from the vantage-point on
the curbstone which a pajamaed Dutchman wishes for
42 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OP THE EAST
himself while some troops march by, one is content
not to see or know any more.
These friendly little barefoot people are of endless
interest, and their daily markets, or passers, are pan-
oramas of life and color that one longs to transplant
entire. Life is so simple and primitive, too, in the
sunshine and warmth of the tropics. A bunch of ba-
nanas, a basket of steamed rice, and a leaf full of betel
preparations comprise the necessaries and luxuries of
daily living. With the rice may go many peppers and
curried messes of ground cocoanut, which one sees
made and offered for sale in small dabs laid on bits
of banana-leaf, the wrapping-paper of the tropics.
Pinned with a cactus-thorn, a bit of leaf makes a prim-
itive bag, bowl, or cup, and a slip of it serves as a sylvan
spoon. All classes chew the betel- or areca-nut, bits of
which, wrapped in betel-leaf with lime, furnish cheer
and stimulant, dye the mouth, and keep the lips stream-
ing with crimson juice. In Canton and in all Cochin
China, across the peninsula, and throughout island
and continental India, men and women have equal
delight in this peppery stimulant. The Javanese
lays his quid of betel tobacco between the lower lip and
teeth, and so great seem to be the solace and comfort
of it that dozing venders and peddlers will barely turn
an eye and grunt responses to one's eager " Brapa f "
("How much?")
Peddlers bring to one's doorway fine Bantam bas-
ketry and bales of the native cotton cloth, or battek,
patterned in curious designs that have been in use from
time out of mind. These native art fabrics are sold
at the passers also, and one soon recognizes the con-
THE KAMPONGS 45
ventional designs, and distinguishes the qualities and
merits of these hand-patterned cottons that constitute
the native dress. The sarong, or skirt, worn by men
and women alike, is a strip of cotton two yards long
and one yard deep, which is drawn tightly around the
hips, the fullness gathered in front, and by an adroit
twist made so firm that a belt is not necessary to na-
tive wearers. The sarong has always one formal panel
design, which is worn at the front or side, and the
rest of the surface is covered with the intricate orna-
ments in which native fancy runs riot. There are
geometrical and line combinations, in which appear the
swastika and the curious latticings of central Asia;
others are as bold and natural as anything Japanese ;
and in others still, the palm-leaves and quaint
animal forms of India and Persia attest the rival art
influences that have swept over these refined, adaptive,
assimilative people. One favorite serpentine pattern
running in diagonal lines does not need explanation
in this land of gigantic worms and writhing crawlers ;
nor that other pattern where centipedes and insect
forms cover the ground ; nor that where the fronds of
cocoa-palm wave, and the strange shapes of mangos,
jacks, and breadfruit are interwoven. The deer and
tapir, and the " hunting-scene " patterns are reserved
for native royalty's exclusive wear. In village and
wayside cottages up-country we afterward watched
men and women painting these cloths, tracing a first
outline in a rich brown waxy dye, which is the foun-
dation and dominant color in all these batteks. The
parts which are to be left white are covered with wax,
and the cloth is dipped in or brushed over with the
46 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
dye. This resist, or mordant, must be applied for each
color, and the wax afterwards steamed out in hot
water, so that a sarong goes through many processes
and handlings, and is often the work of weeks. The
dyes are applied hot through a little tin funnel of an
implement tapering down to a thin point, which is used
like a painter's brush, but will give the fine line- and
dot-work of a pen-and-ink drawing. The sarong's value
depends upon the fineness of the drawing, the elabo-
rateness of the design, and the number of colors em-
ployed ; and beginning as low as one dollar, these bril-
liant cottons, or hand-painted calico sarongs, increase
in price to even twenty or thirty dollars. The Dutch
ladies vie with one another in their sarongs as much as
native women, and their dishabille dress of the early
hours has not always economy to recommend it. The
battek also appears in the slandang, or long shoulder-
scarf, which used to match the sarong and complete
the native costume when passed under the arms and
crossed at the back, thus covering the body from the
armpits to the waist. It is still worn knotted over the
mother's shoulder as a sling or hammock for a child ;
but Dutch fashion has imposed the same narrow, tight-
sleeved Itabaia, the baju, or jacket, that Dutch women
wear with the sarong. The kam Jcapala, a square hand-
kerchief tied around men's heads as a variant of the
turban, is of the same figured battek, and, with the
slandang, often exhibits charming color combinations
and intricate Persian designs. When one conquers
his prejudices and associated ideas enough to pay
seemingly fancy prices for these examples of free-hand
calico printing, the taste grows, and he soon shares
THE KAMPONGS 47
the native longing for a sarong of every standard and
novel design.
The native silversmiths hammer out good designs in
silver relief for betel- and tobacco-boxes, and exhibit
great taste and invention in belt- and jacket-clasps, and
in heavy knobs of hairpins and ear-rings, that are
often made of gold and incrusted over with gems for
richer folk.
There are no historic spots nor show-places of na-
tive creation in Batavia ; no kratons, or dloon-aloons, as
their palaces and courtyards are called ; and only a
sentimental interest for a virtual exile pining in his
own country is attached to the villa of Raden Saleh.
This son of the regent of Samarang was educated in
Europe, and lived there for twenty-three years, devel-
oping decided talents as an artist, and enjoying the
friendship of many men of rank and genius on the
Continent, among the latter being Eugene Sue, who
is said to have taken Raden Saleh as model for the
Eastern Prince in " The Wandering Jew." In Java he
found himself sadly isolated from his own people by
his European tastes and habits ; and he had little in
common with the coarse, rapacious mynheers whose
sole thoughts were of crops and gulden. " Coffee and
sugar, sugar and coffee, are all that is talked here. It is
a dreary atmosphere for an artist," said Raden Saleh to
D' Almeida, who visited him at Batavia sixty odd years
ago. He has left a monument of his taste in this charm-
ing villa, in a park whose land is now a vegetable-patch,
its shady pleasance a beer-garden and exposition-
ground, and the sign u Tu Huur" ("To Hire") hung
from the royal entrance. The exposition of arts and
48 JAVA: THE GAKDEN OF THE EAST
industries in these grounds in 1893 was a great event
in Java, the governor-general Van der Wyk opening
and closing the fair by electric signal, and the natives
making a particularly interesting display of their pro-
ducts and crafts.
TO TH M HILLS
NE'S most earnest desire, in the scorch of
Batavian noondays and stifling Batavian
nights, is to seek refuge in "the hills"
in the dark-green groves and forests
of the Blue Mountains, that are ranged
with such admirable effect as background when one
steams in from the Java Sea. At Buitenzorg, only
forty miles away and seven hundred and fifty feet
above the sea, heat-worn people find refuge in an en-
tirely different climate, an atmosphere of bracing
clearness tempered to moderate summer's warmth.
Buitenzorg ("without care"), the Dutch Sans Souci,
has been a general refuge and sanitarium for Euro-
peans, the real seat of government, and the home of the
governor-general for more than a century. It is the
pride and show-place of Java, the great center of its
social lif e, leisure interests, and attractions. The higher
officials and many Batavian merchants and bankers
have homes at Buitenzorg, and residents from other
parts of the island make it their place of recreation
and goal of holiday trips.
49
50 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
Undressed Batavia was just rousing from its after-
noon nap, and the hotel court was surrounded with
barefoot guests in battek pajamas and scant sarongs,
a sockless, collarless, unblushing company, that yawned
and stared as we drove away, rejoicing to leave this
Sans Gene for Sans Souci. The Weltevreden Station,
on the vast Koenig's Plein, a spacious, stone-floored
building, whose airy halls and waiting- and refreshment-
rooms are repeated on almost as splendid scale at all the
large towns of the island, was enlivened with groups
of military officers, whose heavy broadcloth uniforms,
trailing sabers, and clanking spurs transported us back
from the tropics to some chilly European railway-
station, and presented the extreme contrast of colonial
life. The train that came panting from Tandjon Priok
was made up of first-, second-, and third-class cars, all
built on the American plan, in that they were long
cars and not carriages, and we entered through doors
at the end platforms. The first-class cars swung on
easy springs ; there were modern car- windows in tight
frames, also window-frames of wire netting; while
thick wooden Venetians outside of all, and a double
roof, protected as much as possible from the sun's heat.
The deep arm-chair seats were upholstered with thick
leather cushions, the walls were set with blue-and- white
tiles repeating Mauve's and Mesdag's pictures, and ad-
justable tables, overhead racks, and a dressing-room
furnished all the railroad comforts possible. The rail-
way service of Netherlands India is a vast improvement
on, and its cars are in striking contrast to, the loose-
windowed, springless, dusty, hard-benched carriages in
which first-class passengers are jolted across British
TO THE HILLS 51
India. The second-class cars in Java rest on springs
also, but more passengers are put in a compartment,
and the fittings are simpler ; while the open third-class
cars, where native passengers are crowded together,
have a continuous window along each side, and the
benches are often without backs. The fares average
2.2 United States cents a kilometer (about five eighths
of a mile) for first class, 1.6 cents second class, and 6
mills third class. The first-class fare from Batavia to
Sourabaya, at the east end of the island, is but 50
gulden ($20) for the 940-kilometer journey, accom-
plished in two days' train-travel of twelve and fourteen
hours each, so that the former heavy expense (over a
dollar a mile for post-horses, after one had bought or
rented a traveling-carriage) and the delays of travel
in Java are done away with.
The rail ways have been built by both the government
and private corporations, connecting and working to-
gether, the first line dating from 1875. The continu-
ous railway line across the island was completed and
opened with official ceremonies in November, 1894.
The gap of one hundred miles or more across the "terra
ingrata," the low-lying swamp and fever regions either
side of Tjilatjap, had existed for years after the
track was completed to the east and west of it. Dutch
engineers built and manage the road, but the staff, the
working force of the line, are natives, or Chinese of
the more or less mixed but educated class filling the
middle ground between Europeans and natives, be-
tween the upper and lower ranks. Wonderful skill
was shown in leading the road over the mountains,
and in building a firm track and bridges through the
52 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
reeking swamps, where no white man could labor,
even if he could live. The trains do not run at night,
which would be a great advantage in a hot country,
for the reason that the train crews are composed
entirely of natives (since such work is considered be-
neath the grade of any European), and the cautious
Dutch will not trust native engineers after dark.
Through trains start from either end of the line and
from the half-way stations at five and six o'clock each
morning, and run until the short twilight and pitch-
darkness that so quickly succeed the unchanging six-
o'clock tropical sunset. These early morning starts,
and the eight- and nine-o'clock dinner of the Java hotels,
make travel most wearisome. One may buy fruit at
every station platform, and always tea, coffee, choco-
late, wine and schnapps, bread and biscuits at the
station buffets. At the larger stations there are din-
ing-rooms, or a service of lunch-baskets, in which the
Gargantuan riz tavel, or luncheon, is served hot in
one's compartment as the train moves on.
The hour-and-a-half's ride from Batavia to Buiten-
zorg gave us an epitome of tropical landscapes as the
train ran between a double panorama of beauty.
The soil was a deep, intense red, as if the heat of the
sun and the internal fires of this volcanic belt had
warmed the fruitful earth to this glowing color, which
contrasted so strongly with the complemental green
of grain and the groves of palms and cacao-trees. The
level rice-fields were being plowed, worked, flooded,
planted, weeded, and harvested side by side, the sev-
eral crops of the year going on continuously, with seem-
ingly no regard to seasons. Nude little boys, astride
TO THE HILLS 56
of smooth gray water-buffaloes, posed statuesquely
while those leisurely animals browsed afield ; and no
pastoral pictures of Java remain clearer in memory
than those of patient little brown children sitting
half days and whole days on buffalo-back, to brush
flies and guide the stupid-looking creatures to greener
and more luscious bits of herbage. Many stories are
told of the affection the water-ox often manifests for
his boy keeper, killing tigers and snakes in his defense,
and performing prodigies of valor and intelligence ;
but one doubts the tales the more he sees of this hid-
eous beast of Asia. Men and women were wading
knee-deep in paddy-field muck, transplanting the green
rice-shoots from the seed-beds, and picturesque harvest
groups posed in tableaux, as the train shrieked by.
Children rolled at play before the gabled baskets of
houses clustered in toy villages beneath the inevitable
cocoa-palms and bananas, the combination of those two
useful trees being the certain sign of a kampong, or
village, when the braided-bamboo houses are invisible.
At Depok there was a halt to pass the down-train, and
the natives of this one Christian village and mission-
station, the headquarters of evangelical work in Java,
flocked to the platform with a prize horticultural display
of all the fruits of the season for sale. The record of
mission work in Java is a short one, as, after casting
out the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, the Dutch for-
bade any others to enter, and Spanish rule in Holland
had perhaps taught them not to try to impose a strange
religion on a people. During Sir Stamford Raflles's
rule, English .evangelists began work among the na-
tives, but were summarily interrupted and obliged to
56 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
withdraw when Java was returned to Holland. All
missionaries were strictly excluded until the hu-
manitarian agitation in Europe, which resulted in the
formal abolition of slavery and the gradual abandon-
ment of the culture system, led the government to do
a little for the Christianization and education of the
people. The government supports twenty-nine Prot-
estant pastors and ten Roman Catholic priests, pri-
marily for the spiritual benefit of the European
residents, and their spheres are exactly denned
proselytizing and mutual rivalries being forbidden.
Missionaries from other countries are not allowed to
settle and work among the people, and whatever may
be said against this on higher moral grounds, the
colonial government has escaped endless friction with
the consuls and governments of other countries. The
authorities have been quite willing to let the natives
enjoy their mild Mohammedanism, and our Moslem
servant spoke indifferently of mission efforts at Depok,
with no scorn, no contempt, and apparently no hostility
to the European faith.
Until recently, no steps were taken to educate the
Javanese, and previous to 1864 they were not allowed
to study the Dutch language. All colonial officers
are obliged to learn Low Malay, that being the recog-
nized language of administration and justice, in-
stead of the many Javanese and Sundanese dialects,
with their two forms of polite and common speech.
These officials receive promotion and preferment as
they make progress in the spoken and written lan-
guage. Low Malay is the most readily acquired of all
languages, as there are no harsh gutturals or difficult
TO THE HILLS 57
consonants, and the construction is very simple. Chil-
dren who learn the soft, musical Malay first have diffi-
culty with the harsh Dutch sounds, while the Dutch
who learn Malay after their youth never pronounce it
as well or as easily as they pronounce French. The few
Javanese, even those of highest rank, who acquired the
Dutch language and attempted to use it in conversa-
tion with officials, used to be bruskly answered in
Malay, an implication that the superior language was
reserved for Europeans only. This helped the con-
querors to keep the distinctions sharply drawn between
them and their subject people, and while they could
always understand what the natives were saying, the
Dutch were free to talk together without reserve in the
presence of servants or princes. Dutch is now taught
in the schools for natives maintained by the colonial
government, 201 primary schools having been opened
in 1887, with an attendance of 39,707 pupils. The
higher schools at Batavia have been opened to the sons
of native officials and such rich Javanese as can afford
them, and conservatives lament the " spoiling" of the
natives with all that the government now does for
them. They complain that the Javanese are becoming
too "independent" since schoolmasters, independent
planters, and tourists came, just as the old-style foreign
residents of India, the Straits, China, and Japan bemoan
the progressive tendencies and upheavals of this era
of Asiatic awakening and enlightenment ; and tourist
travel is always harped upon as the most offending and
corrupting cause of the changes in the native spirit.
Once above the general level of low-lying rice-lands,
cacao-plantations succeeded one another for miles
58 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
beyond Depok ; the small trees hung full of fat pods
just ripening into reddish brown and crimson. The
air was noticeably cooler in the hills, and as the shad-
ows lengthened the near green mountains began to
tower in shapes of lazuli mist, and a sky of soft, sur-
passing splendor made ready for its sunset pageant.
When we left the train we were whirled through the
twilight of great avenues of trees to the hotel, and
given rooms whose veranda overhung a strangely
rustling, shadowy abyss, where we could just discern
a dark silver line of river leading to the pale-yellow
west, with the mountain mass of Salak cut in gigantic
purple silhouette.
The ordinary bedroom of a Java hotel, with latticed
doors and windows, contains one or two beds, each
seven feet square, hung with starched muslin curtains
that effectually exclude the air, as well as lizards or
winged things. The bedding, as at Singapore, con-
sists of a hard mattress with a sheet drawn over it, a
pair of hard pillows, and a long bolster laid down the
middle as a cooling or dividing line. Blankets or other
coverings are unneeded and unknown, but it takes one
a little time to become acclimated to that order in the
penetrating dampness of the dewy and reeking hours
before dawn. If one makes protest enough, a thin
blanket will be brought, but so camphorated and mil-
dew-scented as to be insupportable. Pillows are not
stuffed with feathers, but with the cooler, dry, elastic
down of the straight-armed cotton-tree, which one sees
growing everywhere along the highways, its rigid,
right-angled branches inviting their use as the regula-
tion telegraph-pole. The floors are made of a smooth,
TO THE HILLS 69
hard cement, which harbors no insects, and can be kept
clean and cool. Pieces of coarse ratan matting are the
only floor-coverings used, and give an agreeable con-
trast to the dirty felts, dhurries, and carpets, the
patches of wool and cotton and matting, spread over
the earth or wooden floors of the unspeakable hotels
of British India. And yet the Javanese hotels are dis-
appointing to those who know the solid comforts and
immaculate order of certain favorite hostelries of The
Hague and Amsterdam. Everything is done to secure
a free circulation of air, as a room that is closed for a
day gets a steamy, mildewed atmosphere, and if closed
for three days blooms with green mold over every
inch of its walls and floors. The section of portico
outside each room at Buitenzorg was decently screened
off to serve as a private sitting-room for each guest
or family in the hours of startling dishabille ; and as
soon as the sun went down a big hanging-lamp assem-
bled an entomological congress. Every hotel provides
as a night-lamp for the bedroom a tumbler with an
inch of cocoanut-oil, and a tiny tin and cork arrange-
ment for floating a wick on its surface. For the twelve
hours of pitch-darkness this little lightning-bug con-
trivance burns steadily, emitting a delicious nutty
fragrance, and allowing one to watch the unpleasant
shadows of the lizards running over the walls and bed-
curtains, and to look for the larger, poisonous brown
gecko, whose unpleasant voice calling " Becky! Becky!
Becky! " in measured gasps, six times, over and over
again, is the actual, material nightmare of the tropics.
British tourists, unmindful of the offending of their
own India in more vital matters, berate and scorn the
4
60 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
tiny water-pitcher and basin of the Java hotels, brought
from the continent of Europe unchanged ; and rage at
the custom of guests in Java hotels emptying their
basins out of doors or windows on tropical shrubbery
or courtyard pavings at will. There are swimming-
pools at some hotels and in many private houses, but
the usual bath-room of the land offers the traveler a
barrel and a dipper. One is expected to ladle the
water out and dash it over him in broken doses, and
as the swimming-pool is a rinsing-tub for the many,
the individual is besought not to use soap. Naturally
the British tourist's invectives are deep and loud and
long, and he will not believe that the dipper-bath is
more cooling than to soak and soap and scour in a
comfortable tub of his own. He will not be silenced
or comforted in this tubless tropical land, which, if
it had only remained under British rule, might be
would be etc. All suffering tourists agree with him,
however, that the worst laundering in the world be-
falls one's linen in Java, the cloth-destroying, button-
exterminating dhoble man of Ceylon and India being
a careful and conscientious artist beside the clothes-
pounder of Java. In making the great circle of the
earth westward one leaves the last of laundry luxury
at Singapore, and continues to suffer until, in the sub-
stratum of French civilization in Egypt, he finds the
blanchisseuse.
The order of living is the same at the up-country
hotels as at Batavia, and the charges are the same
everywhere in Java, averaging about three dollars gold
each day, everything save wine included ; and at Bui-
tenzorg corkage was charged on the bottle of filtered
TO THE HILLS 61
water which a dyspeptic tourist manufactured with a
patent apparatus he carried with him. Landlords do
not recognize nor deal with fractions of days, if they
can help it, in charging one for board on this " Ameri-
can plan " ; but when that reckless royal tourist, the
King of Siam, makes battle over his Java hotel bills,
lesser travelers may well take courage and follow his
example. The King of Siam has erected commemora-
tive columns crowned with white marble elephants,
as souvenirs of his visits to Singapore and Batavia,
and after the king's financial victory over Buitenzorg
and Garoet hotels, the tourist sees the white elephant
as a symbol of victory more personally and immedi-
ately significant than the lion on the Waterloo column.
It has been said that " no invalid nor dyspeptic should
enter the portals of a Java hotel," and this cannot be
insisted upon too strongly, to deter any such sufferers
from braving the sunrise breakfasts and bad coffee, the
heavy riz tavel, and the long-delayed dinner-hour, solely
for the sake of tropical scenery and vegetation, and
a study of Dutch colonial life.
VI
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI
[T daylight we saw that our portico looked
full upon the front of Mount Salak, green
to the very summit with plantations and
primeval forests. Deep down below us
lay a valley of Eden, where thousands of
palm-trees were in constant motion, their branches
bending, swaying, and fluttering as softly as ostrich-
plumes to the eye, but with a strange, harsh, metal-
lic rustle and clash, different from the whispers and
sighs and cooing sounds of temperate foliage. As
stronger winds threshed the heavy leaves, the level of
the valley rippled and tossed in green billows like a
barley-field. There was a basket village on the river-
bank, where tropic life went on in as plain pantomime
as in any stage presentation. At sunrise the people
came out of their fragile toy houses, stretched their
arms to the sky arid yawned, took a swim in the river,
and then gathered in the dewy shade to eat their
morning curry and rice from their plantain-leaf plates.
Then the baskets and cooking-utensils were held in
the swift-flowing stream, such a fastidious, ideal,
62
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 65
adorable sort of dish-washing! and the little com-
munity turned to its daily vocations. The men went
away to work, or sat hammering and hewing with
implements strangely Japanese, and held in each in-
stance in the Japanese way. The women pounded
and switched clothing to and fro in the stream, and
spread it out in white and brilliant-colored mosaics
on the bank to dry. They plaited baskets and painted
sarongs, and the happy brown children, in nature's
dress, rolled at play under the cocoanut-trees, or
splashed like young frogs in and out of the stream.
While this went on below, and we watched the dark
indigo mass of Salak turning from purple and azure
to sunlit greens in the light of early day, the break-
fast of the country was brought to our porch : cold
toast, cold meats, eggs, fruit, tea or the very worst
coffee in all the world something that even the
American railway restaurant and frontier hotel would
spurn with scorn. Java coffee, in Java, comes to one
in a stoppered glass bottle or cruet, a dark-brown fluid
that might as well be walnut catsup, old port, or New
Orleans molasses. This double extract of coffee, made
by cold filtration, is diluted with hot water and hot
milk to a muddy, gray-brown, lukewarm drink, that
is uniformly bad in every hotel and public place of
refreshment that a tourist encounters on the island.
In private houses, where the fine Arabian berry is
toasted and powdered, and the extract made fresh
each day, the morning draught is quite another fluid,
and worthy the cachet the name of Java gives to coffee
in far countries.
Buitenzorg, the Bogor of the natives, who will not
66 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
call it by its newer name, is one of the enchanted
spots where days can slip by in dateless delight ; one
forgets the calendar and the flight of time, and hardly
remembers the heavy, sickening heat of Batavia stew-
ing away on the plains below. It is the Versailles of
the island, the seat of the governor-general's court,
and the social life of the colony, a resort for officials
and the leisure class, and for invalids and the delicate,
who find strength in the clear, fresh air of the hills,
the cool nights, and the serenely tempered days, each
with its reviving shower the year round. Buitenzorg is
the Simla of Netherlands India, but it awaits its Kip-
ling to record its social life in clear-cut, instantaneous
pictures. There are strange pictures for the Kipling-
to sketch, too, since the sarong and the native jacket
are as much the regular morning dress for ladies at. the
cool, breezy hill-station as in sweltering Batavia, a
fact rather disproving the lowland argument that the
heat demands such extraordinary concessions in cos-
tume. But as that " Bengal Civilian " who wrote "De
Zieke Reiziger; or, Rambles in Java in 1852," and com-
mented so freely upon Dutch costume, cuisine, and Sab-
bath-keeping, succeeded, Mr. Money said, in shutting
every door to the English traveler for years afterward,
and added extra annoyances to the toelatings-kaart
system, budding and alien Kiplings may take warniu < ;.
The famous Botanical Garden at Buitenzorg is the
great show-place, the paradise and pride of the island.
The Dutch are ncknowledgedly the best horticulturists
of Europe, arid with the heat of a tropical sun, a daily
shower, and nearly a century's well-directed efforts,
they have made Buiteuzorg's garden Jirst of its kind
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 67
in the world, despite the rival efforts of the French at
Saigon, and of the British at Singapore, Ceylon, Cal-
cutta, and Jamaica. The governor-general's palace,
greatly enlarged from the first villa of 1744, is in the
midst of the ninety-acre inclosure reached from the
main gate, near the hotel and the passer, by what is
undoubtedly the finest avenue of trees in the world.
These graceful kanari-trees, arching one hundred feet
overhead in a great green cathedral aisle, have tall,
straight trunks covered with stag-horn ferns, bird's-
nest ferns, ratans, creeping palms, blooming orchids,
and every kind of parasite and air-plant the climate
allows j and there is a fairy lake of lotus and Victoria
regia beside it, with pandanus and red-stemmed Banka
palms crowded in a great sheaf or bouquet on a tiny
islet. When one rides through this green avenue in
the dewy freshness of the early morning, it seems as
though nature and the tropics could do no more, until
he has penetrated the tunnels of waringen-trees, the
open avenues of royal palms, the great plantation of
a thousand palms, the grove of tree-fern, and the fran-
gipani thicket, and has reached the knoll commanding
a view of the double summit of Gedeh and Pange-
rango, vaporous blue volcanic heights, from one peak
of which a faint streamer of smoke perpetually floats.
There is a broad lawn at the front of the palace, shaded
with great waringen-, sausage-, and candle-trees, and
trees whose branches are hidden in a mantle of vivid-
leafed bougainvillea vines, with deer wandering and
grouping themselves in as correct park pictures as if
under branches of elm or oak, or beside the conven-
tional ivied trunks of the North.
68 JAVA: THE GABDEN OP THE EAST
It is a tropical experience to reverse an umbrella
and in a few minutes fill it with golden-hearted white
frangipani blossoms, or to find nutmegs lying as
thick as acorns on the ground, and break their green
outer shell and see the fine coral branches of mace
enveloping the dark kernel. It is a delight, too, to
see mangosteens and rambutans growing, to find
bread, sausages, and candles hanging in plenty from
benevolent trees, and other fruits and strange flowers
springing from a tree's trunk instead of from its
branches. There are thick groves and regular avenues
of the waringen, a species of Ficus, and related to the
banian- and the rubber-tree, a whole family whose
roots crawl above the ground, drop from the branches
and generally comport themselves in unconventional
ways. Bamboos grow in clumps and thickets, rang-
ing from the fine, feathery-leafed canes, that are really
only large grasses, up to the noble giants from Burma,
whose stems are more nearly trunks easily soaring to a
hundred feet in air, and spreading there a solid canopy
of graceful foliage.
The creepers run from tree to tree, and writhe over
the ground like gray serpents ; ratans and climbing
palms one hundred feet in length are common, while
uncommon ones stretch to five hundred feet. There
is one creeper with a blossom like a magnified white
violet, and with all a wood-violet's fragrance; but
with only Dutch and botanical names on the labels,
one wanders ignorantly and protestingly in this para-
dise of strange things. The rarer orchids are grown
in matted sheds in the shade of tall trees ; and although
we saw them at the end of the dry season, and few
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 69
plants were in bloom, there was still an attractive
orchid-show.
But the strangest, most conspicuous bloom in that
choice corner was a great butterfly flower of a pitcher-
plant (a nepenthes), whose pale-green petals were
veined with velvety maroon, and half concealed the
pelican pouch of a pitcher filled with water. It was
an evil-looking, ill-smelling, sticky thing, and its un-
usual size and striking colors made it haunt one long-
est of all vegetable marvels. There were other more
attractive butterflies fluttering on pliant stems, strange
little woolly white orchids, like edelweiss transplanted,
and scores of delicate Java and Borneo orchids, not so
well known as the Venezuelan and Central American
orchids commonly grown in American hothouses, and
so impossible to acclimate in Java.
Lady Baffles died while Sir Stamford was governor
of Java, and was buried in the section of the palace
park that was afterward (in 1817) set apart as a
botanical garden, and the care of the little Greek
temple over her grave near the kanari avenue was
provided for in a special clause in the treaty of ces-
sion. The bust of Theismann, who founded the garden
and added so much to botanical knowledge by his
studies in Java and Borneo, stands in an oval plea-
sance called the rose-garden ; and there one may take
heart and boast of the temperate zone, since that rare
exotic, the rose, is but a spindling bush, and its blos-
soming less than scanty at Buitenzorg, when one re-
members California's, and more especially Tacoma's,
perennial prodigalities in showers of roses. Visit-
ing botanists and students are always at work in these
70 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
early hours roaming with note-books and sketch-
books the avenues of this famous Hortus Bogorieusis,
which provides laboratory and working-space for,
and invites foreign botanists freely to avail them-
selves of, this unique opportunity of study. Over one
hundred native gardeners tend and care for this great
botanic museum of more than nine thousand living
specimens, all working under the direction of a white
head-gardener. The Tjiliwong Eiver separates the
botanic garden from a culture-garden of forty acres,
where seventy more gardeners look to the economic
plants the various cinchonas, sugar-canes, rubber,
tea, coffee, gums, spices, hemp, and other growth?
whose introduction to the colony has so benefited
the planters. Experiments in acclimatization are car-
ried on in the culture-garden, and at the experimental
garden at Tjibodas, high up on the slopes of Salak,
where the governor-general has a third palace, and
there is a government hospital and sanatorium.
Theismann's famous museum of living twig- and
leaf -insects was abandoned some years ago, the cura-
tor deciding to keep his garden strictly to botanical
lines. One no longer has the pleasure of seeing there
those curious and most extraordinary freaks of nature
the fresh green or dry and dead-looking twigs that
suddenly turn their heads or bend their long angular
legs and move away; or leaves, as delusive in their
way, that detach themselves from a tree-branch and fly
away. These insects bearing so astonishing a resem-
blance to their environment may be purchased now
and then from Chinese gardeners; but otherwise, if
one asks where they can be found or seen, there comes
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 71
the usual answer, " In Borneo or Celebes," always on
the farther, remoter islands, tropic wonders taking
wing like the leaf-insects when one reaches their re-
puted haunts.
All Java is in a way as finished as little Holland
itself, the whole island cultivated from edge to edge
like a tulip-garden, and connected throughout its
length with post-roads smooth and perfect as park
drives, all arched with waringen-, kanari-, tamarind-,
or teak-trees. The rank and tangled jungle is invisi-
ble, save by long journeys; and great snakes, wild
tigers, and rhinoceroses are almost unknown now.
One must go to Borneo and the farther islands to
see them, too. All the valleys, plains, and hillsides
are planted in formal rows, hedged, terraced, banked,
drained, and carefully weeded as a flower-bed. The
drives are of endless beauty, whichever way one turns
from Buitenzorg, and we made triumphal progresses
through the kanari- and waringen-lined streets in an
enormous " milord." The equipage measured all of
twenty feet from the tip of the pole to the footman's
perch behind, and with a cracking whip and at a rat-
tling gait we dashed through shady roads, past Dutch
barracks and hospitals, over picturesque bridges, and
through villages where the native children jumped
and clapped their hands with glee as the great Jug-
gernaut vehicle rolled by. We visited the grave of
Raden Saleh, a lonely little pavilion or temple in a
tangle of shrubbery that was once a lovely garden
shaded by tall cocoa-palms; and we drove to Batoe
Toelis, "the place of the written stone," and in the
little thatched basket of a temple saw the sacred
72 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
stone inscribed in ancient Kawi characters, the orig-
inal classic language of the Javanese. In another
basket shrine were shown the veritable footprints of
Buddha, with no explanation as to how and when he
rested on the island, nor yet how he happened to have
such long, distinctively Malay toes. Near these
temples is the villa where the poor African prince of
Ashantee was so long detained in exile an African
chief whose European education had turned his mind
to geology and natural sciences, and who led the life
of a quiet student here in the midst of so much
beauty, Buitenzorg the paradise for prince or exile,
student or literary man, delver or dreamer of any race.
There is a magnificent view from the Ashantee villa
out over a great green plain and a valley of palms to
the peaks of Gedeh and Pangera-ngo, and to their
volcanic neighbor, Salak, silent for two hundred years.
Peasants, trooping along the valley roads far below,
made use of a picturesque bamboo bridge that is ac-
counted one of the famous sights of the neighborhood,
and seemed but processions of ants crossing a spider's
web. All the suburban roads are so many botanical
exhibitions approaching that in the great garden, and
one's interest is claimed at every yard and turn.
It takes a little time for the temperate mind to ac-
cept the palm-tree as a common, natural, and inevita-
ble object in every outlook and landscape ; to realize
that the joyous, living thing with restless, perpetually
threshing foliage is the same correct, symmetrical,
motionless feather-duster on end that one knows in
the still life of hothouses and drawing-rooms at home ;
to realize that it grows in the ground, and not in
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 76
a pot or tub to be brought indoors for the winter
season. The arches of gigantic kanari-trees growing
over by-lanes and village paths, although intended for
triumphal avenues and palace driveways, overpower
one with the mad extravagance, the reckless waste,
and the splendid luxury of nature. One cannot accept
these things at first as utilities, just as it shocks one
to have a servant black his shoes with bruised hibiscus
flowers or mangosteen rind, or remove rust from
kris- or knife-blades with pineapple-juice, thrusting
a blade through and through the body of the pine.
The poorest may have his hedge of lantana, which,
brought from the Mauritius by Lady Raffles, now
borders roads, gardens, and the railway-tracks from
end to end of the island. The humblest dooryard
may be gay with tall poinsettia-trees, and bougain-
villeas may pour a torrent of magenta leaves from
every tree, wall, or roof. The houses of the great
planters around Buitenzorg are ideal homes in the
tropics, and the Tjomson and other large tea and
coffee estates are like parks. The drives through
their grounds show one the most perfect lawns and
flower-beds and ornamental trees, vines, and palms,
and such ranks on ranks of thriving tea-bushes and
coffee-bushes, every leaf perfect and without flaw,
every plant in even line, and the warm red earth lying
loosely on their roots, that one feels as if in some or-
namental jardin d'acclimatation rather than among the
most staple and serious crops of commerce. Yet from
end to end of the island the cultivation is as intense
and careful, entitling Java to its distinction as " the
finest tropical island in the world." It is the gem of
76 JAVA : THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the Indies, the one splendid jewel in the Netherlands
crown, and a possession to which poor Cuba, although
corresponding exactly to it geographically and politi-
cally, has been vainly compared.
There were often interesting table d'hote companies
gathered at noon and at night in the long dining-
room of the Buitenzorg hotel. While many of the
Dutch officials and planters, and their wives, main-
tained the wooden reserve and supercilious air of those
uncertain folk of the half-way strata in society every-
where, there were others whose intelligence and cour-
tesy and friendly interest remain as green spots in the
land. There was one most amiable man, who, we
thought, in his love of country, was anxious to hear
us praise it. We extolled the cool breezes and the
charming day, and said : " You have a beautiful coun-
try here."
" This is not my country," he answered.
" But are you not Dutch ? "
" Oh, yes."
" Then Java is yours. It is the Netherlands even
if it is India."
" Yes ; but I am from East Java, near Malang " a
section all of three hundred miles away, off at the
other end of the island ; but a strong distinction an
extreme aloofness or estrangement exists between
residents of East, West, and Middle Java, and between
those of this island and of the near-by Sumatra,
Celebes, and Molucca, all Indonesians as they are,
under the rule of the one governor-general of Nether-
lands India, representing the little queen at The Hague.
Often when we spoke of "India" or "southern
A DUTCH SANS SOUCI 77
India," or referred to Delhi and Bombay as " cities of
India," the Hollanders looked puzzled.
" Ah, when you say ' India/ you mean Hindustan
or British India f "
" Certainly ; that is India, the continent the greater
India."
" But what, then, do you call this island and all the
possessions of the Netherlands out here ? "
" Why, we speak of this island as Java. Every one
knows of it, and of Sumatra and Borneo, by their own
names."'
The defender of Netherlands India said nothing;
but soon a reference was made to a guest who had
been in official residence at Amboyna.
" Where ? " we inquired with keen interest in the
unknown.
" Amboyna. Do you in America not know of Am-
boyna ? " .
Average Americans must confess if, since early geog-
raphy days, they have not remembered carefully that
one tiny island in the group of Moluccas off the east
end of Java an island so tiny that even on the school
atlases used in Buitenzorg it is figured the size of a
pea, and on the maps for the rest of the world is but
a nameless dot in the clustered dots of the group that
would better be named the Nutmeg Isles, since the
bulk of the world's supply of that spicy fruit comes
from their shores.
Then, away down there, out of the world, I was
taken to task for that chief sin and offending of my
country against other countries the McKinley Bill of
so long ago.
78 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
" Why, we could n't make any money out of tobacco
while such a law was in existence," said one Sumatra
planter.
" But we are concerned with the prosperity of our
own American tobacco-growers. It is for the Dutch
government to make laws to benefit the tobacco-
planters of Sumatra."
" Ah ! but you have new and better laws now since
that last revolution in the States, and we are all plant-
ing all the tobacco we can. We shall be very pros-
perous now."
vn
IN A TROPICAL GARDEN
JHE Buitenzorg passer proper is housed
in a long, tiled pavilion facing an open
common, on which the country folk
gather with their produce twice a week,
and, overflowing, stretch in a scattering
encampment down the broad street leading from the
gate of the Botanical Garden. The permanent passer,
or regular bazaar in the covered building, is stocked
with the staples and substantiate of life, and is open
every day. The town tailors have their abode under
that cover, and squat in rows before their little Amer-
ican hand-sewing machines, and sew the single seam
of a sarong skirt, or reel off a native jacket, while the
customer waits. It is the semi- weekly, early morning,
outdoor market of chattering country folk that most
delights and diverts a stranger, however. The lines
of venders, strung along the shady street and grouped
under palm-patched umbrellas in the open, provide
horticultural and floral exhibits of the greatest inter-
est, and afford the most picturesque scenes of native
life. The long street of the Tjina kampong beyond is
s 79
80 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
dull and monotonous by comparison, for when Dutch
rules force the Chinese to be clean and orderly all
picturesqueness and character are gone from their
quarter. All the tasseled lanterns and strips of ver-
milion paper will not " tell " artistically without their
concomitant grease and dirt.
As a very new broom, a clever child pleased with
the toy of a new employer, Amat, our mild-mannered
Moslem servant, was a treasure and delight during
those first days at Buitenzorg. He entered gleefully
into the spirit of our reckless purchase from the heaps
of splendid fruits poured from the great horn of
plenty into the open passer. He gave us the name of
each particular strange fruit, taught us the odd tricks
and sleight-of-hand methods of opening these novel-
ties of the market-place ; and it was quite like kinder-
garten play when he unbraided and wove together
again the ribbed palm-leaf reticules in which dukus
and such small fruits are sold. We carried baskets
of strange fruits back to the hotel, and Amat added
every vegetable curio and market's marvel he could
find to the heaps of fruits and flowers. Our veranda
was a testing- and proving-ground, and there seemed
to be no end to the delights and surprises the tropics
provided.
Tons of bananas were heaped high in the passer
each day, the great golden bunches making most
decorative and attractive masses of color, and their
absurd cheapness tempting one to buy and to buy.
The Java pisang, or banana, however, is but a coarse
plantain with a pinkish-yellow, dry pulp, of a pump-
kiny flavor that sadly disappoints the palate. Yet it
TROPICAL FRUITS.
83
is nature's greatest and most generously bestowed
gift in the tropics, and it was pleasant to eat it picked
ripe in its native home, instead of receiving it steam-
ripened from Northern fruiterers' warehouses. Every
tiny village and almost every little native hut in Java
has its banana-patch or its banana-tree, which requires
nothing of labor in cultivation, save the weeding away
of the old stalks. It was intended as a humane con-
centration of benefits when nature gave man this
food-plant, four thousand pounds of whose fruit will
grow with so little human aid in the same space of
ground required to raise ninety-nine pounds of pota-
toes or thirty-three pounds of wheat; both those
Northern crops acquired, too, only by incessant sweat
of the brow and muscular exertion. The pisang is
the tropical staff of life for whites as well as natives,
as wholesome and necessary as bread, and an equiva-
lent for the latter as a starchy food. It comes to one
with the earliest breakfast cup, appears at every meal,
arrives with the afternoon tea-tray, and always ends
the late dinner as the inevitable accompaniment of
cheese, the happiest substitute for bread or biscuits,
tropical gourmets insist.
The lovely red rambutans (Nephelium lappaceum)
we would have bought for their beauty alone those
clusters of seemingly green chestnut-burs, with spines
tinted to the deepest rose, affording the most exqui-
site color-study of all the fruits in the passer. The
spiny shell pulls apart easily, and discloses a juicy,
half-transparent mass of white pulp around a central
core of smooth stones. The duku, looking like a big
green grape, a fresh almond, or an olive, contains just
84 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
such another ball of pulp within its leathery rind, and
both fruits much resemble the fresh lychees of China
in flavor. The salak, or " forbidden fruit," is a hard,
scaly, pear-shaped thing, which very appropriately
grows on a prickly bush, and whose strange brown
rind reminds one of a pine-cone or a rattlesnake's
skin. This scaly, snaky shell prejudices one against
it ; but the salak is as solid as an apple, with a nutty
flavor and texture. It is not unpleasant, nor is it dis-
tinctively anything in flavor nothing unique or de-
licioiis enough to make one seek hard or long for a
second taste of it. The jamboa, the eugenia or rose-
apple (Eugenia malaccensis), is a fruit of the same size
and shape as the salak, and in spite of its exquisite
coloring it impresses one as being an albino, a skin-
less or some other monstrous and unnatural product
of nature. Its outer integument, thinner than any
nectarine's rind, shades from snow-white at the stem
to the deepest rose-pink at the blossom end, and it
looks as if it were the most fragrant, delicious, and
juicy fruit. One bites into the fine, crisp, succulent
pulp, and tastes exactly nothing, and never forgives
the beautiful, rose-tinted, watery blank for its delud-
ing. The caranibola (Averrlioa), the five-ribbed yellow
" star-fruit," popularly known in real Cathay as the
" Chinese gooseberry," is a favorite, fragrant study in
spherical geometry, and the cutting apart of its trian-
gular sections is the nicest sort of after-dinner amuse-
ment and demonstration ; but its fine, deliciously acid
pulp is usually known to one before he reaches Java.
Its relative, the Ulimbi, is the sharpest of acid fruits, and
lends an edge to chutneys and curried conglomerates.
IN A TROPICAL GARDEN 85
The breadfruit and its gigantic relative, the nanko
(Artocarpus integrifolia), or jackfruit, which often
weighs thirty and even forty pounds, and is sufficient
load for a man to bring to market on his back, are
the vegetable mainstays of native life ; but as both
must be cooked to a tasteless mush to be relished, one
is satisfied only to look at them in the passer. That
swollen monstrosity, the nanko, grows goiter-like on
the trunk of a tree, and is supported in ratan slings
while the great excrescence ripens. One must speak
of the breadfruit with respect, though, after all
that scientists have said, philosophers and political
economists have argued, concerning it. Since ten
breadfruit-trees will support a large family the year
round, and a man may plant that many within an hour
and need give them no further care, Captain Cook
observed that such a man has then "as completely
fulfilled his duty to his own and future generations as
the native of our less genial climate by plowing in
the cold of winter and reaping in the summer heat as
often as the seasons return."
The prickly durian (Durio Zibethimis), which is
almost as large as the nanko, has a pulp a little like
that of a cantaloup melon, only smoother and more
solid a thick, creamy, " almondy-buttery " custard,
which is agreeable to the palate, but offends the nose
with an odor of onion and stale egg. It is spoken of
with bitterness and contempt by most Europeans, is
extolled as " the king and emperor of fruits " by Wal-
lace and a few other intrepid ones, and the little
English children in Java, who all are fond of it, call
it "darling durian." In 1599 Linschott declared it
86 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
to surpass in flavor " all the other fruits of the world."
Crawford said that it tasted like "fresh cream and
filberts," a description which conjures up the cloying
modern fantasia of English- walnut kernels in a may-
onnaise. Another great one has said that "to eat
durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East
to experience"; and Dr. Ward, in his "Medical To-
pography of the Straits," says : " Those who overcome
the prejudice excited by the disagreeable, fetid odor
of the external shell reckon it delicious. From ex-
perience I can pronounce it the most luscious and the
most fascinating fruit in the universe ; the pulp cover-
ing the seeds, the only part eaten, excels the finest
custards which could be prepared by either Ude or
Kitchener." One sees the monster retailed in seg-
ments in every passer ; the natives are always munch-
ing it inconveniently to windward of one, and they
not only praise it, but write poems to it, and respect-
fully salute the tree they see it growing on. This
fruit of discordant opinions hangs high upon a tall
tree, and is never picked, but allowed to fall to the
ground when it becomes perfectly ripe. A falling
durian is justly dreaded and guarded against by the
natives, who tell of men whose shoulders have been
lacerated and heads half crushed by the sudden de
scent of one of these great green cannon-balls. Its
unpleasant odor is said to come with age, and they
tell one that a freshly fallen duriau is free from such
objection ; but the watched durian never falls, I found,
after maintaining the attitude of the fox toward the
grapes for a reasonable time before a durian-tree.
The papaya, a smaller custard-fruit, with unpleasant
IN A TROPICAL GAKDEN 87
little curly gray seeds in the mess, is like a coarse,
flavorless melon, but is highly extolled as a febrifuge
and tonic. The much-heralded and disappointing
cherimoyer is grown too, and mangos ripen in every
yard ; but the Java mangos are coarse and turpentiny,
of a deep pumpkiny hue. Pineapples, the nanas, or
Portuguese ananassa, grow to perfection all over the
low, hot country ; but one is warned to be careful in
eating them, and they are called the most dangerous,
the most choleraic and fever-causing of tropical fruits.
The native orange on this south side of the equator is
not orange at all, even when ripe, but its peel is a
deep, dark, beautiful green, and its flavor unequaled.
The big Citrus decumana, the pomelo of China, the
pumplemoos of Java, the Batavian lime in British
India, the shaddock of the West Indies, and the grape-
fruit of Florida, appears in the passers, but is coarse,
dry, and tasteless, save for the turpentine flavor,
which does not lurk within, but stalks abroad.
The fruit of fruits, the prize of the Indies and of all the
Malay equatorial regions, where the tree is indigenous,
is the mangosteen (Gardnia mangosteen), and the tour-
ist should avail himself of November and December as
the months for a tour in Java, if only to know the man-
gosteen in its perfection. The dark-purple apples hang
from the tall trees by woody stems, and the natives
bring the manggis to market tied together in bunches
of twenties like clusters of gigantic grapes. It is de-
light enough to the eye alone to cut the thick, fibrous
rind, bisect the perfect sphere at the equator line, and
see the round ball of " perfumed snow " resting intact
in its rose-lined cup. The five white segments sepa-
88 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
rate easily, and may be lifted whole with a fork, and
they melt on the tongue with a touch of tart and a
touch of sweet ; one moment a memory of the juiciest,
most fragrant apple, at another a remembrance of the
smoothest cream ice, the most exquisite and delicately
flavored fruit-acid known all the delights of nature's
laboratory condensed in that ball of neige parfum&e.
It is fortunate that the mangosteen is a harmless and
wholesome fruit, and that one may eat with impunity,
laying store for a lifetime in his one opportunity. I
often wondered how it would be if the mangosteen
were a dangerous or a forbidden fruit; if it were
wicked or a little of a sin to eat it ; if mangosteens
could be obtained singly, at great risk or expense ; or
if they should be prescribed for one as a tonic, some-
thing antimalarial, a, substitute for quinine, to be
taken in doses of one, two, or ten before or after each
meal. The mangosteen cannot be transported to the
temperate zone of Europe, not even with the aid of
modern ships' ref rigerating-machines and when coated
with wax, as in less than a week after leaving the
trees the pulp melts away to a brown mass. By the
alternation of seasons the mangosteen is always in
market at Singapore, as it ripens north of the equator
during the summer six months of the northern hemi-
sphere's year, and during this rainy season of Cochin
China is carried from Saigon successfully as far north
as Shanghai and Yokohama. The offer by the lead-
ing British steamship company of thirty pounds
sterling to the ship-captain who will get a basket
of mangosteens to the Queen is still open. The
tree grows throughout the Malay Peninsula and
TROPICAL FKUITS.
IN A TEOPICAL GAEDEN 91
Archipelago, and groves have been successfully planted
in Ceylon, so that there is hope that this incomparable
fruit may finally be acclimated in the West Indies, and
fast steamers make it known in New York and London.
The mangosteen is tinned for export at Singapore ; but
the faded segments floating in tasteless syrup give one
little idea of this peerless fruit in its natural state.
It had been my particular haunting dream of the
tropics to have a small black boy climb a tree and
throw cocoanuts down to me ; and while we sat admir-
ing the rank beauty of the deserted garden around
Baden Saleh's tomb, one afternoon, the expression of
the wish caused a full-grown Malay to saunter across
the grass, and, cigarette in mouth, walk up the straight
palm-stem as easily as a fly. The Malay toes are as
distinct members as the fingers, and almost as long ;
and clasping the trunk with the sole of the foot at
each leaf-scar, that Malay climber gripped the rough
palm-stem as firmly with his toes as with claws or
extra fingers. It was so easily and commonly done
that palm-tree climbing soon ceased to be any more of
a feat to watch than berry-picking ; but the first native
who walked up a palm-tree for my benefit held me
rapt, attentive, while he picked the big nuts and sent
twenty-pounders crashing down through the shrub-
bery. We paid him well, and carried two of the nuts
home with us ; and from them the servant brought us
tall glasses, or schooners, filled with the clear, color-
less, tasteless milk, and a plate full of a white, leathery
stuff tough, tasteless too, and wilted, like cold omelet
without eggs the saddest sort of a feast of fresh
cocoanuts.
92 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
We found all the countless common fragrant flowers
that are so necessary to these esthetic, perfume-loving
people heaped for sale in the flower-market of the
passer, along with the oils and the gums and spices
that give out, and burn with, such delicious odors.
Short-stemmed roses and heaps of loose rose-petals
were laid on beds of green moss or in bits of palm-
leaf in a way to delight one's color-sense, and, with
the mounds of pale-green petals of the Jcananga, or
ylang-ylang-tree's blossoms, filled the whole air with
fragrance. We dried quantities of kananga flowers
for sachets, as they will crisp even in the damp air of
Java, and retain their spicy fragrance for years ; but
the exquisite white-and-gold " Bo-flowers," the sacred
sumboja or f rangipani (the Plumeria acutifolia of the bot-
anists), would not dry, but turned dark and mildewed
wherever one petal fell upon another. This lovely
blossom of Buddha is sticky and unpleasant to the
touch when pulled from the tree, and the stem exudes
a thick milk. After they have fallen to the ground
they may be handled more easily, and fallen flowers
retain the spotless, waxen perfection of their thick,
fleshy petals for even two days. One wonders that
the people do not more often wear these flowers of the
golden heart in their black hair ; but the sumboja is
a religious flower in Java, as in India, and in Bud-
dhist times was almost as much an attribute and sym-
bol of that great faith as the lotus. This Bo-flower
is still the favorite offering, together with the cham-
paka, or Arabian jasmine, in the Buddhist temples of
Burma and Ceylon, and is often laid before the few
images of that old religion now remaining in Java.
IN A TROPICAL GARDEN 93
All through the Malay world, however, it is especially
the flower of the dead, associated everywhere with
funeral rites and graves, as conventional an expression
or accompaniment of grief, death, and burial as the
cypress and the weeping willow. For this reason one
rarely sees it used as an ornamental tree or hedge,
even in a European's garden or pleasure-grounds, and
its presence in hedges or copses indicates that there
are graves, or one of Islam's little open-timbered tem-
ples of the dead, within reach of its entrancing fra-
grance. Our Malay servant would never accept our
name of " frangipani " when told to spread out or stir
the petals we tried to dry in the sun. He stoically
repeated the native "sumboja" after me each time,
very rightly resenting the baptism in honor of an
Italian marquis, who only compounded an essence
imitating the perfume of the West Indian red jasmine,
which breathes a little of the cloying sweetness of the
peerless sumboja. After but a few trials of its sylla-
bles, "sumboja" soon expressed to me more of the
fragrance, the sentiment and spirit, of the lovely
death-flower than ever could the word " frangipani."
Chinese Buddhists seem not to have any traditions or
associations with the Bo-flower, as in South China,
where the tree is grown in gardens, it is only the Mi
tan fa, or " egg-flower," those hideously matter-of-fact
people noting only the resemblance of the lovely
petals to the contrasting yolk and albumen of a hard-
boiled egg.
VIII
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM"
HILE the Dutch East India Company
held the monopoly of trade and produc-
tion in Java, farmed out the revenues,
and exacted forced labor and forced de-
1 livery of produce, this tropical possession
yielded an enormous revenue. With the company's
monopoly of trade with Japan, and only Portugal as
Holland's great rival in the ports of China, the com-
pany made Amsterdam the tea- and spice-market and
the center of Oriental trade in Europe. The early Dutch
traders not only cut down all the spice-trees on the
Molucca Islands, and forbade the planting of clove-,
cinnamon-, and nutmeg-trees, save on certain Dutch
islands, but they burned tons of spices in the streets
of Amsterdam, in order to maintain prices in Europe
and realize their usual profit of three hundred per
cent.
The Dutch East India Company acquired control of
Java through pioneer preemption, purchase, conquest,
strategy, and subtle diplomacy, and, finally, as resid-
uary legatee by the will of the Mohammedan emperor
94
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 95
at Solo. The company then claimed the same sover-
eign rights over the people as the native rulers, who
had exacted one fifth of the peasant's labor and one
fifth of his crops as ground-rent, the land being all
the inalienable property of the princes. When the
colony passed from the company to the crown of
Holland, Marshal Daendels at once turned such feudal
rights to profitable account and instituted public
works on a great scale. With such forced labor he
built the great double post-road over the island from
Anjer Head to Ban joewangi, that road upon whose
building twenty thousand miserable lives were ex-
pended, so that difficulty of communication no longer
interfered with the delivery of products at government
warehouses on the seashore. He further established
government teak- and coffee-plantations, but the natives
who were forced to cultivate them were no more tyran-
nized over nor oppressed than they had been under
their own princes, the change of masters making small
difference in their condition. Previous to Daendels's
time all the coffee came from the Preangers, whose
princes, having yielded their territories by treaty in
the middle of the last century, retained sovereignty
and their old land-revenues on condition of paying
the Dutch East India Company an annual tribute in
coffee, and after that selling the balance of the crop to
the company at the fixed rate of three and a half
florins the picul (133J pounds).
Although the East India Company practically ended
its rule in 1798, the States-General canceled the lease
in 1800, and the colony passed to the crown of Holland,
the same trade monopoly continued until the happy
96 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
interval of British rule (1811-10), and there was a
continual movement of natives from the Dutch to the
native states up to 1811. Under Sir Stamford Raffles's
enlightened control the Java ports were made free to
the ships of all nations, the peasants were given indi-
vidual ownership of lands, great estates were bestowed
upon native chiefs, and a bewildering doctrine of
liberty and equality before the law was preached to
the people. Free trade, free culture, and free labor
were decreed at once. The same treaty of London
(August, 1814) which restored Java to the Dutch
(August, 1816), at the close of the Napoleonic wars,
secured the freedom of the ports; but the Dutch
quickly resumed the old system of land-tenure by vil-
lage communities paying ground-rent in produce and
labor through their wedana, or head man, who answered
to a district chief, who in turn reported to the native
prince acting as regent for the Dutch government.
Dutch residents " advised " these native regents, who
ruled wholly under their orders and were mere mid-
dlemen between the Dutch and the natives. These re-
gents were always chosen from the greatest family of
the province, and the Dutch controleurs directed the
chiefs and wedanas. The Dutch retained the excellent
British police and judicial system in the main, while
having more regard for the native aristocracy, their
prejudices and their laws of caste. British philan-
thropy had introduced the British India ryot system
of separate property in the soil and a separate land-
tax, along with equality of rights, duties, and imposts,
while abolishing all monopolies, forced labor and pro-
ductions. The natives, like true Orientals, preferred
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 97
their own old communal land system, with yearly allot-
ments of village lands and the just rotation of the
best lands, to any modern system of individual prop-
erty, and to what was most dreaded by the native,
individual liability. The Dutch resumed the old land
system, exacted the old one fifth of produce as land-
rent, and obliged the peasants to plant one fifth of the
village land in crops, to be sold to the government at
fixed prices ; but they only demanded one day's labor
in seven, instead of one day in five. The lands which
Sir Stamford Raffles had given to the chiefs and petty
princes soon passed into the hands of Europeans or
Chinese; and except for this one tenth of the land
held by private owners, and two tenths held by the
Preanger regents, the rest of the island became crown
land, subject to lease, but never to be sold. The
Preanger princes resumed their payment of a revenue
in coffee and the sale of the surplus crop to the gov-
ernment at a fixed price. Marshal Daendels's planta-
tions, so long neglected, were put in order again and
cultivated by seventh-day labor. Each family was re-
quired to keep one thousand coffee-trees in bearing
on village lands, to give two fifths of the crop to the
government, and deliver it cleaned and sorted at gov-
ernment warehouses established all through the coffee
districts.
But with the open ports, the abolition of the govern-
ment's spice monopoly in 1824, and the expenses of a
protracted war with the native ruler of Middle Java
(1817-30), the revenues still only met the expenses ;
and there was great concern in Holland at the decrease
of the golden stream of Indian revenue, and conse-
98 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
quent satisfaction in England that its statesmen had
handed back the island, that might have proved only
an embarrassment and intolerable expense instead of
a profit to the British crown. The King of Holland
had established and guaranteed the Netherlands Trad-
ing Company, which acted as the commission agent of
the government in Europe, importing in its own ships
exclusively, selling all the produce in Europe, and
conducting a general business in the colony. The
partial failure of this company, which obliged the
king to meet the guaranteed interest, brought about
a new order of things destined to increase the colonial
trade and crown revenues.
As private enterprise could not make the Java trade
what it had been, Governor Van den Bosch, who ori-
ginated the " culture system " as a means of relieving
the distressed finances, was sent out from Holland in
1830, with power to grant cash credits and make ten-
year contracts with private individuals who would
assist in developing the sugar industry. Sufficient
advances were made to these colonists to enable them
to erect sugar-mills and to maintain themselves until,
by the sales of their products, they were able to repay
the capital and own their mills. The government
agreed that the natives of each community or district
should grow sufficient sugar-cane on their lands to
supply the mills 7 capacity, and deliver it at the mills
at fixed rates. The natives were obliged to plant one
fifth of the village lands in sugar-cane, and each
man to give one day's labor in seven to tending the
crop. The village head man was paid for the com-
munity three and a half florins for each picul of
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 101
sugar made from their cane, and the natives who
worked in the mills were paid regular wages. The
mill-owner sold one third of the finished product of
his mill to the government, at rates rising from eight
to ten florins the picul ; the mill-owner paid back each
year one tenth of the government's cash advanced
to him in sugar at the same rate, and was then free to
ship, as his own venture, the balance of his sugar
to the Netherlands Trading Company, which held
the monopoly of transport and sale of government
produce. Enormous profits resulted to the govern-
ment and mill-owners from the sales of such sugar in
Europe, and during one prosperous decade the crown
of Holland enjoyed a revenue amounting to more
than five million dollars United States gold each year
from its Java sugar sales. The whole east end of the
island and the low, hot lands along the coast were
green at their season with the giant grass whose cul-
tivation has forced or encouraged slavery everywhere
throughout the earth's tropic belt. Slavery itself
ceased in Java by royal edict in 1859, but sugar-cul-
ture went on under the admirable Van den Bosch
system so profitably that mill-owners did not grumble
at having to sell one third of their product to the
government at a merely nominal price.
The great success in sugar led the government to
extend the culture system's method to other crops.
Would-be colonists competed for such profitable con-
tracts, and all young Holland cherished the ambition
to sail away to the East and make fortunes on Java
plantations. A choice was exercised to secure the
best class of young men as colonists ; education, culti-
102 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
ration, and gentlemanly manners were made essentials,
and it was known that no absenteeism would be toler-
ated, that the planters were expected to settle in Java
in permanence, and that leaves of absence would be
granted during the ten-year contracts only for actual
illness. By providing military bands and subsidizing
an opera, by establishing libraries and fostering the
museum of the Batavian Society, and by encouraging
a liberal social life among the higher officials, every-
thing was done to secure all the advantages of civili-
zation and to make life tolerable in the far-away
tropics.
Early experiments had been made with the tea-plant
in Java, and the government initiated tea-growing
with great anticipations. Tea-plants and -seeds were
brought by botanists from Japan as early as 1826, and
later from China, together with skilled cultivators and
workmen to instruct the natives. Crown lands were
leased on long terms, and cash advances made during the
first years of hill-clearing and planting. The govern-
ment obliged the planters to produce equal quantities
of green and black tea, and four grades or qualities
of each kind ; the planters were to repay the govern-
ment's cash advances in tea, to sell the whole crop to
the government at a fixed rate, and to pay the work-
men fixed wages. Tea-growing was not profitable at
first, as there was difficulty in securing a market in
Europe for the bitter, weedy Java leaf, until, by a
great reduction in the selling-price, its cheapness
gained it a sale in Germany. The discovery of the
wild Assam tea-plant in India, and the results obtained
by grafting it on the Chinese plant, marked a new
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 103
departure in tea-growing, and with better understand-
ing of new methods and the aid of machinery in cur-
ing the leaf, tea-gardens became profitable ventures.
After fostering the industry to success, the govern-
ment refused further contracts after 1865, and the tea-
planters were free to dispose of their crops as they
wished. All through the hill-country of the Preangers
tea-bushes stripe the rolling ground for miles, and new
ground is being cleared and leased each season. Java
teas have greatly improved in quality, and win medals
and mention at every exposition ; but they have India
and Ceylon as formidable rivals, in addition to China
and Japan, and their market remains in Holland and
Germany, and in Persia and Arabia by way of Bom-
baythis Mohammedan trade an inheritance of those
early times, when the Dutch drove the Moormen out of
Ceylon and the far Eastern trade.
While the culture system was succeeding with sugar
and tea, the government coffee-plantations were ex-
tended, and more and more hill-country cleared for
such cultivation. Coffee-culture was carried on by
the government without contractors' aid. Each native
was obliged to plant six hundred Arabian or Mocha
coffee-trees and keep them in bearing, and deliver the
crop cleaned and sorted at the government warehouses
at a fixed price nine and twelve florins the picul
previous to 1874, although forty and forty-five florins
were paid in the open market of the ports. By care-
ful supervision and by percentages paid to native of-
ficials for any superior quality in the berries produced
in their district, the coffee from Java government
stores was superior to anything else sold in Europe,
104 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and maintained its average steadily. Coffee was in-
deed "the pivot of the Netherlands colonial regime,"
a staple of greater economic value than spices had been.
In 1879, the year of the greatest production of the
government plantations in Java, some 79,400 tons of
coffee were shipped to Europe. Blight and scale and
insect pests were afterward to reduce the shipments to
but 17,750 tons in 1887.
Indigo was at first cultivated on the same terms as
sugar, but the government soon dispensed with such
contracts, bought back the f abriks, and continued the
industry without contract aid, obliging the natives to
plant indigo on all village land not required for rice,
and deliver the crop to the mills at fixed prices. Cin-
namon, pepper, cinchona, and cochineal were grown
by the natives in the same way, under merely official
supervision, and delivered to the government for a
trifling price.
In 1850 the government sent agents to Peru to
obtain seeds of the cinchona-tree, and after fifteen
years of effort and risk the indefatigable botanists and
explorers secured the treasured seeds of the red-barked
kina-tree. The records of those expeditions, the
lives ventured and lost, are the romances of travel
and exploration; and Sir Clements Markham's and
Charles Ledger's narratives are most fascinating tales.
The first little nursery of trees in the Buitenzorg Bo-
tanical Garden and in experimental gardens on higher
ground near Bandong furnished the seeds and plants
from which have sprung the great kina-plantations,
or cinchona-groves, both government and private,
SCENES AROUND THE MARKET.
THE "CULTUBE SYSTEM" 107
whose red branches show in definite color-masses on
every hillside of the Preangers, while the spindling
young trees shade acres of tea-, coffee-, and cocoa-
plants in their first growths. Java now produces,
from government and private plantations together,
one half of the world's supply of quinine, Ceylon and
India furnishing the balance. Ship-loads of bark are
sent to the laboratories or chemical factories of Europe,
which produce the precious sulphate on which rest
England's and Holland's conquest of the Indies and
all European domination in the farther East, and
laboratories are now building for manufacturing the
sulphate from the bark in Java.
Poppy-culture has always been strictly prohibited,
although the natives are greatly addicted to opium-
smoking, especially in the middle or Hindu provinces.
With all their zeal for revenue, the Dutch have resisted
the example of the British in India and the Chinese
in Szechuen and the western provinces of China, and
have never let the land bloom with that seductive
flower. The sale of opium is a closely guarded gov-
ernment monopoly, conducted at present under the
rfyie system, the government itself importing all that
is consumed in the colony and selling it from fixed
offices throughout the island.
Salt-works and tin-mines were managed in as sys-
tematic and profitable a way as crops and cultures.
No private individual was allowed to make or import
salt into the colony. The government still holds the
salt-supply as a monopoly, and there are large salt-
works on Madura Island, where the natives are re-
108 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
quired to deliver fixed quantities of coarse salt at the
government warehouses at the rate (in 1897) of ten
gulden the kojan (1853 kilograms). The government
manages the tin-mines on Banka Island in the Java
Sea, while the mines of the neighboring Billeton Island
are leased to private individuals.
IX
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" (Continued)
HE culture system, as an experiment in
colonial government and finance, was
the greatest success and worked incal-
culable benefits to the islands and the
native people, as well as to the assisted
colonists and the crown of Holland. Great stretches
of jungle were cleared and brought under cultivation,
and more money was paid in wages directly to native
cultivators and mill workmen each year than all the
natives paid in taxes to the government. The Java-
nese acquired better homes, much personal wealth, and
improved in all the conditions of living. The popula-
tion increased tenfold during the half -century that the
culture system was in operation this alone an un-
answerable reply to all critics and detractors, who de-
claimed against the oppression and outrage upon the
Javanese. As the island became, under this system,
a more profitable possession than it had been under
the real tyranny exercised during the days of close-
trade monopoly, the envy and attention of all the
other colonizing nations of Europe were drawn to this
109
110 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
new departure in colonial government. Spain copied
the system in its tobacco-growing in the Philippine
Islands, but could not follow further. Philanthropic
and pharisaical neighbors, political economists, ad-
vanced political thinkers, humanitarians, and senti-
mentalists, all addressed themselves to the subject,
and usually condemned the culture system in unmea-
sured terms. Holland's voluntary abolition of slavery
in its East India possessions by no means stilled the
storm of invective and abuse. Leaders, speeches,
books, pamphlets, even novels, 1 showed up the horrors,
the injustice and iniquities said to be perpetrated in
Java. It was shown that almost nothing of the great
revenues from the island was devoted to the education
or benefit of the natives ; that no mission or evangel-
ical work was undertaken, or even allowed, by this
foremost Protestant people of Europe ; and that next
to nothing in the way of public works or permanent
improvements resulted to the advantage of those who
toiled for the alien, absentee landlord, i. e., the crown
of Holland, the country being drained of its wealth
for the benefit of a distant monarch. It was estimated
that between 1831 and 1877 the natives were mulcted
of one billion, seven hundred million francs by the
forced labor exacted from them, and the sales of
their produce to the government at the low market
prices fixed by the purchaser. By continued philippics
and exaggerated accusations, the names of Dutch
government and Java planter became, to the average
European, synonyms for all of rapacity, tyranny,
i " Max Havelaar," by Edouard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli) ;
translation by Baron Nahuys (Edinburgh, 1868).
THE "CULTUEE SYSTEM" 113
extortion, and cruelty, and there was an impression
that something worse than Spanish persecution in the
Netherlands, in the name of religion, was being carried
on by the Hollanders in Java in the name of the
almighty florin. All the iniquities and horrors of the
Dutch management of the cinnamon-gardens of Cey-
lon, and all the infamy of the Dutch East India Com-
pany's misrule in Java during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, were stupidly mixed up with and
charged against the comparatively admirable, the
orderly and excellently devised culture system of Gov-
ernor Van den Bosch. Contractor planters vainly
urged that the only tyranny and oppression of the
people came from their own village chiefs ; but philan-
thropists pointed steadily to the colonial government
and the system which inspired and upheld the village
tyrants.
In 1859 Mr. J. W. B. Money, a Calcutta barrister,
visited Java, made exhaustive search and inquiry into
every branch and detail of the culture system's work-
ing, and put the results in book form inwoven with a
comparison with the less intelligent and successful
management of the land and labor question in British
India, where, with sixteen times the area and twelve
times the population of Java, the revenue is only four
times as great. His book, "Java: How to Manage
a Colony" (London, Hurst & Blackett, 1861), is a
most complete and reliable resume of the subject, and
his opinions throughout were an indorsement of the
Van den Bosch culture system. He contrasted
warmly the failure and inefficiency of the British
India ryot warree, or land system, with the established
114 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
communal system which the Oriental prefers and is
fitted for, and showed how a similar culture system in
Bengal and Madras would have worked to the advan-
tage, benefit, and profit of Hindustan, the Hindus, and
the British crown. Mr. Money especially noted how
the Dutch refrained from interfering with native pre-
judices and established customs ; how the prestige of
the native aristocracy was as carefully maintained as
that of the white race, with no modern, Western notions
of equality, even before the law, the Dutch securing
regentship to the leading noble of a district, and giv-
ing him more revenue and actual power than were
possible under the native emperor. Mr. Money noted
only the best of feeling apparently existing between
natives and Europeans, a condition dating entirely
from the establishment of the culture system, and the
general prosperity that succeeded. " No country in
the East can show so rich or so contented a peasantry
as Java," he said.
Alfred Bussel Wallace, who visited Java several
times between 1854 and 1862, while the culture system
was at the height of its successful working, spoke in
approval and praise of what he saw of the actual sys-
tem and its results, and commended it as the only
means of forcing an indolent, tropical race to labor
and develop the resources and industries of the island.
His was one of the few clear, dispassionate, and in-
telligent statements given on that side, and he summed
up his observations in the declaration that Java was
" the very garden of the East, and perhaps, upon the
whole, the richest, best-cultivated, and the best-governed
island in the world."
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 115
The competition of French beet-sugar, fed by large
government bounties, of West Indian and Hawaiian
sugars, so reduced the price of sugar in Europe that
in 1871 the Dutch government began to withdraw
from the sugar-trade, and by 1890 had no interest in
nor connection with any of the many mills which col-
onists had built on the island. Java ranks second
only to Cuba in the production of sugar-cane, and now
produces about one-tenth of the world's supply of
sugar. The average annual crop is 852,400 tons, and
the value of the sugar harvest in 1905 was 15,000,-
000. The distillation of arack for the trade with
Norway and Sweden is an important industry in both
islands.
At the time that sugar began to fall in price, owing
to Western competition, Brazilian and Central Ameri-
can coffees began to command a place in the European
market and to reduce prices; and then the blight,
which reached Sumatra in 1876, attacked Java planta-
tions in 1879, and spread slowly over the island, ruin-
ing one by one all the plantations of the choice Ara-
bian or Mocha coffee-trees. As the area of thriving
plantations decreased, and acres and acres of the white
skeletons of blighted trees belted the hillsides, vain
attempts were made at replanting. Only the tough,
woody, coarse African or Liberian coffee-tree, with its
large leaves and large, flat berries, a plant which
thrives equally in a damp or a dry climate, and luxu-
riates in the poorest, stoniest ground, seems to be
proof against the blight that devastated the Ceylon
and Java coffee-plantations so thoroughly at the same
time. Many of the old coffee-plantations in Java, as
116 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
in Ceylon, were burned over and planted to tea ; yet
in many places in the Preangers one sees the bleached
skeletons of Arabian trees still standing, and the aban-
doned plantations smothered in weeds and creepers,
and fast relapsing to jungle. The virgin soil of Su-
matra has so far escaped the severest attacks of the
blight, and the center of coffee-production there is
near Padang, on the west coast, whence the bulk of
the crop goes directly to England or America in Brit-
ish ships.
The blight forced the Dutch government to begin
its retirement from the coffee-trade, and but the
smallest fraction of the coffee exported now goes from
government plantations or warehouses. Nearly all the
Sumatra plantations are owned or leased by private
individuals, and the greater part of coffee lands in
Java are cultivated by independent planters, who
sell their crop freely in the open market. With the
wholesale replanting of the Liberian tree in place of
the Arabian, and the shipping only of the large, flat
Liberian bean instead of the Mocha's small, round
berry, it is questionable whether the little real " gov-
ernment Java " that goes to market is entitled to the
name which won the esteem of coffee-drinking people
for the century before the blight. The Dutch govern-
ment still raises and sells coffee, but under strong
protest and opposition in Holland, and as a temporary
concession during these times of financial straits.
Public opinion was gradually aroused in Holland,
and opponents of the culture system at last spoke out
in the States-General ; but not until the prices of sugar
and coffee had fallen seriously, and the blight had
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 117
ruined nearly all the government coffee-plantations,
did the stirring of Holland's conscience bid the govern-
ment retire from trade and agriculture, and leave the
development of the island's resources, in natural and
legitimate ways, to the enterprise of the many Euro-
pean settlers then established in permanence in Java,
who had begun to see that the government was their
most serious rival and competitor in the market.
The common sense and cooler vision of these days
since its abandonment have shown that the culture
system was an inspiration, a stroke of administrative
genius of the first order, accomplishing in a few dec-
ades, for the material welfare of the island and its
people, what the native race of a tropical country
never could or would have done in centuries. The
American mind naturally puzzles most over the idea
that twenty odd millions of people of one race, lan-
guage, and religion should ever have submitted to be
ruled by a mere handful of over-sea usurpers and
speculators. Considering the genius and characteris-
tics of all Asiatic people, their superstitions, fatalism,
self-abasement, and continuous submission to alien
conquests and despotisms, which all their histories re-
cord and their religions almost seem to enjoin, and
remembering the successive Buddhist, Brahmanic, and
Mohammedan conquests and conversions of Java, and
the domestic wars of three centuries since Islam's in-
vasion, the half -century of the culture system's prosper-
ous trial seems a most fortunate epoch and the cause
of the admirable and surprising conditions existing
to-day in that model garden and hothouse of the world.
It was much regretted later that some part of the
118 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
culture system's enormous profits was not devoted to
railway construction and the making of the new har-
bor for Batavia at Tandjon Priok, as, immediately
after the system's abandonment, railways and the new
harbor became more urgent needs, and had to be pro-
vided for out of the current revenues, then taxed with
the vigorous beginning of the Achinese struggle
Holland's thirty years' war in the Indies, which has so
sadly crippled the exchequer. In order to provide a
crown revenue in lieu of the sugar and coffee sales, a
poll-tax was imposed on the natives in place of the
seventh of their labor given to culture-system crops,
and increased taxes were levied on lands and property ;
but through the extensive public works, the long-con-
tinued Achinese war in Sumatra, and the little war
with the Sassaks in Lombok (1894), the deficits in the
colonial budgets have become more ominous every year
since 1876. The crown of Holland no longer receives
a golden stream from the Indies, and is pushed to de-
vise means to meet its obligations.
The culture system brought to Java a selected lot
of refined, intelligent, capable, energetic colonists,
who, settling there in permanence and increasing
their holdings and wealth, have become the most
numerous and important body of Europeans on the
island. The great sugar and coffee barons, the patri-
archal rulers of vast tea-gardens, the kina and tobacco
kings, really rule Netherlands India. The planters
and the native princes have, much in common, and in
the Preangers these horse-racing country gentlemen
affiliate greatly and make common social cause against
the small aristocracy of office-holders, who have been
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 119
wont to regard the native nobles and the mercantile
communities of the ports from on high.
The colonial government has never welcomed aliens
to the isles, whether those bent on business or on
pleasure. Dutch suspicion still throws as many diffi-
culties as possible in the way of a tourist, and it took
strong preventive measures against an influx of Brit-
ish or other uitlander planters when the abandonment
of the culture system made private plantations desir-
able, and the opening of the Suez Canal brought Java
so near to Europe. As a better climate, better physi-
cal conditions of every kind, and a more docile, indus-
trious native race were to be found in Java than else-
where in the Indies, there was a threatened invasion
of coffee- and tea-planters, more particularly from
India and Ceylon. The Boer of the tropics, like his
kinsman in South Africa, found effectual means to so
hamper as virtually to exclude the uitlander planters.
Land-transfers and leases were weighted with incon-
ceivable restrictions and impositions ; heavy taxes, irk-
some police and passport regulations, and nearly as
many restraints as were put upon Arabs and Chinese,
urged the British planter to go elsewhere, since he
could not have any voice in local or colonial govern-
ment in a lifetime. 1 Six years' residence is required
for naturalization, but the Briton is rarely willing to
change his allegiance it is his purpose rather to
Anglicize, naturalize, annex, or protect all outlying
countries as English.
The governor-general of the colony may revoke the
toelatiiigs-kaart of any one, Dutch as well as alien,
1 See "A Visit to Java," W. Basil Worsfold, London, 1893.
120 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
and order him out of Netherlands India ; and a resi-
dent is such an autocrat that he can order any planter
or trader out of his domain if it is shown that he
habitually maltreats or oppresses the natives, or does
anything calculated to compromise the superior stand-
ing or prestige of the white people. The Dutch are
severe upon this latter point, and the best of them
uphold a certain noblesse oblige as imperative upon all
who possess a white skin. The European military
officer is sent to Holland for court martial and punish-
ment, that the native soldiers may remain ignorant of
his degradation, and the European who descends to
drunkenness is hurried from native sight and warned.
While the conquerors hold these people with an iron
grasp, they aim to treat them with absolute justice.
Many officials and planters have married native wives,
and their children, educated in Europe, with all the
advantages of wealth and cultured surroundings, do
not encounter any race or color prejudice nor any
social barriers in their life in Java. They are Euro-
peans in the eye of the law and the community, and
enjoy " European freedom." No native man is allowed
to marry or to employ a European, not even as a tutor
or governess, and no such subversion of social order
as the employment of a European servant is to be
thought of. There is a romance, all too true, of gov-
ernmental interference, and the dismissal from his
office of regent, of the native prince who wished to
marry a European girl whose parents fully consented
to the alliance. The laws allow a European to put
away his native wife, to legally divorce her, upon the
slightest pretexts, and to abandon her and her chil-
THE "CULTUEE SYSTEM" 121
dren with little redress ; but fear of Malay revenge,
the chilling tales of slow, mysterious deaths overtak-
ing those who desert Malay wives or return to Europe
without these jealous women, act as restraining forces.
The Dutch do not pose as philanthropists, nor pre-
tend to be in Java "for the good of the natives.'
They have found the truth of the old adage after cen-
turies of obstinate experiment in the other line, and
honesty in all dealings with the native is much the
best policy and conduces most to the general prosper-
ity and abundant crops. Fear of the Malay spirit of
revenge, and the terrible series of conspiracies and
revolts of earlier times, have done much, perhaps, to
bring about this era of kindness, fair dealing, and
justice. The native is now assured his rights almost
more certainly than in some freer countries, and every
effort is made to prevent the exercise of tyrannical
authority by village chiefs, the main oppressors. He
can always appeal to justice and be heard ; the prestige
of the native aristocracy is carefully maintained ; the
Oriental ideas of personal dignity and the laws of
caste are strictly regarded, and, if from prudential and
economic reasons only, no omissions in such lines are
allowed to disturb the even flow of the florin Holland-
ward.
Already the spirit of the age is beginning to reach
Java, and it is something to make all the dead Hol-
landers turn in their graves when it can be openly
suggested that there should be a separate and inde-
pendent budget for Netherlands India, and that there
should be some form of popular representation a de-
liberative assembly of elected officials to replace the
122 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
close Council of India. In fact, suggestions for the
actual autonomy of Java have been uttered aloud.
There are ominous signs everywhere, and the govern-
ment finds its petty remnant of coffee-culture and
grocery business a more vexing and difficult venture
each year. The Samarang " Handelsblad," in com-
menting on it, says:
" The Javanese are no longer as easily led and driven
as a flock of sheep, however much we may deplore
that their character has changed in this respect. The
Javanese come now a great deal into contact with
Europeans, the education spread among them has had
an effect, and communication has been rendered easy.
They do not fear the European as they did formerly.
The time is gone when the entire population of a
village could be driven to a far-off plantation with a
stick ; the pruning-knife and the ax would quickly be
turned against the driver in our times. The Javanese
to-day does not believe that you are interested in his
welfare only ; he is well aware that he is cheated out
of a large proportion of the value of the coffee that is
harvested. Some people may think it a pity that the
time of coercion is coming to an end in Java, but that
cannot change the facts. The dark period in the his-
tory of Java is passing away, and every effort to pre-
vent reforms will call forth the enmity of the natives."
The state committee on government coffee-planta-
tions says in its latest reports:
" It cannot be denied that the intellectual status of
the Javanese at the present day is very different from
that during the time when the coffee monopoly was
introduced. The reforms which we have introduced
THE "CULTURE SYSTEM" 125
in the administration of justice, the education accord-
ing to Western methods, and the free admission of
private enterprise have all brought about a change.
If the native has not become more progressive and
more sensible, he is at least wiser in matters about
which he had best be kept in the dark, unless the gov-
ernment means to remove coercion at the expense of
the exchequer."
The Amsterdam " Handelsblad n remarks that, " as
far as the Dutch possessions are concerned, coercion
and monopoly indeed must go. People who cannot
see this betimes will find out their mistake rather
suddenly."
That sage socialist, filisee Reclus, remarks that
" once more it appears that monopoly ends in the ruin
not only of the despoilers, but of the state."
SINAGAR
CIENTISTS and lay tourists have equally
exhausted their adjectives in laudations
of Java, Miss Marianne North calling it
" one magnificent garden of luxuriance,
surpassing Brazil, Jamaica, and Sarawak
combined"; and Alfred Russel Wallace epitomizing
it after this fashion : " Taking it as a whole, and sur-
veying it from every point of view, Java is probably
the very finest and most interesting tropical island in
the world. . . . The most fertile, productive, and
populous island in the tropics." Lesser folk have
been as sweeping in their superlatives, and all agree
that, of all exiled cultivators in the far parts of the
world, the Java planter is most to be envied, leading,
as he does, the ideal tropical life, the one best worth
living, in a land where over great areas it is always
luxurious, dreamy afternoon, and in the beautiful
hill-country is always the fresh, breezy, dewy summer
forenoon of the rarest June.
The most favored and the most famous plantations
126
SINAGAR 127
are those around Buitenzorg and in the Preanger re-
gencies, which lie on the other side of Gedeh and
Salak, those two sleeping volcanoes that look down
upon their own immediate foot-hills and valleys, to
see those great, rolling tracts all cultivated like a
Haarlem tulip-bed. Above the cacao limit, tea-gar-
dens, coffee-estates, and kina-plantations cover all the
land lying between the altitudes of two thousand and
four thousand feet above the level of the sea. The
owners of these choicest bits of "the Garden of the
East " lead an existence that all other planters of grow-
ing crops, and most people who value the creature
comforts, the luxuries of life, and nature's opulence,
may envy. The climate of the hills is all that Sybarite
could wish for, a perpetual 70 by day, with light
covering required at night, the warm sun of the
tropics tempering the fresh mountain air to an eternal
mildness, in which the human animal thrives and lux-
uriates quite as do all the theobromas and caffein
plants in the ground. In the near circle of these two
great peaks there is no really dry season, despite the
southeast monsoon of the conventional summer
months. Every day in the year enjoys its shower,
swept from one mountain or the other ; and the heavy
thunder-storms at the change of the monsoons and
during the winter rainy season are the joy of the
planter's heart, shaking out myriads of young tea-
leaves by their jar and rushing winds, and freshening
the coffee-trees like a tonic. As every day has its
shower, each day has its tea-crop gathered and cured
in this favorable region ; and that profitable industry
is as continuous and unchanging as the seasons on the
128 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
Preanger hillsides, and paramount there, now that
coffee is no longer king.
The two great plantations of Sinagar and Parakan
Salak, principalities of twelve and fifteen thousand
acres respectively, that lie in the valley between Salak
and Gedeh, are the oldest and the model tea-gardens of
Java, the show-places of the Preangers. Parong Koeda
and Tjibitad, an hour beyond Buitenzorg, are practi-
cally private rail way-stations for these two great estates.
The post-road from Tjibitad to Sinagar follows the
crest of a ridge, and gives magnificent views between
its shade-trees over twenty miles of rolling country,
cultivated to the last acre. Blue vapors were tumbling
in masses about the summit of Salak the afternoon we
coursed along the avenues of shade-trees, and the low
growls of distant thunder gave promise of the regular
afternoon benefit shower to the thirsty plants and trees
that ridged every slope and level with lines of luxuriant-
green. The small ponies scampered down an avenue
of magnificent kanari-trees, with a village of basket
houses like to those of Lilliput at the base of the lofty
trunks, and, with a rush and a sudden turn around
tall shrubbery, brought up before the low white bun-
galow, where the master of Sinagar sat in his envied
ease under such vines and trees as would form a
mise en scene for an ideal, generally acceptable para-
dise. A sky-line of tall areca-palms, massed flame-
trees, and tamarinds, with vivid-leafed bougainvillea
vines pouring down from one tree-top and mantling
two or three lesser trees, filled the immediate view
from the great portico-hall, or living-room, where the
welcoming cups of afternoon tea were at once served.
SINAGAR 129
With the nearest neighbor ten miles away, and the
thousand workmen employed upon the place settled
with their families in different villages within its con-
fines, Sinagar is a little world or industrial commune
by itself, its master a patriarchal ruler, whose sway
over these gentle, childlike Javanese is as absolute as
it is kindly and just. The "master" has sat under
his Sinagar palms and gorgeous bougainvilleas for
twenty-six out of the thirty-three years spent in Java,
and his sons and daughters have grown up there, gone
to Holland to finish their studies, and, returning, have
made Sinagar a social center of this part of the
Preangers. The life is like that of an English country
house, with continental and tropical additions that
unite in a social order replete with pleasure and in-
terest. Weekly musicales are preceded by large din-
ner-parties, guests driving from twenty miles away
and coming by train ; and, with visitors in turn from
all parts of the world, the guest-book is a polyglot and
cosmopolitan record of great interest. Long wings
have been added to the original bungalow dwelling,
inclosing a spacious court, or garden, all connected by
arcades and all illuminated by electric lights. The
ladies' boudoir at the far end of the buildings opens
from a great portico, or piazza, furnished with the ham-
mocks, the ratan furniture, and the countless pillows
of a European or American summer villa, but looking
out on a marvelous flower-garden and an exquisite
landscape view. To that portico were brought the
rarest flowers and fruits for our inspection, such
lilies and orchids and strangely fragrant things!
and we cut apart cacao-pods, and those "velvety,
130 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
cream-colored peaches" inclosing the nutmeg, and
dissected clove-buds with a zeal that amused the young
hostesses, to whom these had all been childhood toys.
The telephone and telegraph connect all parts of the
estate with virtually all parts of the world ; and with
the great news of Europe clicking in from Batavia, or
"helloed" over by some friend at Buitenzorg, one could
quite forget the distance from the older centers of
civilization, and wonder that all the world did not
make Java its playground and refuge of delight, and
every man essay the role of Java planter.
While we sat at tea that first afternoon, two bril-
liant scarlet minivers flashed across the screen of
shrubbery like tongues of flame, followed by crimson-
and-black orioles ; while at the master's call a flock of
azure-aud-iris-winged pigeons came whirling through
the air and settled before us in all the sheen and beauty
of their plumage. A great wire house full of rare
tropic birds was the center of attraction for all the
wild birds of the neighborhood, and gorgeously fea-
thered and strangely voiced visitors were always on
wing among the shrubbery. In that big aviary lived
and flew and walked in beauty the crested Java pigeon,
a creature flashing with all intense prismatic blues,
and wearing on its head an aigret of living sapphires
trembling on long, pliant stems one of the most
graceful and beautiful birds in the world. Other
birds of brilliant plumage, wonderful cockatoos,
parrots, long-tailed pheasants, and beauties of un-
known name, lived as a happy family in the one great
cage, around which prowled and sat licking its whis-
kers a cat of most enterprising and sagacious mien a
SINAGAE 131
cat that had come all the way from Chicago, only to
have its lakeside appetite tormented by this Barmecide
feast of rainbow birds.
"We were led past flower-beds nodding with strange
lilies, past rose-gardens and oleander-hedges, down a
paved path that was a steep tunnel through dense
shrubbery and overarching trees, to a great white
marble tank, or swimming-pool, as large as a ball-
room; though few ball-rooms can ever have such
lavish decorations of palms, bamboos, and tree-ferns
as screen that pool around, with the purple summit
of Salak showing just above the highest plumes and
fronds a landscape study just fitted for a theatrical
drop-curtain. We might swim or splash, dive or
float, or sit on marble steps and comfortably soak at
will in that great white tank, the clear spring water
warmed by the sun to a soothing temperature for the
long, luxurious afternoon bath, and cooled sufficiently
through the night to give refreshing shock to early
morning plungers. Only the approaching storm, the
nearer rumbles of thunder, and finally the first small
raindrops induced us to leave that fairy white pool,
deep sunk in its tropic glen.
After a half -hour of soft rain, accompanied by three
sharp thunder-claps, the climate had done its perfect
work ; every tree, bird, flower, and insect rejoiced, and
all nature literally sang. The warm red earth breathed
pleasant fragrance, every tree had its aroma, and the
perfumed flowers were overpowering with fresh sweet-
ness. Then the master led the house party for a long
walk, first through the oldest tea-gardens, where
every leaf on every plant was erect, shining, as if ready
132 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
for dress-parade, and more intensely, softly green than
ever after the daily shower-bath and wind toilet. "We
strolled on through a toy village under a kanari
avenue, where all the avocations and industries of
Javanese life were on view, and the little people, smil-
ing their welcome, dropped on their heels in the per-
manent courtesy of the dodok, the squatting attitude
of humility common to all Asiatics. The servants who
had brought notes to the master, as he sat on the
porch, crouched on their heels as they offered them,
and remained in that position until dismissed; and
the villagers and wayfarers, hastily dropping on their
'haunches, maintained that lowly, reverent attitude
until we had passed an attitude and a degree of
deference not at all comfortable for an American to
contemplate, ineradicable old Javanese custom as it
may be. The tiny brown babies, exactly matching
the brown earth in tone, crawled over the warm lap
of nature, crowing and gurgling their pleasure, their
plump little bodies free from all garments, and equally
free from any danger of croups or colds from exposure
to the weather. We took a turn through the great
cement-floored fabrik with its ingenious machines all
silent for that night, and only the electric-light dyna-
mos whirling to illuminate the great settlement of out-
buildings around the residence. The stables were
another great establishment by themselves, and fifty
odd Arabian and Australian thoroughbreds, housed in
a long, open-fronted stable, were receiving their even-
ing rub and fare from a legion of grooms. Morphine,
Malaria, Quinine, Moses, and Aaron, and other cup-
winners, arched their shining necks, pawed to us, and
SINAGAR 133
nibbled their reward of tasseled rice-heads, brought
on carrying-poles from the granaries, where legions
of rice-sparrows twittered in perpetual residence. We
sat on a bank near the little race-course, or manege,
where the colts are trained, and the favorites were led
past and put through their paces and accomplishments
one by one. It was almost dusk, with the swiftness
with which day closes in the tropics, when the banteng,
or wild cow (Bos sondaicus), was trotted out a clumsy,
dun-colored creature, with a strange, musky odor, that
was brought as a calf from the wild south-coast coun-
try, and was at once mothered and protected by a
fussy little sheep, " the European goat," as the natives
call the woolly animal from abroad, that was still
guiding and driving it with all the intelligence of a
collie.
The bachelor planter partner showed us his bunga-
low, full of hunting- trophies skulls and skins of pan-
thers, tigers, and wild dogs ; tables made of rhinoceros-
hide resting on rhinoceros and elephant skulls, and
tables made of mammoth turtle-shells resting on deer-
antlers. The great prizes were the nine huge banteng
skulls, trophies of hunting-trips to the South Prean-
ger, the lone region bordering on the Indian Ocean.
There were also chandeliers of deer-antlers, and a
frieze-like wall-bordering of python-skins, strange
tusks and teeth, wings and feathers galore, and dozens
of kodak pictures as witnesses and records of the
many camps and battues of this sportsman all gath-
ered in that same wild region of big game, as much as
fifty or a hundred miles away, but referred to in the
Buitenzorg neighborhood as New York sportsmen
134 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
used to speak of the buffalo country " the south
coast" and "out West," equally synonyms for all
untamed, far-away wildness. Elephant-hunting must
be enjoyed in Sumatra, since that animal has never
existed in a wild state in Java.
With the younger people of the master's family, his
young managers and assistants, fresh from Amster-
dam schools and European universities, speaking
English and several other languages, au courant with
all the latest in the world's music, art, literature, and
drama, plantation lif e and table-talk were full of inter-
est and varied amusements. By a whir of the tele-
phone, two of the assistants were bidden ride over
from their far corner of the estate for dinner, and
afterward a quartet of voices and instruments made
the marble-floored music-room ring, while the elder
men smoked meditatively, or clicked the billiard-balls
in their deliberate, long-running tourney. The latest
books and the familiar American magazines strewed
boudoir and portico tables, and naturally there was
talk of them.
" Ah, we like so much your American magazines
the ' Century ' and the others. We admire so much
the pictures. And then all those stories of the early
Dutch colonists at Manhattan ! We like, too, your
great American novelists Savage, Howells, Gunter
( The Rise of Silas Lapham/ < Mr. Potter of Texas,'
and all those. We read them so much."
They were undoubtedly disappointed that we did
not speak Dutch, or at least read it, since all Holland-
ers know that Dutch is the language of the best fami-
lies in New York, of the cultivated classes and all
SINAGAR 136
polite society in the United States, since from the
mynheers of Manhattan came the first examples of re-
fined living in the New World. " The English colo-
nists were of all sorts, you know, like in Australia,"
said our informants at Buitenzorg and everywhere
else on the island, " and that is why you Americans
are all so proud of your Dutch descent."
XI
PLANTATION LIFE
FTER the sunrise cup of coffee at Sina-
gar such coffee as we had dreamed of
and confidently expected to enjoy, but
never did encounter anywhere else in
Java all the men of the household ap-
peared in riding-gear, and were off to inspect and
direct work in the many gardens and sections of the
estate. The ladies took us for a walk across the tea-
fields to the great landmark of a Sinagar palm, which
gave the name to the estate, and from which lookout
we could view the miles of luxuriant fields between it
and Parakan Salak's group of white houses, and also,
chief feature in every view, the splendid blue slopes
and summit of Salak clear cut against a sky of the
palest, most heavenly turquoise. It was a very dream
of a tropic morning, and a Java tea-garden seemed
more than ever an earthly paradise.
Tea-bushes covered thousands of acres around and
below us, as the ground dropped away from that
commanding ridge, their formal rows decreasing in
perspective until they shaded the landscape like a fine
136
PLANTATION LIFE 137
line-engraving. For mile after mile one could walk
in direct line between soldierly files of tea-bushes
Chinese, Assam, and hybrids. The Chinese plant, de-
scended by generations from that same wild bush dis-
covered in Assam near the Yunnan frontier by English
botanists in 1834, has, by centuries of cultivation, been
brought to grow in low, compact little mats, or mere
rosettes of bushes. It has a thick, woody stem,
gnarled and twisted like any dwarf tree, and some of
the Chinese tea-bushes at Sinagar are fifty or sixty
years of age, the pioneers and patriarchs of their kind
in Java, original seedlings and first importations from
China. The Assam or wild Himalayan tea-plant is
a tall spindling bush with large, thin leaves, and
grafted on Chinese stock produces the tall hybrid
commonly grown in the tea-gardens of Java. The
red soil of these gardens is always being raked loose
around the tea-plants, and at every dozen or twenty
feet a deep hole, or trench, is dug to admit air and
water more freely to the roots. Constant care is given
lest these little open graves, or air-holes, fill up after
heavy rains, and not a weed nor a stray blade of grass
is allowed to invade these prim, orderly gardens and
rob the soil of any of its virtues. Each particular
bush is tended and guarded as if it were the rarest
ornamental exotic, and the tea-gardens, with their
broad stripings of green upon the red ground, and
skeleton lines of palms outlining the footpaths and
the divisional limits of each garden, are like a formal
exhibit of tea-growing, an exposition model on gigan-
tic scale, a fancy farmer's experimental show-place.
In the unending summer of the hill-country there
JAVA: THE GARDES OF THE EAST
is no "tea season," no I loaf." "first pickings,"
or u fire-fly crop," as in China and Japan. Two years
after the young seedling has been transplanted to the
formal garden rows its leaves may be gathered ; and
there are new leaves every day, so that picking, cur-
ing,, firing, and packing continue the year round. The
tea-pickers, mostly women, gather the leaves only
when the plants are free from dew or rain. They
pick nith the lightest touch of thumb and finger,
beeping the leaves on a square cloth spread on the
ground, and then tying up the bundle and " toting **
it off on their heads, for all the world like the
colored aunties of our southern states. The bright
colors of their Jackets and sarongs, and of their bun-
dles, that look fike exaggerated bandana turbans, give
gay and picturesque relief to the green-striped gar-
dens, whose exact lines converge in long, monotonous
perspective whichever way one looks. There is great
fascination in watching these bobbing figures among
the bushes gradually converge to single lines, and the
procession of lank, slender sarongs file through the
gardens, down the avenues of palm and tamarind, to
the f abrik.
The long, red-tiled buildings of the fabrik, in their
order and speckless neatness, with the array of ingeni-
ous and intelligent machines, seem yet more like part
of an exposition exhibit a small machinery hall of
some great international industrial aggregation. The
picking and the processes of converting the tea-leaves
into the green, oolong, and black teas of commerce,
and of packing them into large and small, air-tight,
leaded packages for export, occupy, at the most, but
PLANTATION LIFE 141
two days in ordinary working seasons. Less green
tea is sold each year, and soon the entire Java crop of
tea will be cured to the half black, or oolong, and the
standard black tea, which alone can find sale in Eng-
land or in Russia, the largest and most critical tea-
consuming countries of Europe. An especially fine
black tea is made at these Preanger tea-fabriks, and
for this the green leaves are first exposed to the sun
in wicker trays for wilting, then rolled by machinery
to free the juices in the leaf-cells, and fermented in
heaps for four or eight hours, until by their turning
a dark reddish brown there is evidence that the rank
theine, the active principle or stimulating alkaloid in the
leaves, has been oxidized, and so modified into some-
thing less injurious to human nerves and the digestive
system. The bruised red leaves are dried in a machine
where hot blasts and revolving fans make quick,
clean work of the "firing," that perspiring coolies do
by hand over charcoal pans in China and Japan. All
the sifting, sorting, packing, and labeling, the pressing
of the broken leaves and dust into bricks, go on as
neatly, swiftly, and surely ; and the cases are hauled
away to the railway-station and shipped from Batavia
to their special markets. The leaves to be made into
green teas are given a first toasting, almost as they
come in from the bushes, are rolled on great trays
ranged on tables in an open court, and fired again,
and more thoroughly, before packing. As the taste
of the world's tea-drinkers becomes more cultivated,
green tea will lose favor, and the Java tea-fabriks will
be employed in directly competing with the factories
of India and Ceylon, from whose culture experiments
142 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
they have profited, and whose ingenious machines they
have so generally adopted for curing and preparing
black teas. Often the profuse "flushing" of the tea-
bushes forces the f abrik to run all night to dispose of
the quantity of fresh leaves ; and one gets an idea of
the world's increasing consumption of tea in this
quarter of a century since Java, India, and Ceylon
entered into competition in the tea-trade with China
and Japan. Parakan Salak teas are advertised and
sold in Shanghai and Yokohama, and the appeal to
those great tea-marts is significant of a progressive
spirit in Java trade, that is matched by the threat
that petroleum from Java's oil-wells will soon compete
seriously with American and Russian oil.
The coffee harvest is a fixed event in the plantation's
calendar, and occurs regularly in April and May, at
the close of the rainy season. Now that the finer
Arabian shrub has been so largely replaced by the
hardy Liberian tree, coffee-culture is a little less ardu-
ous than before. The berries are brought to the
mill, husked by machinery, washed, dried on concrete
platforms in the sun, sacked, and shipped to Batavia,
and nothing more is heard of that crop until the next
spring comes around. The trees are carefully tended
and watched, of course, throughout the year, and
scrutinized closely for any sign of scale or worm,
bug or blight. The glowing red volcanic soil is always
being weeded and raked and loosened, the trees
trimmed, young plants from the great nursery of seed-
lings set out in place of the old trees, and the coffee
area extended annually by clearings.
The Sundanese who live in their ornamental little
PLANTATION LIFE 143
fancy baskets of houses beneath Sinagar's tall tama-
rinds and kanari-trees are much to be envied by their
people. The great estate is a world of its own, an
agricultural Arcadia, where life goes on so happily
that it is most appropriate that they should have
presented model Javanese village life at the Chicago
Exposition in 1893. These little Sinagar villagers
have their frequent passers on one side or the other
of the demesne by turn, with theater and wayang-
wayang, or puppet-shows, lasting far into the night.
Professional raconteurs thrill them with classic tales
of their glorious past, while musicians make sweet,
sad melodies to rise from gamelan, or gambang Itayu,
from fiddle, drum, bowls, bells, and the sonorous
alang-alang& rude instrument of most ancient origin,
made of five or eight graduated bamboo tubes, cut
like organ-pipes, and hung loosely in a frame, which,
shaken by a master hand, or swinging in the breeze
from some tree-branch, produces the strangest, most
weird and fascinating melodies in all the East.
The play of village life about Sinagar is so prettily
picturesque, so well presented and carried out, that it
seems only a theatrical representation a Petit Tria-
non sort of affair at the least. The smiling little
women, who rub and toss tea-leaves over the wilting-
trays at the fabrik, seem only to be playing with the
loose leaves like a larger sort of intelligent, careful
children. In the same way the plucking in the tea-
gardens and the march to the fabrik in long, single
file, with bundles balanced on their heads, are mere
kindergarten exercises to develop the muscles of the
back and secure an erect and graceful carriage the
144 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
secret, perhaps, of their splendid bearing, although all
Javanese walk as kings and queens are supposed to
walk, as the result of not being hampered by useless
garments, and thus having control of every member
and muscle of the body from earliest years. The
same supple ease and grace distinguish their manners
too, and one young planter said : " After living a few
years among these gentle, graceful, winning natives,
you cannot know how Europe jarred upon me. All
the hard, sad, scowling faces and the harsh, angry
voices oppressed me and made me so homesick for
Java that I was really glad to turn away from it. I
never before was so aware of the poverty, misery, dis-
tress, and vice of Europe."
Visitors to the Paris Exposition of 1889 and the
Chicago Exposition of 1893 had a typical model Java-
nese village set before them, and all were unstinted
in their praises of the mise en scfaie and the human
features of the exhibit. The Chicago village was
peopled by families from the Sinagar and Parakan
Salak estates, and, as a purely ethnological exhibit,
was the one success of that kind among the many
trifling side-shows that detracted from the character
of the Midway Plaisance. The trip to America was
the prize and reward allotted to the most industrious
and deserving villagers, who with their properties and
industrial accessories filled two sailing-ships from
Batavia to Hong Kong, whence they took steamer to
San Francisco and railway across the continent to
Chicago. There was a large outlay required at the
start, and the best workmen were away from the
estates for a year j and between a dishonest shipping-
PLANTATION LIFE 145
agent at Batavia and the heavy commissions upon all
receipts levied by the exposition's managers at Chi-
cago, and the free admissions which those same gener-
ous American managers bestowed so widely, the village
did not nearly pay its current expenses, and the ven-
ture stands as an entire loss, or a gift to the American
people from the two public-spirited Preanger planters
who paid for it.
The good little Javanese who went to Chicago re-
turned from their great outing as simple and unspoiled
as before, settled down contentedly under their kanari-
trees, and resumed their routine life in field and fabrik.
And what tales they had to tell to open-mouthed vil-
lagers and neighbors, who sat around the traveled
ones, to the neglect of wayang-wayang and provincial
professional story-tellers, listening to their accounts
of the very remarkable things on that other side of
the world ! For the first time ever in their lives these
Javanese saw white men at work in the fields, drudg-
ing in city streets, and doing every kind of menial,
coolie labor. They saw a few black men, blacker than
Moormen, but they were great personages, wearing
fine uniforms and having command of the railway-
trains, and riding in the most magnificently gilded
cars individuals treated always with great respect,
who came to the Midway Plaisance in rich clothing,
with gold watch-chains, jeweled scarf-pins, and much
loose money in their pockets a superior and a
moneyed, if not the ruling class, in that topsy-turvy
country, America.
A striped cat of the common roof-and-fence variety
was given to one of the village managers, and made
146 JAVA: THE GABDEN OF THE EAST
the journey back to Java with the party. Everything
else in Chicago had been paid for so dearly that this
tabby could be fairly said to represent the entire
profit and result of the Chicago village venture. The
cat was named " Chicago," and soon became the pet of
the whole plantation, roaming freely everywhere, and
feasting on small rice-mice and tropical birds. " Chi-
cago " came to us on our arrival, rubbed in friendly
fashion against one and another American knee, and
purred loudly, as if recognizing us for compatriots.
The morning we left Sinagar there was hubbub and
running to and fro in the great quadrangle of the
residence. "Chicago," while walking the well-curb
with gesticulating tail, had lost her balance, and with
frightful cries and a splash ended her existence by
unpleasant coincidence, just as we were making our
farewells to our kindly host. " In despair at being
unable to return to America with you," said one
mourner, " she has thrown herself in the well. It is
plainly suicide." And this domestic tragedy saddened
our leave-taking from those charming people, the fine
flavor of whose hospitality, courtesy and kindliness
took the edge from many of our disagreeable expe-
riences in Java, and gave us pleasant memories with
which to offset those of the other kind.
XII
ACROSS THE PREANGER REGENCIES
NE may ride all day by train from Bui-
tenzorg before reaching the limits of
the Preanger regencies, where native
princes still hold pretended sway; and
it is a continuous landscape feast from
the sunrise start to the sunset halt of the through-
train. The railway line, after curving around the
shoulder of Salak, runs through the vaunted hill-coun-
try, the region of the great tea, coffee, and kina estates ;
and from Soekaboemi to Bandong, the two great
headquarters for planters, one perceives that the
planter is paramount, the cultivator is king. The
new cultures have not dispossessed the old, however,
and the sawas, or flooded rice-fields, break the level of
plain and valley floor with their myriad waving lines
of division, and climb by terraces to the very hilltops
a system of cultivation and irrigation as old as the
human race, and followed in these same valleys by
these same Sundanese since the beginning of their
recorded time. To them rice is a holy grain, the off-
spring of a god, and the gods' best gift to man ; a
147
148 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
grain both cultivated and worshiped. It argues for
the industry of a tropical race that they should grow
this troublesome grain at all, the grain that demands
more back-breaking toil and constant attention from
planting to harvest-time than any other grain which
grows. It would seem discouraging to rice-cultiva-
tion, too, when in old times the natives were taxed ac-
cording to the area of their rice-lands only, and
mulcted of a fifth of their rice when it was harvested
all in this happy land, where they might sit under
the breadfruit- and banana-trees and doze at their
ease, while those kindly fruits dropped in their laps.
These picturesque rice-fields have won for Java the
name of " the granary of the East," and enabled it to
export that grain in quantities, besides supporting its
own great population, one of the densest in the world,
and averaging four hundred and fifty inhabitants to
each square mile. No fertilizer of any kind is applied
to these irrigated rice-fields, save to burn over and
plow under the rich stubble, after the padi, or ripe
ears of grain, have been cut singly with a knife and
borne away in miniature sheaves strung on carrying-
poles across the peasants' shoulders.
Beyond the region of the great plantations, where
every hillside is cleared and planted up to the kina limit,
and only the summits and steepest slopes are left to
primeval jungle, there succeed great stretches of wild
country, where remarkable engineering feats were re-
quired of the railway-builders. With two heavy en-
gines the train .climbs to Tjandjoer station, sixteen
hundred feet above the sea ; and there, if one has tele-
graphed the order ahead, he may lunch at ease in his
ACROSS THE PREANGEB REGENCIES 149
compartment as the train goes on. He may draw from
the three-storied lunch-basket handed in either a sub-
stantial riz tavel, consisting of a little of everything
heaped upon a day's ration of boiled rice, or a " tiffin,"
whose pitoe de resistance is a huge bifstek mit ard appelen,
that would satisfy the cravings of any three dragoons.
Either feast is followed by bread or bananas, with a
generous section of a cheese, with mangosteens or
other fruits, and one feels that he has surely reached
the land of plenty and solid, solid comforts, where
fate cannot harm him when all this may be handed
in to fleeting tourists at a florin and a half apiece.
After this station of abundant rations, all signs of
cultivation and occupancy disappear, and the station
buildings and the endless lantana-hedges along the
railway-track are the only signs of human habitation
or energy in the wilderness of hills covered with alang-
alang or bamboo-grass, and the coarse glagah reeds
which cattle will not touch. The banteng, the one-
horned rhinoceros, and the tigers that used to roam
these moors, fled when the shriek of the locomotive
was heard in the canons, and the sportsmen have to
seek such big game in the jungles and grass-lands of
the south coast. The streams that come cascading
down from all these green heights have carved out
some beautiful scenery, and the Tjitaroem River,
foaming in sight for a while, disappears, runs through
a mountain by a natural tunnel, and reappears in
a deep gorge, of which one has an all-too-exciting
view as the train crosses on a spidery viaduct high
in air.
A great, fertile green plain surrounds the native
150 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
capital of Bandong, and on its confines rises the Tang-
koeban-Praoe, the Ararat of the natives, who see in
its square summit-lines the reversed praoe in which
their ancestors survived the flood, and, turning their
boat over carefully to dry, descended, as the waters
fell, to people the Malay universe. One may ascend
the butte-like peak, passing up first through a belt of
old coffee-plantations, whose product ranked first in
the good old days before the blight, and by the villa
and experimental grounds of Herr Junghuhn, the
botanist, who first succeeded with the kina-culture
and introduced so many other economic plants and
trees to the island. At Lembang, ten miles from
Bandong, the mountain-climber gives up his pony or
carriage, and is carried in a djoelie, or sedan-chair,
through a magnificent jungle to the edge of the open
crater, where bubbling sulphur-pools in an ashy floor,
and a wide view over the fertile valley, are sufficient
reward for all exertion on the climber's part.
Bandong itself, as the capital of the Preanger re-
gencies and the home of the native regent and the
Dutch resident, is a place of great importance to both
races. The regent, as a mere puppet and pensioner of
the colonial government, supports the shadow of his
old state and splendor in a large ddlem, or palace, in
the heart of the town. He has also a suburban villa
in European style, to which are attached large racing-
stables, and this progressive regent is a regular cup-
winner at the Buitenzorg and Bandong races at every
summer, or dry-season, meet, when the "good mon-
soon " inspires all the islanders to their greatest social
exertions.
ACROSS THE PREANGER REGENCIES 151
As one gets farther into the center of the island,
native life becomes more picturesque, and every sta-
tion platform offers one more diverting study. There
is more color in costume, and the wayside and plat-
form groups are kaleidoscopic with their gay sarongs
and kerchiefs. More men are seen wearing the mili-
tary jacket of rank with the native sarong, and the
boat-handled kris thrust in the belt at the back. The
little children, who ride astride of their mothers' hips
and cling and cuddle so confidingly in the slandang's
folds, seem of finer mold, and their deep, dark Hindu
eyes tell of a different strain in the Malay blood than
we had seen on the coast these the Javanese, as dis-
tinguished from the Sundanese. The clumsy buffalo,
or water-ox, is everywhere, plowing the fields, wallow-
ing in mud, or browsing the stubble patch after the
gleaners, always with a patient, statuesque, nude little
brown boy on his blue-gray back, the fine, polished
skins of these small herders glowing in the sun as if
they were inanimate bronze figurines.
The train climbs very slowly from Bandong to
Kalaidon Pass, and, after toiling with double engines
up the steep grades, it rests at a level, and there bursts
upon one the view of the plain of Leles the -fairest
of all tropical landscapes, a vision of an ideal prom-
ised land, and such a dream of beauty that even the
leaden blue clouds of a rainy afternoon could not
dim its surpassing loveliness. The railway follows a
long shelf hewn high on the mountain wall, that en-
circles an oval plain set with two conical mountains
that rise more than two thousand feet above the level
of this plain of Leles, itself two thousand feet above
152 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the level of the sea. The finely wrought surface of
the plain networked with the living green dikes and
terraces of rice-fields, which, flooded, gleam and glit-
ter in the fitful sun-rays, or, sown and harvested,
glow with a mosaic of green and gold is one ex-
quisite symphony in color, an arrangement in greens
that holds one breathless with delight. All the golden
greens of rice seed-beds, the intense, vivid greens of
young rice transplanted, the opaque and darker greens
of advanced crops, and the rich tones of stubble are
relieved by the clumps and masses of palms and fine-
leaved trees, which, like islands or mere ornamental
bits of shrubbery, are disposed with the most admirable
effect to be attained by landscape art. Each of these
tufted clumps of trees, foregrounded with broad, trans-
lucent banana-leaves, declares the presence of toy vil-
lages, where the tillers of the plain, the landscape-
farmers, and the artist-artisans have woven and set
up their pretty basketry homes. A masterpiece, a
central ornament or jewel, to which the valley is but
the fretted and appropriate setting, a very altar of
agriculture, a colossal symbol and emblem of abun-
dance, is the conical Goenong-Kalaidon, a mountain
which rises three thousand feet from the level of the
plain, and is terraced all the way from base to summit
with narrow ribbons of rice-fields the whole moun-
tain mass etched with myriad fine green lines of ver-
dure, wrinkled around and around with the curving
parapets and tiny terraces that retain the flooded
hanging gardens. Beyond this amazing piece of agri-
cultural sculpture stands Goenong-Haroeman, a more
perfect pyramid, a still rarer trophy of the landscape-
ACROSS THE PEEANGER REGENCIES 153
farmer's art, even more finely carved in the living
green lines of ancient terrace-culture. The rush of
the thousand rills, dropping from one tiny terrace to
another, fills the air with a peculiar singing undertone,
an eerie accompaniment that adds the last magic touch
to the fascination of the plain of Leles. Hardly the
miles of sculptured bas-reliefs on Boro Boeder and
Brambanam temple walls make them any more im-
pressive as monuments and records of human toil
than these great green pyramids of Kalaidon and
Haroeman, on which human labor has been lavished
for all the seasons of uncounted generations the
ascending lines, the successive steps of the great green
staircases of rice-terraces, recording ages of toil as
plainly as the rings within a tree-trunk declare its
successive years of growth.
The railway, dipping nearly to the level of the plain
as it describes a great curve around the gloriously
green Kalaidon, again ascends along the side of the
mountain wall, loops itself around the Haroeman
pyramid, and halts at the station of Leles. From that
point one has a backward view over the enchanting
picture (a line of white bridges and culverts marking
the path of the railway along the mountain-side) and
he looks directly across at the soft green slopes of
Haroeman, which faces him that vast green dome or
pyramid, which is a little world in itself, with un-
counted villages nestling under clumps of palm-trees
that break the lines of singing terraces, and those
peasants of the hanging gardens looking down upon
the most pleasing prospect, the most beautiful land-
scape in all Java, which should be world-famous, and
154 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
whose charm it is as impossible to exaggerate as to
describe.
The sesquipedalian names of the railway-stations
throughout the Preanger regencies, are something to
fill a traveler's mind between halts, and almost explain
why the locomotives not only toot and whistle nearly
all the time they are in motion, but stand on the
track before station sign-boards and shriek for minutes
at a time, like machines demented. Eadjamendala is
an easy arrangement in station names for the early
hours of the trip, and all that family of names Tjit-
joeroek, Tjibeber, Tjirandjang, Tjipenjeum, Tjitjalen-
ka, and also Tagoogapoe will slip from the tongue
after a few trials ; but when one strains his eyes to-
ward the limits of the plain of Leles, he may almost
see the houses of Baloeboer-Baloeboer-Limbangan.
People actually live there and pay taxes, and it is my
one regret that I did not leave the train, drive over,
and have some letters postmarked with that astonish-
ing aggregation of sound-symbols. Only actual sight,
too, could altogether convince one, that one small
village of metal-workers could really support so much
nomenclature together with any amount of profitable
trade. In the intervals of practising the pronuncia-
tion of that particular geographic name, the artisans
of Baloeboer-Baloeboer-Limbangan do hammer out
serviceable gongs, bowls, and household utensils of
brass and copper. In earlier times Baloeboer-Baloe-
boer-Limbangan was the Toledo of the isles, and the
kris-blades forged there had finer edge than those
from any other place in the archipelago. In these
railroad and tramp-steamer days of universal, whole-
ACROSS THE PEEANGER REGENCIES 155
sale trade rivalry, the blade of the noble kris more
often comes from abroad, and the chilled edges from
Birmingham or those made in Germany have dis-
placed the blades made at the edge of the plain of
Leles, and the glory of Baloeboer-Baloeboer-Limban-
gan has departed.
xm
"TO TISSAK MALAYA ! w
IHE sun fell at six o'clock, and in the
. ^| fast-gathering twilight of the tropics the
Jl train shrieked past Tjihondje and Rad-
"" japolah, stopped but a minute at Indihi-
ang, and panted into Tissak Malaya like
an affrighted creature, to put up for the night. We
were whirled through avenues of pitch-darkness, with
illuminated porticos gleaming through splendid shrub-
beries, to the passagrahan, or government rest-house.
At first we thought the Parthenon had been restored
and whitened, and leased to some colonial landlord,
or at least that we had come to the deserted summer
palace of some great sovereign, so lofty were the col-
umns, so enormous the shining white portico before
which the sadoes halted. Quite feudal and noble we
felt ourselves, too, when the sadoe-drivers crouched
on their heels in that abject position of the dodok, or
squatting obeisance, and when they raised the coins
to their foreheads in a reverent simbah, or worshipful
thanksgiving. Truly we were reaching the heart of a
strange country, and experiences were thickening !
156
"TO TISSAK MALAYA!" 157
The passagrahan was an object for sight-seers by
itself. The great open space under the portico was
the usual living-room, with huge tables, reading-lamps,
and lounging- and arm-chairs fitted for a giant's ease.
A grand hallway running straight through the center
of the building held the scattered and massive furni-
ture of a banquet-hall. Bedrooms with latticed doors
opened from either side of this noble hall, the least
of these chambers twenty feet square, with ceilings
twenty feet high ; while the beds, measuring seven by
nine feet, suggested Brobdingnagian nightmares to
match.
At nine o'clock we followed a silent, beckoning
Malay with a lantern off into pitch-darkness, down a
deserted street, around a hedge, to a smaller white
portico with lamps and rocking-chairs and center-
tables. We were dazed as we came suddenly into the
glare of lights ; and the other guests at the table d'hote
of the little hotel viewed us as they would have viewed
sudden arrivals by balloon.
" From America ! To Tissak Malaya ! " they all
exclaimed, and we almost apologized for having come
so far. There was an amiable and charming young
Dutch woman in the company, who, speaking English,
benefited all her compatriots with the details of our
present itinerary, our past lives and mutual relation-
ships, after each little conversational turn she took
with us.
Having commanded a sunrise breakfast for the next
morning, we followed the lantern and the silent Malay
back through blackness to our illuminated Parthenon
of a passagrahan, and had entomological excitement
158 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and entertainment for an hour, while all the strange
flying things filled the air and strewed the table be-
neath the lamps. The usual lizards chuck-chucked
and called for "Becky" in the shadows, and thin
wraiths of lizards ran over the great columns and
walls ; but a house-front that was not decorated with
lizards would be the strangest night sight in Java.
When we had laid ourselves out on the state cata-
falques in the great bedrooms, stealthy whisperings
and rustlings of palm-trees beyond the latticed windows,
other strange sounds, and startled bird-calls through-
out the night suggested the great snakes we had ex-
pected to encounter daily and nightly in Java. The
tiny light floating in a tumbler of cocoanut-oil threw
weird shadows over the walls, and within the bed-cur-
tains one had space to dance a quadrille or arrange a
whole set of ordinary bedroom furniture, while the
open construction of the upper partition- walls let one
converse at will with the occupant of the farthest
apartment.
In the first clear light of the dewy morning we
saw that a beautiful garden surrounded the pas-
sagrahan, and our vast Parthenon of the darkness did
not seem so colossal when seen in the shadow of the
magnificent kanari-trees that shaded the street before
it. While lost in admiration of this splendid aisle of
shade-trees, I saw a solitary pedestrian coming down
the green avenue, just the pygmy touch of human life
needed to complete the picture and give one measure
for the soaring tree-trunks and vast canopy of leaves.
The slender figure, advancing with the splendid, slow
stride of these people, was visible now in a glorifying
"TO TISSAK MALAYA!" 161
shaft of earliest, level yellow sunlight, and then almost
invisible against the tall hibiscus-hedges or the green
shadows of tree-trunks. A nearer flash of sunlight
gilded a tray he was carrying a tray furnished with
three small cups of coffee and a plate with six thin
wafers of toast, which, well cooled by the long prome-
nade in the fresh air of the morning, constituted the
breakfast of three able-bodied travelers, who were to
pass the rest of the day on the train, with only oppor-
tunity for a sandwich lunch before the evening's nine-
o'clock dinner. We sent back those thimble cups, and
they were refilled with the same lukewarm, indefinite,
muddy gray fluid ; but finally, by personal exertions
and a hasty trip down the magnificent avenue, some
solid additions were secured to the usual scant, skele-
ton, impressionist breakfast of the country some
marmalade, some eggs, and a bit of the cold blue
meat of the useful buffalo. Everywhere in Java
one's first, best instincts and finer feelings of the day
are hurt and the appetite affronted by just such early
morning incidents; protest and prevision are alike
useless, and travel on the island is beset with unneces-
sary hardships.
The semi- weekly passer of Tissak Malaya was then
beginning in a park, or open market-place, in front
of the passagrahan, and picturesque processions of
venders and buyers came straggling down the arched
avenues, and filled the shady quadrangle with a holi-
day hum. There were double panoramas and stages
of living pictures along each path in the passer en-
campment, that grew like magic; and the glowing
colors of the fruit-, the flower-, and the pepper-markets,
162 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the bright sarongs and turbans, and, above all, the
cheerful chatter, were quite inspiring. We bought
everywhere fruits, and a queer three-story basket to
hold them; yards of jasmine garlands, bunches of
roses, and great double handfuls of the green, linden-
ish ylang-ylang flowers, pinned with a thorn in a
plantain-leaf cornucopia this last lot of perpetual
fragrance for three gulden cents only. Odd bottles
of home-made attars of rose and jasmine were sold as
cheaply, and gums in straw cases, ready for burning.
There was a dry-goods district, where booths were piled
high and hung round with Cheribon and other gay
sarongs of Middle Java, slandangs and kerchiefs of
strongest colors and intricate borderings. We were
distracted with the wide choice offered, but could not
rouse the phlegmatic dealers to any eagerness or ex-
citement in bargaining ; the whole overcharge, reduc-
tions, and slow-descending fall in prices proceeding,
on the part of the dealers, with a well-assumed indiffer-
ence, an uninterrupted betel-chewing, a bored and
lethargic manner that wore one sadly. A long row
of country tailors, thirty or forty of them in a line,
sat like so many sparrows around the edges of the
passer in the comforting shade of the kanari-trees.
All were spectacled like owls, and sat cross-legged be-
fore their little American sewing-machines. The cus-
tomers brought their cloth, the tailors measured them
with the eye, and in no time at all the machines were
humming up and down the seams of the jackets, that
needed no fitting nor trying on, and were made while
the candidates sat and smoked and chatted with the
sartorial artists. From the chatter-chatter along this
"TO TISSAK MALAYA!" 163
tailors' row one might conclude that what the barbers
are to Seville, as purveyors of news, the tailors are to
Tissak Malaya.
All too soon we had to tear ourselves away from
the fascinating passer, and, loaded down with our
mixed marketing, fly by sadoe to the station at the
far end of town. We saw then the magnificent aisle
of kanari-trees we had passed through in darkness the
night before an avenue more fitted for an emperor's
triumphal procession than for our queer little two-
wheeled carts, drawn each by a mite of a pony,
that was all but lifted from the ground by the shafts
when I stepped on the after foot-board untimely, the
driver dodoking like a hop-toad on the ground in re-
spectful humility. The natives were streaming down
the great alUe and in from all the side streets and by-
paths toward the passer, and we half wished we might
miss the train when we realized what a spectacle that
Tissak Malaya passer was about to be.
In Middle Java, where the railway descends from
the Preanger hills to the terra ingrata's succession of
jungle and swamp at the coast-level, one experiences
the same dull, heavy, sickening, depressing heat as in
Batavia. After the clear, fresh, mildly cool air, the
eternal southern-California climate of the hills, this
sweltering atmosphere gave full suggestion of the
tropics' deadly perils. Hour after hour the train fol-
lowed a raised embankment across an endless swamp,
the brilliantly flowered lantana-hedges still accompany-
ing the tracks, and a dense forest wall, tangled and
matted together with ratans and other creepers, shut-
ting off the view on either side. The malaria and the
164 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
deadly fever-germs that haunt this region were almost
visible, so dense was the air. While this section of
the railway was building, even the native workmen
were carried back each day to sleep in camps in safer
neighborhoods. No white man could work, nor re-
main there directing work, and Chinese, who are
germ-, bacillus-, microbe-, and miasma-proof in every
climate, superintended work between the flying visits
of European engineers. Beside these tangled and
noisome swamps there are quicksand regions, into
which car-loads of solid materials were dumped for
week after week, and where the track is still always
being raised and rebuilt, and the floating earth-crust
trembles with each passing train.
As we coursed along past those miles of rankest
vegetation, not a waft of perfume reached us, nor did
any mass of color or cloak of blossoms delight the eye
a green monotony of uninteresting vegetation, save
for the ratan-palms which decorated every tree with
their beautiful pinnate leaves. There was one luxu-
riant vine, half covering a tall tree, which bore clusters
of large white blossoms and pendent red berries ; but
that was the one ideal vine of the imagined tropical
jungle's mad riot of stranger and more gorgeous things
than bougainvillea. No clouds, cascades, or festoons
of gorgeous flowers, no waves of overpowering per-
fume, no masses of orchids, rewarded eager scrutiny ;
no birds of brilliant plumage flashed across the jungle's
front ; no splendidly striped tigers licked their chops
and snarled in the jungle's shade; no rhinoceros
snorted at the iron horse ; and not a serpent raised a
hissing head, slid away through dank grass, or looped
"TO TISSAK MALAYA!" 165
itself from tree-top to tree-top in proper tropical fash-
ion, as we steamed across the deadly, uninhabitable
terra ingrata. Nor had even the first construction
gangs of railway-builders met with any such sensa-
tional 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 loco-
motive 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 zoological 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 morn-
ing 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
166 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
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' fond-
est 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.
XIV
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR
jHE fact is not generally appreciated that
there are ruins of Buddhist and Brah-
manic temples in Middle Java surpass-
ing in extent and magnificence anything
to be seen in Egypt or India. There,
in the heart of the steaming tropics, in that summer
land of the world below the equator, on an island
where volcanoes cluster more thickly and vegetation
is richer than in any other region of the globe, where
earthquakes continually rock and shatter, and where
deluges descend during the rainy half of the year, re-
mains nearly intact the temple of Boro Boeder, cover-
ing almost the same area as the Great Pyramid of Gizeh.
It is ornamented with hundreds of life-size statues and
miles of bas-reliefs presenting the highest examples of
Greco-Buddhist art a sculptured record of all the
arts and industries, the culture and civilization, of the
golden age of Java, of the life of the seventh, eighth,
and ninth centuries in all the farther East a record
that is not written in hieroglyphs, but in plainest pic-
tures carved by sculptor's chisel. That solid pyramidal
167
168 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
temple, rising in magnificent sculptured terraces, that
was built without mortar or cement, without column
or pillar or arch, is one of the surviving wonders of
the world. On the spot it seems a veritable miracle.
It is one of the romances of Buddhism that this
splendid monument of human industry, abandoned
by its worshipers as one cult succeeded another, and
forgotten after the Mohammedan conquest imposed
yet another creed upon the people, should have disap-
peared completely, hidden in the tangle of tropical
vegetation, a formless, nameless, unsuspected mound
in the heart of a jungle, lost in every way, with no
part in the life of the land, finally to be uncovered to
the sight of the nineteenth century. When Sir Stam-
ford Raffles came as British governor of Java in 1811,
the Dutch had possessed the island for two centuries,
but in their greed for gulden had paid no heed to the
people, and knew nothing of that earlier time before
the conquest when the island was all one empire, the
arts and literature flourished, and, inspired by Hindu
influence, Javanese civilization reached its highest
estate ; nor did the Hollander allow any alien investi-
gators to peer about this profitable plantation. Sir
Stamford Raffles, in his five years of control, did a
century's work. He explored, excavated, and surveyed
the rained temples, and searching the voluminous
archives of the native princes, drew from the mass of
romantic legends and poetic records the first " History
of Java." His officers copied and deciphered inscrip-
tions, and gradually worked out all the history of the
great ruins, and determined the date of their erection
at the beginning of the seventh century.
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 169
At this time Sir Stamford wrote : " The interior of
Java contains temples that, as works of labor and art,
dwarf to nothing all our wonder and admiration at the
pyramids of Egypt." Then Alfred Russel Wallace
said : " The number and beauty of the architectural re-
mains in Java . . . far surpass those of Central Amer-
ica, and perhaps even those of India." And of Boro
Boeder he wrote : " The amount of human labor and
skill expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks
into insignificance when compared with that required
to complete this sculptured hill-temple in the interior
of Java." Herr Brumund called Boro Boeder " the
most remarkable and magnificent monument Bud-
dhism has ever erected " ; and Fergusson, in his " His-
tory of Indian and Eastern Architecture," finds in that
edifice the highest development of Buddhist art, an
epitome of all its arts and ritual, and the culmination
of the architectural style which, originating at Barhut
a thousand years before, had begun to decay in India
at the time the colonists were erecting this masterpiece
of the ages in the heart of Java.
There is yet no Baedeker, or Murray, or local red
book to lead one to and about the temples and present
every dry detail of fact. The references to the ruins
in books of travel and general literature are vague or
cautious generalities, absurd misstatements, or guesses.
In the great libraries of the world's capitals the ar-
chaeologists' reports are rare, and on the island only
Dutch editions are available. Fergusson is one's only
portable guide and aid to understanding ; but as he
never visited the stupendous ruin, his is but a formal
record of the main facts. Dutch scientists criticize
170 JAVA: THE GAKDEN OF THE EAST
Sir Stamford Baffles's work and all that Von Hum-
boldt and Lassen deduced from it concerning Javanese
religion and mythology. They entirely put aside all
native histories and traditions, searching and accept-
ing only Chinese and Arabic works, and making a
close study of ancient inscriptions, upon the rendering
of which few of the Dutch savants agree.
We had applied for new toelatings-kaarten, or ad-
mission tickets, to the interior of the island; and as
they had not arrived by the afternoon before we in-
tended leaving Buitenzorg, we drove to the assistant
resident's to inquire. " You shall have them this even-
ing," said that gracious and courtly official, standing
beside the huge carriage ; " but as it is only the merest
matter of form, go right along in the morning, ladies,
anyhow, and I shall send the papers after you by post.
To Tissak Malaya ? No f Well, then, to Djokjakarta."
Upon that advice we proceeded on our journey,
crossed the Preangers, saw the plain of Leles, and
made our brief visit to Tissak Malaya. We rode
for a long, hot day across the swamps and low-lying
jungles of the terra ingrata of Middle Java, and just
before sunset we reached Djokjakarta, a provin-
cial capital, where the native sultan resides in great
state, but poor imitation of independent rulership.
We had tea served us under the great portico of the
Hotel Toegoe, our every movement followed by the
uncivilized piazza stare of some Dutch residents that
gaze of the summer hotel that has no geographic or
racial limit, which even occurs on the American lit-
toral, and in Java has a fixedness born of stolid Dutch
ancestry, and an intensity due to the tropical fervor
PRISONERS OP STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 171
of the thermometer, that put it far beyond all other
species of unwinking scrutiny. The bovine, ruminant
gaze of those stout women, continued and continued
past all provincial-colonial curiosity as to the cut and
stuff of our gowns, drove us to the garden paths, al-
ready twinkling with fireflies. The landlord joined
us there, and strolled with us out to the street and
along a line of torch-lighted booths and shops, where
native products and native life were most picturesquely
presented. Our landlord made himself very agreeable
in explaining it all, walked on as far as the gates of
the sultan's palace, plying us with the most point-
blank personal questions, our whence, whither, why,
for how long, etc. ; but we did not mind that in a
land of stares and interrogative English. He showed
us the carriage we could have for the next day's
twenty-five-mile drive to Boro Boeder "if you go,"
with quite unnecessary emphasis on the phrase of
doubt. He finally brought us back to the portico,
disappeared for a time, and returning, said : " Ladies,
the assistant resident wishes to meet you. Will you
come this way ? " And the courteous one conducted
us through lofty halls and porticos to his own half-
office parlor, all of us pleased at this unexpected atten-
tion from the provincial official.
A tall, grim, severe man in the dark cloth clothes of
ceremony, with uniform buttons, waved a semi-mili-
tary cap, and said curtly : " Ladies, it is my duty to in-
form you that you have no permission to visit Djokja."
It took some repetitions for us to get the whole sen-
sation of the heavens suddenly falling on us, to learn
that a telegram had come from official headquarters
172 JAVA: THE GABDEN OF THE EAST
at Buitenzorg to warn him that three American ladies
would arrive that afternoon, without passports, to
visit Djokja.
"Certainly not, because those Buitenzorg officials
told us not to wait for the passports that they would
mail them after us." Then ensued the most farcical
scene, a grand burlesque rendering of the act of ap-
prehending criminals, or rather political suspects. The
assistant resident tried to maintain the stern, judicial
manner of a police-court magistrate, cross-examining
us as closely as if it were testimony in a murder trial
we were giving, and was not at all inclined to admit
that there could be any mistake in the elaborately
perfect system of Dutch colonial government. Mag-
nificently he told us that we could not remain in
Djokja, and we assured him that we had no wish to
do so, that we were leaving for Boro Boeder in the
morning. The Pickwickian message from Buitenzorg
had not given any instructions. It merely related that
we should arrive. We had arrived, and the assistant
resident evidently did not know just what to do next.
At any rate, he intended that we should stand in awe
of him and the government of Netherlands India.
He " supposed " that it was intended that we should
be sent straight back to Buitenzorg. "We demurred,
in fact refused the two inflammable, impolitic ones
of us, who paid no heed to the gentle, gray-haired
elder member of our party, who was all resignation
and humility before the terrible official. We pro-
duced our United States passports, and quite as much
as told him that he and the noble army of Dutch
officials might finish the discussion with the Amer-
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 173
ican consul ; we had other affairs, and were bound for
Boro Boedor. He waved the United States passports
aside, curtly said they were of " no account," examined
the letters of credit with a shade more of interest, and
gave his whole attention to my " Smithsonian pass-
port," or general letter "to all friends of science."
That beautifully written document, with its measured
phrases, many polysyllabic words in capital letters, and
the big gold seal of Saint-Gaudens's designing, worked
a spell ; and after slowly reading all the commendatory
sentences of that great American institution " for the
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," he
read it again :
" Hum-m-m ! Hum-m-m ! The Smithsonian Insti-
tution of Washington National Geographic Society
scientific observation and study anthropology
photography G. Brown Goode, acting secretary!
Ah, ladies, since you have such credentials as this,"
evidently the Smithsonian Institution has better
standing abroad than the Department of State, and
G. Brown Goode, acting secretary of the one, was a
better name to conjure with away from home than
Walter Q. Gresham, actual secretary of the other,
" since you come so highly commended to us, I will
allow you to proceed to Boro Boedor, and remain there
while I report to Buitenzorg and ask for instructions.
You will go to Boro Boedor as early as possible in the
morning," he commanded, and then asked, " How long
had you intended to remain there ? "
" That depends. If it is comfortable, and the rains
keep off, we may stay several days. If not, we return
to-morrow evening."
174 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
" No, no, no ! " he cried in alarm ; " you must stay
there at Boro Boeder. You have no permission to
visit Djokja, and I cannot let you stay in my resi-
dency. You must stay at Boro Boedor or go back to
Buitenzorg."
To be ordered off to the Buddhist shrine at sunrise
put the pilgrimage in quite another light ; to be sen-
tenced to Nirvana by a local magistrate in brass
buttons was not like arriving there by slow stages
meditation and reincarnation; but as the assistant
resident seemed to be on the point of repenting his
clemency, we acquiesced, and the great man and his
minions drove away, the bearer of the pajong, or official
umbrella of his rank, testifying to the formal char-
acter of the visit he had been paying. Tho landlord
mopped his brow, sighed, and looked like one who had
survived great perils ; and we then saw that his sight-
seeing stroll down the street with us had been a ruse,
a little clever scouting, a preliminary reconnaissance
for the benefit of the puzzled magistrate.
We left Djokja at sunrise, with enthusiasm some-
what dampened from former anticipations of that
twenty-five -mile drive to Boro Boedor, "the aged
thing" in the Boro district of Kedu Residency, or
Bara Budha, " Great Buddha." We had expected to
realize a little of the pleasure of travel during the
barely ended posting days on this garden island, net-
worked over with smooth park drives all shaded with
tamarind-, kanari-, teak-, and waringen-trees, and it
proved a half-day of the greatest interest and enjoy-
ment. Our canopied carriage was drawn by four little
rats of ponies, driven by a serious old coachman in a
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 175
gay sarong and military jacket, with a huge lacquered
vizor or crownless hat tied on over his battek turban,
like a student's exaggerated eye-shade. This gave the
shadow of great dignity and owlish wisdom to his
wrinkled face, ornamented by a mustache as sparsely
and symmetrically planted as walrus whiskers. He
held the reins and said nothing. When there was any-
thing to do, the running footman did it a lithe little
creature who clung to a rear step, and took to his
heels every few minutes to crack the whip over the
ponies' heads, and with a frenzied " Gree ! G-r-r-ee/
Gr-r-r-e-e-e! " urge the mites to a more breakneck
gallop in harness. He steered them by the traces as
he galloped beside them, guided them over bridges,
around corners, past other vehicles, and through
crowds, while the driver held the reins and chewed
betel tobacco in unconcerned state. We rocked and
rolled through beautiful arched avenues, with this
bare-legged boy in gay petticoat "gr-r-ree-ing" us
along like mad, people scattering aside like frightened
chickens, and kneeling as we passed by. The way was
fenced and hedged and finished, to each blade of grass,
like some aristocratic suburb of a great capital, an
endless park, or continuous estate, where fancy farm'
ing and landscape-gardening had gone their most ex*
travagant lengths. There was not a neglected acre on
either side for all the twenty-five miles ; every field
was cultivated like a tulip-bed; every plant was as
green and perfect as if entered in a horticultural show.
Streams, ravines, and ditches were solidly bridged,
each with its white cement parapet and smooth con-
crete flooring, and each numbered and marked with
10
176 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
Dutch preciseness; and along every bit of the road
were posted the names of the kampongs and estates
charged to maintain the highway in its perfect con-
dition. Telegraph- and telephone-wires were strung
on the rigid arms of cotton-trees, and giant creepers
wove solid fences as they were trained from tree-trunk
to tree-trunk the tropics tamed, combed, and curbed,
hitched to the cart of commerce and made man's ab-
ject servant.
Every few miles there were open red-tiled pavilions
built over the highways as refuges for man and beast
from the scorching sun of one season and the cloud-
burst showers of the rainy half of the year. Twice
we found busy passers going on in groves beside these
rest-housespicturesque gatherings of men, women,
and children, and displays of fowls, fruits, nuts, vege-
tables, grain, sugar, spices, gums, and flowers, that
tempted one to linger and enjoy, and to photograph
every foot of the passer's area. The main road was
crowded all the way like a city street, and around
these passers the highway hummed with voices. One
can believe in the density of the population 450 to
the square mile 1 when he sees the people trooping
along these country roads ; and he can well under-
stand why every foot of land is cultivated, how even
in the benevolent land of the banana every one must
produce something, must work or starve. The better
sanitary condition of the native kampongs is given as
1 Holland has a population of 359 to the square mile (Decem-
ber 31, 1892), and Belgium a population of 540 to the square
mile. French statisticians are confident that Java will soon
surpass Belgium in the density of its population.
WAYSIDE PAVILION ON TOST-KOAD.
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 179
a great factor in the remarkable increase of population
in the last half -century ; but it took many years of
precept and example, strict laws, and a rating of native
rulers and village chiefs according to the cleanliness
of their kampongs, before the native hamlets became
tropical counterparts of Broek and the other absurdly
clean towns of Holland. These careless children of
the tropics are obliged to whitewash their houses twice
a year, look to their drains and debris, and use disin-
fectants ; and with the dainty little basket houses, one
of which may be bought outright for five dollars, and
the beautiful palms and shrubberies to serve as screens
from rice-field vapors, each little kampong is a delight
in every way.
Men and boys toiled to the passer, bent over with
the weight of one or two monstrous jack-fruits or
durians on their backs. A woman with a baby
swinging in the slandang over her shoulder had
tied cackling chickens to the back of her belt, and
trudged on comfortably under her umbrella ; and a boy
swung a brace of ducks from each end of a shoulder-
pole, and trotted gaily to the passer. The kampongs,
or villages, when not hidden in palm- and plantain-
groves behind fancy bamboo fences, were rows of
open houses on each side of the highway, and we re-
viewed native life at leisure while the ponies were
changed. The friendly, gentle little brown people
welcomed us with amused and embarrassed smiles
when our curiosity as to sarong-painting, lacquering,
and mat- weaving carried us into the family circle.
The dark, round-eyed, star-eyed babies and children
showed no fear or shyness, and the tiniest ones their
180 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
soft little warm brown bodies bare of ever a garment
save the cotton slandang in which they cuddle so con-
fidingly under the mother's protecting arm let us lift
and carry and play with them at will.
We left the main road, and progressed by a nar-
rower way between open fields of pepper, manioc, in-
digo, and tobacco, with picturesque views of the three
symmetrical and beautiful mountains, Soembung,
Merbaboe, and Merapi the first and largest one as
pure in line, as exquisite and ideal a peak, as Fujiyama,
and the others sloping splendidly in soft volcanic out-
lines. Soembung is the very center of Java, and na-
tive legends cling to the little hill of Tidar at its base
the " spike of the universe," the nail which fastens
the lovely island to the face of the earth. Merbaboe,
the " ash-ejecting," has wrought ruin in its time, and
a faint white plume of steam waves from its summit
still. The capitulations which delivered the Napo-
leonic possessions of the Dutch East Indies to Eng-
land in 1811 were signed at the base of Merbaboe, and
in our then frame of mind toward the Dutch govern-
ment we wished to make a pilgrimage of joyous cele-
bration to the spot. The third of the graceful peaks,
Merapi, the "fire-throwing," was a sacred peak in
Buddhist times, when cave-temples were hewn in its
solid rock and their interiors fretted over with fine
bas-reliefs. A group of people transplanting rice, a
little boy driving a flock of geese down the road, a
little open-timbered temple of the dead in a frangi-
pani-grove all these, with the softly blue-and-purple
mountains in the background, are pictures in enduring
memory of that morning's ride toward Nirvana.
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR 181
A gray ruin showed indistinctly on a hilltop, and
after a run through a long, arched avenue we came
out suddenly at the base of the hill-temple. Instead
of a mad, triumphant sweep around the great pyramid,
the ponies balked, rooted themselves past any lashing
or " gr-r-ree-ing," and we got out and walked under the
noonday sun, around the hoary high altar of Buddha,
down an avenue of tall kanari-trees, lined with statues,
gargoyles, and other such recha, or remains of ancient
art, to the passagrahan, or government rest-house.
XV
BORO BOEDOR
[E deep portico of the passagrahan com-
-j_ - -fl mands an angle and two sides of the
' Jl sc l uare temple, and from the mass of
blackened and bleached stones the eye
finally arranges and follows out the
broken lines of the terraced pyramid, covered with
such a wealth of ornament as no other one structure
in the world presents. The first near view is almost
disappointing. In the blur of details it is difficult to
realize the vast proportions of this twelve-century-old
structure a pyramid the base platform of which is
five hundred feet square, the first terrace walls three
hundred feet square, and the final dome one hun-
dred feet in height. Stripped of every kindly relief
of vine and moss, every gap and ruined angle visi-
ble, there was something garish, raw, and almost dis-
ordered at the first glance, almost as jarring as new-
ness, and the hard black-and-white effect of the dark
lichens on the gray trachyte made it look like a bad
photograph of the pile. The temple stands on a broad
platform, aud rises first in five square terraces, inclos-
182
BORO BOEDOR 185
ing galleries, or processional paths, between their
walls, which are covered on each side with bas-relief
sculptures. If placed in single line these bas-reliefs
would extend for three miles. The terrace walls hold
four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove chapels,
where life-size Buddhas sit serene upon lotus cushions.
Staircases ascend in straight lines from each of the
four sides, passing under stepped or pointed arches
the keystones of which are elaborately carved masks,
and rows of sockets in the jambs show where wood or
metal doors once swung. Above the square terraces
are three circular terraces, where seventy-two latticed
dagobas (reliquaries in the shape of the calyx or bud
of the lotus) inclose each a seated image, seventy-two
more Buddhas sitting in these inner, upper circles of
Nirvana, facing a great dagoba, or final cupola, the
exact function or purpose of which as key to the
whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists.
This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either
covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the
ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a
form surviving from the tree-temples of the earliest,
primitive East when nature-worship prevailed. The
English engineers made an opening in the solid ex-
terior, and found an unfinished statue of Buddha on
a platform over a deep well-hole ; and its head, half
buried in debris, still smiles upon one from the deep
cavern. M. Freidrich, in " I/Extreme Orient" (1878),
states that this top dagoba was opened in the time of
the resident Hartman (1835), and that gold ornaments
were found ; and it was believed that there were sev-
eral stories or chambers to this well, which reached to
186 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the lowest level of the structure. M. Desire de Charnay,
who spent an afternoon at Boro Boedor in 1878 in
studying the resemblance of the pyramid temples of
Java to those of Central America, believed this well-
hole to be the place of concealment for the priest whose
voice used to issue as a mysterious oracle from the
statue itself.
A staircase has been constructed to the summit of
this dagoba, and from it one looks down upon the
whole structure as on a ground-plan drawing, and out
over finely cultivated fields and thick palm-groves to
the matchless peaks and the nearer hills that inclose
this fertile valley of the Boro Boedor " the very finest
view I ever saw," wrote Marianne North.
Three fourths of the terrace chapels and the upper
dagobas have crumbled ; hundreds of statues are head-
less, armless, overturned, missing ; tees, or finials, are
gone from the bell-roofs ; terrace walls bulge, lean out-
ward, and have fallen in long stretches ; and the cir-
cular platforms and the processional paths undulate as
if earthquake-waves were at the moment rocking the
mass. No cement was used to hold the fitted stones to-
gether, and another Hindu peculiarity of construction
is the entire absence of a column, a pillar, or an arch.
Vegetation wrought great ruin during its buried cen-
turies, but earthquakes and tropical rains are working
now a slow but surer ruin that will leave little of Boro
Boedor for the next century's wonder-seekers, unless
the walls are soon straightened and strongly braced.
All this ruined splendor and wrecked magnificence
soon has an overpowering effect on one. He almost
hesitates to attempt studying out all the details, the
BORO BOEDOR
187
intricate symbolism and decoration lavished by those
Hindus, who, like the Moguls, "built like Titans,
but finished like jewelers." One walks around and
around the sculptured terraces, where the bas-re-
liefs portray all the life of Buddha and his disciples,
GROCWD-PLAN OF BOEO BOEDOB.
and the history of that great religion a picture-Bible
of Buddhism. All the events in the life of Prince
Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha, are followed in turn :
his birth and education, his leaving home, his medita-
tion under Gaya's immortal tree, his teaching in the
188 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
deer-park, his sitting in judgment, weighing even the
birds in his scales, his death and entrance into Nirvana.
The every-day life of the seventh and eighth century is
pictured, too temples, palaces, thrones and tombs,
ships and houses, all of man's constructions, are por-
trayed. The life in courts and palaces, in fields and vil-
lages, is all seen there. Royal folk in wonderful jewels
sit enthroned, with minions offering gifts and burning
incense before them, warriors kneeling, and maidens
dancing. The peasant plows the rice-fields with the
same wooden stick and ungainly buffalo, and carries
the rice-sheaves from the harvest-field with the same
shoulder-poles, used in all the farther East to-day.
Women fill their water- vessels at the tanks and bear
them away on their heads as in India now, and scores
of bas-reliefs show the unchanging customs of the East
that offer sculptors the same models in this century.
Half the wonders of that great three-mile-long gallery
of sculptures cannot be recalled. Each round dis-
closed some more wonderful picture, some more elo-
quent story, told in the coarse trachyte rock furnished
by the volcanoes across the valley. Even the humor-
ous fancies of the sculptors are expressed in stone.
In one rilievo a- splendidly caparisoned state elephant
flings its feet in imitation of the dancing-girl near by.
Other sportive elephants carry fans and state um-
brellas in their trunks; and the marine monsters
swimming about the ship that bears the Buddhist
missionaries to the isles have such expression and
human resemblance as to make one wonder if those
primitives did not occasionally pillory an enemy with
their chisels, too. In the last gallery, where, in the
BOBO BOEDOE 189
progress of the religion, it took on many features of
Jainism, or advancing Brahmanism, Buddha is several
times represented as the ninth avatar, or incarnation,
of Vishnu, still seated on the lotus cushion, and hold-
ing a lotus with one of his four hands. Figure after
figure wears the Brahinanic cord, or sacrificial thread,
over the left shoulder ; and all the royal ones sit in
what must have been the pose of high fashion at that
time one knee bent under in tailor fashion, the other
bent knee raised and held in a loop of the girdle con-
fining the sarong skirt. There is not a grotesque nor
a nude figure in the whole three miles of sculptured
scenes, and the costumes are a study in themselves ;
likewise the elaborate jewels which Maia and her maids
and the princely ones wear. The trees and flowers are
a sufficient study alone ; and on my last morning at
Boro Boeder I made the whole round at sunrise,
looking specially at the wonderful palms, bamboos,
frangipani-, mango-, mangosteen-, breadfruit-, pome-
granate-, banana-, and bo-trees every local form be-
ing gracefully conventionalized, and, as Fergusson
says, " complicated and refined beyond any examples
known in India." It is such special rounds that give
one a full idea of what a monumental masterpiece the
great Buddhist vihara is, what an epitome of all the
arts and civilization of the eighth century A. D. those
galleries of sculpture hold, and turn one to dreaming
of the builders aud their times.
No particularly Javanese types of face or figure are
represented. All the countenances are Hindu, Hindu-
Caucasian, and pure Greek; and none of the objects
or accessories depicted with them are those of an un-
190 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
civilized people. All the art and culture, the highest
standards of Hindu taste and living, in the tenth cen-
tury of triumphant Buddhism, are expressed in this
sculptured record of the golden age of Java. The
Boro Boedor sculptures are finer examples of the
Greco-Buddhist art of the times than those of Amra-
vati and Gandahara as one sees them in Indian muse-
ums ; and the pure Greek countenances show sufficient
evidence of Bactrian influences on the Indus, whence
the builders came.
Of the more than five hundred statues of Buddha
enshrined in niches and latticed dagobas, all, save the
one mysterious figure standing in the central or sum-
mit dagoba, are seated on lotus cushions. Those of
the terrace rows of chapels face outward to the four
points of the compass, and those of the three circular
platforms face inward to the hidden, mysterious one.
All are alike save in the position of the hands, and
those of the terrace chapels have four different poses
accordingly as they face the cardinal points. As they
are conventionally represented, there is Buddha teach-
ing, with his open palm resting on one knee ; Buddha
learning, with that hand intently closed ; Buddha med-
itating, with both hands open on his knees ; Buddha
believing and convinced, expounding the lotus law
with upraised hand ; and Buddha demonstrating and
explaining, with thumbs and index-fingers touching.
The images in the lotus bells of the circular platforms
hold the right palm curved like a shell over the fingers
of the left hand the Buddha who has comprehended,
and sits meditating in stages of Nirvana. It was never
intended that worshipers should know the mien of the
FOUK BAS-KELIEFS FKO.M BO11O BOEDOK.
After Wilaeii'a drawings.
BORO BOEDOR 193
great one in the summit chalice, the serene one who,
having attained the supreme end, was left to brood
alone, inaccessible, shut out from, beyond all the
world. For this reason it is believed that this stand-
ing statue was left incomplete, the profane chisel not
daring to render every accessory and attribute as with
the lesser ones.
Humboldt first noted the five different attitudes of
the seated figures, and their likeness to the five Dhyani
Buddhas of Nepal ; and the discovery of a tablet in
Sumatra recording the erection of a seven-story vihara
to the Dhyani Buddha was proof that the faith that
first came pure from the mouth of the Oxus and the'
Indus must have received later bent through mission-
aries from the Malay Peninsula and Tibet. The Boro
Boeder images have the same lotus cushion and aure-
ole, the same curls of hair, but not the long ears of the
Nepal Buddhas, who in the Mongol doctrine had each
his own paradise or quarter of the earth. The first
Dhyani, who rules the paradise of the Orient, is always
represented in the same attitude and pose of the hands
as the image in the latticed bells of these upper, circu-
lar or Nirvana terraces of Boro Boeder. The images
on the east side of Boro Boeder's square terraces cor-
respond to the second Dhyani's conventional pose;
those on the south walls, to the third Dhyani ; the west-
facing ones, to the fourth Dhyani ; and the northern
ones, to the fifth Dhyani of Nepal.
There are no inscriptions visible anywhere in this
mass of picture-writings, no corner-stone or any clue
to the exact year of its founding. We know certainly
that the third great synod of Buddhists in Asoka's
194 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
time, 264 B. c., resolved to spread Buddhism abroad,
and that the propaganda begun in Ceylon was carried
in every direction, and that Asoka opened seven of
the eight original dagobas of India enshrining relics of
Buddha's body, and, subdividing, put them in eighty-
four thousand vases or precious boxes, that were scat-
tered to the limits of that religious world. Stupas, or
dagobas, were built over these holy bits, and all the
central dagoba of Boro Boeder is believed to have been
the original structure built over some such reliquary,
and afterward surrounded by the great sculptured ter-
races. Fa Hian, the Chinese pilgrim who visited Java
in 414 A. D., remarked upon the number of " heretics
and Brahmans " living there, and noted that " the law
of Buddha is not much known." Native records tell
that in 603 A. D. the Prince of Gujerat came, with five
thousand followers in one hundred and six ships, and
settled at Mataram, where two thousand more men of
Gujerat joined him, and a great Buddhist empire suc-
ceeded that of the Brahmanic faith. An inscription
found in Sumatra, bearing date 656 A. D., gives the
name of Maha Raja Adiraja Adityadharma, King of
Prathama (Great Java), a worshiper of the five Dhyani
Buddhas, who had erected a great seven-storied vihara,
evidently this one of Boro Boeder, in their honor.
This golden age of the Buddhist empire in Java lasted
through the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries.
Arts and religion had already entered their decline
in the tenth century, when the Prince Dewa Kosoumi
sent his daughter and four sons to India to study re-
ligion and the arts. The princelings returned with
artists, soldiers, and many trophies and products ; but
ON THE SECOND TEKKACB.
BORO BOEDOR 197
this last fresh importation did not arrest the decay of
the faith, and the people, relapsing peaceably into
Brahmanism, deserted their old temples. With the
Mohammedan conquest of 1475-79 the people in turn
forsook the worship of Siva, Durga, and Ganesha, and
abandoned their shrines at Brambanam and elsewhere,
as they had withdrawn from Boro Boeder and Chandi
Sewou.
When the British engineers came to Boro Boeder,
in 1814, the inhabitants of the nearest village had
no knowledge or traditions of this noblest monu-
ment Buddhism ever reared. Ever since their fathers
had moved there from another district it had been
only a tree-covered hill in the midst of forests. Two
hundred coolies worked forty-five days in clearing
away vegetation and excavating the buried terraces.
Measurements and drawings were made, and twelve
plates from them accompany Sir Stamford Raffles's
work. After the Dutch recovered possession of Java,
their artists and archaeologists gave careful study
to this monument of earlier civilization and arts.
Further excavations showed that the great platform
or broad terrace around the temple mass was of later
construction than the body of the pyramid, that a floor-
ing nine feet deep had been put entirely around the
lower walls, presumably to brace them, and thus cov-
ering many inscriptions the meanings of which have
not yet been given, not to English readers at least.
Dutch scientists devoted many seasons to the study of
these ruins, and Herr Brumund's scholarly text, com-
pleted and edited by Dr. Leemans of Leyden, accom-
panies and explains the great folio volumes of four
198 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
hundred plates, after Wilsen's drawings, published by
the Dutch government in 1874. Since their uncover-
ing the ruins have been kept free from vegetation, but
no other care has been taken. In this comparatively
short time legends have grown up, local customs have
become fixed, and Boro Boedor holds something of the
importance it should in its immediate human relations.
For more than six centuries the hill-temple was lost
to sight, covered with trees and rank vegetation ; and
when the Englishmen brought the great sculptured
monument to light, the gentle, easily superstitious
Javanese of the neighborhood regarded these recha
statues and relics of the ancient, unknown cult with
the greatest reverence. They adopted them as tutelary
divinities, as it were, indigenous to their own soil.
While Wilsen lived there the people brought daily
offerings of flowers. The statue on the first circular
terrace at the right of the east staircase, and the se-
cluded image at the very summit, were always sur-
rounded with heaps of stemless flowers laid on moss
and plantain-leaves. Incense was burned to these
recha, and the people daubed them with the yellow
powder with which princes formerly painted, and even
humble bridegrooms now paint, themselves on festal
days, just as Burmese Buddhists daub gold-leaf on
their shrines, and, like the Cingalese Buddhists, heap
champak and tulse, jasmine, rose, and frangipani
flowers, before their altars. When questioned, the
people owned that the offerings at Boro Boedor were
in fulfilment of a vow or in thanksgiving for some
event in their lives a birth, death, marriage, unex-
pected good fortune, or recovery from illness. Other
BORO BOEDOR 201
worshipers made the rounds of the circular terraces,
reaching to touch each image in its latticed bell, and
many kept all-night vigils among the dagobas of the
Nirvana circles. Less appealing was the custom, that
grew up among the Chinese residents of Djokjakarta
and its neighborhood, of making the temple the goal
of general pilgrimage on the Chinese New Year's day.
They made food and incense offerings to the images,
and celebrated with fireworks, feasts, and a general
May-fair and popular outdoor fete.
After the temple was uncovered the natives con^
sidered it a free quarry, and carried off carved stones
for door-steps, gate-posts, foundations, and fences.
Every visitor, tourist or antiquarian, scientist or relic-
hunter, helped himself ; and every residency, native
prince's garden, and plantation lawn, far and near, is
still ornamented with Boro Boeder's sculptures. In
the garden of the Magelang Residency, Miss Marianne
North found a Chinese artist employed in " restoring"
Boro Boeder images, touching up the Hindu coun-
tenances with a chisel until their eyes wore the proper
Chinese slant. The museum at Batavia has a full col-
lection of recha, and all about the foundation platform
of the temple itself, and along the path to the passagra-
han, the way is lined with displaced images and frag-
ments, statues, lions, elephants, horses ; the Tiansa, or
emblematic geese of Buddhism ; the Garouda, or sacred
birds of Vishnu ; and giant genii that probably guarded
some outer gates of approach. A captain of Dutch
hussars told Herr Brumund that, when camping at
Boro Boeder during the Javanese war, his men amused
themselves by striking off the heads of statues with
11
202 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
single lance- or saber-strokes. Conspicuous heads
made fine targets for rifle and pistol practice. Native
boys, playing on the terraces while watching cattle,
broke off tiny heads and detachable bits of carving,
and threw them at one another ; and a few such play-
ful shepherds could effect as much ruin as any of the
imaginary bands of fanatic Moslems or Brahmans.
One can better accept the plain, rural story of the boy
herders' destructiveness than those elaborately built
up tales of the religious wars, when priests and people,
driven to Boro Boeder as their last refuge, retreated,
fighting, from terrace to terrace, hurling stones and
statues down upon their pursuers, the last heroic be-
lievers dying martyrs before the summit dagoba. Fa-
natic Mohammedans in other countries doubtless would
destroy the shrines of a rival, heretic creed ; but there
is most evidence in the history and character of the
Javanese people that they simply left their old shrines,
let them alone, and allowed the jungle to claim at its
will what no longer had any interest or sacredness for
them. To this day the Javanese takes his religion
easily, and it is known that at one time Buddhism and
Brahmanism flourished in peace side by side, and that
conversion from one faith to the other, and back again,
and then to Mohammedanism, was peaceful and grad-
ual, and the result of suasion and fashion, and not of
force. The old cults faded, lost prestige, and vanished
without stress of arms or an inquisition.
XVI
BORO BOEDOR AND MENDOET
ITH five hundred Buddhas in near neigh-
borhood,one might expect a little of the
atmosphere of Nirvana, and the looking
at so many repetitions of one object
1 might well produce the hypnotic stage
akin to it. The cool, shady passagrahan at Boro Boeder
affords as much of earthly quiet and absolute calm, as
entire a retreat from the outer, modern world, as one
could ever expect to find now in any land of the lotus.
This government rest-house is maintained by the resi-
dent of Kedu, and every accommodation is provided
for the prilgrim, at a fixed charge of six florins the
day. The keeper of the passagrahan was a slow-spoken,
lethargic, meditative old Hollander, with whom it was
always afternoon. One half expected him to change
from battek pajamas to yellow draperies, climb up on
some vacant lotus pedestal, and, posing his fingers,
drop away into eternal meditation, like his stony
neighbors. Tropic life and isolation had reduced him
to that mental stagnation, torpor, or depression so
common with single Europeans in far Asia, isolated
203
204 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
from all social friction, active, human interests, and
natural sympathies, and so far out of touch with the
living, moving world of the nineteenth century. Life
goes on in placidity, endless quiet, and routine at Boro
Boedor. Visitors come rarely ; they most often stop
only for riz tavel, and drive on ; and not a half-dozen
American names appear in the visitors' book, the first
entry in which is dated 1869.
I remember the first still, long lotus afternoon in the
passagrahan's portico, when my companions napped,
and not a sound broke the stillness save the slow, occa-
sional rustle of palm-branches and the whistle of birds.
In that damp, heated silence, where even the mental
effort of recalling the attitude of Buddha elsewhere
threw one into a bath of perspiration, there was exer-
tion enough in tracing the courses and projections of
the terraced temple with the eye. Even this easy
rocking-chair study of the blackened ruins, empty
niches, broken statues, and shattered and crumbling
terraces, worked a spell. The dread genii by the door-
way and the grotesque animals along the path seemed
living monsters, the meditating statues even seemed
to breathe, until some "chuck-chucking" lizard ran
over them and dispelled the half-dream.
In those hazy, hypnotic hours of the long afternoon
one could best believe the tradition that the temple
rose in a night at miraculous bidding, and was not
built by human hands ; that it was built by the son of
the Prince of Boro Boedor, as a condition to his re-
ceiving the daughter of the Prince of Mendoet for a
wife. The suitor was to build it within a given time,
and every detail was rigidly prescribed. The princess
BORO BOEDOE AND MENDOET 205
came with her father to inspect the great work of art,
with its miles of bas-reliefs and hundreds of statues
fresh from the sculptor's chisel. " Without doubt
these images are beautiful," she said coldly, " but they
are dead. I can no more love you than they can love
you " ; and she turned and left her lover to brood in
eternal sorrow and meditation upon that puzzle of all
the centuries the Eternal Feminine.
At last the shadows began to stretch ; a cooler breath
came ; cocoanut-leaves began to rustle and lash with
force, and the musical rhythm of distant, soft Malay
voices broke the stillness that had been that of the
Sleeping Beauty's enchanted castle. A boy crept out
of a basket house in the palm-grove behind the passa-
grahan, and walked up a palm-tree with that deliberate
ease and nonchalance that is not altogether human or
two-footed, and makes one rub his eyes doubtingly at
the unprepared sight. He carried a bunch of bamboo
tubes at his belt, and when he reached the top of the
smooth stem began letting down bamboo cups, fas-
tening one at the base of each leaf-stalk to collect the
sap.
Everywhere in Java we saw them collecting the
sap of the true sugar-palm and the toddy-palm, that
bear such gorgeous spathes of blossoms ; but it is only
in this region of Middle Java that sugar is made from
the cocoa-palm. Each tree yields daily about two
quarts of sap that reduce to three or four ounces of
sugar. The common palm-sugar of the passers looks
and tastes like other brown sugar, but this from cocoa-
palms has a delicious, nutty fragrance and flavor, as
unique as maple-sugar. We were not long in the land
206 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
before we learned to melt cocoa-palm sugar and pour
it on grated ripe cocoannt, thus achieving a sweet
supreme.
The level valley about Boro Boeder is tilled in such
fine lines that it seems in perspective to have been
etched or hatched with finer tools than plow and hoe.
There is a little Malay temple surrounded by graves
in a frangipani-grove near the great pyramid, where
the ground is white with the fallen " blossoms of the
dead," and the tree-trunks are decked with trails of
white and palest pink orchids. The little kampong
of Boro Boeder hides in a deep green grove such a
pretty, picturesque little lot of basket houses, such a
carefully painted village in a painted grove, the vil-
lage of the Midway Plaisance, only more so, such a
set scene and ideal picture of Java, as ought to have
wings and footlights, and be looked at to slow music.
And there, in the early summer mornings, is a busy
passer in a grove that presents more and more at-
tractive pictures of Javanese life, as the people come
from miles around to buy and to sell the necessaries
and luxuries of their picturesque, primitive life, so
near to nature's warmest heart.
All the neighborhood is full of beauty and interest,
and there are smaller shrines at each side of Boro
Boeder, where pilgrims in ancient times were supposed
to make first and farewell prayers. One is called
Chandi Pawon, or more commonly Dapor, the kitchen,
because of its empty, smoke-blackened interior result-
ing from the incense of the centuries of living faith,
and of the later centuries when superstitious habit,
and not any surviving Buddhism, led the humble
THE EIGHT-HAND IMAGE AT MENDOET.
BORO BOEDOR AND MENDOET 209
people to make offerings to the recha, the unknown,
mysterious gods of the past.
Chandi Mendoet, two miles the other side of Boro
Boeder, is an exquisite pyramidal temple in a green
quadrangle of the forest, with a walled foss and
bridges. Long lost and hidden in the jungle, it was
accidentally discovered by the Dutch resident Hart-
man in 1835, and a space cleared about it. The na-
tives had never known of or suspected its existence,
but the investigators determined that this gem of
Hindu art was erected between 750 and 800 A. D.
The workmanship proves a continued progress in the
arts employed at Boro Boedor, and the sculptures
show that the popular faith was then passing through
Jainism back to Brahmanism. The body of the tem-
ple is forty-five feet square as it stands on its walled
platform, and rises to a height of seventy feet. A
terrace, or raised processional path, around the temple
walls is faced with bas-reliefs and ornamental stones,
and great bas-reliefs decorate the upper walls. The
square interior chapel is entered through a stepped
arch or door, and the finest of the Mendoet bas-reliefs,
commonly spoken of as the " Tree of Knowledge," is
in this entrance- way. There Buddha sits beneath the
bo-tree, the trunk of which supports a pajong, or state
umbrella, teaching those who approach him and kneel
with offerings and incense. These figures, as well as
the angels overhead, the birds in the trees, and the
lambs on their rocky shelf, listening to the great teacher,
are worked out with a grace and skill beyond compare.
Three colossal images are seated in the chapel, all with
Buddha's attributes, and Brahmanic cords as well, and
210 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the long Nepal ears of the Dhyani ones. They are
variously explained as the Hindu trinity, as the Bud-
dhist trinity, as Buddha and his disciples, and local
legends try to explain them even more romantically.
One literary pilgrim describes the central Adi Buddha
as the statue of a beautiful young woman " counting
her fingers," the mild, benign, and sweetly smiling
faces of all three easily suggesting femininity.
One legend tells that this marvel of a temple was
built by a rajah who, when once summoned to aid or
save the goddess Durga, was followed by two of his
wives. To rid himself of them, he tied one wife and
nailed the other to a rock. Years afterward he built
this temple in expiation, and put their images in it.
An avenging rival, who had loved one of the women,
at last found the rajah, killed him, turned him to stone,
and condemned him to sit forever between his abused
partners.
A legend related to Herr Brumund told that " once
upon a time " the two-year-old daughter of the great
Prince Dewa Kosoumi was stolen by a revengeful cour-
tier. The broken-hearted father wandered all over the
country seeking his daughter, but at the end of twelve
years met and, forgetting his grief, demanded and mar-
ried the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen.
Soon after a child had been born to them, the revenge-
ful courtier of years before told the prince that his
beautiful wife was his own daughter. The priests as-
sured Prince Dewa that no forgiveness was possible
to one who had so offended the gods, and that his only
course of expiation lay in shutting himself, with the
mother and child, in a walled cell, and there ending
BORO BOEDOR AND MENDOET 211
their days in penitence and prayer. As a last divine
favor, he was told that the crime would be forgiven
if within ten days he could construct a Boro Boedor.
All the artists and workmen of the kingdom were
summoned, and working with zeal and frenzy to save
their ruler, completed the temple, with its hundreds
of statues and its miles of carvings, within the fixed
time. But it was then found that the pile was in-
complete, lacking just one statue of the full number
required. Prayers and appeals were useless, and the
gods turned the prince, the mother, and the child to
stone, and they sit in the cell at Mendoet as proof of
the tale for all time.
With such interests we quite forgot the disagree-
able episode in the steaming, provincial town beyond
the mountains, and cared not for toelatings-kaart
or assistant resident. Nothing from the outer world
disturbed the peace of our Nirvana. No solitary horse-
man bringing reprieve was ever descried from the sum-
mit dagoba. No file of soldiers grounded arms and
demanded us for Dutch dungeons. Life held every
tropic charm, and Boro Boedor constituted an ideal
world entirely our own. The sculptured galleries
drew us to them at the beginning and end of every
stroll, and demanded always another and another look.
A thousand Mona Lisas smiled upon us with impas-
sive, mysterious, inscrutable smiles, as they have smiled
during all these twelve centuries, and often the reali-
zation, the atmosphere of antiquity was overpowering
in sensation and weird effect.
Boro Boedor is most mysterious and impressive in
the gray of dawn, in the unearthly light and stillness
212 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
of that eerie hour. Sunrise touches the old walls and
statues to something of life ; and sunset, when all the
palms are silhouetted against skies of tenderest rose,
and the warm light flushes the hoary gray pile, is the
time when the green valley of Eden about the temple
adds all of charm and poetic suggestion. Pitch-dark-
ness so quickly follows the tropic sunset that when we
left the upper platform of the temple in the last rose-
light, we found the lamps lighted, and huge moths and
beetles flying in and about the passagrahan's portico.
Then lizards " chuck-chucked/ 7 and ran over the walls ;
and the invisible gecko, gasping, called, it seemed to
me, " Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky! " and
Rebecca answered never to those breathless, exhausted,
appealing cries, always six times repeated, slowly over
and over again, by the fatigued soul doomed to a liz-
ard's form in its last incarnation. There was infinite
mystery and witchery in the darkness and sounds of
the tropic night sudden calls of birds, and always
the stiff rustling, rustling of the cocoa-palms, and the
softer sounds of other trees, the shadows of which
made inky blackness about the passagrahan; while
out over the temple the open sky, full of huge, yellow,
steadily glowing stars, shed radiance sufficient for one
to distinguish the mass and lines of the great pyramid.
Villagers came silently from out the darkness, stood
motionless beside the grim stone images, and advanced
slowly into the circle of light before the portico. They
knelt with many homages, and laid out the cakes of
palm-sugar, the baskets and sarongs, we had bought
at their toy village. Others brought frangipani blos-
soms that they heaped in mounds at our feet. They
BOEO BOEDOR AND MENDOET 213
sat on their heels, and with muttered whispers watched
us as we dined and went about our affairs on the raised
platform of the portico, presenting to them a living
drama of foreign life on that regularly built stage
without footlights. One of the audience pierced a fresh
cocoanut, drank the milk, and then rolling kanari and
benzoin gum in corn-fiber, lighted the fragrant cig-
arette, and puffed the smoke into the cocoa-shell.
" It is good for the stomach, and will keep off fever,"
they answered, when we asked about this incantation-
like proceeding ; and all took a turn at puffing into the
shell and reinhaling the incense-clouds. The gentle
little Javanese who provided better dinners for pas-
sagrahan guests than any island hotel had offered us,
came into the circle of light, with her mite of a brown
baby sleeping in the slandang knotted across her
shoulder. The old landlord could be heard as he
came back far enough from his Nirvana to call for
the boy to light a fresh pipe ; and one felt a little of
the gaze and presence of all the Dhyani Buddhas on
the sculptured terraces in the strange atmosphere of
such far-away tropic nights by the Boeder of Boro.
WHEN we came " gree-ing " back by those beautiful
roads to Djokja, and drew up with a whirl at the
portico of the Hotel Toegoe, the landlord of beaming
countenance ran to meet us, greet us with effusion,
and give us a handful of mail long, official envelops
with seals, and square envelops of social usage.
"Your passports are here. They came the next
day. They are so chagrined that it was all a stupid
mistake. The assistant resident at Buitenzorg tele-
214 JAVA: THE GARDEN' OF THE EAST
graphed to the resident here to tefl the three Ameri-
can ladies who were to arrive in Djokja that he had
ported, their passports, and to have every attention
paid you. He wished to commend yon and pat you em
Then the telegraph operator changed
the message so as not to have to send so many words
on the wire, and he made <JM*m all thtnt yon were
some very danger OCA people whom they must arrest
and send back. The assistant resident knew there was
some mistake as soon as he saw yon. 9 (Did he?) "He
is so chagrined. And it was all the telegraph operators
fault, and you must not blame our Djokja Residency.' 7
TMtMd of moffirying, this rather irritated us the
more, and the immtiaiit resident's long, formal note
was fuel to the
"LAMES: Thismorningltelegraphedtotiiesecretary-
general what m heaven's name eonM be the reason you
were not to go to Djokja. I got no answer from him,
but received a letter from the chief of the telegraph,
who had received a telegram from the telegraph office
of Boitenxorgr to tefl me there had been a mistake in
the telegram. Instead of 'The permission is not given/
there should hare been written, ' The papers of permis-
sion I have myself tins moment posted. Do all yon
can in the matter/ etc. Perhaps yon wfll have received
them the moment you get tins my letter.
u So I am so happy I did not insist upon y our retern-
ing to Boitenzorg; and so sorry you had so long stay
at Boro Boedor; and I hope yon wffl forget the fatal
mistake, and feel yourself at ease now , etc.
Evidently the little episode was confined to the
BORO BOEDOB AND MENDOET 215
bureau of telegraphs entirely, the messages to the
American consul, secretary-general, and Buitenzorg
resident all suppressed before reaching them. Cer-
tainly this was no argument for the government own-
ership and control of telegraphs in the United States.
There were regrets and social consolations offered, but
no distinct apology ; and we were quite in the mood for
having the American consul demand apology, repara-
tion, and indemnity, on pain of bombardment, as is
the foreign custom in all A sin Pacification by mall
courtesies did not pacify. Proffered presentation to
native princes; visits to their bizarre palaces, and at-
tendance at a great performance by the sultan's actors,
dancers, musicians, and swordsmen, would hardly off-
set being arrested, brought up in an informal police-
court, cross-questioned, bullied, and regularly ordered
to Boro Boeder under parole. We would not remain
tacitly to accept the olive-branch not then. The pro-
fuse landlord was nonplussed that we did not humbly
and gratefully accept these amenitim.
" You will not go back to Buitenzorg now, with only
such unhappy experience of Djokja ! Every one is so
chagrined, so anxious that yon should forget the little
contretemps. Surely yon win stay now for the great
topeng [lyric drama], and the wedding of Pakoe Alam's
daughter ! "
"No j we have our toelatings-kaarten, and we leave
on the noon train."
And then the landlord knew that we should have
been locked up for other reasons, since sane folk are
never in a hurry under the equator. They consider
the thermometer, treat the zenith sun with respect*
and do not trifle with the tropics.
xvn
BRAMBANAM
" In the whole course of my life I have never met with such
stupendous and finished specimens of human labor and of the
science and taste of ages long since forgot, crowded together
in so small a compass, as in this little spot [Branibanam], which,
to use a military phrase, I deem to have been the headquarters
of Hinduism in Java." (Eeport to Sir Stamford Baffles by Cap-
tain George Baker of the Bengal establishment.)
IHERE are ruins of more than one hun-
dred and fifty temples in the historic
region lying between Djokjakarta and
Soerakarta, or Djokja and Solo, as com-
mon usage abbreviates those syllables of
unnecessary exertion in this steaming, endless mid-
summer land of Middle Java. As the train races on
the twenty miles from Djokja to Brambanam, there is a
tantalizing glimpse of the ruined temples at Kalasan ;
and one small temple there, the Chandi Kali Bening,
ranks as the gem of Hindu art in Java. It is entirely
covered, inside as well as outside, with bas-reliefs and
ornamental carvings which surpass in elaboration and
artistic merit everything else in this region, where re-
216
BRAMBANAM 219
fined ornament and lavish decoration reached their
limit at the hands of the early Hindu sculptors. The
Sepoy soldiers who came with the British engineers
were lost in wonder at Kalasan, where the remains of
Hindu art so far surpassed anything they knew in
India itself; while the extent and magnificence of
Brambanam's Brahmanic and Buddhist temple ruins
amaze every visitor even after Boro Boeder.
We had intended to drive from Boro Boedor across
country to Brambanam, but, affairs of state obliging
us to return from our Nirvana directly to Djokja, we
fell back upon the railroad's promised convenience.
In this guide-bookless land, where every white resident
knows every crook and turn in Amsterdam's streets,
and next to nothing about the island of Java, a kind
dispenser of misinformation had told us that the rail-
way-station of Brambanam was close beside the temple
ruins; and we had believed him. The railway had
been completed and formally opened but a few days
before our visit, and our Malay servant was also quite
sure that the road ran past the temples, and that the
station was at their very gates.
When the train had shrieked away from the lone
little station building, we learned that the ruins were
a mile distant, with no sort of a vehicle nor an animal
nor a palanquin to be had; and archaeological zeal
suffered a chill even in that tropic noonday. The
station-master was all courtesy and sympathy; but
the choice for us lay between walking or waiting at
the station four hours for the next train on to Solo.
We strolled very slowly along the broad, open coun-
try road under the deadly, direct rays of the midday
220 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
sun, at the time when, as the Hindus say, " only Eng-
lishmen and dogs are abroad," reaching at last a
pretty village and the grateful shade of tall kanari-
trees, where the people were lounging at ease at the
close of the morning's busy passer. Every house,
shed, and stall had made use of carved temple stones
for its foundations, and the road was lined with more
such recha artistic remains from the inexhaustible
storehouse and quarry of the neighboring ruins. Piles
of tempting fruit remained for sale, and brown babies
sprawled content on the warm lap of earth, the tiniest
ones eating the green edge of watermelon-rind with
avidity, and tender mothers cramming cold sweet po-
tato into the mouths of infants two and four months
old. There was such an easy, enviable tropical calm
of abundant living and leisure in that Lilliput village
under Brobdingnag trees that I longed to fling away
my "Fergusson," let slip life's one golden, glowing,
scorching opportunity to be informed on ninth-cen-
tury Brahmanic temples, and, putting off all starched
and unnecessary garments of white civilization, join
that lifelong, happy-go-lucky, care-free picnic party
under the kanari-trees of Brambanam; but
A turn in the road, a break in the jungle at one side
of the highway, disclosed three pyramidal temples in
a vast square court, with the ruins of three correspond-
ing temples, all fallen to rubbish-heaps, ranged in line
facing them. These ruined piles alone remain of the
group of twenty temples dedicated to Loro Jonggran,
" the pure, exalted virgin " of the Javanese, worshiped
in India as Deva, Durga, Kali, or Parvati. Even the
three temples that are best preserved have crumbled
BBAMBANAM 228
at their summits and lost their angles ; but enough re-
mains for the eye to reconstruct the symmetrical piles
and carry out the once perfect lines. The structures
rise in terraces and broad courses, tapering like the
Dravidian gopuras of southern India, and covered, like
them, with images, bas-reliefs, and ornamental carv-
ings. Grand staircases ascend from each of the four
sides to square chapels or alcoves half-way up in the
solid body of the pyramid, and each chapel once con-
tained an image. The main or central temple now re-
maining still enshrines in its west or farther chamber
an image of Ganesha, the hideous elephant-headed son
of Siva and Parvati. Broken images of Siva and Par-
vati were found in the south and north chambers, and
Brahma is supposed to have been enshrined in the
great east chapel. An adjoining temple holds an ex-
quisite statue of Loro Jonggran, " the maiden with the
beautiful hips," who stands, graceful and serene, in a
roofless chamber, smiling down like a true goddess
upon those who toil up the long carved staircase of
approach. Her particular temple is adorned with bas-
reliefs, where the gopis, or houris, who accompany
Krishna, the dancing youth, are grouped in graceful
poses. One of these bas-reliefs, commonly known as
the " Three Graces " has great fame, and one and two
thousand gulden have been vainly offered by British
travelers anxious to transport it to London. Another
temple contains an image of Nandi, the sacred bull;
but the other shrines have fallen in shapeless ruins,
and nothing of their altar-images is to be gathered
from the rubbish-heaps that cover the vast temple
court.
12
224 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
The pity of all this ruined splendor moves one
strongly, and one deplores the impossibility of recon-
structing, even on paper, the whole magnificent place
of worship. The wealth of ornament makes all other
temple buildings seem plain and featureless, and one
set of bas-reliefs just rescued and set up in line, de-
picting scenes from the Ramayan, would be treasure
enough for an art museum. On this long series of
carved stones disconsolate Rama is shown searching
everywhere for Sita, his stolen wife, until the king of
the monkeys, espousing his cause, leads him to success.
The story is wonderfully told in stone, the chisel as elo-
quent as the pen, and everywhere one reads as plainly
the sacred tales and ancient records. The graceful
figures and their draperies tell of Greek influences
acting upon those northern Hindus who brought the
religion to the island ; and the beautifully convention-
alized trees and fruits and flowers, the mythical animals
and gaping monsters along the staircases, the masks,
arabesques, bands, scrolls, ornamental keystones, and
all the elaborate symbols and attributes of deities
lavished on this group of temples, constitute a whole
gallery of Hindu art, and a complete grammar of its
ornament.
These temples, it is believed, were erected at the be-
ginning of the ninth century, and fixed dates in the
eleventh century are also claimed ; but at least they
were built soon after the completion of Boro Boeder,
when the people were turning back to Brahmanism,
and Hindu arts had reached their richest development
at this great capital of Mendang Kumulan, since called
Brambanam. The fame of the Javanese empire had
F
BRAMBANAM 227
then gone abroad, and greed for its riches led Khublai
Khan to despatch an armada to its shores ; but his
Chinese commander, Mengki, returned without ships
or men, his face branded like a thiefs. Another ex-
pedition was defeated, with a loss of three thousand
men, and the Great Khan's death put an end to further
schemes of conquest. Marco Polo, wiudbound for
five months on Sumatra, then Odoric, and the Arab
Ibn Batuta, who visited Java in the fourteenth cen-
tury, continued to celebrate the riches and splendor of
this empire, and invite its conquest, until Arab priests
and traders began its overthrow. Its princes were
conquered, its splendid capitals destroyed, and with
the conversion of the people to Mohammedanism the
shrines were deserted, soon overgrown, and became
hillocks of vegetation. The waringen-tree's fibrous
roots, penetrating the crevices of stones that were
only fitted together, and not cemented, have done most
damage, and the shrines of Loro Jonggran went fast
to utter ruin.
A Dutch engineer, seeking to build a fort in the dis-
turbed country between the two native capitals, first
reported these Brambanam temples in 1797; but it
was left for Sir Stamford Raffles to have them exca-
vated, surveyed, sketched, and reported upon. Then
for eighty years until the year of our visit they had
again been forgotten, and the jungle claimed and cov-
ered the beautiful monuments. The Archaeological
Society of Djokja had just begun the work of clearing
off and rescuing the wonderful carvings, and groups
of coolies were resting in the shade, while others pot-
tered around, setting bas-reliefs in regular lines around
228 JAVA: THE GABDEN OF THE EAST
the rubbish-heaps they had been taken from. This
salvage corps chattered and watched us with well-con-
tained interest, as we, literally at the very boiling-point
of enthusiasm, at three o'clock of an equatorial after-
noon, toiled up the magnificent staircases, peered into
each shrine, made the rounds of the sculptured ter-
races, or processional paths, and explored the whole
splendid trio of temples, without pause.
Herr Perk, the director of the works, and curator
of this monumental museum, roused by the rumors of
foreign invasion, welcomed us to the grateful shade
of his temporary quarters beside the temple, and hos-
pitably shared his afternoon tea and bananas with
us, there surrounded by a small museum of the finest
and most delicately carved fragments, that could not
safely be left unprotected. "While we cooled, and
rested from the long walk and the eager scramble
over the ruins, we enjoyed too the series of Cephas's
photographs made for the Djokja Society, and in them
had evidence how the insidious roots of the graceful
waringen-trees had split and scattered the fitted stones
as thoroughly as an earthquake ; yet each waringen-
gripped ruin, the clustered roots streaming, as if once
liquid, over angles and carvings, was so picturesque
that we half regretted the entire uprooting of these
lovely trees.
When the director was called away to his workmen,
we bade our guiding Mohammedan lead the way to
Chandi Sewou, the "Thousand Temples," or great
Buddhist shrine of the ancient capital. "Oh," he
cried, " it is far, far from here an hour to walk. You
must go to Chandi Sewou in a boat. The water is
BEAMBANAM 231
up to here," touching his waist, " and there are many,
many snakes." Distrusting, we made him lead on in
the direction of Chandi Sewou ; perhaps we might get
at least a distant view. When we had walked the
length of a city block down a shady road, with carved
fragments and overgrown stones scattered along the
way and through the young jungle at one side, we
turned a corner, walked another block, and stood be-
tween the giant images that guard the entrance of
Chandi Sewou's great quadrangle.
The " Thousand Temples " were really but two hun-
dred and thirty-six temples, built in five quadrilateral
lines around a central cruciform temple, the whole
walled inclosure measuring five hundred feet either
way. Many of these lesser shrines mere confessional
boxes in size are now ruined or sunk entirely in the
level turf that covers the whole quadrangle, and others
are picturesque, vine-wreathed masses, looking most
like the standing chimneys of a burnt house. This Bud-
dhist sanctuary of the eleventh century has almost the
same general plan as Boro Boedor, but a Boro Boeder
spread out and built all on the one level. The five
lines of temples, with broad processional paths between
them, correspond to the five square terraces of Boro
Boedor ; and the six superior chapels correspond to the
circles of latticed dagobas near Boro Boeder's summit.
The empty central shrine at Chandi Sewou has crum-
bled to a heap of stones, with only its four stepped-
arch entrance-doors distinct ; and the smaller temples,
each of them eleven feet square and eighteen feet high,
with inner walls covered with bas-reliefs, are empty as
well. When the British officers surveyed Chaudi Se-
232 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
wou, five of the chapels contained cross-legged images
seated on lotus pedestals either Buddha, or the tir-
thankars, or Jain saints j but even those headless and
mutilated statues are missing now. Every evidence
could be had of wilful destruction of the group of
shrines, and the same mysterious well-hole was found
beneath the pedestal of the image in each chapel
whether as receptacle for the ashes of priests and
princes ; a place for the safe keeping of temple trea-
sures ; as an empty survival of the form of the earliest
tree-temples, when the mystery of animate nature com-
manded man's worship ; or, as M. de Charnay suggests,
the orifice from which proceeded the voice of the con-
cealed priest who served as oracle.
With these Brambanam temples, when Sivaism or
Jainism had succeeded Buddhism, and even before
Mohammedanism came, the decadence of arts and
letters began. The Arab conquest made it complete,
and the art of architecture died entirely, no structures
since that time redeeming the people and religion
which in India and Spain have left such monuments
of beauty.
The ruins of the "Thousand Temples" are more
lonely and deserted in their grassy, weed-grown quad-
rangle, more forlorn in their abandonment, than any
other of the splendid relics of Java's past religions. The
glorious company of saintly images are vanished past
tracing, and the rows of little sentry-box chapels give a
different impression from the soaring pyramids of solid
stone, with their hundreds of statues and figures and the
wealth of sculptured ornament, found elsewhere. The
vast level of the plain around it is a lake or swamp in
BRAMBANAM
233
the rainy season, and the damp little chapels, with
their rubbish-heaps in dark corners and the weed-
grown well-hole, furnish ideal homes for snakes. As
our Mohammedan had suggested snakes, we imagined
them everywhere, stepping carefully, throwing stones
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PLAN OF CHANDI SEWOU ("THOUSAND TEMPLES").
From Sir Stamford Raffles'* " History of Java."
ahead of us, and thrusting our umbrellas noisily into
each chapel before we ventured within ; but the long-
anticipated, always expected great snake did not ma-
terialize to give appropriate incident to a visit to such
complete ruins. Only one small wisp of a lizard gave
234 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
the least starting-point for a really thrilling traveler's
tale. The only other moving object in sight at Chandi
Sewou was a little girl, with a smaller sister astride
of her hip, who followed us timidly and sat for a time
resting on the knee of one of the hideous gate guard-
iansone of the Gog and Magog stone monsters, who,
although kneeling, is seven feet in height, and who,
with a club in his right hand, a snake wound around
his left arm, and a ferocious countenance, should
frighten any child into spasms rather than invite fa-
miliarity.
Herr Perk pointed out to us, on the common be-
tween the two great temples, a formless green mound
which he would excavate the following week, and
showed us also the Chandi Lompang, a temple cleared
off eighty years ago, but covered with a tangle of un-
derbrush and a few tall trees a sufficient illustra-
tion of what all the Loro Jonggran temples had been
when the Djokja Society began its work of rescue and
preservation. The British engineers could see in 1812
that Chandi Lompang had been a central shrine sur-
rounded by fourteen smaller temples, whose carved
stones have long been scattered to fence fields and
furnish foundation-stones for the neighborhood. It
was hoped that the kind mantle of vegetation had pre-
served a series of bas-reliefs of Krishna and the lovely
gopis, wrought with an art equal to that employed by
the sculptors of the " Three Graces " at Loro Jonggran
which the British surveyors uncovered. Every one
must rejoice that a period of enlightenment has at last
come to the colony, and that steps are being taken to
care for the antiquities of the island.
FRAGMENT FROM LOKO JONGGRAN TEMPLE.
BBAMBANAM 237
There are other regions of extensive temple rains in
Java, but none where the remains of the earlier civi-
lization are so well preserved, the buildings of such
extent and magnificence, their cults and their records
so well known, as at Boro Boedor and Brambanam.
The extensive ruins of the Singa Sari temples, four
miles from Malang, near the southeastern end of the
island, are scattered all through a teak and waringen
forest, half sunk and overgrown with centuries of
vegetation. Images of Ganesha, and a colossal Nandi,
or sacred bull of Siva, with other Brahmanic deities,
remain in sight ; and inscriptions found there prove
that the Singa Sari temples were built at about the
same time as the Loro Jonggran temples at Bram-
banam. The mutilation and signs of wanton destruc-
tion of the recha suggest that it was not a peaceful
conversion from Brahmanism to Mohammedanism in
that kingdom either.
ON the Dieng plateau, southwest of Samarang, and
not far from Boro Boedor, there are ruins of more than
four hundred temples, and the traces of a city greater
than any now existing on the island. This region has
received comparatively little attention from archaeolo-
gists, although it has yielded rich treasures in gold,
silver, and bronze objects, a tithe of which are pre-
served in the museum of the Batavian Society. For
years the Dieng villagers paid their taxes in rough in-
gots of gold melted from statuettes and ornaments
found on the old temple sites, and more than three
thousand florins a year were sometimes paid in such
bullion. The Goenoeng Praoe, a mountain whose
238 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
summit-lines resemble an inverted praoe, or boat, is
the fabled home of the gods ; and the whole sacred
height was once built over with temples, staircases of
a thousand steps, great terraces, and embankment
walls, now nearly lost in vegetation, and wrecked by
the earthquakes of that very active volcanic region.
These Dieng temples appear to have been solid struc-
tures, whose general form and ornamentation so resem-
ble the ruins in Yucatan and the other states of Cen-
tral America that archaeologists still revolve the puzzle
of them, and hazard no conjectures as to the worshipers
and their form of worship, save that the rites or sacri-
fices were very evidently conducted on the open sum-
mits or temple-tops. I could not obtain views of these
ruined pyramid temples from any of the Batavia pho-
tographers, to satisfy me as to their exact lines even
in decay. There are other old Siva temples in that
region furtively worshiped still, and the "Valley of
Death," where the fabled upas grew, was long believed
to exist in that region, where the cult of the destroyer
was observed.
M. de Charnay did not visit these pyramid temples
of the Dieng plateau ; but after seeing the temple of
Boro Boeder, and those at Brambanam, he summed
up the resemblances of the Buddhist and Brahmanic
temples of Java to those at Palenque and in Yucatan
as consisting: in the same order of gross idols; the
pyramid form of temple, with staircases, like those of
Palenque and Yucatan ; the small chapels or oratories,
with subterranean vaults beneath the idols ; the same
interior construction of temples ; the stepped arches ;
the details of ornamentation, terraces, and esplanades,
GANESHA, THE ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD.
BRAMBANAM 239
as in Mexico and Yucatan ; and the localization of tem-
ples in religious centers far from cities, forming places
of pilgrimage, as at Palenque, Chichen-Itza, and, in a
later time, at Cozumel. 1
1 Vide "Six Semaines a Java," par Desir6 de Charnay ("Le
Tour du Monde," volume for 1880).
XVIII
SOLO : THE CITY OP THE SUSUNHAN
[S the two native states of Middle Java, the
Vorstenlanden, or " Lands of the Princes,"
were last to be brought under Dutch rule,
Djokjakarta and Soerakarta are the cap-
itals and head centers of native suprem-
acy, where most of Javanese life remains unchanged.
The Sultan of Djokja, and the so-called emperor, or
susunkan, of Solo, were last to yield to oversea
usurpers, and, as tributary princes enjoying a "pro-
tected and controlled independence," accept an "ad-
visory elder brother," in the person of a Dutch resident,
to sit at their sovereign elbows and by " suggestions "
rule their territories for the greater good of the na-
tives and the Holland exchequer. All the region
around Djokja and Solo is classic ground, and the
oldest Javanese myths and legends, the earliest tradi-
tions of native life, have their locale hereabout. These
people are the Javanese, and show plainly their Hindu
descent and their higher civilization, which distinguish
them from the Sundanese of West Java ; yet the Sun-
danese call themselves the " sons of the soil," and the
240
SOLO: THE CITY OF THE SUSUNHAN 241
Javanese " the stranger people." The glories of the
Hindu empire are declared by the magnificent ruins
so lately uncovered, but the splendor of the Moham-
medan empire barely survives in name in the strangely
interesting city of the susunhan set in the midst of the
plain of Solo a plain which M. Desire de Charnay
described as " a paradise which nothing on earth can
equal, and neither pen, brush, nor photography can
faithfully reproduce."
At this Solo, second city of the island in size, one
truly reaches the heart of native Java the Java of
the Javanese more nearly than elsewhere; but Is-
lam's old empire is there narrowed down to a kraton,
or palace inclosure, a mile square, where the present
susunhan, or object of adoration, lives as a restrained
pensioner of the Dutch government, the mere shadow
of those splendid potentates, his ancestors.
The old susunhans were descended from the Moor-
men or Arab pirates who harried the coast for a cen-
tury before they destroyed the splendid Hindu capital
of Majapahit, near the modern Soerabaya. They
followed that act of vandalism with the conquest of
Pajajaran, the western empire, or Sundanese end of
the island ; and religious conversion always went with
conquest by the followers of the prophet. There was
perpetual domestic war in the Mohammedan empire,
which by no means held the unresisting allegiance of
the Javanese at any time, and the Hindu princes of
Middle Java were never really conquered by them or
the Dutch. The Java war of the last century between
the Mohammedan emperor, the Dutch, and the rebel-
lious native prince, Manko Boeni, lasted for thirteen
242 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
years ; and in this century the same sort of a revolt
cost the Dutch as imperial allies more than four mil-
lions of florins, and made the British rejoice that their
statesmen had wisely handed back such a troublesome
and expensive possession as Java proved to be. The
great Mataram war of the last century, however, es-
tablished the family of the present susunhan on the
throne, after dividing his empire with a rebellious
younger brother, who then became Sultan of Djokja-
karta, and a new capital was built on the broad plain
cut by the Bengawan or Solo River, which is the largest
river of the island. At the death of the susunhan,
Pakoe Bewono II ("Nail of the Universe"), in 1749,
his will bequeathed his empire to the Dutch East India
Company, and at last gave Holland control of the
whole island. Certain lands were retained for the im-
perial family, and its present head, merely nominal,
figurehead susunhan that he is, receives an annuity
of one hundred thousand florins a sum equal to the
salary of the governor-general of Netherlands India.
The present susunhan of Solo is not the son of the
last emperor, but a collateral descendant of the old
emperors, who claims descent from both Mohammedan
and Hindu rulers, the monkey flag of Arjuna and the
double-bladed sword of the Arab conquerors alike his
heirlooms and insignia. His portraits show a gentle,
refined face of the best Javanese type, and he wears a
European military coat, with the native sarong and
Arab fez, a court sword at the front of his belt, and
a Solo kris at the back. Despite his trappings and
his sovereign title, he is as much a puppet and a pris-
oner as any of the lesser princes, sultans, and regents
THE SCSCSHAS.
SOLO: THE CITY OF THE SUSUNHAN 245
whom the Dutch, having deposed and pensioned, allow
to masquerade in sham authority. He maintains all
the state and splendor of the old imperialism within
his kraton, which is confronted and overlooked by a
Dutch fort, whose guns, always trained upon the kra-
ton, could sweep and level the whole imperial estab-
lishment at a moment's notice. The susunhan may
have ten thousand people living within his kraton
walls; he may have nine hundred and ninety-nine
wives and one hundred and fifty carriages, as re-
ported; but he may not drive beyond his own gates
without informing the Dutch resident where he is
going or has been, with his guard of honor of Dutch
soldiers, and he has hardly the liberty of a tourist
with a toelatings-kaart. He may amuse himself with
a little body-guard of Javanese soldiers ; but there is
a petty sultan of Solo, an ancient vassal, whose mil-
itary ambitions are encouraged by the Dutch to the
extent of allowing him to drill and command a private
army of a thousand men that the Dutch believe would
never by any chance take arms against them, as allies
of the susunhan's fancy guard. Wherever they have
allowed any empty show of sovereignty to a native
ruler, the Dutch have taken care to equip a military
rival, with the lasting grudge of an inherited family
feud, and establish him in the same town. But little
diplomacy is required to keep such jealousies alive and
aflame, and the Dutch are always an apparent check,
and pacific mediators between such rivals as the su-
sunhan and the sultan at Solo, and the sultan and
Prince Pakoe Alam at Djokja.
The young susunhan maintains his empty honors
246 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
with great dignity and serenity, observing all the
European forms and etiquette at his entertainments,
and delighting Solo's august society with frequent
court balls and fe"tes. Town gossip dilates on his
marble-floored ball-room, the fantastic devices in elec-
tric lights employed in illuminating the palace and its
maze of gardens on such occasions, and on the blaze
of heirloom jewels worn by the imperial ladies and
princesses at such functions. The susunhan some-
times grants audiences to distinguished strangers, and
one French visitor has told of some magnificent Jap-
anese bronzes and Chinese porcelains in the kraton,
which were gifts from the Dutch in the early time
when the Japanese and Javanese trade were both Hol-
land monopolies. No prostrations or Oriental salaams
are required of European visitors at court, although
the old susunhans obliged even the crown prince and
prime minister to assume the dodok, and sidle about
like any cup-bearer in his presence. The princes and
petty chiefs were so precisely graded in rank in those
days that, while the highest might kiss the sovereign's
hand, and those of a lower rank the imperial knee,
there were those of lesser pretensions who adoringly
kissed the instep, and, last of all, those who might
only presume to kiss the sole, of the susunhan's foot.
The susunhan is always accompanied on his walks in
the palace grounds, and on drives abroad, by a bearer
with a gold pajong, or state umbrella, spreading from
a jeweled golden staff. The array of pajongs carried
behind the members of his family and court officials
present all the colors of the rainbow, and all the varie-
gations a fancy umbrella is capable of showing each
SOLO: THE CITY OF THE SUSUNHAN 247
striped, banded, bordered, and vandyked in a different
way, that would puzzle the brain of any but a Solo
courtier, to whom they speak as plainly as a door-plate.
Solo has the same broad streets and magnificent
shade-trees as the other towns of Java, and some of
the streets have deep ditches or moats on either side
of the drive, with separate little bridges crossing to
each house-front, which give those thoroughfares a
certain feudal quaintness and character of their own.
At the late afternoon hour of our arrival we only
stopped for a moment to deposit the luggage at the
enormously porticoed Hotel Sleier, and then drove on
through and about the imperial city. The streets were
full of other carriages, enormous barouches, "mi-
lords," and family carryalls, drawn by big Walers,
with which we finally drew up in line around the park,
where a military band was playing. We had seen
bewildering lines of palace and fort and barrack walls,
marching troops, and soldiers lounging about off duty,
until it was easy to see that Solo was a vast garrison,
more camp than court. Later, when we had returned
to the hotel portico, to swing at ease in great broad-
armed rocking-chairs, exactly the Shaker piazza-
chairs of American summer life, there was still sound
of military music off beyond the dense waringen shade,
and the fanfare of bugles to right and to left.
Solo's hotel, with its comforts, offered more mate-
rial inducements for us to make a long stay, than any
hotel we had yet encountered in Java ; and the clear-
headed, courteous landlady was a hostess in the most
kindly sense. The usual colonial table d'hdte assem-
bled at nine o'clock in the vast inner hall or pavilion,
13
248 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
looking on a garden ; and in this small world, where
every one knows every one, his habitat and all his
affairs, the new-comers were given a silent, earnest
attention that would have checked any appetites save
those engendered by our archaeological afternoon at
Brambanam. When beefsteak was served with a sauce
of pineapple mashed with potato, and the succeeding
beet salad was followed by fried fish, and that by a
sweet pudding flooded with a mixture of melted choc-
olate and freshly ground cocoanut, we were oblivious
to all stares and whispers and open comments in Dutch,
which these colonials take it for granted no alien un-
derstands or can even have clue to through its likeness
to German. While we rocked on the great white por-
tico we could see and hear that Solo's lizards were as
gruesome and plentiful as those of other towns. While
tiny fragilities flashed across white columns and walls,
and arrested themselves as instantaneous traceries and
ornaments, a legion of toads came up from the garden,
and hopped over the floor in a silence that made us
realize how much pleasanter companions were the
croaking and bemoaning geckos, who keep their ugli-
ness out of sight.
At sunrise we set out in the company of an Ameri-
can temporarily in exile at Solo, and drove past the
resident's great garden of palms and statues and flower-
beds, into the outer courts of the emperor's and the
sultan's palaces, watching in the latter the guard-
mount and drill of a fine picked body of his troops.
The palace of one of the younger princes of the im-
perial house was accessible through kind favor, as the
owner is pleased to let uitlanders enjoy the many for-
THE DODOK.
SOLO: THE CITY OF THE SUSUNHAN 261
eign features of these pleasure-grounds. This foreign
garden did not, however, make us really homesick by
any appealing similarity to the grounds of citizens or
presidents on the American side of the globe ; for the
progressive prince has arranged his demesne quite
after the style of the gardens of the cafes chantants
of the lower Elysee in Paris colored-glass globes and
all, marble-rimmed flower-beds, and a cascade to be
turned on at will and let flow down over a marble stair-
case set with colored electric bulbs. Colored globes
and bulbs hang in festoons and arches about the bi-
zarre garden, simulate fruits and flowers on the trees
and bushes, glow in dark pools and fountain basins,
and play every old fantastic trick of al-fresco cafes in
Europe. A good collection of rare beasts and birds is
disposed in cages in the grounds, and there are count-
less kiosks and pavilions inviting one to rest. In one
such summer-house, with stained-glass walls, the at-
tendants showed photographs of the prince, his father
and family, the solemn old faces and the costumes of
these elders almost the only purely Javanese things to
be seen in this fantastic garden, since even the recha,
gray old images from Boro Boeder and Brambanam,
have been brightened with red, white, and blue paint
and made to look cheerful and decorative have been
restored, improved, brought down to modern times,
and made to accord better with their cafe-chantant
surroundings.
Quite unexpectedly, we saw the princely personage
himself receive his early cup of coffee attracted first
to the ceremony by noticing a man carrying a gold
salver and cup, and followed by an umbrella-bearer
262 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and two other attendants, enter an angle of the court
in whose shady arcade we were for the moment resting.
Suddenly all four men dropped to their heels in the
dodok, and, crouching, sidled and hopped along for a
hundred feet to the steps of a pavilion. The cup-
bearer insinuated himself up those four steps, still
squatting on his heels, and at the same time balancing
his burden on his two extended hands, and proffered
the gold salver to a shadowy figure half reclining in a
long chair. We stood motionless, unseen in our dark
arcade, and watched this precious bit of court comedy
through, and saw the cup-bearer retire backward down
the steps, across the court, to the spot where he might
rise from his ignoble attitude and walk like a human
being again. While exacting this much of the old eti-
quette, this prince of European education and tastes
has the finest ball-room in Solo a vast white-marble-
floored pringitan, or open-sided audience-hall, which is
lighted with hundreds of electric lights, and on whose
shining surface great cotillions are danced, and rich
favors distributed to companies blazing with diamonds.
XIX
THE LAND OF KRIS AND SARONG
HE stir of camp and court, the state
and pomp and pageantry of three such
grandees as emperor, sultan, and resident
in the one city, made such street-scenes
in Solo as tempted the kodaker to con-
stant play while the sun was high. Bands and march-
ing troops were always to be seen in the street, and
the native officials of so many different kinds made
pictures of bewildering variety. The resident, re-
turning from an official call, dashed past in a coach
and four, with pajong-bearers hanging perilously on
behind, and a mounted escort clattering after. Mem-
bers of the imperial household staff were distinguished
by stiff sugar-loaf caps or f ezzes of white leather ; and
such privileged ones stalked along slowly, magnifi-
cently, each with a kris at the back of his belt, and
always followed by one or two lesser minions. Those
of superior rank went accompanied by a pajong-bearer
balancing the great flat umbrella of rank above the
distinguished one's head ; and the precision with which
the grandee kept his head within the halo of shadow,
253
264 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
or the bearer managed to keep such a true angle on
the sun, were something admirable, and only to be
accomplished by generations of the two classes prac-
tising their respective feats. The emperor's mounted
troops were objects of greater interest, these dragoons
wearing huge lacquered vizors or crownless caps over
their turbaned heads, the regulation jackets, sarongs,
and heavy krises, and bestriding fiery little Timor
ponies. The native stirrup is a single upright bar of
iron, which a rider holds between the great toe and its
neighbor ; and these troopers seemed to derive as much
support from this firm toe-grip as booted riders do from
resting the whole ball of the foot on our stirrups.
There is a labyrinthine passer at Solo, where open
sheds and rustic booths have grown upon one another
around several open court spaces, which are dotted
with the huge mushrooms of palm-leaf umbrellas, and
whose picturesqueness one cannot nearly exhaust in a
single morning's round. The pepper- and fruit- and
flower-markets are, of course, the regions of greatest
attraction and richest feasts of color. The horn of
plenty overflowed royally there, and the masses of ba-
nanas and pineapples, durians, nankos, mangosteens,
jamboas, salaks, dukus, and rambutans seemed richer
in color than we had ever seen before ; and the brass-,
the basket-, the bird-, the spice-, and the gum-markets
had greater attractions too. The buyers were as inter-
esting as the venders, and a frequent figure in these
market groups that tempted the kodaker to many an
instantaneous shot, regardless of the light, better any
muddy impression of that than none at all, was the
Dutch housewife on her morning rounds. I braved
JAVA, BALI, AND MADUKA KKISES.
From Sir Stamford Kaffles's ' History of Java."
THE LAND OP KRIS AND SARONG 257
sunstroke and apoplexy in the hot sunshine, and trailed
my saronged subjects down crowded aisles to open
spots, to fix on film the image of these sockless ma-
trons in their very informal morning dress. I lurked
in booths and sat for endless minutes in opposite shops,
with focus set and button at touch, to get a good study
of Dutch ankles, when certain typical Solo hausfraus
should return to and mount their carriage steps only
to have some loiterer's back obscure the whole range
of the lens at the critical second.
We found pawnshops galore in this city full of cour-
tiers and hangers-on of greatness, and such array of
krises and curious weapons that there was embarrass-
ment of choice. We left the superior shops of dealers
in arms, where new blades, fresh from Sheffield or
German works, were pressed upon us, and betook our-
selves to the junk-shops and pawnshops, where aggre-
gations of discarded finery and martial trappings were
spread out. Books, silver, crystal, cutlery, jeweled dec-
orations, medals, epaulets, swords, and krises in every
stage of rust and dilapidation were found for sale.
The kris is distinctively the Malay weapon, and is
a key to much of Malay custom and lore ; and if the
Japanese sword was "the soul of the Samurai," as
much may be said for the kris of the Javanese warrior.
The cutler or forger of kris-blades ranked first of all
artisans. There are more than one hundred varieties
of the kris known, the distinctive Javanese types of
kris differing from those of the Malay Peninsula and
the other islands, and forty varieties of kris being used
in Java and its immediate dependencies. The kris
used in Bali differs from that of Madura or Lombok,
258 JAVA: THE GAKDEN OF THE EAST
and that of Solo from that used in "West or Suda-
nese Java. These differences imply many curiously
fine distinctions of long-standing importance in eti-
quette and tradition ; yet the kris is a comparatively
modern weapon modern as such things go in Asia.
No kris is carved on Boro Boeder or Brambanam
walls, and its use cannot be traced further back than
the thirteenth century, despite the legends of mythi-
cal Panji, who, it is claimed, devised the deadly crooked
blade and brought it with him from India. When it
was introduced from the peninsula it was instantly
adopted, and all people wearing the kris were counted
by that badge as subjects of Java. The kris is worn
by all Javanese above the peasant class and over four-
teen years of age, and is a badge of rank and station
which the wearer never puts aside in his waking hours.
Great princes wear two and even four krises at a time,
and women of rank are allowed to display it as a badge.
It is always thrust through the back of the girdle or
belt, a little to the left, and at an angle, that the right
hand may easily grasp the hilt ; and its presence there,
ready for instant use, has proved a great restraint to
the manners of a spirited, hot-blooded people, and lent
their intercourse that same exaggerated formality,
mutual deference, and high decorum that equally dis-
tinguished the old two-sworded men of Japan. The
kris is the warrior's last refuge, as the Javanese will
run amuck, like other Malays, when anger, shame, or
grief has carried him past all bounds, and, stabbing
at every one in the way, friend or enemy alike, is ready
then to take his own life.
The Javanese are still the best metal-workers in the
THE LAND OF KRIS AND SARONG 259
archipelago, and long displayed wonderful skill in
tempering steel, in welding steel and iron together,
and in giving the wavy blade fine veinings and dam-
ascenings. Those beautiful veinings, grained and
knotted in wood, and other curious patteniings of the
blade, were obtained by soaking the blades, welded of
many strips of hard and soft metal, in lime-juice and
arsenic until the surface iron was eaten out. A wound
from such a weapon is, of course, as deadly as if the
kris were dipped in poison for that purpose solely ; and
from this arises the common belief that all kris-blades
are soaked in toxic preparations. With the more gen-
eral use of firearms, and the arming of the troops with
European rifles, the kris remains chiefly a personal
adornment, an article of luxury, and a badge of rank.
Solo has always been considered a later Toledo for
its blades, and in the search for a really good, typical
Solo kris I certainly looked over enough weapons to
arm the sultan's guard. The most of them were dis-
appointingly plain as to sheath and hilt, the boat-
shaped wooden hilts having only enough carving on
the under part to give the hand a firm grasp. We
could not find a single Madura kris, with the curious
totemic carvings on the handle ; and all the finely or-
namental krises, with gold, silver, or ivory handles
inlaid with jewels, have long since gone to museums
and private collections. One may now and then chance
upon finely veined blades with mangosteen handles in
plain, unpromising wood, and brass Sundanese sheaths ;
but after seeing the treasures of krises in the Batavia
museum, one is little satisfied with such utilities, mere
every-day serviceable weapons. Increasing tourist
260 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
travel will soon encourage the manufacture of orna-
mental krises, and in numbers to meet the certain fixed
demand, so that later tourists will have better sou-
venirs than can be had now.
There is one whole street of sarong-shops in Solo,
each little shop or open booth glowing with cloths of
brilliant colors, and each shop standing in feudal dig-
nity behind a tiny moat, with a mite of a foot-bridge
quite its own. Solo sarongs presented many designs
quite new to us, and the sarong-painters there employ
a rich, dull, dark red and a soft, deep green in the long
diamonds and pointed panels of solid color, relieved
with borders of intricate groundwork, that tempt
one to buy by the dozen. There were many sarongs,
painted with four and five colors in fine, elaborate de-
signs, that rose to ten and twenty United States gold
dollars in value ; but one's natural instincts protested
against paying such prices for a couple of yards of
cotton cloth, mere figured calico, forsooth, despite its
artistic and individual merits. Our landlady at the
Sleier had inducted us into much of the sarong's mys-
teries, qualities, and details of desirability, and we had
the museum's rare specimens in mind ; but we were
distracted in choice, and the thing I desired, just any
little scrap as an example of the prang rusa, or deer-
fight, pattern, which only the imperial ones may wear,
was not to be had anywhere in Solo. We looked in
upon many groups of little women tracing out fine,
feathery, first-outline designs in brown dye with their
tiny funnel arrangements that are the paint-brushes
of their craft ; and we found one great cement-floored
fabrik of sarongs, a regular factory or wholesale estab-
THE LAND OF KEIS AND SARONG 261
lishment, with many Chinese and native workmen.
There whole sections of the sarong pattern were
stamped at a stroke by lean Chinese, who used the
same kind of tin stamping-blocks as are used in stamp-
ing embroidery patterns in Western lands. We knew
there was such a factory for block-printed sarongs on
Tenabang Hill in Batavia, but it was a shock, a disil-
lusionment, to come upon such an establishment of vir-
tually ready-made, " hand-me-down " sarongs in Solo.
There is a large Chinese population in Solo ; and
one has sufficient evidence of the wealth and prosperity
of these Paranaks as one sees them driving past in
handsome victorias, wearing immaculate duck suits,
patent-leather shoes, and silk hose, with only the ig-
noble pigtail, trailing away from the derby hat and
disappearing shamefully inside the collar, to betray
them. These rich Paranaks sit rigid and imperturb-
able, with folded arms, the very model of good form,
smoking long black cheroots, and viewing all people
afoot with undisguised scorn. One need not possess
a Californian's bitter anti-Chinese sentiments to have
this spectacle irritate him, and to almost wish to see
the plutocrats pitched out of their " milords " and the
Javanese Jehu drive over them. One easily under
stands the hatred that Dutch and natives alike enter-
tain for these small traders, middlemen, and usurers,
who have driven out all competitors, and fatten on the
necessities of the people. Although these island-born
Chinese have adopted so many European fashions in
dress and luxurious living, they are still Celestials,
never cutting the queue nor renouncing the tinseled
household altars.
262 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
Sola's Chinatown, or Tjina kampong. is a little China
complete, 1 tarring its amazinsr cleanliness and order
without odors other than those of the cook-shops,
where sesame-oil sizzles and smells quite as at home
in "big China. 9 There were three great weddings in
progress on one "lucky day " in Solo, and each house-
front was trimmed with flags, lanterns, garlands, and
tinsel flowers; orchestras tinkled and thumped, and
great feasts were spread in honor of the brides 7 com-
ing to the new homes. Every one was bidden to
enter and partake; and we were hospitably urged
to enter at each gorgeous door, and rice-wine, cham-
pagne, painted cakes, and afl the fruits of two zones
were generously pressed upon us. The thumps of an
approaching band drew us from one sarong-shop, and
we saw a procession advancing, with banners and huge
lanterns borne aloft. One felt sure the remarkable
train must hare issued from the palace gates until
the faces were in range, and there followed the gor-
geous red Chinese wedding-chair, and all the bride's
jewels and gowns and gilded slippers, carried about on
cushions like sovereign regalia. Men in uniform bore
palanquins fall of varnished pig, and mountains of
the pies and cakes and nameless things of Chinese high-
holiday appetites, that roused the gaping envy of the
street crowds, Urchins cheered and danced and ran
with the band much as they do elsewhere ; and the
gen, captivated with the sights, drove beside the
gaudy procession until sated with the Oriental splen-
dors and Celestial opulence of a Solo marriage feast
The street fife of Solo could well entertain one for
many days. Native life is but the least affected by
THE LAND OF KRIS AND SABONO 263
foreign ways, and the local color is all one could wish.
There are drives of great beauty about the town, with
far views of those two lovely symmetrical peaks, Mer-
api and Merbaboe, on one side, and of the massive
Mount Lawn on the other. The temple ruins at Suku,
at the foot of Mount Lawn, twenty-six miles southeast
of Solo, are the most puzzling to arehsBologistB, feast
known and visited of all such remains in Java. They
are of severe form and massive construction, without
traces of any carved ornament, and the solid pylons,
truncated pyramids, and great obelisks, fitamting on
successive platforms or terraces, bear such s
resemblance to tie monuments of ancient Egypt and
Central America that speculation is offered a wide
range and free field. The images found there an
ruder than any other island sculptures, and every-
thing points to these strange temples having been the
shrines of an earlier, simpler faith than any now ob-
served or of which there is any record. These Suku
temples were discovered in IS 14 by Major Johnson,
the British officer residing at the native court of Solo.
They were then unknown to the natives ; there were
no inscriptions found, nothing in native records or
traditions to lead to any solution of their mysteries;
and no further attempts have been made toward dis-
covering the origin of these vast constructions since
Sir Stamford Barnes's day.
When M. Deare" de Char-nay came to Java, in 1878,
to study the temple ruins whose puzzling resemblance
to Central American structures had puzzled archaeolo-
gists. all of government assistance was lent him. He
had driven only eight leagues from Solo toward Mount
264 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
Lawu, when his carriage broke down; he spent the
night at a village, and returned the next morning to
Solo, " sufficiently humiliated with " his " failure," he
wrote. He did not repeat the attempt, as there was a
great f e~te occurring at the emperor's palace which oc-
cupied his remaining days. He says that every one
at Solo consoled him for his failure to reach the Suku
temples by saying that the visible ruins there were
only the attempted restorations of an epoch of deca-
dence, and dated only from the fourteenth century.
M. de Charnay quotes all that Sir Stamford Raffles
and Fergusson urge as to the striking and extraordi-
nary resemblance of these particular temples to those
of Mexico and Yucatan ; and as ethnologists admit that
the Malays occupied the archipelagos from Easter Is-
land to Madagascar, he thinks it easy to believe that
they or a parent race extended their migrations to the
American continent, and that if this architectural re-
semblance be an accident, it is the only one of its
kind in the universe. 1
The three-domed summit of the mountain is visited
now by Siva worshipers, who make offerings and burn
incense to the destroying god who manifests himself
there, and the region is one to tempt a scientist across
the seas to exploit it, and should soon invite the at-
tention of the exploring parties which Mr. Morris K.
Jesup has enlisted in the search for proofs of early
Asiatic and American contact.
1 "Le Tour du Monde," "Six Semainesa Java," parM. D6sir6
de Charnay, volume for 1880.
XX
DJOKJAKARTA
|S the heat of Solo was but little less than
that of Batavia, and we had only worse
accounts and solemn warnings given of
the sickening, unendurable heat of Soe-
rabaya, where fever and cholera most
often abide, it seemed wisest to give up the visit to
that east end of the island, to forego that torrid shore
where first the Arabs landed and conquered the Hindu
rulers of Majapahit, to be succeeded in their turn by
the Portuguese, and then the Dutch. The ruins of
Majapahit, and the tombs of its princes, and the graves
of the Arab priests who were the first rulers of the con-
quered empire are attractions in Soerabaya's neighbor-
hood ; but the great object was the Mount Bromo of
the Tengger plateau, where the exhausted residents
may take refuge from the steaming plain and breathe
again. Tosari, the great sanatorium, on one of the
sharp spurs of the Tengger, is over five thousand feet
in air, and commands one of the most famous views
in Java, with the plains, the sea, and groups of islands
in one direction, and the great Bromo, smoking splen-
265
266 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
didly, in another. The great crater of the Bromo,
with several smoking cones rising from a level of rip-
pling, wind-swept " sandy sea," is three miles in diame-
ter, and is claimed, despite Kilauea, as the largest crater
in the world, as it is certainly the largest in Java. A
colony of Siva worshipers, who fled to the Tengger
that they might pursue their religion unmolested by
Arab rulers, live there in long communal houses, tend
the sacred fire once brought from India, and sacrifice
regularly to Brama, the " God of Fire," at his smok-
ing temple. In this modern day living sacrifices are
not offered, save of fowl ; and priests and people con-
tent themselves with offerings of fruit and foods, and
make other great ceremonies of burning lumps of fra-
grant benzoin, the " Java frankincense," at the crater's
edge.
The most serious sacrifices in the Bromo's neighbor-
hood are of those unfortunate natives who are seized
by tigers as they work in clearings or walk mountain
paths alone. The briefest stay at Tosari equips a vis-
itor with tiger stories fit for tropical regions ; and my
envy was roused when some Tosari tourists told of
having seen a child who had been seized and slightly
mangled by a tiger, but a day before, on a road near
the village, over which they themselves had passed.
The short railway ride back from Solo to Djokja, past
the familiar ground of Brambanam, was a morning's
delight. We could see from the train that the rail-
way did run close past the temple courts ; and with
the brief glimpse of the ruined pyramids, we viewed
our exploit of walking to Loro Jonggran's fane at
midday, and clambering over the temples through the
THE BRAMBAXAM BABY.
DJOKJAKARTA
long afternoon, with great complacency a feat that
nothing could induce us to repeat, however.
It is all historic and sacred soil in the region around
Djokja, and we returned with the greater interest for
our real visit to the city, where one touches the age of
fable in even the geographic names of the place and
its environs, since the modern Dutch rendering of
Djokjakarta, and the older Yugya-Karta of Sir
Stamford Raffles, are only variants of the native
Ayogya-Karta, the Ayudya mentioned in the Javanese
Parvas, or Ramayan, as the capital established by
Rama. The exploits of Na-yud-ya, the earliest ruler
of Djokja, are described in the same sacred Parvas,
and this was the center of the early Hindu empire,
whose princes were great builders and for ten cen-
turies were busy erecting temples, palaces, and towers
in the region around this their city of Mataram.
Na-yud-ya's descendants resisted the Arab invaders
to the last, and the Hindu princes of Middle Java re-
tained their independence long after Islam's susunhan
had declared himself supreme over the eastern empire
of Majapahit l and the western empire of Pajajaran. 2
These Hindu or native princes, as they were consid-
ered, resisted susunhan and Dutch alike, and the Java
war of the last century against the two usurpers was
a long and bitter struggle, lasting from 1745 to 1758.
The susunhan's brother, the second prince, who had
joined the native or Hindu princes, was won back to
1 Majapahit, capital of the eastern empire, was near the
modern Soerabaya.
2 Pajajaran, capital of the western empire, was near the
modern Batavia.
y
270 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
family allegiance by Dutch intrigue and influence ; and
the susunhan, dividing his eastern or Majapahit em-
pire with his troublesome brother, made the latter a
ruler, under the title of Sultan of Djokjakarta. The
Dutch had been given the site of Samarang for their
aid in such wars, and soon after the division of the
eastern empire, the susunhan made that remarkable
will of 1749, deeding his empire to the Dutch East
India Company after his decease. The region be-
tween Djokja and Solo remained a seat of war for
the rest of the century, the old princes, different heirs,
claimants, and factions, always resorting to arms, and
the Dutch always having an interest in the struggles.
Marshal Daendels had his campaigns against and his
sieges of Djokja, and the British had to besiege and
bombard it before it admitted Sepoy occupation. After
the restoration of Java to the Dutch there was a thir-
teen years' war with this eastern empire, the Matarain
or Majapahit war, and then, by treaty, the Dutch
gained final control of the whole island and became ab-
solute masters of Java ; susunhan and sultan accepted
annuities ; each paid a revenue in products of the soil,
and admitted Dutch residents to " make recommenda-
tions." The Sultan of Djokja is only another of the
puppet rulers. He maintains the outward show and
trappings of his ancestors' estate, and, with fine irony,
is termed one of the " independent princes."
The city of Djokja, fifth in size of the cities of the
island, and reputed as more Javanese than Solo, less
influenced by Chinese and European example, is in the
center of the residency, and but twelve miles from
the shores of the Indian Ocean. It is approached by
DJOKJAKARTA 271
railway from either side over a plain planted chiefly
with indigo and tapioca, whose low, uninteresting
plants in myriad rows, and the frequent roofs and tall
chimneys of fabriks, speak of abundant prosperity for
all classes. The broad streets of the provincial capital
are beautifully shaded, and the residency, a great, low,
white building with a classical portico, is set in a lux-
uriant garden, where Madagascar palms and splendid
trees make halos and shadow for the grim stone im-
ages, the pensive Buddhas and fine bas-reliefs, brought
from neighboring ruins. The government offices ad-
join, and on any court day one may see the crowds of
litigants and witnesses sitting around on their heels
beneath a shadowing waringen-tree that would be fit
bench for Druids' justice. The majority of the cases
tried before the assistant resident, who there balances
the scales, are of petty thieving ; for notwithstanding
the severity of the penalties for such offenses, the in-
herent bias of the Malay mind is toward acquiring
something for nothing transmuting twum into meiim.
The death sentence is pronounced upon the burglar
caught with a weapon on his person, and twenty years
in chains is prescribed for the unarmed burglar ; for
in this eternal summer, where people must live and
sleep with open doors and windows, or at most with
flimsy lattices, some protection must be assured to
those who own portable properties and valuables.
But with the great advances made in the security of
property, the innate propensities of the race are not
to be eradicated by even three centuries of stern
Dutch justice ; and there is the same mass-meeting of
witnesses and lookers-on squatting under the big
272 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
waringen-tree at Djokja, when the scales are to be
balanced by the blind lady, as before every petty
court-room on the island. An ingenious little firefly
lamp, taken from a Djokja burglar, was given me as a
souvenir of one such a court day. It was a veritable
fairy's dark lantern a half of a nutshell, with a flat
cover sliding on a pivot and concealing at will the
light of two fireflies struggling in a dab of pitch. The
burglar carried a reserve supply of fireflies in a bit of
hollow bamboo stoppered at the ends, and added a
fresh illuminator whenever the dark lantern's living
glow diminished.
The Djokja passer is a large and important daily
gathering, but corrugated-iron and tiled sheds in
formal rows have pretty nearly robbed it of all a
passer's picturesqueness. Model municipal govern-
ment, Dutch system and order, are too pronounced
to please one whose eye has seen what a few palm-
thatched booths and umbrellas, and a few tons of
scattered fruits and peppers, can produce in that pic-
nic encampment by Boro Boeder's groves or in the
open common at Tissak Malaya.
We had been promised great finds in the way of old
silver and krises in a street of Chinese pawnshops
opening from one corner of the passer ; but the prom-
ises were not realized. The betel-boxes, buckles, and
clasps in charge of these wily " uncles " of Djokja were
plain and commonplace, and not a jeweled nor a fancy
kris of any kind was to be seen, after all the repute of
Djokja's riches in these lines of native metal- work.
Hundreds of sarongs, each with a dangling ribbon of
a ticket^ were stowed away on the shelves of these
DJOKJAKARTA 273
pawnshops, proofs of the improvidence and small ne-
cessities of these easy-going, chance-inviting people ;
and while we were haggling over a veined kris-blade
with the most obdurate Chinese that ever kept a pawn-
shop, a timid little woman stole in and offered her
sarong to the arrogant, blustering old rascal. He
scowled and scolded and stormed at the frightened
little creature, shook out and snapped the finely pat-
terned battek as if it were a dust-cloth, and still mut-
tering as if making threats of blood and vengeance,
made out a ticket, and threw it at her with a few silver
cents. We wanted nothing more from that shop, save
the head of the " uncle " on a trencher or impaled on
a kris's point.
With a shameless eye to revenue only, the govern-
ment has long continued to sell pawnbrokers' licenses
at auction to the highest bidder, after a brief relapse
from the year 1869 to 1880, when the experiment was
tried of selling licenses to any one at a moderate rate.
The great income from such licenses fell away so amaz-
ingly that the auctions were resumed, and the im-
provident natives handed over again to the merciless
Chinese pawnbrokers, who charge interest even up to
ninety per cent., and usually retain everything that
crosses their counters. M. Emile Metzger, in a com-
munication to the " Scottish Geographic Magazine"
(vol. iv., 1888), gives fifty thousand florins a year as
the annual revenue during the eleven years when the
other system prevailed, which soon increased to as
much as one million, sixty-five thousand florins a year
when licenses were again auctioned off. Since 1903
pawnshops are under government management.
274 JAVA: THE GABDEN OF THE EAST
The Sultan of Djokja has a kraton, or palace inclo-
sure, a mile square in the very heart of the city, the
great entrance-gates fronting on a vast plein or platz,
where waringen-trees have been clipped and trained
to the shape of colossal state umbrellas, great green
pajongs planted in permanence in the outer court or
approach to the throne, as a badge of royalty. The
huge Burmese elephants, that play an important part
in state processions, trumpet in one corner; and
strangely costumed retainers are coming and going,
some of them as gaily uniformed as parrakeets, and
others reminding one of the picadors and matadors in
the chorus of " Carmen." Surrounded by this indoor
army of gorgeous musicians, singers, dancers, bearers
of fan and pajong, pipe and betel-boxes, the sultan's
court is as splendidly staged as in the last century ;
and when this " regent of the world " and " vicegerent
of the Almighty/' as his titles translate, goes abroad
in state procession, the spectacle is worth going far to
see, the Djokjans assure one. Twenty different kinds
of pajongs belong to this court those flat umbrellas
that are the oldest insignia of royalty in all the East,
and are sculptured on Boro Boeder's walls through all
the centuries pictured there. From the sultan's own
golden pajong with orange border, the gold-bordered
pajong of the crown prince, the white pajongs of sul-
tanas and their children and of concubines' children,
down to the green, red, pink, blue, and black pajongs
of the lesser officials and nobles, all pajongs are exactly
ordered by court heraldry the pajong the definite
symbol of rank, a visiting-card that announces its
owner's consequence from afar. Strange accompani-
DJOKJAKARTA 275
ments these, however, for a sultan who plays billiards
at the club and a sultana who takes a hand at whist.
The old Taman Sarie, or Water Kastel, in the sub-
urbs, built by a Portuguese architect in the middle of
the last century for the great sultan Manko Boeni,
is an Oriental Trianon, a paradise garden of the trop-
ics, where former greatness spent its hours of ease in
cool, half -underground chambers and galleries such as
Hindu princes have made for themselves in every part
of India. The Taman Sarie is sadly deserted now. The
most important buildings were shaken to formless
mounds by earthquakes the last great Djokja earth-
quake of 1867, when so many lives were lost, making
the complete ruins that are covered with vines and
weeds. The ornamental waters are choked with weeds
and rubbish ; the carved stonework is black with mold
and lichens; the caves, grottoes, tunnels, staircases,
and galleries around the wells are dripping and slippery
with green mosses ; and the rose-gardens and shrubber-
ies are fast going to jungle. A few pavilions remain,
whose roof gables are as deeply recurved as those of
Burmese temples, but for the most part all the once
splendid carved and gilded constructions are but
wrecks and refuges for bats and lizards. The Water
Kastel in its better days stood in the midst of a lake,
reached only by boat or a secret tunnel ; and here the
old sultan Hamanku Bewono IV and his harem whiled
away their leisure hours, even when an army thundered
at the gates.
On one unfortunate day he kept Marshal Daen-
dels waiting in the outer court for an hour beyond
the time appointed for an interview, while the sul-
276 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
tan and his women made merry, and the gamelan
sounded gaily from the Water Kastel's galleries.
Daendels, growing weary, suddenly pushed through
the retainers to the mouth of the tunnel, and appeared
to the dallying sultan in the Water Kastel without
announcement or further ceremony, and with still less
ceremony seized the sultan by the arm and led him
back to Dutch headquarters, where the interview
took place. Another version of this Water Kastel
tradition describes the mad marshal as making a dash
down terraces and staircases to a water-pavilion sunk
deep in foliage at the edge of a tank, where, in a shady
cellar of a sleeping-room, shielded and cooled by a
water curtain falling in front of it, he dragged the
sultan from his bed, and carried him off to head-
quarters. The opas and the chattering old guardian,
who led us about the Kastel's labyrinths, plunged into
the green gloom of a long, mossy staircase that led
to the platform on which the sultan's sleeping-room
opened, to show us the " unlucky bed " and prove by
it their particular or favored version of the irruption
of Marshal Daendels. The bedstead or couch is an
elaborately carved affair, and must once have been the
chief ornament of this cool cave-like retreat; but in
the reek and gloom of the late afternoon this water
boudoir seemed too suggestive of rheumatism, ma-
laria, and snakes by wholesale to invite one to linger,
or to suggest repose on the " unlucky bed," which in-
sures an early death to the one who touches it.
Another water-chamber was provided in the Sumoor
Gamelan ("Musical Spring"), a deep circular well or
tank near the ruined banquet-hall, with vaulted cham-
DJOKJAKARTA 277
bers opening around it just such echoing places of
green twilight, where it must be cool on the hottest
noonday, as one may see in the old palaces at Luck-
now, Futtehpore Sikri, and Ahmedabad, in the father-
land whence the ruling princes of Java came. There
is, too, a great oval tank with beautiful walls, para-
pets, and pavilions, well worthy of a Hindu palace ;
and in this secluded place there lived for many dec-
ades a sacred white or dingy yellow turtle with red
eyes, an albino to whom the people made offerings and
paid homage. The Tainan Sarie has great fascination
for one, and at sunset something of romance seems to
linger in the old gardens and grottoes, the picturesque
courtyards and galleries ; and one could imagine scores
of legends and harem's mysteries belonging there
that anything and everything had happened there by
that lake that burns a rose-red when the palms are
silhouetted against the high sunset sky. A group of
children played hide-and-seek about the once august
court, supple, nimble little bronze fauns, with the care-
fully folded kerchiefs on their heads their only gar-
mentskerchiefs that they arrange with the greatest
care and deliberation many times a day, holding the
ends of the cloth with agile toes while they pat and
crease and coax the fine folds into the prescribed order
of good form. These children dashed through the
shrubberies, leaped balusters and walls as lightly and
easily as wild creatures, and ran up tall trees like
squirrels, to gather tasseled orchids and some strange
blue flowers that we pointed to with suggestive cop-
pers, and they hailed us as old friends when we came
again.
278 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
There were delightful drives to be taken in and
around Djokja in the cool of the afternoon, the tama-
rind- and waringen-shaded streets leading to bowery
suburbs, that gave wider views out over the fertile
plain with the winding Oepak River, or toward the
beautiful blue mountain cones that slumbered to
northward. There were always the most decorative
palm-trees in the right place to outline themselves
against the rosy sunset sky, and the drives back to the
hotel through the quick twilight and sudden darkness
gave many views into lamp-lighted huts and houses
genre pictures of native life, Dutch-Indies interi-
ors, where candle-light or firelight illuminated family
groups and women at their homely occupations, that
should inspire a new, a tropical school of Dutch
painters. The graves of the old Hindu princes of
Mataram crown a beautiful wooded hill south of the
city near the sea-shore, and are still worshiped and
garlanded by their people.
Through our now near friend, august patron, and
protector, the kindly assistant resident, we received
word at sunrise that the independent Prince Pakoe
Alam V ("Axis of the Universe") and his family
would graciously receive us the next morning at nine
o'clock ; and that meanwhile our patronage was invited
for a topeng, or lyric dance, to be given by Prince Pakoe
Alam's palace troupe on that evening for the benefit
of the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in the
Lombok war. This Lombok war had been brought
to a close that week by the capture of the treach-
erous Balinese sultan who had so tyrannized over
the Sassaks, and was then on his way to be paraded
TYING THE TURBAX
DJOKJAKAETA 281
with the victorious soldiers before the governor-gen-
eral in a grand triumph or review at Batavia.
I had a long, quiet afternoon at the Hotel Toegoe to
give again to the enormous folios of Wilsen's drawings
of Boro Boeder, while my companions napped, the
palm-branches hung motionless in the garden, and
only a few barefooted servants moved without sound
that deathly silence of tropic afternoon life that is
sometimes a boon, and sometimes an exasperation and
irritation to one accustomed to doing his sleeping by
dark and not turning day into night. Finally the pale
skeleton of an invalid, who was my next neighbor on
the long porch, lifted his pitiful voice, and was helped
out to his chair, and then our imperturbable Amat
stirred from his leisured sleep on the flags beyond,
meditated for a while, twisted his kerchief turban
anew, disappeared, and returned with the tea-tray,
silent, impassive, and automatic, as if under some spell.
A graceful little woman peddler came to the porch's
edge a pretty, gentle creature with dark, starry
Hindu eyes, clear-cut features, even little white teeth,
and crinkly hair. It was delight enough to watch this
pretty creature's flash of eyes and teeth, and her man-
ners were most beguiling as she proffered her sarongs
intricately figured batteks from Cheribon and Solo,
silk plaided ones from Singapore, and those of Borneo
shot through with glittering threads. Nothing could
have been more graceful and charming than the naive
appeals of the little peddler woman, and nothing could
have presented more extreme and unfortunate con-
trast than to have the sockless and waistless young
Dutch matron of the opposite portico step down and
282 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
run to the garden gate at sound of a military band.
Few women since Atalanta's time have been able to
run gracefully ; and this thick-ankled young matron,
with her flapping mule slippers, scant sarong, and
shapeless jacket, outdid all descriptions and carica-
tures of "the woman who runs." A friendly cavalier
in gaudy battek pajamas, who had been talking to the
lady, and blowing clouds of pipe-smoke into her face
the while, gaily danced an elephantine fandango as
the band went sounding down the street to give its
sunset concert in the park.
When tea was taken to the lady's porch after this
divertisement, she took a banana to the edge, and
called, " Peter ! Peter ! " There was a rustle and crash
of boughs overhead, and a great ape, nearly the size
of a man, swung from one tree-branch to another,
snatched the banana, and bounded back into the tree,
where it peered cunningly at us while he ate. After
that every rustle in the shrubbery made us jump ; we
kept umbrellas at hand for defense, and made sol-
emn compact that no one of us should be left asleep
unguarded while doors and windows were open to
this dreadful reminder of " The Murders in the Rue
Morgue."
XXI
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE"
[S the lines of the topeng-players are al-
ways delivered in the ancient Kawi, or
classic language of Java, one has need
to brush up beforehand, and to wish for
a libretto, a book of the opera, to keep
in hand as the lyric drama progresses. Sir Stamford
Raffles's "History of Java" furnishes one a general
glimpse of the ancient literature of the island, and by
many translations acquaints one with the great epics.
This old literature is Hindu in form and origin ; and
Kawi, the classic or literary language of the past, in
which all the history, early records, epic and legendary
poems, and the books of religion and the law are
written, is closely related to Sanskrit and Pah'. The
famous myths and legends of India are included in
this literature, and the Eamayan and Mahabharata
appear, incomplete but unaltered, in the Javanese
epics known as the Kandas and the Parvas. Besides
these two great works, there is the " Arjuna Vivaya,"
giving an account of the exploits of the Indian
Arjuna, the real hero of the Mahabharata; and
283
284 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
there is still another romantic legendary poem,
the " Bharata Yuddha," in which many of the inci-
dents and the heroes of the Mahabharata are pre-
sented in Javanese settings with Javanese names. All
these Kawi books are known to the people by transla-
tions in modern Javanese, and by their frequent pre-
sentation in the common dramatic entertainments, the
wayang-wayang, or shadow-plays, of even the smallest
villages.
Many " Books of Wisdom " and of exhortation to
pious and righteous living survive in Kawi liter-
ature; but with all that Hindu civilization brought,
it bequeathed nothing that could be called Buddhist
literature, and the bulk of ancient Javanese literature
is decidedly secular and profane sentimental and
romantic poems, love-tales in verse, that continue to
extreme lengths. The Arab conquest has left almost
no impress upon the language. Although schools
were established, and a considerable body of Arabic
literature came with the Mohammedan conquerors,
but little save bababs, romantic chronicles of the loves
of imaginary princes and heroes, have been added to
Javanese literature in the four centuries since Islam's
conquest. The spoken language of the Javanese shows
few traces of Arabic, and the written language is also
unchanged a neater, more beautiful and graceful sys-
tem of ornamental characters than either Arabic or
Persian.
The old Kawi epics are popularized by the theater,
the topeng, and the common wayang-wayang, or
shadow-dance of puppets, where a manager delivers
the well-known lines. Of these three dramatic forms
PAKOE ALAM : THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 287
the topeng is the highest, the most classic and refined
presentation, a lyric drama very like the No dance of
Japan, and doubtless, like the No dance, had a reli-
gious origin. A topeng troupe has its dalang, or man-
ager, who prompts, sometimes explains, and often
delivers all the lines for the masked actors ; and there
is a gamelan, or orchestra, of four or more musicians,
and a chorus which chants accompanying and explan-
atory verses as the action proceeds. Great princes
maintain their own private topeng troupes, and in
their palace presentations, and always in the presence
of native royalties, the actors go without masks. The
topeng's gamelan consists of two sets of the circles of
tiny gongs (gong or agong, a pure Javanese word and
instrument), that are struck with wooden sticks, and
two wood and two metal gambang kayu (wood and
metal bars of different length and thickness mounted
on a boat-shaped frame), or native xylophones, to which
single instrument the name "gamelan" is so often
given in the West.
The common wayang-wayang of the people is a
modification of the same masked or puppet drama that
was in vogue long before the Mohammedan conquest.
As the religion of Islam forbade the representation of
the human figure, the susunhan ordered the puppets
to be so distorted that the priests could not call them
images of human beings, and that even then only
their shadows, thrown on a curtain, should be seen.
Hence the exaggerated heads, the beaks and noses, of
the cardboard jumping-jacks which, pulled by unseen
strings, serve to maintain an interest in the national
history and legends, and by preludes and lines, chanted
288 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
in classic Kawi, preserve acquaintance with the liter-
ary language among the common people. There is a
form of wayang-wayang half-way between this puppet-
show and the real drama, in which the actors them-
selves are visible, wearing distorted masks; but the
plays are of modern times, in the common dialect, and
the manager often improvises his lines and scenes as
the play progresses. With these popular dramas there
rank the performances of the graceful bedaya, or danc-
ing-girl, whose tightly folded sarong, floating scarf-
ends, measured steps, outward sweep of the hand, and
charming play of arm and wrist recall the Japanese
maiko. Although the winsome bedaya is sculptured
on Boro Boeder's recording walls, there is nothing
there to indicate the puppet-play, nor anything from
which it might have evolved, although from other rec-
ords ethnologists claim that the Javanese possessed
this dramatic art when the Hindus came. A love of
the drama in the form of the topeng and the way an g-
wagang was so ingrained in the tastes and fixed in the
customs of the people that the Mohammedan con-
querors could not suppress those popular amusements,
and were finally content to modify them in trifling
points. The Dutch were also wise enough never to
interfere with these harmless pleasures of the people,
the greatest distraction and delight of these sensitive,
emotional, innately esthetic and refined Javanese, who
will sit through shadow-plays for half the night, and
are moved to frenzy and tears by the martial and ro-
mantic exploits of their national heroes.
All of society, the two hundred of Djokja's supe-
rior circle, European and native together, gathered at
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 289
the Societeit's marble hall on the night of the topeng.
That exalted being, the resident, entered in his mod-
estly gilded uniform; and all the company rose, and
stood until he and Prince Pakoe Alain had advanced
and seated themselves in the two arm-chairs placed
in front of the chairs of the rest of the audience.
" Our best people are all here to-night," said our ami-
able table d'hote acquaintance of the Hotel Toegoe;
and we looked around the lofty white hall, where
row upon row of robust, prosperous-looking Europe-
ans sat in state attire. All the men wore heavy cloth
coats, either richly frogged military jackets or the civil-
ian's frock or cutaway, only a few wearing conven-
tional black dress-coats, and none the rational white
duck clothes of the tropics. The Dutch ladies were
dressed in rich silks, brocades, and even velvets, and
fanned vigorously as a natural consequence, while
more of mildew fumes than of sachet odors came
from these heavy cloth and silk garments, whose care
and preservation are so difficult in the tropics. One
was reminded of those tropical burghers in crimson
velvet coats who received Lord Macartney and Staun-
ton in a red velvet council-room at Batavia just one
century before. The native officers and their families
were naturally more interesting to a stranger splen-
did-looking Javanese men, who stood and walked like
kings, all wearing the battek kerchief or turban folded
in myriad fine plaitings, richly patterned sarongs, and
the boat-handled kris showing at the back of the short
black military jacket. Many of these native officials
had constellations of stars and decorations pinned to
their breasts, and their finely cut features, noble mien,
15
290 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and graceful manners declared them aristocrats and
the fine flower of an old race. Their wives, shy, slen-
der, graceful women in clinging sarongs and the dis-
figuring Dutch jacket, wore many clasps and buckles
and jeweled knobs of ear-rings. They seemed to have
inherited all the Hindu love of glittering, glowing
jewels, and the Buddhist love of flowers and perfumes,
each little starry-eyed, flower-like woman redolent of
rose or jasmine attar, and wearing some brilliant blos-
som in the knot of satin-black hair. The women had
thrust their pretty brown feet into gold-heeled mule
slippers, that clicked musically on the tiles as they
walked, while the children comfortably rubbed their
bare feet on the cool white floor.
A few Chinese families, nearly all of them Para-
naks, or half-castes, to the island born, were there ;
the women in gay embroidered satins, jeweled and
diamonded out of all reason, and the children gay as
cockatoos and parrakeets in their bright little coats
and caps and talismanic ornaments. Rows of shad-
owy, silent natives, opas, lantern- and pajong-bearers,
and attendants of every kind, crouched in rows among
the great columns of the portico gallery gods who
squatted spellbound, rapt, and freely tearful in their
enjoyment of the splendid topeng produced that night.
Prince Pakoe Alam's artists rendered for the sake
of military charities a four-act lyric drama, dealing
with the adventures of mythical Panji, a hero of Hindu
times, who is said to have introduced the kris to Java.
The gamelan's music was all soft harmonies, tender,
weird, sad melodies in plaintive minor key, that ac-
companied the action throughout. The high-pitched
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 293
nasal recitatives, the squeaks and squawks and stamps
of fencing warriors, the slow posing, the stilted and
automatic movements of all the actors, were enough
like the No dance of Japan to confuse one greatly.
All the actors were magnificently costumed and ac-
coutred, their dresses, armor, and weapons being his-
toric properties of the Pakoe Alain family, that had
figured on festal occasions in the topengs of a century
and more. In the first act four women in silk sarongs
and velvet jackets did a regular Delsarte dance, with
all those theatrical poses, sweeps, and gestures with
the devitalized arm and wrist that the trainers of the
would-be beautiful are teaching in America. Dark-
robed attendants, identical with the mutes and invis-
ible supers of the Japanese stage, crawled around be-
hind the principals, arranging costumes, handing and
carrying away weapons, as needed. Then deliberate
mortal combat raged to slow music ; and after it the
harmless automatic dance was resumed. There was
one tedious act where warriors in modern military
jackets, worn with sarongs, indulged in long-drawn
recitatives in Kawi ; there were prolonged fan, spear,
and bow drills ; and one fine final act, where heroes,
stripped to the waist in old style, with bodies powdered
yellow, and half protected by gorgeously gilded breast-
plates, fenced with fury and some earnest.
At the end of the first act nearly every man in the
audience rose and went out, each mopping his brows
and whewing great breaths of air from his lungs.
Some few returned with cups of coffee, glasses of pink
lemonade, and tall beakers of soda-water for the per-
spiring ladies wedged in their chairs. These men
294 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
stayed outside after that act, declaring themselves
only during intermissions, when they rushed cooling
drinks to their partners at the front. At the end of
three hours Panji triumphed over all his enemies, the
performance ended, chairs scraped loudly as the audi-
ence stirred, the applause was long, and the sighs of
relief profound.
After the resident had made the tour of the room
and honored the most distinguished ones, and the Eu-
ropean dancing was about to begin, the native ladies
withdrew ; and as we saw these most interesting fig-
ures leaving, we, who had risen at five o'clock that
morning, and expected to repeat the act the next
morning, followed the beauties in golden slippers out
to the picturesque confusion of lantern- and pajong-
bearers at the carriage entrance. Dancing as it is
done in Djokja could not keep us longer awake that
night, though we have regretted ever since that we did
not wait to see how many of the broadcloth-coated men
and their partners in winter gowns survived one vig-
orous continental waltz on a marble floor, or if an
anteroom was converted into an emergency hospital
for treating heat prostrations.
With the exemplary early rising the tropics enjoin,
we had been up for hours had enjoyed the dash of a
dipper-bath, breakfasted, written letters, visited the
passer, the pawnshops, and the photographer before
it was time to join the assistant resident's party and
drive to the palace of Prince Pakoe Alam. The car-
riages went through several gateways, past a guard
house and sentries, before they drew up in an inner
court before an open pringitan, or audience-hall, eighty
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 295
feet square, whose great, low-spreading roof, resting
only on heavy teak columns, was all open to the air.
The prince, his crown prince, and his second son, who
is the father's aide-de-camp, were waiting to receive
us as we alighted, all three dressed in conventional
European military uniforms, with many medals and
orders illuminating their coat fronts, and only the
native turban on the old prince's head suggesting any-
thing Javanese in attire. The prince spoke Dutch, his
sons English and French as well as Dutch ; and each
gave us cordial welcome and courteous greetings be-
fore they offered an arm to conduct us back to the cool
inner part of the pringitan, where the young princesses
were waiting. We went far in over the shining mar-
ble floor, away from all glare and reflection of the vast
sanded court, to a region of tempered shadow, where
the wife, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter of
the prince stood beside a formal semicircle of chairs.
The ladies spoke only Dutch and Malay, but they did
the honors most gracefully, and with the two princes to
interpret, conversation moved along smoothly. These
princesses wore sarongs and jackets and gilded mule
slippers, but their simple costumes were brightened
by many jeweled clasps and brooches and great, glit-
tering knobs of ear-rings, and both had coronals of
pale-yellow flowers around the knot of black hair
drawn low at the back of the head, in foreign style.
Their complexions were the pure pale yellow of the
true Javanese aristocracy, not the pasty greenish yel-
low of the higher-class women of China. They had
very pretty manners, combining gentleness and dig-
nity, and they put the conventional questions as to
296 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
our homes and journeys with great earnestness and
seeming interest.
The old prince, whose high military rank makes him
an offset and check upon the Sultan of Djokja, and
who, by his lineage and connections with the imperial
house of Solo, almost ranks the sultan, is very liter-
ally a serene highness, a most gracious and courtly
host, whose dignity and charming address befit his
rank and exalted name. His lands and mills and
highly improved estates bring him a large private
income ; and progressive as he may be, I am sure his
people speak of him admiringly as a gentleman of the
old school and that old school must have been an
admirable one in Java, where the native manners are
as fine as in Japan. Prince Pakoe Alam received a
foreign military education in his youth, and his sons
have enjoyed still greater advantages to fit them for
the still newer order. They are the most charming,
natural, and unaffected young men, unspoiled and
with truly princely mien and manners. To be told
hereafter that a young man has the manners of a
prince will mean a great deal in simple courtesy, fine
finish, and perfection, to those who remember these
Javanese princes, the handsome young Pakoe Alams.
The natural refinement and charm that one is sen-
sible of in even the lowliest Javanese have their full-
est and finest flowering in these princely ones; and
that delightful hour spent in the vast shady white
pringitan offset many misadventures in Java.
Rows of red-coated and -cowled servitors sat around
the edges of the pringitan's shining floor, holding the
state pajongs and hooded spears of ceremony ; and a
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 297
full gamelan and a group of singers, in the same bright
court livery, squatted in rows facing us at the far front
of the hall, awaiting the signal to begin. The art-
ists of the previous night, all the singers and musi-
cians of the full topeng troupe, lifted up their voices
to the tinkling, softly booming, sonorous airs of the
gamelan and delighted us with a succession of chants
throughout our stay. The young princes led us " down
front," for the whole strange scene in which we found
ourselves was very like a theater, and, in the strong
glare of the footlights of daylight, explained the sev-
eral instruments of the native orchestra. Then in
from the wings " enter right," as the play-books would
say came a procession of servants, swinging racks of
decanters and glasses, and bearing bowls of ice, trays
of fruits, wafers, and sweets. Abject minions sidled
over the floor, and mutely offered us iced wines or
aerated waters, moving awkwardly about in the ig-
nominious attitude of the dodok, like so many land-
crabs. "Light-boys" crouched and crawled behind
each smoker, handing cigars, holding burning punk-
sticks, or extending trays to receive the ashes, main-
taining their abject position during all our stay. One
never gets used to this abasement of the dodok, often
as he may see it; and after the first absurdity and
humor of it wears off, it is irritating and humiliating
to see one human being thus belittle himself before
another. One suspects that there was more of fear
than reverence in its first observance, and that it comes
from centuries of tyranny and oppression rather than
from any spontaneous expressions of humility and ad-
miration. This group of household retainers, sidling
298 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
and jerking over the floor with something between the
gait of a toad and a crab, seemed to mar the perfect
dignity and decorum of the occasion. These same
attendants strode into the sunlit court with the free,
splendid tread of Javanese men, only to crouch to their
heels at the pringitan's edge, make the simbah's im-
ploring obeisance with clasped hands to the forehead,
repeating the simbah if they caught a princely eye,
while they sidled grotesquely over the pringitan floor
and crouched like dogs at the master's feet.
There was a carved screen behind us, closing off an
inner space, where broad divans invited to informal
ease, and many beautiful objects were disposed. We
were taken there by the old prince to see the great gold-
bound " Menac," or family record of the Pakoe Alams
an immense volume with jeweled covers, resting on
a yellow satin cushion. This family history was put
in this splendid form a hundred years ago by Prince
Pakoe Alam II, a literary highness who possessed
considerable artistic talent, and maintained a staff of
artists and writers in his palace, who were busied for
years in tracing and illuminating, under his instruc-
tions, this one precious manuscript. Javanese callig-
raphy, which is even more decorative and ornamental
than Arabic or Persian, makes beautiful pages ; and
each page, gracefully written in black, gold, or colors,
is also bordered and illuminated more lavishly than
any old Flemish missal. The beautiful ornamental
letters, medallions, and miniatures, the tangle of grace-
ful arabesques, and the glow of soft colors and gold,
relieved with touches and dashes of black, make the
Pakoe Alain's " Menac " a treasure of delight for a whole
PAKOE ALAM: THE "AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE" 299
morning's inspection ; but we had only time to turn
its leaves, see the more remarkable pages, and obtain
a general dazzling idea of its quality. The " Axis of
the Universe " is a bibliophile and collector by inheri-
tance, and there were many precious manuscript books,
unique editions de luxe in jeweled bindings, that we
could have given hours to inspecting. There is one
particular book of Arabian tales, rivaling the family
" Menac " in the beautiful lettering and rich illumina-
tion, that was sent to the Amsterdam Colonial Exposi-
tion some years ago, and naturally excited surprise
and admiration among European book-collectors.
Conversation never lagged during this morning call,
and the little second prince was regretful that we had
given up a trip to the sweltering end of the island,
where the Bromo smokes. " The Bromo is the only
' lake of fire ' in the world, you know," said the prince,
proudly. And soon after, in answer to a question, he
said, "No, I have never been in Europe, but I have
been all over Java" this last with an emphasis that
became one to the island born, and appreciative of all
its wonderful beauties.
When we praised and extolled the scenery of Java,
he asked naively, "Is America not beautiful, then?
Have you no mountains, no beautiful scenery there ? "
And when we answered patriotically to the facts,
Niagara, the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, Mount Rainier,
and Alaska, he asked in amazement, " Then why do
you travel to other countries ? "
The old prince announced the approaching marriage
of his granddaughter to the son of the Prince of Ma-
lang, and asked that we would attend the fe"tes which
300 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
he would give in celebration of the affair a fortnight
later ; but with all of the other India beckoning, we
could not prolong our stay in Java ; and we took leave
of our princely hosts then, to hasten to the train, prom-
ising, as one always does in every pleasant place, to
come again when time would allow for a fuller enjoy-
ment of this Javanese Djokja, that we had only begun
to know as we were leaving.
XXII
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP"
JILATJAP! Tjilatjap ! " Often as one
may sound those syllables aloud, they
seem absurd ; and the very idea of spend-
ing the night in a town of such name,
of buying a railway ticket with that
name printed on it, and asking to have one's luggage
labeled to that destination, was enough to tickle the
fancy. Could there be solemn men and serious women
living there? and had the station a sign-board? and
could the pale, grave little Dutch children keep their
faces straight and glibly pronounce the name of that
town without sneezing?
Whether it is printed " Tjilatjap," " Chalachap," or
" Chelachap," it at once suggests enough puns to spare
one printing them, and surely no town on the north
side of the equator could support such a name with
any dignity.
But Tjilatjap is one of the oldest foreign settlements
in Java, the one good harbor on the whole south coast ;
and the " Tjilatjap fever" is a distinguished specialty of
the region that surpasses all the deadly forms of fever
301
302 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
in Java. The place proved to be such a cemetery for
European troops that the government was finally
forced to abandon the extensive barracks, magazines,
and fortifications it had once constructed there. A con-
siderable white population remains, however, and the
passer is one of great local importance to the natives.
The completion of the railway brought new life to the
old settlement ; and with such easy access, Tjilatjap is
well worth visiting, if it were only to see its shade- trees.
All the post-roads running into the town, every street
and lane, are such continuous isles, arcades, and tun-
nels of living green that one is repaid for coming, even
after all the other teak and tamarind, kanari and wa-
ringen avenues he may have seen elsewhere in Java.
Not the allies of Versailles, nor the cryptomeria ave-
nues of Japan, can surpass these tree-lined streets of
Tjilatjap, the endless vistas of straight trunks and
arching branches, the lofty canopies of solid, impene-
trable shade, rejoicing one in every part of the town.
Tamarind may be the coolest and waringen the densest
shade, but kanari-trees give the most splendid and
inspiring effect, and Tjilatjap is the place of their
greatest perfection.
We drove during the late afternoon and until dusk
through kanari avenues, whose great green cathedral
aisles, with fretted arches a hundred feet overhead,
dwarfed everything that moved or stood beneath them ;
and then under cool, feathery tamarind bowers, and
past arrays of noble teak, everywhere exclaiming with
delight. The use of the big-leaved teak for street and
post-road shade-trees seemed to me the acme of botan-
ical extravagance, as ill ordered as putting Pegasus
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" 303
to a cart, since we of the temperate zone are used to
even speaking of that expensive timber with respect.
While we drove through the magnificent avenues in
the late afternoon light, past parade-grounds and
parks, over canals and along their embankments, the
rising mists and the solid blue vapors massing in the
distances were so much actual, visible evil malaria
almost in tangible form. One felt that he should dine
on so many courses of quinine only, taking the saving
sulphate first with a soup-spoon, if he expected to sur-
vive the mad venture into Tjilatjap's fever-laden air.
A crowded, neglected cemetery gave one further creeps
and gruesome thoughts ; and the evil-smelling sugar
and copra warehouses on the harbor front seemed to
seal our doom that old ignorant instinct or idea as-
serting itself that the bad smell must necessarily be
the bad air. There is a beautiful view from the old
military encampment out over the land-locked harbor,
with a glimpse of the open ocean through a narrow en-
trance. The dark mass of Noesa Kambangan ( " Float-
ing Island") rises beyond the silvery waters a tropical
paradise deliberately depopulated by the Dutch as a
strategic measure, that there might be no temptation
of sustenance to induce an attack or siege from that
quarter. The island is mountainous, and contains
much fine scenery, many floral marvels, curious sta-
lactite caverns of holy repute where Siva is secretly
worshiped, hot springs, and even gold-mines, and is
famous in the old Javanese poems and legends. The
great surf of the Indian Ocean beats upon its pre-
cipitous south shore, where the clefts and caves in the
bold cliffs are inhabited by myriads of sparrows, who
304 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
build there their edible nests. Nest-hunting furnishes
employment to the few islanders, and, like everything
else, is strictly regulated and taxed by the colonial gov-
ernment. The nest-hunters only pursue their perilous
quest after the young sparrows are well grown each
season, as only new, fresh, one-season-old nests serve
to make the " bad vermicelli" soup Celestial gourmets
adore ; and the hunters are often suspended over
the cliffs by ropes in order to reach their carefully
hidden homes. The glutinous white lumps are as
much esteemed in Java as in China, and this rare
dainty commands a high price from the moment it is
secured.
There is a typical little country colonial hotel at Tji-
latjap a large building containing the offices, draw-
ing-room, and dining-room in the center of a garden,
with long, low buildings at either side of it, where rows
of bedrooms open upon the long arcade or bricked
porch, which is a general corridor, screened off into as
many little open sitting-rooms, each with its table,
lamp, and lounging-chairs. After our malarial drive
we were served an excellent dinner, which concluded
with a dessert course of kanari ambon, the "Java
almond," or nut of the kanari-tree, soaked in brandy.
The kanari ambon has the shape and shell of a butter-
nut ; but the long, solid white kernel is finer and firmer
than even an almond, and of a richer, more distinct
and delicate flavor. These nuts of the Tjilatjap region
are superior to those grown elsewhere in Java, but we
learned this too late, when we tried to buy them else-
where.
After the sun fell the air grew heavier and hotter
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" 306
a stifling, sodden, steaming, reeking atmosphere of
evil that one could hardly force in and out of the
lungs. We gasped at intervals all through the long
evening, and wondered if some vast vacuum bell had
not been dropped down over Tjilatjap, while we batted
flying things from our faces and swept them from the
writing-table. Lizards ran over the walls, of course ;
and one pale-gray, clammy thing was picked from the
bed-curtains, and thrown out with a sickening " ugh ! "
The invisible one, in agony, called for " Becky ! Becky !
Becky ! " and a hoarser voice cried for " ToJcee ! ToJcee !
ToJcee ! " of whom we had never heard before.
Wearily, without rustle of leaves, stir, or any provo-
cation, a sullen rain began to fall, and saturating the
atmosphere, made it that much heavier. The rain
ceased as wearily as it had begun, and the awful,
sodden stillness was only broken by the slow, heavy
drip of the listless foliage, and the occasional thud of
a falling mango. Far, far away, faintly in the air
was heard a smothered booming, moaning sound the
ceaseless surf of the Indian Ocean. Overhead there
was darkness, profound and intense, beyond even heat-
lightning's illumining, with a more impenetrable black-
ness where the double rows of ancient kanari-trees
shaded the street beyond the hotel garden. The pos-
sibilities of its effects, the awful, desperate depression
that loneliness in such surroundings would surely
cause, made me wonder how great was the proportion
of suicides' graves in that damp, weedy cemetery we
had driven past in the gloaming.
Then three guests came over from the other part of
the hotel, and, spreading themselves out on chairs in
306 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
the section of porch beyond our partition screen, be-
gan conversation, all in Dutch consonants and palatal
garglings, with a volume and lung-power, a fervor
and emphasis, that made the languid air vibrate and
the mangos fall in showers. Their voices could have
easily been heard at the harbor's edge or the railway-
station, in a stamp-mill or in a boiler factory ; and the
humor of it the three Dutchmen in the stilly night
bellowing away as if conversing through a half-mile
of fog greatly relieved the sodden melancholy of the
malarial evening. Clouds of dense, rank, Sumatra
tobacco-smoke rose from the talkers' mouths in vol-
umes to match their voices, and until long past mid-
night those three men on a silent porch conversed
more Hollandico, the roar of voices and the pungent
smoke sending us dreams of Chicago fires and riots,
passing freight-trains, and burning forests.
We had been warned betimes that there would
be no opportunity to lunch at wayside stations or
from compartment baskets during the long ride from
Tjilatjap to Garoet, and we planned accordingly. Our
gentle Moslem, who made such inconsequent, irre-
sponsible child's play at waiting on us, was shown the
bread and the cold buffalo beef, and bidden make
sandwiches in plenty. I even went into details as to
salt and pepper, the "mustard" and "no mustard"
varieties, and insisted on white paper only for wrap-
ping, before leaving him to the task.
After all Tjilatjap's evil name, we never had any ill
effects from venturing into it, and we had a sense of
complacent rejoicing when we took train, that next
morning, for Maos on the main line of the railway,
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" 307
and knew that a few hours would put us beyond the
terra ingratti.
Nearly always, in our railway rides in Java, we had
the first-class compartments to ourselves; and we
often looked longingly, despite the heat, at the crowded
second-class compartments, where many Europeans,
nice, intelligent-looking people and interesting fami-
lies, traveled in sociable numbers. The only compan-
ions ever of our first-class solitude were, once, the chief
constructor of the railways, who for a sudden short
trip had dispensed with his official car ; and, again, a
young Holland geologist and mining expert returning
from a season's survey in Borneo both traveling at
government expense. Only the more extravagant
planters, native princes, tourists, and officials with
passes or under orders seem to use the first-class cars,
although the additional comforts and the extra space
are actual necessaries of travel in the tropics. That
the second-class carriages were always well filled with
Europeans showed that at least one thrifty notion of
the Hollanders' home survived transplantation in this
matter of railway fares. From the two chance fellow-
passengers whom we had the fortune to meet on the
train I derived enough, by a day's steady questioning
and comment, to atone for the dearth of travelers'
talk I had suffered before. Both men were cyclope-
dias of things Javanese, geologic and botanical, and
those were very red-letter days in the guide-bookless
land.
There was always interest enough in watching the
people by the way ; and as the through railway-trains
were then novelties of a few days' and weeks' experience
16
308 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
in that section of Middle Java, the station platforms
were crowded with native sight-seers. Native officials
and their trains of attendants, Mohammedan women
with gorgeous head-gear and the thinnest pretenses of
veils, stolid planters with obsequious, groveling ser-
vants, and planters' wives, barefooted, wrapped in
scant sarongs, and as often wearing red velvet jackets
and other traveling toilets of eccentric combination,
the costume of the tropics and a Northern winter at
the same time processions of these entertained us
not a little as they went their way to the other com-
partments of the long train.
After the scorching hours spent running through
swamp and jungle, we drew near the mountains ; life
became more bearable, and we beckoned our Moslem
at the next stopping-place.
" Bring the sandwiches ; they are not in this basket."
He looked blankness, as if a little vaguer and more
becalmed in mind than usual. " The sandwiches that
you made at the Tjilatjap hotel this morning," I ex-
plained slowly. " Where are they f "
"Oh, I eat them jus' now," said the soft- voiced
one, naively, his hand unconsciously traveling to the
digestive region and comfortably stroking it.
Language was useless at such a crisis, and sadly,
silently, I resigned myself to the rest of the ten
hours' empty ride. An hour later we reached Tjiawi,
near which the finest pineapples of the island are
grown ; and we bought them on the platform, great
fragrant, luscious globes of delight, regardless of the
almost prayerful requests made to us on arrival, that
we would not touch a pineapple in Java. We did a
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" 309
tourist's whole duty to specialties of strange places
for that one day, buying the monster nanas in most
generous provision ; and we made up for all previous
denials and lost pineapple opportunities as we tore off
the ripe diamonds of pulp in streaming sections that
melted on the tongue ; nor did we feel any sinking at
heart nor dread of the future for such indulgence.
Then, at Tissak Malaya, we bought strings of mango-
steens through the car- windows. But after the light,
evanescent, six-o'clock breakfast of the country, these
noonday feasts of juicy fruits did not satisfy one for
long, and soon we hungered again.
At Tjipeundeui, in the shadow of the great volcanic
range that walls the west, a local chief, or village
head man, was foremost on the station platform, that
was crowded with cheerful, chattering groups of na-
tives, hung over with bundles as if come from a fair.
With great excitement the chief announced that the
Goenoeng Galoengoeng, or " Great Gong Mountain,"
was in eruption again. Two weeks before it had rum-
bled, as its name indicates it has a habit of doing, and
sent out a shower of stones that ruined a large coffee-
plantation, scorching and half burying the budding
trees in the hot rocks, pebbles, and sand. It had be-
gun rumbling and shaking again, the village wells had
emptied, and the people had fled, remembering too well
the eruption of 1822, when one hundred and fifteen
villages were destroyed, twenty thousand people were
killed, and plantations ruined for twenty miles around
by the rain of hot stones and ashes, and the hot water
and mud overflowing from the blown-out crater. But
such a gentle, happy, cheerful, chattering lot of
310 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
refugees as they were, saving their best sarongs and
finery by wearing them, and tying the rest of their
treasures in shapeless bundles, as they went picnick-
ing forth to visit relatives until the volcanic disturb-
ance might subside! They were not a whit more
care-worn or anxious than the crowd on the next
station platform, where two or three hundred plea-
sure-seekers were returning from a famous country
passer, whose rare meetings attract people from afar.
Even the chief of the volcanic village radiated joy and
pride all over his wrinkled old brown face as he re-
lated the moving events occurring in his bailiwick.
Eruptions were evidently his pastime, a diversion
quite in his line, since he had only come down to the
railway to see his family off to a place of safety, while
he would return, play Casabianca on his burning
heath, and have it out with the resounding Galoen-
goeng at his leisure.
We had an hour to wait at Tjibatoe station before
the Garoet train left, and the refreshment-room keeper
offered tea and biscuits the inevitable, omnipresent
Huntley & Palmer biscuits, that are the mainstay and
salvation, the very prop and stay and staff, of tourist
life in Netherlands as well as British India, and for
whose making the great Reading bakers buy the
entire tapioca-crop of Java each year. After a short
wait in the room, redolent of gin and schnapps and
colonial tobacco, a boy sauntered in the back door
with an iron tea-kettle, and the proprietor was about
to make the tea with that warm water, when we
chorused a protest. He good-naturedly allowed me
to gather up tea-pot, tea-kettle, small boy, and all, and
"TJILATJAP," "CHALACHAP," "CHELACHAP" 311
go a hundred yards down the road, climb a bamboo
ladder laid against a bank, and restore the cooling
kettle to its place on the home fire in the airiest,
dearest little fancy basket of a home, in which one
could imagine grown people playing "keep house."
A bright-eyed little woman stirred the fire, gave me a
box to sit upon, and herself crouched before the sullen
tea-kettle, chattering and crooning like a child at play.
" Bodedit ? Bodedit f " (" Does it boil f Does it boil ? )
she asked seriously, putting her ear to the spout, or
sliding the lid and peering into the still interior; but
it finally did boil energetically. We made the tea;
and, at risk of every bone, I descended that slanting
half-ladder in a gentle rain, and returned to enjoy
quite a feast that the kind refreshment-room keeper
had conjured up in the meantime.
XXIII
GARGET AND PAPANDAYANG
'AIN blurred the landscape for all of the
half-hour run from Tjibatoe down to
Garoet, and we lost the panorama of
splendid mountains that surround the
great green Garoet plain, embowered in
the midst of which is the town of Garoet, a favorite
hill and pleasure-resort of the island. We did catch
glimpses now and then, however, of dark mountain
masses looming above and through the clouds, and of
flooded rice-fields and ripening crops, with scarecrows
and quaint little baskets of outlooks perched high on
stilts, where young Davids with slings lay in wait
for birds. Boys leading flocks of geese, and boys
astride of buffaloes made other pictures afield, and
in the drizzling rain of the late afternoon we were
whirled through the dripping avenues to the Hotel
Hork, home of Siamese royalties and lesser tourists,
health- and pleasure-seekers, who visit this volcanic
and scenic center of the Preanger regencies.
Our sitting-room porch at this summer hotel, with
an endless season, looked on a garden, whose formal
312
GARGET AND PAPANDAYANG 313
flower-beds, bordered with stones and shells, classic
vases, and other conventions of their kind, reminded
one at once of by-places in Europe; and so also did
the bust of Mozart and the copy of Thorwaldsen's
" Venus," until one noted their protecting palm- and
mango-trees. This Garoet hotel is one of the institu-
tions of Java, and the Vrouw van Hork and her excel-
lent Dutch housekeeping are famed from Anjer Head
to Banjoewangi. All the colonial types were repre-
sented at the long table d'hote, and every language of
Europe was heard. There were always nice neighbors
at table, able and anxious to talk English, and the
cheery Dutch ladies were kindness and friendliness
personified. At no other resort on the island did we
receive such a pleasant impression of the simplicity,
refinement, and charm of social life in the colony.
But, although two thousand feet above sea-level, in
a climate of mildly tempered eternal spring, the ladies
all wore the sarong and loose dressing-sacque in the
morning, as in scorching Batavia or lowland Solo.
Even on damp and chilly mornings, when a light wrap
was a comfortable addition to our conventional muslin
gowns, the Garoet ladies were bare-ankled and as
scantily clad as the Batavians ; and there were shock
and real embarrassment to me in seeing in sarong and
sacque the dignified elderly matron who had been my
charming dinner neighbor the night before.
There is an interesting passer at Garoet, and besides
the lavish display of nature's products, there are cu-
rious baskets brought from a farther valley, which
visitors compete for eagerly. The town square, or
overgrown village green, is faced by the homes of the
314 JAVA: THE GAKDEN OF THE EAST
native regent and the Dutch resident, and by the quaint
little messigit, or Mohammedan mosque. The last
mufti, or head priest of the prophet, at Garoet was a
man of such intelligence and liberality that he had
but one wife, and allowed her to go with face uncov-
ered, to learn Dutch, and to meet and freely converse
with all his foreign visitors, men as well as women.
Travelers brought letters to this mufti and quoted him
in their books, but since his death the more regular,
illiberal order has ruled at Mohammedan headquarters.
The great excursion from Garoet is to the crater of
Papandayang, a mountain whose extended lines (fif-
teen miles in length by six in breadth) match its
syllables ; which has been in vigorous eruption within
a century ; and which still steams and rumbles, and,
like the Goenoeng Goentor, or " Thunder Mountain,"
across the plain, may burst forth again at any mo-
ment. At the last eruption of Papandayang, in 1772,
there was a great convulsion, a solid mass of the
mountain was blown out into the air, streams of lava
poured forth, and ashes and cinders covered the earth
for seven miles around with a layer five feet thick, de-
stroying forty villages and engulfing three thousand
people in one day. The scar of the great crater, or
" blow-out hole," near the summit of the mountain, is
still visible from the plain, and the plumes and clouds
of steam ascending from it remind one of its un-
pleasant possibilities. We made a start early one
rainy morning, and drove twelve miles across the
plain, along hard, sandy white roads, continuously
bordered with shade-trees. The frequent villages were
damp and cheerless, and the little basket houses, that
GABOET AND PAPANDAYANG 317
the people weave as they would a hat, were anything
but enviable dwellings then. The sling-shooters' sen-
try-boxes throughout the fields perches where men or
boys sat to pull sets of strings that reached to scare-
crows far away suggested too much of clammy,
rheumatic discomfort to seem as picturesque as usual
strange little Malay companion pieces to the same
boxes on stilts that one sees perched in the rice-fields
of Hizen and the other southern provinces of Japan.
At Tjisoeroepan, at the foot of the mountain, we
changed to clumsy djoelies, or sedan-chairs, each borne
by four coolies, whose go-as-you-please gait, not one
of them keeping step with any other, was especially
trying so soon after coming from the enjoyment of
the swift, regular, methodical slap-slap tread of the
chair-bearers of South China. Despite their churning
motion, the way was enjoyable ; and, beginning with
a blighted and abandoned coffee-plantation at the base
of the mountain, we passed through changing belts of
vegetation, as by successive altitudes we passed botan-
ically from the tropic to the temperate zone. The
bleached skeletons 'of the old coffee-trees, half-smo-
thered in undergrowth and vines, interested one more
than the beautifully ordered and carefully tended young
coffee-trees in newer plantations sad reminders of
those good old days before the war (the Achinese war),
the deficit, and the blight. Beyond kina limits there
were no more clearings, and then the tree-fern appeared
wan skeletons of trees at first, where much thin-
ning out had left them in range of scorching sun-
light ; but in the shade of greater trees in the thick of
the jungle they stood superb great, splendid, soft,
318 JAVA: THE GARDEN OP THE EAST
drooping, swaying, gigantic green fronds, a refined, ef-
feminate, delicate, sensitive sort of palm, the tropic's
most tropical, exquisite, wonderful tree. The upper
regions of Papandayang are all clothed with real
jungle, the forest primeval, with giant creepers writh-
ing and looping serpent-like about the trees, and doing
all the extravagant things they are expected to do.
Eatans, or climbing palms, enveloped whole trees with
their pendant, gracefully decorative leaves ; orchids
swung in tasseled sprays, starred mossy trunks and
branches, and showed in all the green wonderland
overhead and around ; and in each ravine, where warm
streams sprayed the air, a whole hothouse full of bloom-
ing, green, and strange loveliness delighted the eye.
We met strings of coolies descending with baskets
of sulphur on their backs, the path was yellow with
the broken fragments of years' droppings, and infra-
grant, murky sulphur-streams crossed and ran beside
the path, in promise of the stifling caldrons we were
fast approaching.
We had a magnificent view back over the Garoet
plain, with its checker-board of green and glinting
fields, marked with the network of white post-roads
and dotted with the clumps of palms that bespoke the
hidden villages, and then we passed in through a
natural gateway or cutting in the solid mountain-side
made by the last eruption. The broad passage or de-
file led to the Jcawa, or crater, a bowl or depression
deep sunk in rocky walls, with pools of liquid sulphur
bubbling all over the five-acre floor and sending off
clouds of nauseous steam. These pools, vats of purest
molten gold, boiled violently all the time, scattering
GAEOET AND PAPANDAYANG 319
golden drops far and wide from their fretted, honey-
combed edges. There was always suggestion of the
possibility of their suddenly shooting into the air like
geysers, and deluging one with the column of molten
gold ; or of the soft filigree edges of the pools crum-
bling and precipitating one untimely into the lakelet
of fire and brimstone. Steam jets roared and hissed
from all parts of the quaking solfatara, and from the
rumblings and strange underground noises one could
understand the native legends of chained giants groan-
ing inside of the mountain, and their name for Papan-
dayang, "The Forge." The sulphur coolies stepped
warily along the paths between the pools ; our shoe-
soles were not proof against the steam and scorch of
the heaving ground beneath us ; and carbonic-acid gas
and sulphureted hydrogen were all that one could find
to breathe down there on the crater's floor the un-
doubted Guevo Upas, or " Valley of Poison."
It is said that one can see the shores both of the In-
dian Ocean and the Java Sea from the summit of Papan-
dayang, which is seven thousand feet above their level.
Although the skies were cloudy and doubtful around
the horizon edges, we were willing to take the brilliant
noonday sun overhead as augury, and attempt the
climb. As there was no path beyond the crater's rest-
sheds for the coolies to carry us in djoelies, we started
on foot straight up the first steep slope of the crater's
ragged wall, through tangles of bushes and the rank
bamboo-grass. We drove our servant on ahead, and
the poor indolent creature, cheated of his expected
lounge after his arduous pony-ride up the mountain
and his midday rice-feast, turned plaintive counte-
320 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
nance backward, as he picked his reluctant way bare-
footed through this prickly underbrush.
" What for go here ? " he bleated.
" To get to the top of the mountain and see the two
oceans."
" Dis mountain no got top," wailed the unconscion-
able one ; but we remembered the waist-deep water he
had conjured up to discourage us from Chandi Sewou ;
nor had we forgotten the Tjilatjap sandwiches with
which he had comforted himself such a few days be-
fore, and we said, " Go on ! "
Then, remembering our perpetual hunt for and ex-
pectation of great snakes, he turned mournful coun-
tenance and wailed : " Slanga ! slanga ! [" Snakes !
snakes ! "] always live dis kind grass."
" Very well. That 's just what we want to find. Be
sure you tell us as soon as you step on one or see it
moving."
But, after pushing and tearing our way through
bamboo-grass and bushes to the first ridge, we saw
only other and farther ridges to be surmounted, with
great ravines and stony hollows between. We took
such view of the cloudy plains and ranges to north-
ward and southward as we could, seeing everywhere
the murky, blue, misty horizon of the rainy season,
and nowhere the silver sea-levels, nor the lines of per-
petual surf that fringe the Indian Ocean. We saw
again the mosaic of rice-fields and dry fields covering
the Graroet plain ; and looking down upon the foot of
an opposite mountain spur, we could study, like a
relief -map or model tilted before us, a vast plantation
cultivated from tea to highest coffee and kina level.
GARGET AND PAPANDAYANG 321
Nowhere in the slopes below could we see the
vale of the deadly upas-tree, that was last supposed
to occupy a retired spot on Papandayang's remote
heights. The imaginative Dr. Foersch, surgeon of
the Dutch East India Company at Samarang in 1773,
made the blood of all readers of the last century run
cold with his description of himself standing alone,
" in solitary horror," on a blasted plain covered with
skeletons, with another solitary horror of a deadly
upas the only larger object in sight. The Guevo
Upas, or " Valley of Poison," was first said to be on
the plain southeast of Samarang, but that region was
explored in vain; then it was put upon the Dieng
plateau, and found not there ; and last the valley was
said to be on the side of a high mountain far away in the
almost unexplored Preanger regencies. Dr. Horsfield,
in his search for volcanic data, routed the upas myth
from the Papandayang region and exploded it for all
time, and the Guevo Upas has gone to that limbo where
the maelstrom and other perils of ante-tourist times
are laid away. There is a deadly tree in Java, the
antiar (Antiaris toxicaria), whose sap is as poisonous
as serpent venom if it enters a wound, and will pro-
duce deep, incurable ulcers if dropped on the skin ; and
skeletons of animals may have been found beneath
and near it. Erasmus Darwin immortalized the deadly
upas, or antiar, in his poem, " The Botanic Garden,"
and this antiar is the only actual and accepted upas-
tree of the tropics. It is quite possible that some
valley or old crater on the mountain-side, where the
carbonic-acid and sulphurous gases from the inner
caldron could escape, would be strewn with skeletons
322 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
of birds and animals, a valley of death to man and
beast, and as deadly a place, for the same reasons, as
the celebrated grotto at Naples ; but no tree could live
in those fumes either; and the solitary tree on the
11 blasted plain " of skeletons, and the Dutch doctor in
his " solitary horror," have to be abandoned entire a
last disillusionment in Java.
When we returned from above, our djoelie coolies
were squatted under the tiled shed of refuge built
for visitors and sulphur-miners, and were as curious
a lot of mixed types and races as one could find in
an ethnological museum. While the Malays have,
as a rule, but scanty beards and no hair on breast or
limbs, two of these men were as whiskered and hairy
as the wild men of Borneo, or the hirsute ones of Cey-
lon, the faces narrowed to the countenance of apes by
the thick growth of hair, and their breasts shaggy as
a spaniel's back. These wild men came from some
farther district, but our medium could not or would
not comprehend our queries and establish the exact
spot of their birthplace by cross-questioning the man-
apes themselves ; and the missing links sat comfort-
ably the while, submitting their disheveled heads to
one and another's friendly search and attentions.
We were reluctant to descend Papandayang at the
rapid gait the coolies struck for going down hill, but
they whisked us through the different belts of vege-
tation and down to the serried rows of coffee-trees in
seemingly no time at all. The head man of Tjisoeroe-
pan had posted the village gamelan, or orchestra, in
the little rustic band-stand of the green, and their
tinkling, mild, and plaintive melodies reached us
GARGET AND PAPANDAYANG 323
through the trees long before we were in sight of
them. The musicians played a long program while
the djoelies were put away, carts and horses brought
round, and the very moderate bill itemized and paid
too modest a bill altogether to need an accompaniment
of slow music.
We reached Garoet as the delayed afternoon shower
began falling ; but the lovely moonlight evening under
the shade-trees of Garoet streets was to be remem-
bered, as were the later hours on the porch, with the
iron bust of Mozart looking at us from his tropical
garden bower. In the middle of the night we heard
commotion on our porch, as of bamboo-chairs thrown
over and dragged about. "The snake! at last!"
was the first thought and cry; and as the thrashing
continued, it was evident that a whole den of pythons
must be contorting outside. " A tiger ! " and we peered
through a crack of the latticed door and saw our Tissak
Malaya basket scattered in sections over the garden
path, and monkeys capering off with our store of Boro
Boedor cocoanut-palm sugar. And this petty larceny
of the garden monkeys was our only adventure with
wild beasts in the tropics !
xxrv
" SALAMAT ! n
|HE return from the hill-country to Bui-
tenzorg and Batavia was all too hurried,
and the soft Malay " Salamat" ("Fare-
well") found much regretfully left un-
done. We lingered at the Sans Souci
by Salak until the last hour of grace for the neces-
sary steamer preparations at Batavia, as we dreaded
the reeking sea-coast with its scorching noondays and
stifling nights.
The shady avenues, the wonder-garden, the pic-
turesque passer, and the veranda view of the great
blue mountain rising from the valley of palms below
were more enchanting than at first. I had come to
appreciate and accept the tropics then, to be aware of
many fine distinctions unnoted in the first enjoyment
of their beauty. I fancied that I could detect greater
coolness in the shade of the tamarind than in that of
any other tree ; the milk of a fresh cocoanut had be-
come the most refreshing and delicious drink ; and the
palm had established itself in my affections and all
associations with the outer world. There had come to
324
" SALAMAT ! " 325
be a sense of attachment, almost comradeship, in the
constant companion tree, the graceful, restless creature
that the natives say will not live beyond the sound
of the human voice dying if the village or habita-
tion it guards is deserted. So nearly human and ap-
pealing are these waving cocoas that it is fitting that
there should be a census of palms quite as much as of
people, and that in the last enumeration it appeared
that the people and the palms existed in even numbers
one palm apiece for every one of the millions of in-
habitants of the island.
The drives and the scenery about Buitenzorg, the
sunset and twilight band-concerts under the great aisles
of kanari-trees, had fresh interest, and it was indeed a
penance to leave without taking train around to the
Preanger side of Mount Gedeh, and driving up to the
sanatorium of Sindanglaya, over three thousand feet
above sea-level. The cool mountain air at that eleva-
tion is cure and tonic for all tropic ills, and with the
mercury always 20 lower than at sea-level, Sindang-
laya is the one sure refuge for all Malaysia and Cochin
China, French officers from Saigon reaching it more
quickly than Japan or the highlands of Ceylon. From
Sindanglaya one may go to the Gedeh's crater, and to
the summit of its twin peak, Pangerango, the highest
mountain of the island, where, surrounded by prim-
roses and violets, the flora of the European temper-
ate zone, islanded there after the period of great cold
had retreated northward, one may look down upon
all the Batavia Residency, and out upon the Java Sea,
and southward across Preanger hills to the greater
Indian Ocean.
17
326 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
There was always some new or strange thing to
pique one's interest and implore delay, and the promise
of the great talipot-palm of the gardens bursting into
its magnificent flower, or the great creeper, the Eaf-
flesia, producing one of its gigantic six-foot flowers,
the biggest blossom known to the world, was an in-
ducement not put away without a pang. There were
bird's-nest caves near by on a mountain-side, and over
in the highlands toward Bantam a strange colony of
"Badouins," more than a thousand refugees from
religious persecution, who continue there unhindered
the practice of a religion part pagan and part Bud-
dhist, which commands the most severely upright
lives. The anthropologist and economist have passed
these people by, and one can find little concerning
them in English print. Every day held its won-
der and surprise, and rumor of more and of greater
ones.
Although we were living and walking on the line of
one of the great fissures of the earth's crust all that
time, and eleven of the forty-five volcanoes of the
island are gently active, we did not once feel the tremor
of an earthquake. Table d'hdte talk often turned upon
the volcanic phenomena one and another guest had
experienced, and the eruption of Krakatau by no
means an old story to these colonials was a topic for
which I had an insatiable appetite. They told one
thrilling stories of that summer of Krakatau's pro-
longed activity; of Batavian folk running frequent
excursion-steamers to the Strait of Sunda to witness
the spectacle of a volcano in eruption ; and of that
August Sunday of horror when the very end of the
"SALAMATI" 327
world seemed to have come to all that part of Java.
A dense pall of smoke covered all of Buitenzorg's sky
that day ; Salak was lost in the darkness, and it was
thought that it or Gedeh was in eruption when crashes
and roars beyond those of the most terrific thunder-
storms, the bang and boom of the heaviest artillery's
bombardment, and the sound of frightful explosions
filled the air, shook and rocked the ground, and rattled
houses until conversation was impossible. Compass-
needles spun around and around, barometers rose and
fell, clouds of sulphurous vapors half strangled the
people in the gloom of that awful Sabbath night, and
no one slept with this dread cannonading and the end
of the world seemingly close at hand. The next day-
light brought the climax, a series of prolonged and
awful roars, and then the very crack and crash of
doom, when half of Krakatau's island was torn away
with the final explosion. None who endured those
days of terror can tell of them without excitement ; and
those whose plantations were near the Sunda Strait
had yet more gruesome times during the days of dark-
ness and of greenish, horrid twilight, when the heavens
seemed to be falling about them in the rain of ashes
and hot stones. Batavian folk had as terrifying ex-
periences, and each entering ship brought more awful
tales of being caught by the waves or the eddies of
that sickening sea, with hot stones setting decks and
rigging afire, and the weight of hot ashes threatening
to sink the vessels in the sea of pumice before they
could be shoveled away. Pumice covered the ocean
for miles away from Krakatau; and it drifted into
Batavia harbor in a surface-layer so deep that planks
328 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
were laid on it and men walked even a mile to shore,
they say.
A Dutch scientific commission investigated and col-
lected reports upon the phenomenal events, and its
report, " Krakatau," edited by R. D. M. Verbeek, the
eminent geologist and director of mines to the Dutch
government, was published at Batavia in 1885, in a
quarto volume of 500 pages, in Dutch and French
editions, accompanied by charts and an atlas of col-
ored plates that make clear the whole course of the
spectacular phenomena.
The Royal Society of Great Britain appointed a
"Krakatoa Committee," composed of thirteen of its
most eminent geologists, meteorologists, seismists, and
specialists in such lines, to collect data concerning this
most remarkable eruption of the century, and its re-
port, a quarto volume of 475 pages, edited by G. J.
Symons, and published in London in 1888, embodies
the result of their inquiries.
M. Rene Breon's report to the French Minister of
Public Instruction was published by his government,
and he contributed papers to "La Nature," in the
April and May numbers for the year 1885. Mr. H. O.
Forbes, the naturalist, was in Batavia in the first weeks
of Krakatau's activity, and the record of his excursion
to the island and his observations was read to the
Royal Geographic Society, and afterward published
in vol. vi. of "Proceedings" (1884, pp. 129, 142).
The many official reports and accounts of the Kra-
katau eruption are best epitomized in Findlay's " Sail-
ing Directory for the Indian Archipelago and China "
(p. 78):
"SALAMAT!" 329
In an old Dutch work there is an account of a violent eruption
on Krakatau in 1680, since which time it appears to have been
quiescent until May 21, 188<5, when smoke was observed rising
from it, and it quickly became very active. On the 23d a ves-
sel encountered a large accumulation of pumice off Flat Cape,
Sumatra ; and on the 24th volcanic cinders fell on the island of
Timor, twelve hundred miles distant.
For the next eight or nine weeks the eruption continued with
great vigor, increasing in activity on August 21st, preparatory
to its final great effort. On the evening of the 26th some violent
explosions took place, audible at Batavia, eighty miles distant ;
and between 5 and 7 A. M. on the 27th there was a still more
gigantic explosion, followed about 10 A. M. by ajietonation_o
terrific as to be heard even in_ India , Ceylon,. Manilla^ and the
west coast of Australia, over two thousand miles away. Fol-
lowing on these came a succession of enormous waves, which
completely swept the shores of the strait, utterly destroying
An j el-, Telok Betong, and numerous villages, the loss of life
being officially estimated at over thirty-six thousand souls.
The coasts and islands in the vicinity were buried under a layer
of mud and ashes.
The effects of this eruption were felt all over the world. Ashes
fell at Singapore, 519 miles distant, Bengkalis, 568 miles dis-
tant, and the Cocos Islands, 764 miles to the southwestward ;
and undulations of the sea were recorded at Ceylon, Aden,
Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, and in the Pacific. A wave
of atmospherical disturbance was also generated, which has
been traced three times completely round the world, traveling
at the speed of sound. Many months afterward pumice was
cast ashore on Zanzibar Island and Madagascar, supposed to
have drifted from the Strait of Sunda.
The height of the column of steam and smoke given off by
the volcano is estimated at from nine to twelve miles, 1 the con-
sequence being that large quantities of fine dust were discharged
into the upper regions of the atmosphere, giving rise to those
1 The Royal Society gives an estimate of seventeen miles
ae the height of this great column of smoke.
330 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
beautiful sunset effects observed all over the world for several
months afterward. The amount of solid matter ejected has been
computed at over four and a quarter cubic miles.
Such a convulsion has naturally greatly altered the features
of the surrounding sea and islands. The northern portion of
Krakatau has completely disappeared, and several banks and
shoals have been formed between it and Bezee Island, render-
ing the passage between almost impracticable. It has not other-
wise affected the navigation of Sunda Strait, and its activity has
now ceased (1889). . . .
Krakatau Island, lying in the middle of Sunda Strait, has been
reduced in size from thirteen to six square miles, the site of the
northern part of the island now being covered by deep water,
no bottom being obtained at 164 fathoms at one spot. The
island is now three and a half miles in Length, east and west,
and two miles wide at its east end. Mount Radaka, its fine
conical peak, which still remains, rising boldly up to the height
of 2657 feet, may be seen at a considerable distance, and serves
as a fairway mark for ships entering the strait from the west-
ward. It is in latitude 6 C 9' S., longitude 105 27' E., and its
northern side is now a sheer precipice about 2550 feet
high. . . . The island was uninhabited, but visited occasionally
by fishermen. . . .
Verlaten Island has increased in size from about one and a
half to four and a half square miles. Lang Island has altered
somewhat in shape, but not much in size. The round islet named
Polish Hat has disappeared, but another islet now lies three
quarters of a mile west a half-mile from its south point, with
deep water between.
Bezee or Tamarind Island, lying ten and a half miles north
by east from Krakatau peak, has altered a little in shape, but
not in size, and appears to be the northern limit of the volcanic
disturbance. . . . Bezee Island formerly produced pepper. . . .
The village was on the east side opposite Little Tamarind Island,
but the volcanic eruption smothered the island with mud and
ashes.
Although we traveled on the island through all the
November weeks, we did not experience any of the
"SALAMAT!" 331
sensational downpours promised for the beginning of
the rainy season, nor the terrific thunder-storms war-
ranted to rend the heavens at the turn of the monsoon,
nor any inconvenience or disarrangement of plans
through the first instalments of the annual precipita-
tion. The black clouds of the Java Sea did not sud-
denly envelop our ship in such sheets of rain that the
vessel was forced to lay to, the lookout in the bows
unable to see ten feet ahead of him, and the double
sail-cloth awnings over the decks serving no more pur-
pose than so much gauze. The rain did not descend
in a flood or cloud-burst's fury at precisely three
o'clock every afternoon, penetrating carriage-curtains
and -aprons, filling the carriage-boxes like tanks, and
saturating every garment and article. Nor any more
did we play billiards by lightning, without lamps, like
that British planter who eventually scared away a
party of Americans by his account of thunder-storms
in Java. This British resident assured the tourists
that at his Preanger plantation the thunder-claps shook
the house, rocked the furniture, and stopped clocks,
and that he had often turned out the reeling lamps
for safety's sake, and continued his games of billiards
by the lightning's incessant, blinding green glare.
And the Americans believed it, and remained away
from Java British humor and American credulity
matched to equally surprising extremes.
There were gentle, intermittent drizzles and light
showers on several days ; many days when the gray
skies sulked and seemed about to weep ; but the only
hard showers were at night. The one vaunted sensa-
tional, tropical downpour, with blue-and-green light-
ning's illumination, made my last Batavian midnight
332 JAVA: THE GAEDEN OF THE EAST
memorable, and put me at last in line with my cli-
matic expectations. Yet that was at the end of Novem-
ber, when the monsoon was supposed to have sent off
its irregular fireworks and settled down to the fixed
program of a three-o'clock shower every afternoon,
in order to precipitate its annual eighty inches of
rain.
Even the thermometer disappointed one in this land
comprised between the parallels of 5 and 8 south of
the equator. Not once in my stay did it register as
great a heat as I have once seen it register in Sitka in
July 94 Fahrenheit ; but as the column of mercury is
often small gage or warrant for one's own sensations,
he must believe, even if with mental reservations, that
Batavia's mean temperature was but 78.69 for twelve
years, with a monthly mean range of but two degrees.
If one has been out in the sun at that hour, he feels
skeptical about Batavia's annual average noonday tem-
perature being but 83, all of four degrees cooler than
Samarang's and Sourabaya's average noon temper-
ature. He may believe that the thermometer very
seldom falls below 70 or rises above 90, but a qual-
ity in the air, a weight and appreciable humidity, make
Batavia's mean, exhausting, lifeless 83 noondays the
climax of one's discomfort.
With the upas-tree, the great snakes, the tigers, the
pirates, and the good coffee exposed as myths; the
white ants never eating out the contents of a trunk
overnight ; mildew ignoring the luggage left for over
a fortnight at Buitenzorg; and the trunks left at
Singapore for more than a month equally innocent of
fungus-mold, I felt that the tropics had defrauded me
"SALAMAT!" 333
a bit or else that I had lent too willing an ear to
returned travelers' imaginations. Taking my own ex-
perience as proof, there might be written a brief chap-
ter about snakes to match that famous one in Horre-
bow's " History of Iceland." But the disillusionment
of disillusionments awaited us on the borders of Ban-
tam, when the last Batavian day brought informa-
tion that our so-called tiny bantam cock is not from
Bantam at all. It was first seen on board a Japanese
junk trading at Bantam in the long ago, and the
Malays, who are natural and long-descended cock-
fighters, saw in these little fowls combatants more
spirited than any of their own breed, and of more
manageable size. The true bantam cocks to the prov-
ince born are nearly as large as turkeys ; long ago
Dr. Marsden told of their being as large as Norfolk
bustards, and of their standing high enough to peck
off the dinner-table, and said that when they sat down
on the first joint of the leg they were taller than any
common fowls. The introduction of the pretty Jap-
anese fowls revolutionized cock-fighting, and the Dutch
imported them through their Nagasaki factory, and in-
troduced them to Europe.
The equator was proved not such a terrible thing as
it had been made out to be a thing that might be
spoken of very disrespectfully because of that mis-
placed awe and veneration ; and the tropics not at all
as astonishing as they used to be, when illustrated
books of travel, museum collections and models, and
exposition villages had not made their life and scenery
so familiar ; when hothouses had not brought even or-
chids to common acquaintance, and Northern markets
334 JAVA: THE GARDEN OF THE EAST
to displaying oranges and bananas as commonly and
regularly as apples or potatoes.
With the other India the whole continent of the
real, the greater, or British India before us, we could
not delay on the Netherlands isle ; and that strange,
haunting, indefinite fear, the dread of some unknown,
undefinable evil, that shadows and oppresses one so
in the tropics, asserted itself more strongly as we ap-
proached Batavia. One is not sure whether this vague
fear which possesses one under the line is due to the
sense of extreme distance, to dread of the many dis-
eases that lie in wait, to fear of the sudden deaths of
so many kinds that may snatch one in the lands where
the sun swings nearest, or to the peril of volcanic
forces that may instantly overwhelm one in some dis-
aster like that of Krakatau. At least, there was always
a sensation 'of oppression, a dread of some impending
danger in the midst of one's enjoyment, and an un-
conscious looking-forward to free breathing and the
sensation of safety, when once across the line again,
back to the grand route and the world again, safe
under the British flag at friendly Singapore, at home
again with the English language.
Yet Java, the peerless gem in "that magnificent
empire of Insul-Inde which winds about the equator
like a garland of emeralds," is the ideal tropical island,
the greenest, the most beautiful, and the most exqui-
sitely cultivated spot in the East, the most picturesque
and satisfactory bit of the tropics anywhere near the
world's great routes of travel. Now that the dark
days of Dutch rule are ended and enlightened modes
prevail ; now that the culture system has developed the
"SALAMAT!" 335
island's resources and made it all one exquisite, fruitful
garden, and the colonists have begun to take an inter-
est in uncovering and protecting the ancient monu-
ments, the interest and attractions of Java are greater
each year. It is alike the scientist's greatest store-
house and the traveler's unequaled tropical pleasure-
resort and playground in the East. The antiquities
have been merely scratched, explorations in that line
are only well begun, leaving to archaeologists and
anthropologists a field of incalculable richness more
especially to those bent upon arriving at some solu-
tion of the great puzzle, some proof of Asiatic and
American contact in pre-Columbian times. The puz-
zling resemblance of the older Javanese ruins to those
of Central America has yet to be explained, and the
alluring theory of migration from the rich "food-
ponds " of the waters within the archipelago to other
and farther inclosed seas teeming with fishes, until
the Malays had followed with the great currents up
one shore of the Pacific Ocean and down the other,
must be proved. Dutch scientists naturally desire
to explore and exploit this treasure-house of Java for
themselves ; but with a questioning world and many
eager inquirers bent on solving all the mysteries and
problems of race origin and migrations, the prize
must be won by the swiftest.
If Baedeker or Murray would only go to Java and
kindly light the tourist's way ; if the Dutch govern-
ment would relax the useless vexations of the toelat-
ings-kaart system, and the colonists welcome the vis-
itor in more kindly spirit, Java would rank, as it
deserves to, as a close second to Japan, an oasis in
336 JAVA: THE GAKDEN OP THE EAST
travel, an island of beauty and delight to the increas-
ing number of round-the-world travelers, who each
year are discouraged from visiting the country by less
heedful ones who have ventured there.
Whether, as pessimists foretell, a Mohammedan re-
bellion shall desolate the isle; whether it remains in
Dutch leading-strings, arrives at even the limited
independence of a British colony, or succumbs to
Germany's colonial ambitions, as the French so freely
prophesy, Java is certain soon to loom larger in the
world's view, and for a time at least to occupy the
stage.
INDEX
Achin, 4, 10.
Antiar. See UPAS.
Arabs, 37, 38, 227, 265.
Ashantee, 10, 72.
Asoka, 194.
Ayudya, 269.
Badouins, 326.
Baloeboer-Baloeboer-Limbangan, 154.
Bananas, 8, 80.
Bandong, 150.
Bantam, 42, 333.
Banteng, 133.
Batavia, 21, 25-48.
Batavian Society, Museum of, 34, 35,
36.
Baths, 60, 131.
Battek, 42, 45, 46.
Betel-nut, 42.
Bilimbi, 84.
Birds' nests, 304.
Birds, tropic, 13, 130.
Block-printing, 261.
Boro, Boeder, 167-169, 182-202.
Botanical Garden, 66-70.
Brambanam, 218.
Breadfruit, 85.
Breon, M. Rend, 328.
Bromo, Mount, 265, 299.
Brunmnd, Herr, 169, 197.
Buddhism, 168, 169, 187, 190, 193, 194.
Buddhist art, 36, 167, 190, 223, 224.
Buffalo, water-, 55:
Buitenzorg, 49, 62-76, 79, 324.
Burglary, 271.
Cacao, 58, 129.
Carambola, 84.
Central America, 186, 232, 238, 263.
Chandi Sewou, 228-234.
Chicago Exposition, 143, 144, 145.
Chinese, 22, 37, 38, 39, 40, 80, 261, 262,
290.
Christianity, 55, 56.
Cinchona-culture, 70, 104, 150.
Climate, 21, 49, 127, 331, 332.
Coffee, 65, 115, 116.
Coffee-culture, 95, 103, 104, 142, 317.
Coinage, 20.
Courts of law, 271.
Culture system, 94-125.
Daendels, Marshal, 22, 95, 97, 270, 275,
276.
Dancing-girls, 188, 288.
De Charnay, M. Desire, 186, 232, 238,
263, 264.
Delsarte, 293.
Depok, 55.
Dhyani, 193.
Dieng plateau, 237, 238.
Dishabille, 26, 66.
Djokjakarta, 170, 213, 269-282.
Dodok, 132, 166, 163, 246, 262, 297.
Duku, 83.
Durian, 85, 86.
Education, 56, 57.
Egypt, 263.
Fergusson's " History of Indian and
Eastern Architecture," 169, 189, 220,
264.
Ferns, tree-, 317.
Findlay's "Sailing Directory," 328-330.
Forbes, H. 0., 328
Frangipani. 68, 92, 93.
Fruits, 80-91.
Gamelan, 143, 287, 290, 297, 322.
Garoet, 312, 313.
337
338
INDEX
Gautama Buddha, Prince Siddhartha,
187.
Gecko, 59, 212.
Gedeh, 326.
Government, colonial, 31, 32, 119, 120.
Gulden, 20.
Heyden, General Van der, 11.
Hotel life, 26, 26, 29, 58, 59, 61, 313.
Indigo-culture, 104.
Jamboa, 84.
Kalaidon, 151, 152, 153.
Kali, Goddess. See LORO JONGGRAN.
Kanari-trees, 67, 158, 302, 304.
Kawi language, 72, 283, 284, 293.
Khublai Khan, 227.
Kina. See CINCHONA.
Krakatau, 11, 826-330.
Kris, 35, 154, 242, 257, 258, 259, 272
289.
Land laws, 119.
Laundering, 60.
Lawn, Mount, 263.
Leemans, Dr., 197.
Leles, plain of. 152, 153.
Literature, native, 283, 284.
Lizards, 59, 212, 248, 305.
Lombok, 278.
Loro Jonggran, 220, 223.
Macartney, Lord, 21, 289.
Mahabharata, 283, 284.
Majapahit, 241, 265, 269.
Malacca, Straits of, 1, 3, 8.
Malays, 2, 3, 41, 42, 121.
Mangosteen, 30, 87, 88.
Marco Polo, 227.
Mataram, 269, 278.
"MaxHavelaar," 110.
McKinley Bill, 77.
".Menac," 298, 299.
Mendoet, 209, 210.
Merapi, 180, 263.
Merbaboe, 180, 263.
Metzger, Emile, 273.
Missions, 55.
Mohammedans, 38.
Money, J. W. B., 113, 114.
Monkeys, 224, 282, 323.
Monsoon, 18.
Mortality, 21.
Music, 143, 287, 290.
Kanko, 85.
No dance, 293.
Noesa Kambangan, 303.
North, Marianne, 126, 186.
Opium, 107.
Pajajaran, 241, 269.
Pajong, 174, 209, 246, 253, 254, 274, 296.
Pakoe Alam, Prince, 278, 290, 294-300.
Palaces, 36, 67, 246, 249.
Palms, 62, 72, 91, 205.
Pangerango, 325.
Panji, 258, 290.
Papandayang, 314, 319.
Papaya, 86, 87.
Parakan Salak, 128, 136.
Paranaks, 39, 261, 290.
Passer, 42, 79, 161, 176, 206, 254, 372,
313.
Passports. See TOKLATINGS-KAABT.
Pawnshops, 257, 273.
Perk, Herr, 228.
Pineapple, 87, 308.
Polo, Marco, 227.
Pomelo, 87.
Population, 17, 21, 22, 176.
Baden Saleh, 47, 71.
Baffles, Lady, 69, 75.
Raffles, Sir Stamford, 1, 3, 96, 97, 168,
169, 227, 264, 269, 283.
Railway, 6, 50, 61, 62, 164, 307.
Ramayan, 283.
Rambutan, 83.
Bice-fields, 62, 53, 147, 312.
Riz tavel, 30.
Royal Society of Great Britain, 328.
Sadoe, 19.
Salak (fruit), 84.
Salak, Mount, 18, 62, 127, 128.
Salt monopoly, 105.
Sarong, 26, 45, 46, 66, 257, 260, 281, 289,
312.
Siddhartha, Prince, 187.
Sinagar, 128-146.
Sindauglaya, 325.
Singapore, 1.
Singa Sari, 237.
Slavery, 101.
Snakes, 165, 166, 320.
Social life, 30, 33, 66, 129, 289, 294, 295,
313.
Soembung, 180.
Soerabaya, 2C5.
Soerakarta. See SOLO.
Solo, 240-264.
Staunton, 21, 289.
Steamships, 7.
Stirrup, 254.
Sugar-culture, 98, 115, 206.
Suku, 263, 264.
Sultan of Djokja. 274.
Sumatra, 9-1L
Snsunhan, 241-246, 269, 270.
Tailors, 79, 162,
Tandjon Priok, 18, 19.
INDEX 339
Tapioca, 310. Verbeek, B. D. M., 328.
Tea-culture, 102, 108, 137, 138, 14L Volcanoes, 18, 67, 150, 180, 265, 309,
Tengger, 265. 314, 318.
Terra, ingrata, 163, 164. Vorstenlanden, 240.
"Thousand Temples." See CHAHDI
SEWOU. WaUace, Alfred Russel, 12, 23, 114, 126,
Tissak Malaya, 156-162. 169.
Tjilatjap, 301, 302. "Wandering Jew," 47.
Toekoe Oemar, 11. Water Kastel, 257, 277.
Toelatings-kaart, 23, 170, 211, 215. Wayang-wayang, 143, 287, 288.
Topeng, 278. Wilsen, Herr, 198.
Tosari, 265.
Ylang-ylang, 92.
Upas, 319, 321. Yucatan, 238, 239, 364.
