The Project Gutenberg eBook, Java, Facts and Fancies, by Augusta de Wit This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Java, Facts and Fancies Author: Augusta de Wit Release Date: September 7, 2013 [eBook #43665] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAVA, FACTS AND FANCIES*** E-text prepared by Walt Farrell, Marc-André Seekamp, David Garcia, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/javafactsfancies00witarich Mask used by Topeng-players J AVA FACTS AND FANCIES [I] [II] [III] BY AUGUS TA DE WI T WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS LO N DO N C HAP MAN & HALL, Ltd. 1905 When the Lady Dolly van der Decken, in answer to questions about her legendary husband's whereabouts, murmured something vague about "Java, Japan, or Jupiter," she had Java in her mind as the most "impossible" of those impossible places. And, indeed, every schoolboy points the finger of unceremonious acquaintance at Jupiter; and Japan lies transparent on the egg-shell porcelain of many an elegant tea-table. But Java? What far forlorn shore may it be that owns the strange-sounding name; and in what sailless seas may this other Ultima Thule be fancied to float? Time was when I never saw a globe—all spun about with the net of parallels and degrees, as with some vast spider's web—without a little shock of surprise at finding "Java" hanging in the meshes. How could there be latitude and longitude to such a thing of dreams and fancies? An attempt at determining the acreage of the rainbow, or the geological strata of a Fata Morgana, would hardly have seemed less absurd. I would have none of such vain exactitude; but still chose to think of Java as situate in the same region as the Island of Avalon; the Land of the Lotos-Eaters, palm-shaded Bohemia by the sea, and the Forest of Broceliand, Merlin's melodious grave. And it seemed to me that the very seas which girt those magic shores—still keeping their golden sands undefiled from the gross clay of the outer world—must be unlike all other water—tranquil ever, crystalline, with a seven-tinted glow of strange sea-flowers, and the flashing of jewel-like fishes gleaming from unsounded deeps. And higher than elsewhere, surely, the skies, blessed with the sign of the Southern Cross, must rise above the woods where the birds of paradise nestle. Where is it now, the glory and the dream? The soil of Java is hot under my feet. I know—to my cost—that, if the surrounding seas be different from any other body of water, they are chiefly so in being more subject to tempest, [IV] [V] [vi] turmoil, and sudden squalls. I find the benign influences of the Southern Cross—not a very brilliant constellation by the way—utterly undone by the fiery fury of the noonday-sun; and have learnt to appreciate the fine irony of the inherited style and title, as compared with the present habitat, of the said Birds of Paradise. And yet—all disappointing experience notwithstanding, and in spite of the deadly dullness of so many days, the fever of so many sultry nights, and the homesickness of all hours—I have still some of the old love for this country left; and I begin to understand something of the fascination by which it holds the Northerner who has breathed its odour-laden air for too long a time; so that, forgetting his home, his friends, and his kindred in the gray North, he is content to live on dreamily by some lotos-starred lake; and, dying, to be buried under the palm-trees. Augusta de Wit. FIRST GLIMPSES A 'brownie' of that enchanted garden that men call Java "A "brownie" of that enchanted garden that men call Java." Batik-pattern My first impression of Java was not that of effulgent light and overpowering magnificence of colour, generally experienced at the first sight of a tropical country; but, on the contrary, of something unspeakably tender, ethereal, and soft. It was in the beginning of the rainy season. Under a sky filmy with diaphanous fleecy texture, in which a tinge of the [1] [2] [3] hidden blue was felt rather than seen, the sea had a pearly sheen, with here and there changefully flickering white lights, and wind-ruffled streaks of a pale violet. The slight haziness in the air somewhat dulled the green of innumerable islets and thickly-wooded reefs, scattered all over the sea; and, blurring their outlines, seemed to lift them until they grew vague and airy as the little clouds of a mackerel sky, wafted hither and thither by the faintest wind. In the distance the block of square white buildings on the landing-place—pointed out as the railway station and the custom houses—stood softly outlined against a background of whitish-grey sky and mist-blurred trees. Slowly the steamer glided on. And, as we now approached the roadstead of Batavia, there came swimming towards the ship numbers of native boats, darting out from between the islets, and diving up out of the shadows along the wooded shore, like so many waterfowl. Swiftest of all were the "praos'" very slight hulls, almost disappearing under their one immense whitish-brown sail, shaped like a bird's wing, and thrown back with just the same impatient fling— ready for a swoop and rake—so exactly resembling sea-gulls skimming along, as to render the comparison almost a description. On they came, drawing purplish furrows through the pearly greys and whites of the sea. And, in their wake, darting hither and thither with the jerky movements of water-spiders, quite a swarm of little black canoes—hollowed- out tree-trunks, kept in balance by bamboo outriggers, which spread on either side like sprawling, scurrying legs. As they approached, we saw that the boats were piled with many-tinted fruit, above which the naked bodies of the oarsmen rose, brown and shiny, and the wet paddle gleamed in its leisurely-seeming dip and rise, which yet sent the small skiff bounding onward. They were along-side soon, and the natives clambered on board, laden with fragrant wares. They did not take the trouble of hawking them about, agile as they had proved themselves, but calmly squatted down amid their piled-up baskets of yellow, scarlet, crimson, and orange fruit—a medley of colours almost barbaric in its magnificence, notwithstanding the soberer tints of blackening purple, and cool, reposeful green; and calmly awaited customers. Under the gaudy kerchiefs picturesquely framing the dark brows, their brown eyes had that look of thoughtful—or is it all thoughtless?—content, which we of the North know only in the eyes of babies, crooning in their mother's lap. And, as they answered our questions, their speech had something childlike too, with its soft consonants and clear vowels, long-drawn-out on a musical modulation, that glided all up and down the gamut. They had a great charm for me, their flatness of features and meagreness of limbs notwithstanding; and I thought, that, if not quite the fairies, they might well be the "brownies" of that enchanted garden that men call Java. "Fishing-praos, their diminutive hulls almost disappearing under the one tall whitish-brown sail, shaped like a bird's wing and flung back, as if ready for a swoop and rake." The ship lay still, and we trod the quay of Tandjong Priok. [4] [9] "The ship lay still, and we trod the quay of Tandjong Priok." But alas! for day-dreaming—the gruff authoritative voice of the quartermaster was heard on deck; and—after the manner of goblins at the approach of the Philistine—all the little brownies vanished. They were gone in an instant: and, in their pretty stead, came porters, cabin-stewards with trunks, and passengers in very new clothes. For we were fast approaching; and, presently, with a big sigh of relief, the steamer lay still, and we trod the quay of Tanjong Priok. It would seem as if the first half hour of arrival must be the same everywhere, all the world over; but here, even in the initial scramble for the train, one notices a difference. There is a crowd; and there is no noise. No scuffling and stamping, no cries, no shouting, no gruff-voiced altercations. All but inaudibly the barefooted coolies trot on, big steamer-trunks on their shoulders; they do not hustle, each patiently awaiting his turn at the office and on the platform; and, as they stand aside for some hurrying, pushing European, their else impassible faces assume a look of almost contemptuous amazement. Why should the "orang blanda"[A] thus discourteously jostle them? Are there not many hours in a day, and many days to come after this? And do they not know that "Haste cometh of the evil?" The train has started at last, and is hurrying through a wild, dreary country, half jungle, half marshland. From the rank undergrowth of brushwood and bulrushes rise clumps of cocoanut palms, their dark shaggy crowns strangely massive above the meagre stems through which the distant horizon gleams palely. In open spaces young trees stand out here and there, half strangled in the festoons of a purple-blossomed liana that trails its tendrilled length all over the lower shrub-wood. Thickets of bamboo bend and sway in the evening wind. To the right stretches a long straight canal, dull as lead under the lustreless sky; the breeze, in passing, blackens the motionless water, and a shiver runs through the dense vegetation along the edge—broad-leaved bananas, the spreading fronds of the palmetto, and mimosas of feathery leafage, above which the silver-grey tufts of bulrushes rise. After a while the jungle diminishes and ceases; and a vast reach of marshy country stretches away to the horizon. We neared it as the sun was setting. Though it had not broken through the clouds, the fiery globe had suffused their whiteness with a deep, dull purple as of smouldering flames. A tremulous splendour suddenly shot over the rush-beds and rank waving grasses of the marshy land; the shining reed-pricked sheets of water crimsoned; and along the canal moving like an incandescent lava stream, the broadly curving banana leaves seemed fountains of purple light, and the palmetto and delicate mimosa fronds grew transparent in the all-pervading rosiness—almost immaterial. Even after the burning edge of the sun, perceived for a brief moment, had sunk away, these marvellous colours did not fade; softly shining on they seemed to be the natural tint of this wonderful land—independent of suns and seasons. Then, all at once, they were extinguished by the rapidly-fallen dusk, as a fire might be under a shower of ashes; and, a few minutes after, it was night. At the lamplit station of Batavia I hailed one of the vehicles waiting outside—a curious little two-wheeled conveyance, which, with its enormous lanterns, airily supported roof, and long shafts between which a diminutive pony trotted, looked like a fiery-eyed cockchafer that darts about, moving its long antennae. I hoisted myself on to the sloping seat, and, for some time was driven through an avenue, the trees on either side of which made a cloudy darkness against the pale strip of sky overhead. There was an incessant high-pitched twittering of birds among the leaves; and, every now and then, a fragrance of invisible flowers came floating out on the windless air. We passed a tall building, shimmering white through the darkness—the Governor-General's palace I was told. Then the horse's hoofs clattered over a bridge, and, past the turn of the road, a long row of brilliant windows flashed up, with a white blaze of electric light in the distance. Past the resplendent shop-windows on the left side of the street—the other remaining dark, featureless—a leisurely crowd moved; open carriages, bearing ladies to some evening entertainment, bowled along; a many-windowed club- building blazed out; a canal shone with a hundred slender spears of reflected light—I had reached my destination, the suburb of Rijswijk. [A] "People from Holland" the name for Europeans generally. Sekin. (Interior of Sumatra) [10] [11] [12] Four-armed Çiva A BATAVIA HOTEL [13] [14] Landing of a Hindoo Ship.—Relief to Boroboedoer (Java) If, in this commonplace-loving age, there be one thing more commonplace and utterly devoid of character than another, it is a hotel. Hotels! where are railroads there are they. The locomotive scatters them along its shining path together with cinders, thistleseeds, and tourists. They are everywhere; and everywhere they are the same. The proverbial peas are not so indistinguishably alike. Surely, a whimsical imagination may be pardoned for fancying a difference between the pods "shairpening" in some Scotch kailyard, the petits-pois coquettishly arranged in Chevet's shop-window, and the Zuckererbsen mashed down to a green pulse in some strong-jawed Prussian's plate—a difference, the far and faint and fanciful analogy to the more obvious one between the gudeman, the French chef, and the Königlich Preussischer Douanen Beamten Gehilfe who own the said peas. But a hotel, on whatever part of Europe it may open its dull window-eyes, has not even a name native of the country, and declaring its citizenship. The genius of speech despairs of making a difference in the name, where there is none in the thing; and thus, from Orenburg to Valentia, and from Hammerfest to Messina, a hôtel is still called a hôtel, and the traveller still expects and finds the same Swiss portier and the same red velvet portières, the same indescribable smell of sherry, stewed-meat, and cigars in the passages, the same funereally-clad waiters round the table d'hôte, and the same dishes upon it. Thus I thought in my old European days. But, since, I have come to Java, and I have seen a Batavia hotel—a rumah makan. Ah! that was a surprise, a shock, a revelation—I would say "un frisson nouveau" if Batavia and shivering were compatible terms. "Un étouffement nouveau" better expressed my sensations, as it flashed upon me in full noon-day glory. Noon is its own time, its hour of hours, the instant when those opposing elements of Batavia street-life—the native population most conspicuous of a morning, and the European contingent preponderant in the evening—attain that exact equipoise which gives the place its particular character; and when the conditions of sky, air, and earth are attuned to truest harmony with it. The great, strong, full noon-day sun beats on the stuccoed buildings, heating their whiteness to an intolerable [15] [16] incandescence. It has set the garden ablaze, burning up the long grey shadows of early morning to round patches of a charred black, that cling to the foot of the trees; and making the air to quiver visibly above the scorched yellow grass- plots. Among their dark leafage, the hibiscus flowers flare like living flame; and the red-and-orange blossoms, dropping from the branches of the Flame of the Forest, seem to lie on the path like smouldering embers. Through this blaze of light and colour, move groups of gaudily-draped natives—water-carriers, flower-sellers, fruit-vendors, pedlars selling silk and precious stones—their heads protected from the sun by enormous mushroom-shaped hats of plaited straw, and their shining shoulders bending under a bamboo yoke, from the ends of which dangle baskets of merchandise. Small, brown, chubby children, a necklet their one article of wear, are gathering the tiny, yellow-white blossoms that bespangle the grass under the tanjong trees. Grave-faced Arabs stride past. Chinamen trudge along—lean, agile figures —chattering and gesticulating as they go. A seller of fruit and vegetables his baskets dangling from the ends of a bamboo yoke. "A seller of fruit and vegetables his baskets dangling from the ends of a bamboo yoke." But, among the crowd of orientals, no Europeans are seen, save such as rapidly pass in vehicles of every description, from the jolting dos-à-dos onwards—with its diminutive pony almost disappearing between the shafts—to the elegant victoria drawn by a pair of big Australian horses. But, even when driving, the noon-day heat is dangerous to the Westerner; and the European inmates of the hotel are all in the dark cool verandahs, enjoying a dolce far niente enlivened by chaffering with the natives and drinking iced lemonades, the ladies—here is another surprise for the newcomer!—all attired in what seems to be the native dress of sarong and kabaya! A kabaya is a sort of dressing- jacket of profusely-embroidered white batiste, fastened down the front with ornamental pins and little gold chains; and under it is worn the sarong, a gaudily-coloured skirt falling down straight and narrow, with one single deep fold in front, and kept in place by a silk scarf wound several times round the waist, its ends dangling loose. With this costume, little high-heeled slippers are worn on the bare feet; and the hair is done in native style, simply drawn back from the forehead, and twisted into a knot at the back of the head. Altogether, this style of attire is original rather than becoming. And, if this must be confessed of the ladies' costume, what must be said of the garb some men have the courage to appear in? A kabaya, and—may Mrs. Grundy graciously forgive me for saying it! for how shall I describe the indescribable, save by calling it by its own by me never-to-be-pronounced name?—A kabaya and trousers of thin sarong-stuff gaily sprinkled with blue and yellow flowers, butterflies, and dragons! [17] [18] Pine-apples and mangosteen, velvety rambootan and smooth-skinned dookoo. "Pine-apples and mangosteen, velvety rambootan and smooth-skinned dookoo." But all this is only an induction into that supreme mystery, celebrated at noon, the rice-table. Here is indeed, "un étouffement nouveau." All things pertaining to it work together for bewilderment. To begin with; it is served up, not in any ordinary dining-room, but in the "back gallery," a place which is a sight in itself, a long and lofty hall, supported on a colonnade, between the white pillars of which glimpses are caught of the brilliantly-flowering shrubs and dark-leaved trees in the garden without. In the second place, it is handed round by native servants, inaudibly moving to and fro upon bare feet, arrayed in clothes of a semi-European cut, incongruously combined with the Javanese sarong and head- kerchief. And, last not least, the meal itself is such as never was tasted on sea or land before. The principal dish is rice and chicken, which sounds simple enough. But on this as a basis an entire system of things inedible has been constructed: besides fish, flesh, and fricassees, all manner of curries, sauces, pickles, preserved fruit, salt eggs, fried bananas, "sambals" of fowl's liver, fish-roe, young palm-shoots, and the gods of Javanese cookery alone know what more, all strongly spiced, and sprinkled with cayenne. There is nothing under the sun but it may be made into a sambal; and a conscientious cook would count that a lost day on which he had not sent in at the very least twenty of such nondescript dishes to the table of his master, for whose digestion let all gentle souls pray! And, when to all this I have added that these many and strange things must be eaten with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, the reader will be able to judge how very complicated an affair the rice-table is, and how easily the uninitiated may come to grief over it. For myself, I shall never forget my first experience of the thing. I had just come in from a ride through the town, and I suppose the glaring sunlight, the strangely-accoutred crowd, the novel sights and sounds of the city must have slightly gone to my head (there are plenty of intoxicants besides "gin" vide the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table). Anyhow, I entered the "back gallery" with a sort of "here-the-conquering-hero-comes" feeling; looked at the long table groaning under its dozens of rice-bowls, scores of dishes of fowls and fish, and hundreds of sambal-saucers, arrayed between pyramids of bananas, mangosteens, and pine-apples, as if I could have eaten it all by way of "apéritif;" sat me down; heaped my plate up with everything that came my way; and fell to. What followed I have no words to express. Suffice it to say, that in less time than I now take to relate it, I was reduced to the most abject misery—my lips smarting with the fiery touch of the sambal; my throat the more sorely scorched for the hasty draught of water with which, in my ignorance, I had tried to allay the intolerable heat; and my eyes full of tears, which it was all I could do to prevent from openly gushing down my cheeks, in streams of utter misery. A charitable person advised me to put a little salt on my tongue, (as children are told to do on the tail of the bird they want to catch). I did so; and, after a minute of the most excruciating torture, the agony subsided. I gasped, and found I was still alive. But there and then I vowed to myself I would never so much as look at a rice-table again. [19] [20] [23] "The big kalongs hanging from the topmost branches in a sleep from which the sunset will presently awaken them." I have broken that vow: I say it proudly. It is but a dull mind which cannot reverse a first opinion, or go back upon a hasty resolve. And now I know how to eat rice, I love it. Still, that first meal was a shock. It suddenly brought home to the senses what up to that minute had been noted by the understanding only: the fact of my being in a new country. The glare of the garden without, the Malay sing-song of those dark bare-footed servants, the nondescript clothes of the other guests, united with the tingling and burning in my throat to make me realise the stupendous change that had come over my universe, the antipodal attitude of things in Europe and things in Java. I had the almost bodily sensation of the intervening leagues upon leagues, of the dividing chasm on the unknown side of which I had just landed. And it fairly dizzied me. Now, the natural reaction following upon a shock of this kind throws one back upon the previous state of things—in the case the ways and manners of the old country—and one stubbornly resolves to adhere to them. But, though this may be natural, it is not wise. I, at least, soon discovered for myself the truth of the old sage's saw: "Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur en delà," as applied to the affairs of everyday life; the more so, as oceans and broad continents, the space of thousands of Pyrenean ranges, separate those hither and thither sides, Holland and Java. The home-marked standard of fit and unfit must be laid aside. The soul must doff her close-clinging habits of prejudiced thought. And the wise man must be content to begin life over again, becoming even as a babe and suckling, and opening cherub lips only to drink in the light, the leisure, and the luxuriant beauty of this new country as a rich mother's milk—the blameless food on which to grow up to (colonial) manhood. But to return to that first "rice-table." After the rice, curries, etc. had been disposed of, beef and salad appeared, and, to my infinite astonishment, were disposed of in their turn, to be followed by the dessert—pine-apples, mangosteens, velvety "rambootans," and an exceedingly picturesque and prettily-shaped fruit—spheres of a pale gold containing colourless pellucid flesh—which I heard called "dookoo." Then the guests began to leave the table, and I was told it was time for the siesta—another Javanese institution, not a whit less important, it would appear, than the famous rice-table—and vastly more popular with newcomers. Perhaps, the preceding meal possesses somniferous virtue; or, perhaps, the heat and glare of the morning predispose one to sleep; or, perhaps—after so many years of complaining about "being waked too soon"—the sluggard in us rejoices at being bidden in the name of the natural fitness of things, to "go and slumber again." I will not attempt to decide which of those three possible causes is the true one; but so much is certain: even those who kick most vigorously at the rice-table, lay them down with lamb-like meekness to the siesta. I confess I was very glad myself to escape into the coolness and quiet of my room. Plain enough it was, with its bare, white-washed walls and ceiling, its red-tiled floor and piece of coarse matting in the centre, its cane-bottomed chairs. But how I delighted in the absence of carpets and wall-papers, when I found the stone floor so deliciously cool to the feet, and the bare walls distilling a freshness as of lily-leaves! The siesta lasted till about four. Then people began to hurry past my window, with flying towels and beating slippers, marching to the bath-rooms. And, [24] [25] at five, tea was brought into the verandah. Then began the first moderately-cool hour of the day. A slight breeze sprang up and wandered about in the garden, stirring the dense foliage of the waringin-tree, and making its hundreds of pendulous air-roots to gently sway to and fro. A shower of white blossom fluttered down from the tanjong-branches, spreading fragrance as it fell. And, by and by, a faint rosiness began to soften the crude white of the stuccoed walls and colonnades, and to kindle the feathery little cirrus-clouds floating high overhead, in the deep blue sky where the great "kalongs" were already beginning to circle. At six it was almost dark. The loungers in the verandah rose from their tea, and went in. And, some half-hour later, I saw the ladies issue forth in Paris-made dresses, the men in the garb of society accompanying them on their calls, for which I was told this was the hour. The "front gallery" of the hotel, a spacious hall supported on pillars, was brilliantly lit. A girl sat at the piano, accompanying herself to one of those weird, thrilling songs such a Grieg and Jensen compose. And when I went in to the eight-o'clock dinner, the menu for which might have been written in any European hotel, I had some trouble in identifying the scene with that which, earlier in the day, had so rudely shocked my European ideas. I half believed the rice-table, the sarongs and kabayas, and the Javanese "boys" must have been a dream, until I was convinced of the contrary by the sight of a lean brown hand thrust out to change my plate of fish for a helping of asparagus. THE TOWN [26] [27] [28] Mask used by Topeng-players Wayang 'bèbèr', drawing, representing the story of Djaka Prataka It is only for want of a better word that one uses this term of "town" to designate that picturesque ensemble of villa- studded parks and avenues, Batavia. There is, it is true, an older Batavia, grey, grim and stony as any war-scarred city of Europe—the stronghold which the steel-clad colonists of 1620 built on the ruins of burnt-down Jacatra. But, long since abandoned by soldiers and peaceful citizens alike, and its once stately mansions degraded to offices and warehouses, it has sunk into a mere suburb—the business quarter of Batavia—alive during a few hours of the day only, and sinking back into a death-like stillness, as soon as the rumble of the last down-train has died away among its echoing streets. And the real Batavia—in contradistinction to which this ancient quarter is called "the town"—is as unlike it as if it had been built by a different order of beings. It is best described as a system of parks and avenues, linked by many a pleasant byway and shadowy path, with here and there a glimpse of the Kali Batawi gliding along between the bamboo groves on its banks, and everywhere the whiteness of low, pillared houses, standing well back from the road, each in its own leafy garden. Instead of walls, a row of low stone pillars, not much higher than milestones, separates private from public grounds, so that from a distance one cannot see where the park ends and the street begins. The shadow of the tall trees in the avenue keeps the garden cool, and the white dust of the road is sprinkled with the flowers that lie scattered over the smooth grass-plots and shell-strewn paths of the villa. Among the squares of Batavia, the largest and most remarkable by far is the famous Koningsplein. It is not so much a square as simply a field, vast enough to build a city on, dotted from place to place by pasturing cattle, and bordered on the four sides of its irregular quadrangle by a triple row of branching tamarinds. From the southern distance two aerial mountain-tops overlook it. The brown bare expanse of meadowy ground, lying thus broadly open to the sky, with nothing but clouds and cloudlike hill-tops rising above its distant rampart of trees, seems like a tract of untamed wilderness, strangely set in the midst of a city, and all the more savage and lonely for these smooth surroundings. Between the stems of the delicate-leaved tamarinds, glimpses are caught of gateways and pillared houses; the eastern side of the quadrangle is disfigured by a glaring railway-station; and, notwithstanding, it remains a rugged solitary spot, a waste, irreclaimably barren, which, by the sheer strength of its unconquered wildness, subdues its environment to its own mood. The houses, glinting between the trees, seem mere accidents of the landscape, simply heaps of stones; the glaring railway-station itself sinks into an indistinct whiteness, dissociated from any idea of human thought and enterprise. [29] [30] A triple row of branching tamarinds. "A triple row of branching tamarinds." The idyllic Duke's park, very shadowy, fragrant, and green. "The idyllic Duke's park, very shadowy, fragrant, and green." Now and then a native traverses the field, slowly moving along an invisible track. He does not disturb the loneliness. He is indigenous to the place, its natural product, almost as much as the cicadas trilling among the grass blades, the snakes darting in and out among the crevices of the sun-baked soil, and the lean cattle, upon whose backs the crows perch. There is but one abiding power and presence here—the broad brown field under the broad blue sky, shifting shades and splendours over it, and that horizon of sombre trees all around. This vast sweep of sky gives the Plein a tone and atmosphere of its own. The changes in the hour and the season that are but guessed at from some occasional glimpse in the street, are here fully revealed. The light may have been glaring enough among the whitewashed houses of Ryswyk and Molenvliet—it is on the Plein only that tropical sunshine manifests itself in the plenitude of its power. The great sun stands flaming in the dizzy heights; from the scorched field to the incandescent zenith the air is one immense blaze, a motionless flame in which the tall tamarinds stand sere and grey, the grass shrivels up to a tawny hay, and the bare soil stiffens and cracks.—The intolerable day is past. People, returning home from the town, see a roseate sheen playing over roofs and walls, a long crimson cloud sailing high overhead. Those walking on the Plein behold an apocalyptic heaven and a transfigured earth, a firmamental conflagration, eruptions of scarlet flame through incarnadined cloud, runnels of fire darting across the melting gold and translucent green of the horizon; hill-tops changed into craters and tall trees into fountains of purple light. And many are the nights, when, becoming aware of a dimness in the moonlit air, I have hastened to the Koningsplein, and found it whitely waving with mist, a very lake of vapour, fitfully heaving and sinking in the uncertain moonlight, and rolling airy waves against a shore of darkness. [35] [36] The Business-quarter of Batavia. "The Business-quarter of Batavia." The seasons, too—how they triumph in this bit of open country! When, after the devouring heat of the East monsoon, the good gift of the rains is poured down from the heavens, and the town knows of nothing but impracticable streets, flooded houses, and crumbling walls, it is a time of resurrection and vernal glory for the Plein. The tamarinds, gaunt gray skeletons a few days ago, burst into full-leaved greenness; the hard, white, cracked soil is suddenly covered with tender grass, fresh as the herbage of an April meadow under western skies. In the early morning, the broad young blades are white with dew. There is a thin silvery haze in the air, which dissolves into a pink and golden radiance, as the first slanting sunbeams pierce it. And the tree tops, far off and indistinct, seem to rise airily over hollows of blue shade. A footsore Klontong trudging wearily along. "A footsore Klontong trudging wearily along." Not far from the Koningsplein there is another square, its very opposite in aspect and character—the idyllic Duke's [37] Park very shadowy, fragrant, and green. One walks in it as in a poet's dream. All around there is the multitudinous budding and blossoming of many-coloured flowers, a play of transparent bamboo-shadows that flit and shift over smooth grassplot and shell-strewn path, a ceaseless alternation of glooms and glories. Set amidst tall dark trees, whose topmost branches break out into a flame of blossom, there stands a white pillared building, palace-like in the severe grace of its architecture. Is it the Renaissance style of those gleaming columns and marble steps, or that name of "the Duke's Park," or both, that stir up the fancy to thoughts of some sixteenth-century Italian pleasaunce, such as Shakespeare loved as a setting for his love-stories? A Duke as gentle as his prince of Illyria, Olivia's sighing lover, might have walked these glades, listening to disguised Viola as, all unsuspectedly, she wooed him from his forlorn allegiance. The irony of facts has willed it otherwise. The Chinese quarter. The Chinese quarter. A duke it was, sure enough, who stood sponsor to the spot. But as (according to French authorities) there are fagots and fagots, even so there are Dukes and Dukes—and vastly more points of difference than of resemblance between Viola's gentle prince, and the thunderous old Lord of Saxen-Weimar, to whose rumbling Kreuzdonnerwetters and Himmel-Sakraments this abode of romance re-echoed some fifty years ago. A distant relative to the King of the Netherlands, he was indebted to his Royal kinsman's sense of family duty for these snug quarters, a very considerable income (from the National Treasury) and the post of an Army Commander, which upheld the prince in the pensioner. His tastes were few and simple, and saving the one delight of his soul, a penurious youth, and the hardships of the Napoleonic supremacy having so thoroughly taught him the habit, that it had become a second nature to him; and would not be ousted now by the mere fact of his having become rich. He was proud of his parsimony too, prouder even than of his swearing, remarkable as it was; and, amidst the pomp and circumstance he had so late in life attained to, neglected not the humble talents which had solaced his less affluent days. So that, looking upon the many goodly acres around his palace, lying barren of all save grass, flowers, blossoming trees, and such like useless stuff, he at once saw what an unique opportunity it would afford him for the exercise of his favourite virtue. And, setting about the matter in his own thorough-going way, he cut down the trees, ploughed up the grassplots, and had the grounds neatly laid out in onion-beds, and plantations of the sirih, which the Javanese loves. Here one might meet the Duke of a morning—a portly, bald-pated, red-faced old warrior with a prodigious "meerschaum" protruding from his bristling white beard, stars, crosses, and goldlace all over his general's uniform, and a pair of list slippers on his rheumatic old toes. An orderly walked behind him, holding a gold-edged sunshade over his shining pate. And, every now and then, the Duke would stop to look earnestly at his crops; and, stooping with a groaning of his flesh, and a creaking of his tight tunic, straighten some trailing plant, or flick an insect off the sirih leaves. "The Duke was in his kitchen-garden, A counting of his money," as one might vary the nursery rhyme. [38] [39] [40]