From the railway station at Batavia the comfortless
"dos-a-dos," colloquially known as the sado, a
vehicle resembling an elementary Irish car, and
drawn by a rat-like Timor pony transports us to
the fashionable suburb of Weltevreden, away from
the steamy port and fever-haunted commercial
capital. The march of modern improvement scarcely
affects old-world Java, where jolting sado and
ponderous milord remain unchanged since the
early days of colonisation, for time is a negligeable
quantity in this lotus-eating land, too apathetic even
to adopt those alleviations of tropical heat common
to British India. The Java of the ancient
world was considered "The Jewel of the East,"
and possesses many claims to her immemorial title,
but the stolid Dutchman of to-day contents himself
with the domestic arrangements which sufficed for
his sturdy forefathers, scorning the mitigations of
swinging punkah or electric fan. The word Batavia
signifies "fair meadows," and these swampy fields
of rank vegetation, exhaling a deadly miasma, were
considered such an adequate defence against hostile
attack, that forts were deemed unnecessary in a
locality where 87,000 soldiers and sailors died in the
Government Hospital during the space of twenty
years. Batavia proper is a commonplace city of
featureless streets, brick-walled canals, and ramshackle
public buildings, but the residential town
of Weltevreden, suggesting a glorified Holland,
combines the quaint charm of the mother country
with the Oriental grace and splendour of the tropics.
The broad canals bordered by colossal cabbage-palms,
the white bridges gay with the many
coloured garb of the Malay population, the red-tiled
roofs embowered in a wealth of verdure, and the
pillared verandahs veiled with gorgeous creepers,
tumbling in sheets of purple and scarlet from cornice
to floor, compose a characteristic picture, wherein
Dutch individuality triumphs over incongruous
environment. Waving palms clash their fronds in
the sea-breeze; avenues of feathery tamarind and
bending waringen trees surround Weltevreden with
depths of green shadow; the scarlet hybiscus flames
amid tangled foliage, where the orange chalices
of the flowering Amherstia glisten from sombre
branches, and hang like fairy goblets from the
interwoven roofs of tropical tunnels, pierced by
broad red roads. On this Sunday afternoon of the
waning year which introduces us to Weltevreden,
family groups are gathered round tea tables
canopied with flowers and palms, in the white
porticos of the Dutch villas, and the startling
déshabille adopted by Holland in the Netherlands
India almost defies description. The ladies, with
stockingless feet thrust into heelless slippers, and
attired in the Malay sarong (two yards of painted
cotton cloth), supplemented by a white dressing-jacket,
display themselves in verandah, carriage, or
street, in a garb only fit for the bath-room; while
the men, lounging about in pyjamas, go barefoot
with the utmost sangfroid. The sarong, as worn
by the slender and graceful Malay, appears a modest
and appropriate garb, but the grotesque effect of
native attire on the broad-built Dutchwoman affords
conclusive proof that neither personal vanity nor a
sense of humour pertain to her stolid personality.
Dutch Puritanism certainly undergoes startling
transformations under the tropical skies, and the
Netherlands India produces a modification of
European ideas concerning what have been called
"the minor moralities of life," unequalled in
colonial experience. An identical exhibition fills
the open corridors of the Hotel Nederlanden, built
round a central court, and the general resort of the
guests during the hot hours of the January days.
Evening dress is reserved for State occasions,
and though sarong and kabaja be discarded at
the nine o'clock dinner, the blouse and skirt of
morning wear in England suffices even at this late
hour for the fair Hollander, who also concedes so
far to the amenities of civilisation as sometimes to
put on her stockings. So much of life in Java is
spent in eating, sleeping, and bathing, that but a
small residuum can be spared for those outside
interests which easily drop away from the European
when exiled to a colony beyond the beaten track of
travel, and destitute of that external friction which
counteracts the enervating influence of the tropics.
Comfort is at a discount according to English ideas,
but the arrangements of the Hotel Nederlanden,
under a kindly and capable proprietor, render it an
exception to the prevailing rule. Each guest is
apportioned a little suite, consisting of bedroom,
sitting-room, and a section of the verandah, fitted
up with cane lounge, table, and rocking-chair. The
bathrooms, with porcelain tank and tiles, leave
nothing to be desired, and the "dipper-bath,"
infinitely cooler than the familiar tub, becomes
an unfailing delight. Ominous prophecies have
emphasised the rashness of coming to Java in the
rainy season, but it has expended its force before
January arrives, and though daily showers cool the
air, and the sky is often overcast, no inconvenience
is experienced. Lizards and mosquitoes are few,
and in the marble-floored dining hall of cathedral
proportions the absence of a punkah is generally
unfelt, though the fact of a tropical climate is
realised at the slightest exertion. The day begins
at 6 a.m. with a cup of the Java coffee, which, at
first unpalatable, reveals by degrees the hidden
excellence of the beverage, brought cold in a
stoppered cruet, the potent essence requiring a
liberal admixture of boiling water. At 9 a.m. a
solid but monotonous breakfast of sausage, bacon,
eggs, and cheese is customary, with the accompaniment
of iced water, though tea and coffee are
provided for the foreign traveller, unused to the cold
comfort which commends itself to Dutch taste. The
mid-day riz-tavel from beginning to end of a
stay in Java, remains the terror of the English
visitor. Each plate is heaped with a mound of rice,
on which scraps of innumerable ingredients are
placed—meat, fish, fowl, duck, prawns, curry, fried
bananas, and nameless vegetables, together with
chilis and chutneys, sembals, spices, and grated
cocoanut, in bewildering profusion. The Dutch
digestion triumphantly survives this severe test at
the outset of the meal, and courageously proceeds
to the complementary courses of beefsteak, fritters
and cheese. Fortunately for those of less vigorous
appetite, mine host of the Nederlanden, far in
advance of his Javanese fraternity, kindly provides
a simple "tiffin" as an alternative to this
Gargantuan repast. Afternoon tea is served in the
verandah, and at eight o'clock the Dutch contingent,
having slept off the effects of the rice table, prepares
with renewed energies to attack a heavy dinner.
New Year's Eve is celebrated by a very bombardment
of fireworks from the Chinese campong, and
crowds hasten to the fine Roman Catholic church
for Benediction, Te Deum, and an eloquent, though
to me incomprehensible, Dutch sermon. Crisp
muslins and uncovered heads for the women, and
white linen garb for the men, are the rule in church,
for the slatternly undress of sarong and pyjamas
is happily inadmissible within the walls of the
sanctuary, where the fair fresh faces and neat array
compose a pleasing picture which imagination would
fail to evolve from the burlesque ugliness of the
slovenly déshabille wherewith the Dutch colonist
disguises every claim to beauty or grace. On
alluding to the shock experienced by this grotesque
travesty of native garb, a Dutch officer asserts that
there are in reality but few Dutch ladies in Java of
pure racial stock, for one unhappy result of remoteness
from European influence is shown by the
gradual merging of the Dutch colonists into the
Malay race by intermarriage. Exile to Java was
made financially easy and attractive by the Dutch
Government, but it was for the most part a
permanent separation from the mother country, and
a long term of years necessarily elapsed before the
colonial planter could even return for a short visit
to his native land. The overwhelming force of
public opinion against mixed marriages, and the
consequent degeneration of type, from a union which
lowers one of the contracting parties without raising
the other, beats but faintly against these remote
shores, cut off from associations which mould and
modify the crudities of individual thought in regions
swept by the full tide of contemporary life. The
idea of welding European and Asiatic elements into
one race, as a defence against external aggression,
possesses a superficial plausibility, but ages of
historical experiment only confirm the unalterable
truth of the poetic dictum that
East is East, and West is West,
And never the two shall meet.
Until they stand on either hand,
At God's great Judgment Seat!
The sudden rise of an Oriental race to the position
of a great world-power, and the apprehensions of
coming struggles for supremacy in Eastern waters,
present many future complications concerning Java,
even if not weakened by the assimilation of her
European colonists to an inferior race.
Neither landlord nor secretary of the Hotel
Nederlanden spare time or trouble in arranging the
programme of sight-seeing, and but for their kindly
help, only a partial success would be possible, owing
to the difficulties presented by the two unknown
tongues of Dutch and Malay. Ignorance of the
former involves separation from the world as revealed
by newspapers, and though a smattering of "coolie
Malay" is picked up with the aid of a handbook,
and the "hundred words" mastered, sanguinely
asserted to suffice for colloquial needs, there are
many occasions when even the practice of this
elementary language requires a more extensive
vocabulary. At a New Year's fête given by the
proprietor of the hotel to his numerous Malay
employés, we make our first acquaintance with
native music. Dancing girls, in mask and tinsel,
gyrate to the weird strains of the Gamelon, an
orchestra of tiny gongs, bamboo tubes, and metal
pipes. Actors perform old-world dramas in dumb
show, and conjurors in gaudy attire attract people
of all ages to those time-honoured feats of legerdemain
which once represented the sorcery of the
mystic East. The simple Malay has not yet adopted
the critical and unbelieving attitude which rubs the
gilt off the gingerbread or the bloom off the plum,
and his fervid faith in mythical heroes and necromantic
exploits gives him the key to that kingdom
of fancy often closed to a sadder if wiser world.
The electric tram provides an excellent method of
gaining a general idea of Batavia and Weltevreden;
the winding route skirting canals and palm groves,
campongs of basket-work huts, and gay passers,
the native markets, with their wealth of many-coloured
fruit. Stacks of golden bananas, olive-tinted
dukus, rambutans like green chestnut-shells
with scarlet prickles, amber star-fruit, brown
salak, the "forbidden apple," bread-fruit, and
durian offer an embarassing choice. Pineapples
touch perfection on Java soil; cherimoya and mango,
papaya and the various custard-fruits, the lovely but
tasteless rose-apple, and the dark green equatorial
orange of delicious flavour, afford a host of unfamiliar
experiences. The winter months are the season of
the peerless mangosteen, in beauty as well as in
savour the queen of tropical fruits. The rose-lined
purple globes, with the central ball of ivory
whiteness in each fairy cup, suggest fugitive
essences of strawberry and nectarine combined with
orange to produce this equatorial marvel, also
considered perfectly wholesome. The mangosteen,
ripening just north or south of the Equator,
according to the alternations of the wet and dry
seasons, cannot be preserved long enough to reach
the temperate zone, and though every year shows
fresh varieties of tropical fruit successfully transported
to European markets, the mangosteen remains
unknown outside the narrow radius of the equatorial
region to which the tree is indigenous. The flower
markets blaze with many-coloured roses, tons of
gardenias and a wealth of white heavy-scented
flowers, such as tuberoses and Arabian jasmine. All
the spices of the East, in fact, seem breathing from
these mounds of blossom, as well as from gums and
essences distilled from them in archaic fashion.
Transparent sachets, filled with the scented petals
of ylang-ylang, fill the air with intoxicating sweetness,
and outside the busy passer, a frangipanni-tree,
the native sumboya or "flower of the dead,"
just opening a white crowd of golden-hearted
blossoms to the sun, adds another wave of perfume
to the floral incense, steaming from earth to sky with
prodigal exuberance.
Batavia possesses few objects of interest. The
dismal green-shuttered Stadkirche, a relic of Dutch
Calvinism; the earliest warehouse of the Netherlands
Company, a commonplace lighthouse, and the gate
of Peter Elberfeld's dwelling (now his tomb), with
his spear-pierced skull above the lintel, as a reminder
of the sentence pronounced on traitors to the Dutch
Government, comprise the scanty catalogue. Antiquities
and archæological remains fill a white
museum of classical architecture on the Koenig's
Plein, a huge parade ground, flanked by the
Palace of the Governor-General. Gold and silver
ornaments, gifts from tributary princes, shield and
helmet, dagger, and kris, of varied stages in Malay
civilisation, abound in these spacious halls, where
every Javanese industry may be studied. Buddhist
and Hindu temples have yielded up a treasury of
images, censers, and accessories of worship, the
excavations of ruined cities in Central Java, long
overgrown with impenetrable jungle, opening a mine
of archæological wealth in musical instruments,
seals, coins, headgear, chairs and umbrellas of State.
Golden pipes and betel-boxes show the perfection of
the goldsmith's art, and metal statues vie with those
of sculptured wood or stone. Here Captain Cook
left his treasure trove from the Southern seas, and
the Council Chamber of the Museum contains
portraits and souvenirs of the great navigators who
sailed into the uncharted ocean of geographical
discovery, and in various stages of their adventurous
careers anchored at Java, to display the wondrous
trophies of unknown lands in the island then
regarded as the farthest outpost of contemporary
civilisation.
The toelatingskaart, or Javanese passport, formerly
indispensable for insular travel beyond the
radius of forty miles from Batavia, though not yet
obsolete, proves practically needless, and is never
once demanded during a six weeks' stay. The small
addition contributed to the rich revenue by this
useless official "permit," appears the sole reason
for retaining it, now that vexatious restrictions are
withdrawn. In the intervals of arranging an
up-country tour from monotonous Weltevreden,
destitute of any attraction beyond the white
colonnades and verdant groves flanking sleepy canals
and quaint bridges, the local industry of sarong
stippling affords a curious interest. Every city in
Java possesses a special type of this historic dress,
represented on the walls of temples dating before the
Christian era, and worn by the Malay races from
time immemorial. This strip of cotton cloth, which
forms the attire both of men and women, is twisted
firmly round the body, and requires no girdle
to secure it. Palm-fronds, birds, and animals,
geometric patterns, religious emblems, fruits and
flowers, are represented in bewildering confusion.
The girls, with flower-decked hair and scanty garb,
occupy a long, low shed, filled with rude frames for
stretching the cloth, painted in soft-tinted dyes—brown,
blue, and amber for the most part—with
tapering funnels. These waxed cloths allow infinite
scope for native imagination, only a small panel of
formal design being obligatory, the remaining
surface fancifully coloured at will in harmonious
hues. No two sarongs are alike, and the painted
battek, notwithstanding the simplicity of the
cotton background, represents an amount of labour
and finish which makes the archaic garment a costly,
though almost indestructible production. The
graceful slandang, a crossed scarf of the same
material, only serves as a shoulder-strap, wherein
the brown Malay baby sits contentedly, for the ugly
white jacket of the Dutchwoman is now compulsory
on the native. Every variety of battek, basket-work,
mats, and quaint silver or brass ware, is
brought by native peddlers to the broad verandahs of
the hotel, the patient and gentle people content to
spend long hours on the marble steps, dozing
between their scanty bargains, or crimsoning their
months with the stimulating morsel of betel-nut,
said to allay the hunger, thirst, and exhaustion of
the steaming tropics. The conquered race, cowed
by ages of tyranny under native princes, possesses
those mild and effeminate characteristics fostered by
a languid and enervating climate. That the salient
angles of the sturdy Dutch character, which
accomplished so many feats of endurance in the
earlier days of the colony, should undergo rapid
disintegration by intermarriage with the native
stock, must arouse regret in all who realise the
claims to respect possessed by the fighting forefathers
of Holland's tropical dependencies.
Educational matters were for centuries in abeyance,
and until 1864 the Malays were forbidden to
learn the language of their European rulers. Many
dialects are found in Java's wide territory, but Low
Malay has been declared the official tongue, and
with the advance of public opinion, wider views
prevail concerning the rights of the subject race.
A good Roman Catholic priest, one of the most
enlightened and liberal Dutchmen encountered in
Java, asserts that in the schools of the Colonial
Government, the Malay boy possesses a mathematical
facility superior to that of the Dutch scholar, in
spite of the advantage accruing from hereditary
education.
At the sunset hour, Batavian life awakens from
the long slumbers of the tropical afternoon, and as
the golden light filters through the waving palms,
the long Schul-Weg, beside the central canal, fills
with saunterers, enjoying the delights of that
brief spell, when peace and coolness fall on the
world before the sudden twilight drops veil after veil
of deepening gloom, merging into the "darkness
which may be felt," for the twelve hours of the
tropical night. Gathering clouds reveal but scanty
glimpses of the moon in these January weeks, but
through rifts in the sombre canopy, the Southern
stars hang low in the dome of heaven, and shine
like burning lamps, appearing almost within reach
of an outstretched hand.
The first destination of the up-country traveller in
Java is Buitenzorg, the Dutch "Sans Souci,"
containing the Governor-General's rural Palace, the
houses of Court officials, and the superb Botanical
Garden, which ranks first among the horticultural
triumphs of the world. The two hours' journey by
the railway, which now traverses the whole of Java,
shows a succession of tropical landscapes, appearing
unreal in their fantastic and dream-like beauty.
The glowing green of rice-fields, the dense forests of
swaying palms, the porphyry tints of the teeming
soil, and the purple mountains, carved into the weird
contours peculiar to volcanic ranges, frame myriad
pictures of unfamiliar native life with dramatic
effect. Villages of woven basket-work cluster
beneath green curtains of banana and spreading
canopies of palm, the central mosque surmounting
the tiny huts with many-tiered roofs, and walls
inlaid with gleaming tiles of white and blue. Brown
figures, with gay sarong and turbaned headgear,
bring bamboo buckets to moss-grown wells, gray
water-buffaloes crop marshy herbage, a little bronze-hued
figure seated on each broad back, and busy
workers stand knee-deep in slush, to transplant
emerald blades of rice or to gather the yellow crops,
for seedtime and harvest go on together in this
fertile land. Our train halts at Depok, a Christian
village unique in Java, for the religious history of
the island shows little missionary enterprise among
a race strangely indifferent to the claims of faith,
and lightly casting away one creed after another,
with a carelessness which has ever proved a formidable
bar to spiritual progress. The Portuguese
Jesuits were expelled by the Dutch, and English
efforts at conversion were succeeded by a general
exclusion of foreign missionaries. Public opinion
eventually prevented the continuance of this despotic
rule, and at the present day a certain number of
Roman and Protestant clergy are supported by the
Government, but Roman zeal outstrips the niggardly
spiritual provision, and proves the appreciation in
which it is held by full churches and devout
worshippers. The Mohammedanism of the Malay
lacks the fiery fervour common to Islam, and his
slack hands are ever ready to forego all symbols of
faith. From the region of rice and tapioca, maize
and sugar-cane, we reach the great cacao plantations,
hung with chocolate-coloured pods, and the ruddy
kina-groves on the lower slopes of the mountain
chain. The palms are everywhere, clashing their
huge fronds, and undulating in waves of fiery green,
the light and shadow of the golden evening reflected
on the swaying foliage. Stately Palmyra, slender
areca, graceful pandang with a length of scarlet
crowning each smooth grey stem, the mighty royal
palm, king of the forest, spreading cocoanuts, and a
hundred unknown varieties, soaring among bread-fruit
and teak, nutmeg and waringen, reveal the
inexhaustible powers of tropical Nature. Buitenzorg
occupies an ideal position between the blue and
violet peaks of Gedeh and Salak, the guardian
mountains of the fairy spot, perennially green with
spring-like freshness, from the daily showers
sweeping across the valley from one or other
of the lofty crests, and possessing a delicious
climate at an altitude of eight hundred feet.
The Hotel Bellevue, where back rooms should
be secured on account of a superb prospect,
comprising river, mountain and forest, stands
near the great entrance of the world-famous
Gardens, and our balcony commands a profound
ravine, carved by a clear river, winding away
between forests of palm to the dark cone of Mount
Salak, the climax of the picture. The artist
destined to interpret the soul of Java is yet unborn,
or unable to grasp the character of her unique and
distinctive scenery, but a village of plaited palm-leaves,
accentuating this tropical Eden, brings it
down to the human level, where soft Malay voices,
glimpses of domestic life, and a canoe afloat on
the brimming stream, remind us that we are still
on terra firma, and not gazing at a dreamland
Paradise beyond earthly ken. Sleeping accommodation
in the hills suggests little comfort. A
hard mattress beneath a sheet is the sole furniture
of the huge four-poster, surrounded by thick muslin
curtains to exclude air and creeping things; pillows
are stuffed hard with cotton-down, and no coverings
are provided—an unalterable custom possessing
obvious disadvantages in a climate reeking with
damp, where the walls of a room closed for a day or
two become green with mould. Rheumatic stiffness
on waking is a matter of course in humid Java, for
the hour between darkness and dawn contains a
concentrated essence of dew, mist, and malaria,
which penetrates to the very marrow of unaccustomed
bones, even when it lacks the frequent
accompaniment of the violent cascade known as "a
tropical shower." The glorious Botanical Garden
is approached by a mighty avenue of colossal kanari-trees,
over a hundred feet high, with yellow light
filtering through the fretted roof of interlacing
boughs, which suggests a vast aisle in some primeval
forest. Stately columns and spreading roots garlanded
with stag-horn ferns, waving moss, white and purple
orchids, or broad-leaved creepers, falling in sheets
and torrents of shining foliage and knitting tree to
tree, attest the irrepressible growth of vegetation,
which flings a many-coloured veil of blossom and
leaf over root, branch, and stem. A fairy lake
glows with the pink and crimson blossoms of the
noble Victoria Regia, the huge leaves like green
tea-trays floating on the water, where a central
fountain adds prismatic radiance to the scenic effect
of the splendid lilies. Climbing palms and massive
creepers, splashed with orange, scarlet, and gold,
tumble in masses from lofty branches, and the
dazzling Bougainvillea flings curtains of roseate
purple over wall and gateway. A dense thicket
of frangipanni scents the air with the symbolic
blossoms, shining like stars from grey-green boughs
of sharp-cut leaves. A copse of splendid tree-ferns
flanks the forest-like plantation known as "The
Thousand Palms," and beneath dusky avenues of
waringen (a variety of the banyan species, which
strikes staff-like boughs into the earth and springs
up again in caverns of foliage), herds of deer are
wandering, snatching at drooping vines, or sheltering
from the fierce sun in depths of impenetrable shade.
Tufts of red-stemmed Banka palms cluster on the
green islets of lake and river, vista after vista opens
up, each mysterious aisle appearing more lovely than
the last, and luring the wanderer to the climax
formed by a terraced knoll, commanding a superb
view of Gedeh and Salak, the twin summits of
chiselled turquoise, gashed by the amethyst shadows
of deep ravines, with Gedeh's curl of volcanic smoke
staining the lustrous azure of the sky. Many-coloured
tree carnations, gorgeous cannas and
calladiums, copses of snowy gardenia, and flowering
shrubs of rainbow hues, blaze with splendour, or
exhale their wealth of perfume on the languid air,
thronged with the invisible souls of the floral
multitude. Graceful rattans shoot up in tall ladders
of foliage-hidden cane, climbing to the topmost
fronds of the loftiest palm, and, unless ruthlessly cut
down, overthrowing the stately tree with their fatal
embrace. Sausage and candle trees, with strange
parodies of prosaic food and waxen tapers, climbing
palms, sometimes extending for five hundred feet,
and gigantic blossoms like crimson trumpets, or delicately-tinted
shells of ocean, comprise but a tithe
of Nature's wonders, crowned by the mighty
"Rafflesia," the largest flower in the world, with
each vast red chalice often measuring a circumference
of six feet. A hundred native gardeners are
employed in this park-like domain, and seventy men
work in the adjacent culture-garden of forty acres,
where experiments in grafting and acclimatizing
are carried on, as well as in the supplementary
garden of Tjibodas, beautifully situated on the lower
slopes of Mount Salak. The white palace of the
Governor-General faces the lake, fed by the lovely
river Tjiligong, winding in silver loops round verdant
lawn and palm-clad hill, or expanding into bamboo-fringed
lakes, and bringing perennial freshness into
the tropical Eden of sun-bathed Java.
Beyond the fretted arches of the great kanari
avenue, the white tomb of Lady Raffles, who died
during her husband's term of office in the island,
forms a pathetic link with the past. When the
colony was restored to Holland, a clause in the treaty
concerning it, made the perpetual care of this
monument, to one deeply loved and mourned,
binding upon the Dutch Governor—a condition
loyally observed during the century since the
cessation of English rule. Cinnamon and clove
scent the breeze which whispers mysterious secrets
to the swaying plumes of the tall sago-palms, and
dies away in the delicate foliage of tamarind and
ironwood tree. A network of air roots makes a
grotesque circle round the spreading boughs of the
banyan grove, mahogany and sandal-wood, ebony
and cork, ginger-tree and cardamom, mingle their
varied foliage, the translucency of sun-smitten green
shading through deepening tones into the sombre
tints of ilex and pine with exquisite gradation.
Flamboyant trees flaunt fiery pyramids of blossom
high in the air, and the golden bouquets of the
salacca light up dusky avenues, where large-leaved
lianas rope themselves from tree to tree in cables of
vivid green. Bare stems, except in the palms, are
unknown in this richly-decorated temple of Nature;
climbing blade-plants with sword-like leaves of gold-striped
verdure, huge orchids like many-coloured
birds and butterflies fluttering in the wind, wreathe
trunk and branch with fantastic splendour, and
matted creepers weave curtains of dense foliage from
spreading boughs. The austere and scanty vegetation
of Northern climes, which gives a distinct
outline and value to every leaf and flower, has
nothing in common with the prodigal and passionate
beauty of the tropical landscape, where the wealth
of earth is flung broadcast at our feet in mad
profusion. Day by day the marvellous gardens of
Buitenzorg take deeper hold of mind and imagination.
The early dawn, when the dark silhouettes
of the palms stand etched against the rose-tinted
heavens, the hot noontide in the shadows of the
colossal kanari-trees, the sunset gold transfiguring
the foliage into emerald fire, and spilling pools of
liquid amber upon the mossy turf, or the white
moonlight which transmutes the forest aisles into a
fairy world of sable and silver, invest this vision of
Paradise with varied aspects of incomparable beauty.
The surrounding scenery, though full of interest,
seems but the setting of the priceless gem, and when
inexorable Time, the modern angel of the flaming
sword, at length bars the way, and banishes us from
our Javanese Eden, the exiled heart turns back
perpetually to the floral sanctuary, the antitype of
that Divinely-planted Garden on the dim borderland
of Time which revealed and fulfilled the primeval
beauty of earth's morning hours.
Soekaboemi (Desire of the World), a favourite
sanatorium of the Dutch, is approached by an
exquisite railway, curving round the purple heights
of forest-girt Salak. The usual afternoon deluge
weeps itself away, palm plumes and cassava boughs,
overhanging the silvery Tjiligong, drop showers of
diamonds into the current, and giant bamboos creak
in the spicy wind, redolent of gardenia and clove.
The hills, scaled by green rice-terraces, each with
tiny rill and miniature cascade, are vocal with
murmuring waters. Lilac plumbago, red hybiscus,
and golden allemanda mingle with pink and purple
lantana, yellow daisies, and hedges of scarlet tassels,
enclosing wicker huts in patches of banana and
cocoanut. Brown girls, in blue and orange sarongs,
occupy the steps of a basket-work shrine, from
whence an unknown god, smeared with ochre,
extends a sceptred hand, for Hinduism left deep
traces on inland Java, dim with the dust of vanished
creeds. The expense and trouble of former travel
by the superb post-roads, made at terrible sacrifice
of life in earlier days, is now done away with,
though the noble avenues and picturesque shelters,
erected for protection from sun or rain, suggest a
pleasant mode of leisurely progress. No trains may
run at night, not only on account of native
incompetence, but from dangers caused by constant
geographical changes on this volcanic soil, where
rivers suddenly alter their course, and earthquakes
obstruct the way with yawning chasms or heaps of
debris. A paternal Government provides the
traveller with a half-way house, erecting a large
hotel at Maos, with uniform rates, entirely for the
benefit of the passenger by rail. Trains are built
on the American plan, stations are spacious and
airy, refreshments easily secured, and every halting-place
offers an embarras de richesses in the shape of
tropical fruits, wherewith to supplement or replace
the solidity of the Dutch commissariat. Coffee and
tea plantations in ordered neatness, contrast with
the untamed profusion of forest vegetation, clothing
sharp promontory and shelving terrace. Dusky
villages cling like birds' nests to ledges of rock,
screw-palms with airy roots frame mountain tarns,
and a Brazilian Emperor-palm, with smooth column
bulging into a pear-shaped base, accentuates the
sunset glory from a crag crowned by the black
canopy of colossal fronds. The Preanger Regency
was the heart of ancient Mataram, that historic
kingdom of old-world Java round which perpetual
warfare waged for centuries.
Language and customs change as we cross the
saddle between the blue peaks of Salak and Gedeh;
gay crowds bring fruits to picturesque wayside
markets, bearing bamboo poles laden with golden
papaya and purple mangosteen, or plaited baskets
containing the conglomerate native cuisine. The
elastic and gracefully-modelled figures of the
Soendanese populace betoken a purer race than that
of the steamy Batavian lowlands, where foreign
elements deteriorate the native stock. The Hotel
Victoria at Soekaboemi consists of detached white
buildings round tree-filled courts, erected on the
"pavilion system." Every two visitors occupy a
tiny bungalow of two bedrooms, opening on a
spacious verandah divided by a screen, and each
section provided with lamp, rocking-chair, and
tea-table, the long public dining hall being
approached by a covered alley. The rain, swishing
down through the night in torrents and cataracts,
clears at sunrise, and though heavy clouds still veil
the heights of Salak, the transparent beauty of the
morning crystallises the atmosphere, and sharply
defines every feature of the landscape. The country
roads, shaded by towering palms and fruit-laden
mangos, glow with a continuous procession of
brown figures, the women clad in the universal
sarong, but men and children often in Nature's garb,
with touches of orange or crimson in scarf and
turban. Water-oxen and buffaloes, goats and sheep,
vary the throng, but cattle fare badly in fertile Java,
where the all-pervading rice ousts the pasture-land.
Glorious bamboos form arches of feathery green
meeting across the road, and the busy China
campong, or désar in Preanger parlance, is
full of life and movement with the first streak of day,
for all trade in Java depends upon the indefatigable
industry of the Celestial. The idle gambling Malay,
though an expert hunter and fisher, takes no thought
for the morrow, and is protected by the Dutch
Government from ruin by an enforced demand of
rice for storage, according to the numbers of the
family. Every village contains the great Store Barn
of plaited palm leaves, so that, in case of need, the
confiscated rice can be doled out to the improvident
native, who thus contributes to the support of his
family in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves
want without pauperising, the common garner
merely serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many
salutary laws benefit the Malay, possessing a notable
share of tropical slackness, and the lack of initiative
partly due to a servile past under the sway of
tyrannical native princes. The little brown people
of Java, eminently gentle and tractable, are honest
enough for vendors of eatables to place a laden basket
at the roadside for the refreshment of the traveller,
who drops a small coin into a bamboo tube fastened
to a tree for this purpose. The customary payment
is never omitted, and at evening the owner of the
basket collects the money, and brings a fresh supply
of food for future wayfarers. Country districts
demonstrate the fact of Java being a creedless land.
This is Sunday, and the Feast of the Epiphany,
but the only honour paid to the day consists in a
gayer garb, and a band playing for an hour in the
palm-shaded garden. Work goes on in rice-field and
plantation, but no church bell rings from the closed
chapel outside the gates, and no sign of religion is
evident, whether from mosque, temple, or church.
Lovely lanes form alluring vistas. The pretty
désas of plaited palm and bamboo, hiding in
depths of tropical woodland, with blue thunbergia
clambering over every verandah, and the Preanger
girls, with their brilliant slandangs of orange and
scarlet, amber and purple, make vivid points of
colour in the foreground of blue mountain and dusky
forest. A copper-coloured boy carries on his head a
basket of gold-fish large as salmon, the westering
sun glittering on the ruddy scales.
Traditional servility remains ingrained in
Preanger character, and the crouching obeisance
known as the dodok, formerly insisted upon, is
still observed by the native to his European masters,
the humble posture giving place to kneeling on a
nearer approach. The kind proprietor of the
Soekaboemi Hotel offers every facility to those
guests anxious to penetrate below the surface of
Soendanese life, placing his carriage and himself at
the disposal of the visitor, and affording a mine of
information otherwise unattainable, for books on
Java are few and far between, and the work of Sir
Stamford Raffles continues the best authority on
island life and customs, though a century has elapsed
since it was written. Why, one asks in amazement,
did England part with this Eastern Paradise? rich
not only in vegetation, but containing unexplored
treasures of precious metal and the vast mineral
wealth peculiar to volcanic regions, where valuable
chemical products are precipitated by the subterranean
forces of Nature's mysterious laboratory. In
the far-off days when "the grand tour" of Europe
was the climax of the ordinary traveller's ambition,
beautiful Java was relinquished on the plea of being
an unknown and useless possession, too far from the
beaten track of British sailing ships to be of practical
value. The remonstrances of Sir Stamford Raffles,
and his representations of future colonial expansion,
were regarded as the dreams of a romantic
enthusiast, and the noble English Governor, in
advance of his age, while effecting during his brief
tenure of office results unattainable by a century of
ordinary labour, found his efforts wasted and his
work undone. Instead of returning home, he
applied himself heroically to the developement of
Singapore, the eternal monument of patriotic
devotion and invincible courage.
The line to Tjandjoer, the starting point
for Sindanglaya, traverses one of the exquisite
plains characteristic of Java. Mountain walls,
with palm-fringed base and violet crest, bound
a fertile expanse, where myriad brooks foam
through fairy arches of feathery bamboo and
long vistas of spreading palm fronds. Rice
in every stage of growth, from flaming green
to softest yellow, covers countless terraces, the
picturesque outlines of their varied contours
enhancing the beauty of the fantastic scene. A
sado, with a team of three tiny ponies, dashes up
the long avenue leading to the palm-fringed hills,
the mighty Amherstia trees forming aisles of dark
green foliage, brightened with the vivid glow of
orange red blossoms. The broad road is a kaleidoscope
of brilliant colour, for native costume vies with
the dazzling tints of tropical Nature as we advance
further into the Preangers. The gay headgear,
worn turbanwise, with two ends standing upright
above plaited folds, and magenta kabajas, with
slandangs of apple green, amber or purple,
make a blaze of colour against the forest background,
or glow amidst the dusky shadows of
palm-thatched sheds, where thirsty travellers imbibe
pink and yellow syrups, the favourite beverages of
the Malay race. The ascending road commands
superb views of the mountain chain, and the
rambling two-storied hotel, widened by immense
verandahs, stands opposite cloud-crowned Gedeh,
half-veiled by the spreading column of volcanic
smoke. The misty blue of further hills leads the
eye to the three weird peaks of the Tangkoeban
Prahoe, the boat-shaped "Ark" regarded as the
Ararat of Java, for the universal tradition of the
great Deluge underlies the religious history welded
from Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindu elements.
Legendary lore clusters round the petrified "Ark"
in which the progenitors of the Malayan stock
escaped from the Noachian flood. The storm-tossed
and water-logged boat, lodged between jutting rocks,
was reversed that it might dry in the sun, but the
weary voyagers who traditionally peopled the Malay
Archipelago remained in the lotus-eating land, and
the disused "Ark" or Prau, fossilizing through
the ages, became a portion of the peaks whereon it
rested. The sacred mountain developed into a place
of pilgrimage and prayer, and the ruins of richly-carved
temples, together with four broken flights
of a thousand steps, denote the former importance
ascribed to the great Altar of Nature, and the power
of religion on the social life of the past. Generations
of later inhabitants, dwelling in flimsy huts of
bamboo and thatch, regarded the mysterious ruins
of the Tankahan Prahoe as the work of giants or
demons, and the haunted hill as a mysterious resort
of evil spirits. In lofty Sindanglaya, the swaying
palms of the lowlands yield to glorious tree-ferns,
shading road and ravine with feathery canopies of
velvet green. A lake of azure crystal mirrors a thick
fringe of the great fronds, and on every parapet of
the ruddy cliffs the living emerald of the lanceolated
foliage glows in vivid contrast with the splintered
crags. Sindanglaya is the refuge of fever-stricken
Europeans from malarial coast or inland swamp, but
the hotel is now empty of invalids. The kind
proprietor lavishes time and care on English guests,
and the attentive Malay "room-boys," squatting
on the verandah outside our doors, fear to lose sight
of their charges for a moment, lest some need of
native help should arise. They watch hand and eye
like faithful dogs, for their language is unintelligible
to us as ours to them, and the only attempt at
speech is "Chow-chow, mister!" when the dinner-bell
rings, the mystic words accompanied by a
realistic pantomime of mouth and fingers.
The following morning dawns like an ideal day
of June, and we start in chairs, carried by four
coolies, for the beautiful Falls of Tjibereum. A
mountain road winds through rice-fields and tree-ferns
towards fold upon fold of lilac peaks, until we
reach the mountain garden of Tjibodas, the beautiful
supplement of incomparable Buitenzorg. A strange
sense of remoteness belongs to this lonely pleasaunce
of the upper world, on a sheltered slope of ever-burning
Gedeh, quiescent now save for the blue curl
of sulphurous smoke, which gives perpetual warning
of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate
the surrounding country. Subterranean activity
increases during the rainy season, and tremors of
earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of
those unused to the perils of existence on this thin
crust of Mother Earth, for Java's teeming soil and
population rest upon an ominous fissure of the
globe's surface, and twelve of the forty-five volcanos
on this island of terror and beauty are still
moderately active, sometimes displaying sudden
outbursts of energy. The green lawns and towering
camphor trees of Tjibodas suggest the spellbound
beauty of some enchanted spot, unprofaned by
human foot. A glassy lake mirrors the tall bamboos
and feathery tamarinds, their slender and sensitive
foliage motionless in the still air of the dewy dawn.
Huge coleas accentuate the spring verdure with
heavy masses of bronze and crimson, and magnolias
exhale intoxicating odours from snowy chalices.
Blue lilies and flaxen pampas grass grow in thickets
upon the emerald slopes, and the ordered loveliness
of the mountain Paradise, walled in by dense jungle
and savage precipice, brings the glamour of dreamland
into the stern environment of mysterious forest
and frowning peak. A rudely-paved and mossy
path, shadowed by the black foliage of stately
casuarinas, leads into the gloomy jungle. The forest
monarchs are curtained with tangled creepers and
roped together with serpent-like lianas, stag-horn
ferns, and green veils of filmy moss fluttering from
every bough. A swampy path through rank grass
and rough boulders pierces the dense thickets,
matted together with inextricable confusion, teak
and tamarind, acacia and bread-fruit, palm and tree-fern
losing their own characteristics and merging
themselves into concrete form. The appalling
stillness and solemnity of the dense jungle appears
emphasised by a solitary brown figure, with pipe and
betel-box, beneath a thatched shed at an angle of
the narrow track, where he presides over a little
stall of cocoanuts, bananas, and coloured syrups, for
the refreshment of coolies on their way from the
Tjibodas garden to villages across the heights of
Gedeh. No voice ever seems raised in these remote
recesses of the mountains, where even the children
of each brown hamlet play silently as figures in a
dream. Our bearers, swishing through wet grass
and splashing across brimming brooks, push with
renewed energies up a steep ascent to the heart of
the wild solitude, where three mighty waterfalls
dash in savage grandeur from a range of over
hanging cliffs into a churning river, descending by
continuous rapids over a stairway of brown-striped
trap-rock and swirling between lichen-clad banks,
to lose itself in the green gloom of the impenetrable
woods. One of these huge cascades would make the
fortune of a Swiss valley, and we need no further
efforts of our willing bearers in the cause of sight-seeing,
but as neither words nor gestures prove
intelligible to Western obtuseness, a brown coolie
seizes each arm, and rushes us up a grassy hill to a
huge cavern, hung with myriad bats, and containing
a pool of crystal water. The simple minds of these
kindly mountaineers shirk no trouble for the benefit
of the stranger, who, though regarded as a madman,
must be humoured as such, not only to the top of
his bent, but often beyond it. A descent through
rice-fields and désas skirts the serrated cliffs of
Gedeh's northward side, though tree-ferns growing
in thousands afford shelter from the daily showers.
The sudden passion of tropical rain dies away,
leaving an atmosphere of unearthly transparency.
Gedeh, carved in amethyst, leans against a primrose
sky, streaked by the puff of white smoke from the
crater. Villagers returning from work brighten the
road with patches of scarlet and yellow; children,
clad only in necklaces of red seeds and silver bangles,
running about amid groups of women in painted
battek, with brown babies carried in the orange
or crimson folds of the slandang, pause before
the doorways of woven basket-work huts, or carry
crates of yellow bananas and strings of purple
mangosteens, to supplement the "evening rice" of
their frugal meal. The Malay races have been called
"the flower of the East," noted for their soft voices
and courteous manners in the days of old, but
European intercourse obliterates native characteristics,
and the inhabitant of the sea-coast, or
of the larger towns, unpleasantly imitates the
brusquerie of his Dutch masters, and even exaggerates it.
The Soendanese of the Preanger hills,
less in contact with the external world, retains traces
of life's ancient simplicity, and though a keen
intelligence forms no part of his mental equipment,
his desire to please and satisfy his employer is of
pathetic intensity.
The Governor-General of Java, whose stipend is
of double the amount received by the American
President, owns a country palace at Sindanglaya,
in addition to the splendid official residences at
Batavia and Buitenzorg. A lovely walk leads from
this flower-girt mansion to a pavilion on the Kasoer
hill, commanding a prospect of four mountain
ranges, outlined in tender hues of lavender and
turquoise against the cobalt sky. In the foreground
stretches a fertile plain, with bamboo and sugar-cane
varying the eternal rice in brilliant shades of green
and gold, always decorative, from the first emerald
blade to the amber-tinted straw, for the sacred
grain possesses a beauty far exceeding that of wheat,
barley, or rye.
Undulating lines and ascending terraces break
the uniformity of the lovely plains with the
fascination of weird contour and fanciful design,
intricate as the pattern traced on the native sarong.
The rice-culture of these fields and valleys is a
perfect survival of the primeval system, unchanged
since the days when "the gift of the gods" was
first bestowed on primitive man in this land of
plenty. The peasant, toiling in the flooded
sawas, and occupied from seedtime to harvest
in the arduous labour demanded by the rice-field,
combines with his agricultural work the idea of a
sacred duty to the divinities who gave him the
staple commodity whereon his life mainly depends.
Cocoanut and sugar-cane, maize and tapioca, banana
and cassava, supplement the rice, but it ranks above
all other products of the teeming soil, for sacramental
efficacy and supernatural origin have
hallowed the "grain of heaven" from the very
dawn of history, and the hereditary belief in the
efficacy of the sacred crop still remains mystically
rooted in the sub-consciousness of the Malay race.
The occasional drawback of weeping skies is
counterbalanced by the gorgeous vegetation only
seen to perfection in the rainy season, and that
clouds should sometimes veil the burning blue to
mitigate Equatorial sunshine proves a source of
satisfaction to those who fail to appreciate the Rip
Van Winkle life of womankind in Java. The
journey to Garoet supplies a succession of vivid
pictures, illustrating the individuality of the insular
scenery. The weird outlines of volcanic ranges,
shading from palest azure to deepest plum-colour,
the dreamlike beauty of Elysian plains, and the
stately palm-forests extending league upon league,
with mighty vans clashing in the mountain breeze,
assume magical charm as we penetrate into the
heart of the alluring land. Two pyramidal peaks,
Haroeman and Kaleidon, rise sheer from the fair
plain of Lelés in colossal stairways of green rice-terraces.
Knots of palm shelter innumerable
villages which dot the mountain flanks, the woven
huts fragile as houses of cards, but built up on
identical sites through countless ages, recorded in
perennial characters of living green on these twin
trophies of primitive agriculture. Many travellers
have commented on the strange undertone of music,
echoing from a thousand silvery rills and tiny
cascades, which follow the verdant lines of terrace
or parapet, and make the shimmering air vocal with
melody, like the distant song of surf on a coral reef.
Variety of form belongs to all Javanese agriculture
as the result of handicraft, for the peasant
unconsciously puts his own personality into his toil.
The exquisite tints of the rice in different stages of
growth display a translucence indescribable except
in terms of light and fire. The amber gleam of
young shoots, the green flames of the springing
crop, the pulsating emerald of later growth, and the
golden sheen of ripened ears, invest the "gift of the
gods" with unearthly radiance. The Eastern mind
has ever responded to Nature's touch, for the great
Mother whispers her closest secrets to simple hearts,
and science now realises that civilisation has broken
many of the subtle links which in earlier days were
mystic bonds of union between man and the
universe.
Malay idiosyncracy evidences the survival of
many primal influences forgotten or denied by races
of higher type and deeper culture. Very little is
known concerning the Malayan people who mingled
with almost every Oriental stock. Amphibious
tastes suggest picturesque traditions of prolonged
voyaging in search of fresh fishing grounds to supply
the needs of a rapidly multiplying population. A
strong Malay element exists even in far-off Japan,
and the wide ramifications of the nomadic stock can
be traced to broad rivers encountered on the southward
journey, and luring stragglers from the main
body by the mysterious glamour of winding water-ways
piercing the tangled forests, and pointing to
unknown realms of hope or promise. The Malay
retains many of the hereditary gifts bestowed on
the untaught children of Nature, and, in spreading
his language and customs far over the vast Pacific,
adopted few extraneous ideas from the world through
which he wandered. His primeval instincts still
sway his life under other conditions. Marvellous
skill in hunting, fishing, boat-building, and navigation
in tornado-swept waters, remains to him. The
deft weaving of palm-leaf hut and wall of defence
creates a village or destroys it at lightning speed.
Even now his basket-work home is never built on
dry land, if water can be found wherein to plant the
supporting poles of the fragile dwellings, suggesting
the impermanence of a nomadic race. The Malay
never travels on foot to any place which can possibly
be reached by water, his native element; winds
and tides have imbued him with something of their
own unstable and changing character, and the sea
which nurtured him is still the supreme factor in
his life. Feet vie with fingers in marvellous
capacity, and to see a native cocoanut gatherer run
up the polished stem of a swaying palm, with greater
ease and swiftness than anyone shows in mounting a
ladder, transports thought to the distant past, when
the ancestral stock, disembarking from the rude
canoes at nightfall, sought an evening meal on the
edge of the palm-forest, bowed beneath the weight
of green and yellow nuts a hundred feet overhead.
What wonder if in lands of perpetual summer the
syren song of some "long bright river" should lure
the storm-tossed mariners from the perilous seas
to the comparative security of inland life! The
stern environment of Northern poverty stands out
in terrible contrast with the teeming prodigality of
tropical Nature, offering all the richest fruits of
earth in full measure to these early wanderers
across the Southern seas.
The mountain railway, curving round ridge
or precipice and spanning sombre gorge with
bridge and aqueduct, affords superb views of
the unrivalled plains. Waterfalls foam over
granite cliffs; a sinuous river flings a silver
chain round the symmetrical base of Kaleidon, and
from our lofty vantage point we gaze into the
luminous green of a million palms, where the warm
heart of a deep forest opens to display the lustre
and colour of molten emeralds. The Soendanese
quarter of the island gives place to the ancient
Javanese territory, and Malay characteristics, though
underlying and mingling with every insular stock,
are here modified by a strain of Hindu ancestry,
which gives refinement of feature and grace of
carriage. Well-modelled figures and delicate hands
and feet are attributed to the liberal admixture of
royal and noble blood with that of the peasantry,
for the ancient Rulers of Java respected no rights
but their own, and the domestic arrangements of
King Solomon prevailed in a kingdom of tyrants
and slaves. Hindu thraldom was intensified under
Arab priests, who, following in the train of piratical
Moormen, claimed the sovereignty of Java under
their protection. The gold-embroidered jacket of
civil or military rank, with the kris thrust into
a brilliant sash, here supplements the universal
sarong, itself of bolder design and glowing colour
in this old-world realm of Mataram, the centre of
Java's historic interest. The crooked blade of the
kris is still used in divination, light and shadow
playing over the wavy steel, ever suggesting
cabalistic signs inscribed by an invisible hand on
the azure surface. The kris is popularly endowed
with healing efficacy, and the availing touch of the
sacred talisman is an article of Javanese faith. A
hundred varieties of the weapon are found in
the Malay Archipelago, from the gold-hilted and
diamond-studded royal kris to the boat-handled
dagger of common use, permitted to all but peasants;
women of the higher class wear it in the girdle, and
though unrepresented in the sculpture of Javanese
temples, the kris is ascribed to the days of Panji, a
Hindu warrior whose feats form the libretto of
a popular drama, though his authenticity appears
uncertain. The changes in local costume and
character, as seen in wayside villages, enliven the
journey until we reach the mountain gateway of
Tjadas Pangeran, "the Royal Stone," flanked by
flashing waterfalls, and forming the entrance to the
region supreme in natural scenery, archaic art, and
literary interest. The black cone of Goentoer, "the
thunder peak," accentuates the red blaze of the
declining sun on the intricate rice-mosaic of green
and gold in the divinely beautiful plain revealed
through the rocky cleft. Amid the many glories of
Javanese landscape, the poetic glamour of these
palm-girt levels lingers longest in the memory, for
the world-famed picture known as "The Plains of
Heaven" might have been inspired by the haunting
loveliness of these rolling uplands. Our railway
carriage contains a native Regent, his principal wife,
and a pretty daughter. Javanese princes are made
ostensible rulers of native districts, but associated
with Dutch Residents as "Elder Brothers," who
may be more accurately termed compulsory advisers.
Without a measure of despotic authority exercised
by the fraternal partner, the spendthrift Malay
would cause perpetual hindrance to insular development
and commercial prosperity. The old Regent,
with embroidered military jacket glittering above his
elaborately-patterned sarong, looks a grim and forbidding
figure, and evidently regards his womenkind
as beneath notice. His head is tied up in a black
kerchief, and a brilliant Order conferred by the
Queen of Holland adorns his breast. Madame, in
magenta shawl and purple gown, travesties
European costume. Diamonds blaze incongruously
on arms and neck, a scarlet flower in oily black
braids completing her startling attire. The girl, in
yellow sarong and pink cotton jacket glorified with
rubies and pearls, shows her high breeding in
slender wrists, delicate hands, and bare feet of
exquisite modelling, a red stain of henna drawing
attention to their statuesque contour. She staggers
beneath a load of impedimenta belonging to her
princely father: bags, bundles, and a heavy cloak.
Javanese parents of exalted rank treat their
daughters with disdain, the approved discipline of
family life consisting in stamping an impression of
abject insignificance deeply on the plastic mind of
girlhood. Fertile plain and wooded slopes are alike
destitute of domestic animals. The sheep was
unknown to native races in this pastureless land,
and, though introduced by the earliest colonists, is
still spoken of as "the Dutch goat," no other term
existing for it in Malay parlance. Monkeys
chatter and rustle in forest trees, gorgeous birds flit
past on jewelled wings, and frogs in this rainy
season make a deep booming like the tuning of
numerous violoncellos. At length the little town of
Garoet appears in a green valley, encircled by a
diadem of peaks which suggest a tropical Engadine.
Volcanic mountains replace Alpine crests, but the
white battlements of Papandayang's smoking crater
give the effect of distant snow, and the dark pines
of the Swiss valley are merely translated into the
lustrous green of crowding palms. Brawling river,
rustic bridge, and brown hamlets foster the strange
illusion, and if it be true that somewhere in the
wide world every face finds a counterpart, natural
scenery may be subject to an identical law, and
various ice-bound landscapes be mirrored under
Southern skies in pictures wreathed with palm-fronds
and tropic flowers. The Hotel Rupert,
garlanded with creepers, the open lattices trellised
with ivy and roses, shows a more poetic aspect than
any hostelry of the distant Engadine. Our hostess
is the widow of a German physician, and her fair
young daughter, alert and capable as the typical
Hausfrau of her native land, has established a
reputation for supplying the guests with the home
comforts and restful atmosphere which make the
Hotel Rupert an ideal abiding-place in stagnant
Java, where as a rule the sole luxuries are out-of-doors,
and of Nature's providing. That the Dutchman
flourishes on his diet of tinned meat, his
appalling rice-table, and the extraordinary sequence
of dishes which probably belonged to the early days
of colonisation, either proves herculean strength or
the triumph of mind over matter, but to those of
less heroic mould the unwonted amenities of a more
familiar civilisation are welcome as a green oasis in
a sandy desert. A cool and healthy mountain
climate gives unwonted zest for the lovely excursions
of which Garoet is the centre. From the little lake
Setoe Bajendit, a covered raft plies to a cupola-crowned
hill, facing a noble panorama of volcanic
peaks the Soendanese désa of basket-work huts,
through which we pass, presents a curious spectacle,
with the village street lined on either side by rows
of kneeling children, clad in Dame Nature's brown
suit alone; each little figure holding up a long-stemmed
flower—red hybiscus, creamy tuberose, or
snowy gardenia—the imploring faces raised in silent
entreaty to the white strangers for the infinitesimal
coins which suffice to purchase a sheaf of blossom.
Changing lights and shadows sweep across the
glancing emerald of the rice-filled vale, darken the
purple rifts of mountain gorges, or intensify the
luminous azure of soaring crests. Wayside fruit-stalls
make gay patches of colour among green piles
of banana leaves, and thin yellow strips of bamboo,
the approved paper and string of the tropics, in
which every parcel is packed. Tall sugar-cane and
plumy maize surround each brown désa beneath
the knot of palms, and fields of tapioca vary the
prevailing rice-grounds with sharp-pointed leaves
and paler verdure. The entire tapioca crop of Java
belongs to Huntley and Palmer, for use in the
manufacture of the biscuits which make a valuable
supplement to the Javanese commissariat, for
unlimited rice seldom commends itself to English
tastes. Hot springs abound in this volcanic soil,
and in the "five waters" of Tjipanas, each of
different temperature, the native finds a panacea
wherein he can indulge to his heart's content, the
healing springs rushing into stone tanks set in sheds
of bamboo. The principal excursion from Garoet
is to the active crater of the Papandayang, a long
drive of twelve miles leading to the foot of the
volcano. From this point a chair carried by six
coolies is required for the steep road, formed by
hundreds of moss-grown steps. Plantations of
coffee, cinchona, and tapioca girdle the lower slopes
of the mountain, hedges and thickets of red and
purple coleas bordering the primeval jungle of
orchid-decked trees on the higher levels, the moss-grown
boughs wreathed with epiphytal plants, the
trunks covered with branching ferns, and the thick
ropes of matted lianas strangling the dense forest
in their green embrace. Wild oleander mingles rosy
blossoms with bushes of living gold like tall growths
of double buttercups, and at length the cooler regions
show the familiar ferns, violets, and primroses of
the temperate zone. The weird silence of the jungle
is emphasised by an occasional cry of a wild bird,
flitting among the tall tree tops, or the crash of a
bough, dragged down by the weight of some climbing
rattan. A walk up a boulder-strewn slope reaches
the old crater, or Solfatara, almost surrounded by
steep walls of rock. Boiling and wheezing springs,
fast-forming sulphur columns, and clouds of choking
steam, rise from the yellow and orange-powdered
earth. A deafening noise issues from the self-building
architecture of ruddy pillars, the bubbling
of boiling mud, and the shrill spouting of hot vapours
from narrow orifices in the trembling crust of the
fire-charged earth. Golden sulphur-pools shower
burning drops on every side, and from the
mysterious kawa or crater, echoes of subterranean
thunder sound at intervals, from the
traditional forge where native legends assert that
a chained giant is condemned to work eternally
in the service of the Evil One.
At night the broad verandah of the Hotel Rupert
is transformed into a stage for a performance of
the topeng or national drama, chartered by an
American guest. The weird spectacle, accompanied
by the gamelon music, transports us to the days of
old-world Java, story and performance being of
ancient origin and religious signification. The
subjects of the topeng are derived from the
Panji group of dramatic poems, the ancient
costumes, the curious masks, and the office of the
dalang or reciter, whose ventriloquial skill is
required for the entire wording of the libretto,
comprise a valuable memento of bygone days,
otherwise entirely forgotten. The wayang-wayang
or "shadow dance" of puppets, vies with the
topeng in popularity, but the latter ranks as
classic and lyrical drama. A graceful girl in pink,
with floating scarf, and gleaming kris in her
spangled sash, exhibits wonderful skill in the supple
play of wrist and fingers, through the process known
as devitalization, a form of drill which gives to
the arm a plastic power of detached movement,
fascinating but uncanny. The dusky garden is
filled with a native crowd, moved alternately to
tears and laughter by exploits unintelligible to the
European spectator, for the story of every national
hero is known to the poorest and most ignorant of
the people, from perpetual attendance on theatrical
performances. The al fresco entertainments
necessitated by the climate provide exceptional
opportunities of dramatic education in the legends
of Java's heroic age. The spacious verandahs
gleaming with the soft light of Chinese lanterns,
and set in depths of shadow, the scented gloom of
the tropical night veiling the dusky lawns, crowded
with mysterious figures drawn by the weird music
from every quarter, the brilliant robes and grotesque
masks of the actors, compose a picture of archaic
charm. Passers-by pause on their way to look, and
listen with unwearied interest to the oft-told tales,
for the stories of the world's childhood, like the fairy
lore of our own early days, deepen their significance
to the untaught mind by perpetual repetition. The
Hindu cloudland which veils the Javanese past
"was reached by a ladder of realities," for the
exploits of gods and mythical heroes were afterwards
attributed to native Rulers, until the medley of truth
and fiction, history and mythology, became an
inextricable tangle. The birds' beaks, and hooked
noses of the masks in the topeng, and of the
puppets in the shadow-play, were made compulsory
after the Arabic conquest, in order to reconcile the
national pastime with the creed of Islam, which
forbade the dramatic representation of the human
form. The reigning Susunhan evaded the decree
by distorting mask and puppet, but although
the outside world might no longer recognise the
heroes of the play, Javanese knowledge of national
tradition easily pierced the flimsy disguise, and
credited their deified heroes with a new power of
metamorphosis. The fantastic play lasts so far into
the night that the prolonged libretto is brought to a
summary conclusion by the hostess, since European
nature can stand no more, though the rapt attention
of the Malay would continue till morning. The
satiety of modern days has never touched these
simple minds, and an entire absence of that critical
element which disintegrates so many of life's simple
joys, ministers to the supreme satisfaction derived
from the crude ideals of native drama. Silently the
brown spectators slip away like shadows from the
dim and dewy garden, for the simple and untaught
Malay, though eagerly welcoming the privileges
permitted to him, never encroaches upon them, and
the conduct of these Eastern playgoers affords an
example of order and sobriety which shames many
an audience of higher education and social superiority
in distant Europe.
A long day's journey lies between Garoet and
Djokjacarta, which popular parlance abbreviates
into Djokja. From the blue Preanger hills and
palm-shadowed upland plains, the railway descends
by steep gradients to the dense jungle and fever-laden
swamp known as the Terra Ingrata.
Malarious mists steam from marsh and mere, pink
and purple lantana, yellow daisies, and the pallid
blossoms of strangling creepers emphasise the gloom
of the matted foliage, forming an impenetrable
screen on either side of the narrow embankment
across the dreary morass. The railway through the
hundred miles of this miasma-haunted region was
laid at immense sacrifice of human life, even the
native workmen being compelled to sleep in camps
far away from the scene of their daily toil. No white
man could even direct the work, and the ubiquitous
Chinaman, proof against every ill that flesh is heir
to in Java, was deputed to superintend the solution
of abstruse professional problems, between the short
and hasty visits of Dutch and English engineers.
Quagmire and quicksand, stagnant pool and sluggish
stream, succeed in weary iteration. Bleached
skeletons of dead trees writhe in weird contortions
against the dark background of jungle, as though
some wizard's curse had blighted life and growth
amid the rank vegetation rising from this dismal
Slough of Despond. The brooding melancholy of
atmosphere and scenery penetrates mind and soul,
oppressed by an intangible weight, and escape
from the Dantesque horrors of this selva oscura is
accompanied by a sudden relief and buoyancy of
spirit which perceptibly heightens the interest of the
old-world city, once isolated by the woodland
fastness of Nature, and belonging to an ageless past,
surrounding the authentic origin of Djokjacarta
with thick clouds of fable and myth. The modern
name is derived from Arjudja, a city recorded in
Java's ancient annals as being established by Rama,
the incarnate Sun-God. Na-yud-ja, the first king
of this Divinely-founded capital, also memorialises
in his name the place which became the nucleus of
the ancient Hindu empire. Temples and palaces,
walls and watch-towers, ruined by earthquake,
buried in jungle, and blackened by smoke of war,
testify to the splendours of old Mataram. A bitter
resistance was offered by the invading hordes of
Islam, whether pirates or prophets, princes or
soldiers, and the Hindu territory remained independent
until the fierce conflict in the 18th century with
usurping Mohammedans and Dutch colonists, when
family influence was undermined by political
intrigues. The Dutch, after many vicissitudes,
became absolute rulers of Java, though native
princes, as tributaries, were suffered to retain a
semblance of sovereignty. The shadowy paraphernalia
of vanished power is still accorded to the
Sultan of Djokjacarta, in melancholy travesty of
past authority, though every hereditary privilege
has been wrested from his grasp. A curious relic
of primitive days remains in the al fresco Throne of
Judgment, a block of stone beneath a rudely-tiled
canopy, moss-grown and hoary. Two ancient
waringen-trees, their aerial roots, drooping branches,
and colossal main trunks denoting an almost fabulous
age, flank the historic seat, where the turbaned
Ruler administered justice to the surging crowd
which thronged around him, the indigo garb of
the Soendanese contrasting with the gay sarongs of
Central Java, glowing in the hot sunlight as it
poured through the dark trellis of fluttering boughs.
The city in the course of ages moved away from
this ancient centre, and the rustic Throne is now
remote from the heart of civic life. The streets of
Djokjacarta, and the surrounding roads, consist of
shady avenues, where open tokos (the native
shops) vary the monotony of Dutch villas, their
white colonnades and porticos gleaming against the
background of stately trees, and rising from a mass
of tropical vegetation. The prevailing indigo of
Soendanese dress gives a dull aspect to the wide but
squalid streets, for in native capitals, though Dutch
cleanliness may enforce perpetual "tidying up," the
lacking sense of order produces a strange impermanence
in the conditions insisted upon. The inner
court of the Sultan's Kraton, or Royal Enclosure,
is now taboo to visitors, for the barbaric monarch,
on the plea of age and infirmity, has obtained the
privilege of privacy, and the Palace can only be seen
through a personal interview. The outer courts are
accessible to carriages, which make the square-mile
circuit of the spacious quadrangles. Massive gates
and crumbling machicolated walls command a green
plain, where immense waringen-trees, clipped into
the semblance of evergreen umbrellas, display the
Eastern symbol of sovereignty. Officials passing to
and fro show a continuous procession of these State
pajongs. The Sultan's august head is canopied
with gold, edged by an orange stripe, the Crown
Prince sporting an umbrella with a golden border.
Sultanas and royal children are known by white
pajongs, while the vast concourse of Court
officials, with umbrellas of pink, blue, red, black,
purple and green, show their status to the initiated
eye through the sequence of colour by which the
pajongs form a complete system of heraldry.
In the dusky angle of a mossy wall, four elephants,
used in State processions, feed upon bundles of
bamboo and sugar-cane. Mud huts and bamboo
sheds prop themselves against tiled eaves and
windowless houses. Open doors afford glimpses of
squalid interiors, crowded with slatternly women
and dirty children, the hereditary retainers and
hangers-on of this effete and moribund royalty.
Private troupes of dancing bedayas, gamelon
players, actors, pipe, fan, and betel-box bearers,
pertain to the tumbledown Palace, and the patriarchal
system of ancient Java permits the presence
of whole families belonging to these indispensable
ministers of the royal pleasure. The people show
the same indifference to Mohammedanism as to the
perished faiths of olden time, and a large funeral
party encountered on leaving the Kraton displays
painful irreverence, though scattering rice and
lighting incense sticks before a white coffin borne
shoulder-high, and decked with a tracery of yellow
marigolds and rosettes of pink paper. No priest
accompanies the procession, and the laughter of the
white-scarved mourners, preceded by men carrying
ropes and planks, suggests an utter heartlessness
and barbarity. Gay passers, a busy campong
Tchina, a very hive of Celestial industry, and
innumerable drives beneath over-arching trees, with
distant views of purple peaks, comprise the interests
of old-world Djokja, with the one exception of the
famous Taman Sarie, or Water Castle, ruined by
earthquake, but remaining as a pathetic memorial
of bygone power and pride. Pavilions and baths,
grottoes and fish-ponds, set in the tangled verdure
of a neglected garden, surround the arcaded parapets
of a colossal tower. Green plumes of fern wave
from wall and battlement, velvet moss and orange
lichen tapestry the blackened stone, and matted
creepers sway their woven curtains in the evening
wind. A Dancing Hall, which formerly rang with
the weird music accompanying the "woven paces
and waving hands" of Court bedayas, in their
spangled pink robes, now echoes to the tread of
alien feet; the dim arcades teem with ghostly
memories, and the mournful desolation of the Taman
Sarie borrows fresh poignancy in the former scene
of mirth and music. A moss-grown and slippery
stairway leads to the green twilight of a subterranean
grotto, containing the richly-carved stone bedstead
of the Sultan, who sought this cool retreat from the
ardour of a tropical sun. A silvery curtain of
murmuring water fell before his sculptured couch,
and supplied this haunt of dreams with an ideal,
if rheumatic environment of poetic beauty and
lulling charm. Superstition clings to the deserted
resting-place, and to touch even the stone columns
of the royal couch is to invoke the powers of
evil, and the presence of Death. The Sumoor
Gamelon, or "Musical Spring," echoing with the
voice of flowing waters, flanks the ancient
banqueting hall, and cools a circle of vaulted
grottoes, their shadowy depths bathed in the
emerald twilight, deepened by the veil of verdure
and the transparent foliage drooping over open
window spaces. The Sultan's oval bathing tank,
with stone galleries and spiral pavilions, occupies a
hollow tower, but a touch of young life dispels the
gloom, for a group of brown children swim and
dive in the cool depths, shouting and splashing with
a merriment unsubdued by the solemn sadness of
the deserted halls. A Portuguese architect designed
this fantastic retreat for an old-time Sultan, who
brought the idea of the Water Castle from a far-off
Indian home. The earthquake of 1867 rendered
the Taman Sarie uninhabitable, choked the lake in
which it stood, and destroyed the subaqueous
tunnel which ensured the absolute seclusion of
Sultan and harem. The famous Marshal Daendels,
weary of waiting for an interview with a dilatory
Sultan, yielded to natural impatience, and hearing
the sound of distant music from the watery depths,
dashed through the thicket of tamarinds which
concealed the entrance to the water pavilion, and,
dragging the Sultan from the place of dreams,
scattered bedayas and gamelon players in terror,
forcing the so-called "Regent of the World" and
"Shadow of the Almighty" to accompany him
to the Dutch headquarters. Rose garden and
shrubbery, palm grove and pleasaunce, are fast
relapsing into impenetrable jungle. Broken
fountains, and mouldering vases once filled with
orange-trees, outline the balustraded terraces; gilt
pavilions lift their upcurved eaves above a wild
growth of oleander, but the enchanted scene of old
romance is given up to bats and lizards, for the
crumbling Taman Sarie is now a fast-vanishing
monument of Java's buried past.
The number of rechas, or sacred stone figures
of Brahmin and Buddhist origin, in the garden of
the Dutch Residency, shows the scant care bestowed
on the ancient temples, for years used as mere
quarries of broken statuary, and still receiving inadequate
recognition as historical remains, though Sir
Stamford Raffles a century ago realised the supreme
importance of Javanese sculpture as an indispensable
link in archæological science. Djokjacarta,
interesting in itself as the survival of an ancient
dynasty, borrows double attraction from the architectural
wonders which surround it, buried for ages
in the deep green grave of tropical vegetation, but
now laid bare as an open book, wherein we may read
those graven records which unveil the mysteries of
the past, and enable us to gaze down the long vista
of Time and Change.
The archæological interest of Java culminates in
the mysterious temple known as Boro-Boedoer,
"the aged thing," with an actual history lost in
mist and shadow, though recorded in imperishable
characters on this spellbound sanctuary of a
departed faith. The little tramway from Djokjacarta
traverses fields of rice and sugar-cane, indigo and
pepper; a range of dreamlike mountains bounds the
view, crowned by the turquoise cone of Soemboeung,
the traditional centre of Java, a green knoll at the
base of the volcanic pyramid being regarded as the
"spike" which fastens the floating isle to some
solid rock in unfathomed depths of ocean. The
fitful fancy of a wandering race, ever drifting across
the changing seas, reflects itself in the legendary
lore of the Malay Archipelago, often represented by
weird traditions as though in perpetual motion.
The vicissitudes of volcanic action, whereby islands
were sometimes submerged or created, gives a
colouring of fact to the vague ideas entertained by
these nomads of the sea. Merbaboe, the "ash-ejecting,"
and Merapi, the "fire-throwing," flank
the loftier crest, honeycombed with dim cave
temples, now deserted and forgotten, but formerly
sanctifying those watch-towers of Nature which
guard the hoary shrine of Boro-Boedoer. At
Matoelan we hear that the swift river separating
the great Temple from the secular world is in flood,
the bridge broken down, and the supplementary raft
impossible through the swirling current. This
untoward event involves a further expedition to
Magelang, a sordid town of continuous markets, the
Javanese population being of pronounced Hindu
type, silent and sad, according to the idiosyncracy
of their mysterious ancestors across the sea. The
conversational difficulties presented by the Dutch
and Malay languages, combined with the incapacity
of our brown driver, eventually land us at Mendoet,
on the wrong side of the turbid stream—the Jordan
which divides the weary traveller from his Land of
Promise. Evening draws on, the clear sky flushes
pink above the darkness of the palm-woods, and
hope sinks apace, for the surging flood shows no
sign of abatement. Suddenly the apathetic driver
rouses himself from what proves a profitable meditation,
and, with folded hands, breathes the magic
word pasteur, whipping up his sorry steeds to
fresh exertions. We draw up at a white bungalow
on the roadside, close to a rustic church, and find a
friend in an English-speaking Dutch priest, who,
after giving us tea on his verandah, suggests
inspection of Mendoet's little moated temple, on the
edge of the forest. An ever-growing tangle of lianas
and vines buried this ancient shrine through the
lapse of ages, until accident revealed the entombed
sanctuary about eighty years ago. A processional
terrace surrounds the walled pavement supporting
the grey edifice, and the sculptured bas-reliefs
denote the transitional stage of Buddhist faith, as it
materialised through Jainism into the Puranic
mythology of Hindu creed. The central chapel
contains the famous picture in stone known as "The
Tree of Knowledge," and represents the Buddha
beneath the sacred Bo-Tree of Gaya. A fluted
pajong, propped against the boughs, canopies
his head, one hand being raised in benediction
over kneeling converts, offering rice and incense.
Listening angels hover overhead, birds peep out
from nests among the leaves, and kids lean with
necks outstretched over fretted crags, magnetised by
the mystic attraction of the inspired Teacher.
Long-eared statues show Nepalese influence, even
the Buddhist images being girt with the sacred cord
of Brahma. A controversy exists as to their
identification with the Hindu Trinity, but as
Eastern cults frequently bestow Divine attributes
on mortals, the mysterious figures may possibly
represent the murdered wives of the Rajah who
founded the Mendoet temple in expiation of his
crime. Another legend suggests the petrification
of a princely family, as a punishment for marrying
within the forbidden degrees, but myth grows apace
in this haunted land, and every century offers fresh
variations of old-world stories, until original form
is lost beneath a weight of accretion, like the thick
moss blurring the chiselled outlines of some carven
monument. After careful scrutiny of the miniature
temple which suggests so many interpretations of
symbolic imagery, we return to the little presbytery
to hear of the subsiding river, and the good priest,
announcing that the raft can now be safely
negotiated, accompanies us to the tottering structure,
a straw matting laid over three crazy boats
punted across the turbulent stream. A half-hour's
stroll beneath the arching boughs of a kanari avenue,
ends at a picturesque Rest House, facing the temple-crowned
hill. Surely we have reached the peace
and silence of Nirvana at last! and the exquisite
beauty of the surrounding landscape, mountain and
forest, park-like valley and winding glen, transfigured
in the deepening gold of sunset, stamps an
ineffaceable impression of Boro-Boedoer in that
mystic gallery of imagination and memory which
retains earth's fairest scenes as eternal possessions
of mind and soul. A shadowy garden, fragrant and
dim, stretches up to the pyramidal pile which covers
the hill. A frangipanni grove scents the air, with
gold-starred blossoms gleaming whitely amid the
silvery green of lanceolated leaves, and a shaft of
ruby light striking the stone Buddhas which guard
the portico, emphasises the inscrutable smile of the
tranquil faces. Like all stupendous monuments of Art
or Nature, Boro-Boedoer at first sight seems a disappointment,
simply because the mind fails to grasp
the immensity of the noblest Temple ever dedicated
to the gentle Sage whose renunciation typified the
greater Sacrifice offered by the Saviour of the World.
Who that reads the story of Sakya Munyi can doubt
that through the Prince who gave up kingdom,
throne, and earthly ties for the sake of downtrodden
humanity, a prophetic gleam of heavenly
light pierced the darkness of the future, and pointed
to the distant Cross? Twenty-five centuries have
rolled away since Prince Siddartha closed his unique
career, and twelve centuries later the wondrous sanctuary
of Boro-Boedoer was erected in honour of the
creed eternally dear to the heart of the mystic East.
The eight stately terraces which climb and encircle
the sacred hill rise from a spacious pavement of
blackened stone, and the walled processional paths
display a superb series of sculptured reliefs, which
would measure three miles in length if placed side
by side. The grey and black ruins, with their rich
incrustations of sacred and historic scenes, remain
in such splendid preservation that fancy easily
reconstructs the bygone glory of the golden age,
when this mighty Altar of Faith witnessed the
glittering pageantry of Oriental devotion; when
gaily-clad crowds flocked to the morning sacrifice of
flowers and music, while monarchs brought their
treasures from far-off lands to lay at the feet of the
mystic Sage, prophetically revealed as an incarnation
of purity and peace vouchsafed to a world of
oppression and sorrow. Life-size Buddhas, enthroned
on the sacred lotus, rise above the crumbling
altars of five hundred arcaded shrines, and stone
stairways ascend from every side, beneath sharply-curved
arches bordered with masks or gargoyles.
The last three terraces form sweeping circles,
flanked by bell-shaped dagobas resembling gigantic
lotus-buds. Each open lattice of hoary stone
reveals an enthroned Buddha, mysteriously enclosed
in his symbolical screen, for these triple terraces
typify the higher circles of Nirvana. Each dreamy
face turns towards the supreme Shrine of the
glorious sanctuary, a domed dagoba fifty feet high,
and once containing some authentic relic of the
Buddha's sacred person. Certain archæologists
recognise in this spire-tipped cupola a survival
of Nature-worship, incorporated with the later
Buddhism in a form derived from the tree temples
of primeval days, and built over a receptacle for the
cremated ashes of the Buddhist priesthood. A touch
of mysticism added by an unfinished statue in the
gloom of the shadowy vault, suggests the unknown
beauty of the soul which attains Nirvana's supremest
height, for the supernal exaltation of purified
humanity to Divine union may not be interpreted or
expressed by mortal hands, but must for ever remain
incommunicable and incomprehensible. From the
central dagoba, ascended by a winding stair, the
intricate design of the spacious sanctuary discloses
itself with mathematical precision, and the changing
glories of dawn, sunset, and moonlight idealize the
sacred hill, rising amid the palm-groves and rice-fields
of a matchless valley, sweeping away in green
undulations which break like emerald waves against
the deepening azure and amethyst of the mountain
heights. The solemn grandeur of Boro-Boedoer
blinds the casual observer to many details which
manifest the ravages of time, the ruthlessness of
war, and the decay of a discarded creed. Headless
and overthrown figures, broken tees, mutilated
carvings, and shattered chapels abound, but the vast
display of architectural features still intact conveys
an impression of permanence rather than of ruin.
For six centuries, Boro-Boedoer was blotted from
the memory of the people, and the heavy pall of
tropical verdure which veiled the vast Temple
remained unlifted. Superincumbent masses of trees,
parasites, and strangling creepers wove their intricate
network of root, branch, and stem round the
monumental record of a dead faith and a buried
dynasty. The riotous luxuriance of tropical Nature
triumphed over the glories of Art, hewn with
incalculable toil and skill in the living rock. Seeds
borne on the wind, or sown by wandering birds,
filled every interstice of the closely-matted verdure;
stair and terrace, dome and spire, sank out of sight
into the forest depths, and when English engineers
arrived to excavate the monumental pile, the task
of clearing away the tangled masses of foliage
occupied two hundred coolies during six weeks of
arduous toil. The brief English occupation of the
island necessarily left the work unfinished, but
Dutch archæologists continued the labour, though
with slower methods and feebler grasp of the
situation. A transient cult sprang up among the
Javanese populace as the ancient sanctuary revealed
itself anew. The statues were invoked with
reverential awe, incense was offered; the saffron,
used as a personal decoration on festive occasions,
was smeared over the impassive faces, unchanged
in the eternal calm of a thousand years, and
fragrant flower petals were heaped on the myriad
altars. Vigils were kept on the summit, and the
sick were laid at the feet of favourite images. This
spurious devotion, hereditary or instinctive, sprang
up in responsive hearts with simultaneous fervour,
though the forgotten doctrines of Buddhism were
never reinstated. Sentiment survived dogma in the
subconscious soul, and the faint shadow cast by an
immemorial past indicates the depths plumbed by
the early creed in the abyss of Eastern personality.
The vague simulacrum quickly faded, like a flickering
flame in the wind which fanned it into life; but
simple souls, as they pass Boro-Boedoer in the brief
twilight, mutter incantations, and brown hands grasp
the silver amulets which ward off the powers of evil,
for the deserted temple is still regarded as the haunt
of unknown gods, who may perchance wreak
vengeance on the world which has forsaken them.
The long scroll of ancient history, unrolled by
the sculptured terraces, represents the birth, growth,
and development of Buddhist faith. Queen Maya,
jewelled and flower-crowned, with the miraculous
Babe on her knee, sits among her maidens, the
earth breaking into blossom at the advent of
her star-born child. His education in the mental
and physical achievements imperative on Eastern
royalty, when the sword-pierced heart of the mother
who typified the Virgin Queen of Saints was translated
to Nirvana's rest, is contrasted with the sudden
realisation of life's vanity when brought face to face
with the world's threefold burden of sorrow, sickness
and death. The renunciation of power, wealth and
love follows, liberating the soul for the pilgrimage
along the mystic "path," pursued until "the dew-drop
fell into the shining sea" of Eternity. The
manifold details of the Buddha's traditional career
are vividly pourtrayed on the hoary walls of volcanic
trachyte in outline clear and sharp, as though the
sculptors of the eighth century had just laid down
burin and chisel. The indented leaves of the
Bo-Tree, beneath which the Sage meditates, are so
exquisitely carved that they almost seem to flutter
in the breeze. The scene of the deer-park wherein
he judges beasts and men, carefully weighing the
tiniest birds in the balance of the sanctuary,
suggests a prophetic vision of the greater Saviour,
Who declared that even the humble sparrow is
remembered by the Creator. Countless scriptural
truths throw their anticipatory shadows across the
life of the Eastern mystic who approached so closely
to the Christian ideal of a later age, for the Buddha's
spiritual experiences became the inspiration of
unnumbered hearts, and exercised a purifying
influence over every creed of the philosophic East.
The social life of ancient Java, comprising public
ceremonials, domestic occupations, architecture,
agriculture, navigation, drama and music, is
memorialised by succeeding terraces of the igneous
rock which sufficed for the old-world sculptor as the
medium of his Art. An unknown King and Queen,
the traditional founders of Boro-Boedoer, appear in
varied guise, throned and crowned, walking in
religious processions beneath State pajongs,
kneeling before Buddha with open caskets of
treasure, and receiving the homage of the people,
accompanied by bearers of smoking censers and
waving fans. Armed warriors guard the jewelled
thrones, and the popular attitude in every scene of
the royal progress evidences the semi-sacred character
awarded to Indian sovereignty. The eighth
century A.D. was the meridian of the Javanese
Empire, and in the subsequent changes of
nationality the facial type of the past has altered
beyond recognition, for in the ancient civilisation
depicted on these sculptured terraces, archæologists
assert that every physiognomy is either of Hindu or
Hellenic character. Ships of archaic form, with
banks of rowers; palm-thatched huts built on piles,
in the unchanging fashion of the Malay races;
graceful bedayas, the Nautch girls of Java,
performing the old-world dances still in vogue;
and women with lotahs on their heads, passing in
single file to palm-fringed tanks, might be represented
with equal truth in this twentieth century.
Seedtime and harvest, ploughing and reaping,
bullock-carts and water-buffaloes, fruit-laden wagons
and village passers, pass in turn before the
spectator in this wondrous gallery of native art.
Richly-caparisoned elephants suggest Indian accessories
of royal life and State ceremonial, an
occasional touch of humour enlivening the solemn
pageantry. In one grotesque relief a bedaya
and an elephant stand vis-a-vis, the ponderous
monster imitating the steps of the slim maiden in
floating veil and embroidered robes, her slender
limbs contrasting with the outflung feet of her
clumsy partner. Weird myths of the great fishes
which guided and propelled the coracle-like boats of
the first Buddhist missionaries to the shores of Java
are perpetuated in stone, and the forest, sloping
down to the wave-beaten coast, shows the rich
vegetation which still clothes this island of eternal
summer. The sumboya or flower of the dead,
droops over stately tombs; bamboo and palm,
banana and bread-fruit, mingle their varied foliage;
mangosteen and pomegranate, mango and tamarind,
acacia and peepul, show themselves as indigenous
growths of the fertile soil; while palace and temple,
carven stairway, and flower-girt pavilion, suggest the
wealth and prosperity of the ancient empire. The
mighty Temple of Boro-Boedoer, built up through
successive ages, indicates the gradual change from
the simplicity of the early faith, at first supplanting,
and eventually becoming incorporated with, the
Brahminism which succeeded it in modified form,
as though rising from the ashes of the earlier Hindu
creed which Buddhism virtually destroyed. In the
higher terrace, the last addition to this stupendous
sanctuary, the images of Buddha represent the ninth
Avatar or Incarnation of the god Vishnu, though
he still sits upon the lotus cushion and holds
the sacred flower in one hand. This inclusion of
Sakya Munyi within the Puranic Pantheon was a
masterly feat of strategy accomplished by reviving
Brahminism, the heresy of the Jains supplying the
link between the rival creeds. All the sculptured
figures, leaning forward in veneration of the mystic
statue in the central cupola, are invested with the
sacred thread of the Vishnavite Brahmin. The
images of the highest circular terrace are carved in
four symbolical attitudes. The "teaching"
Buddha rests an open palm on one knee; in the
posture of "learning" his hands are outstretched
to receive the gift of knowledge. In "exposition,"
one hand is raised towards Heaven, and in the act
of "demonstration," thumbs and index fingers are
joined. Ferguson points out that within the grey
lattice of each lotus-bell dagoba, the right palm
of the enthroned Buddha curves over the left hand.
This restful posture indicates the state of final
comprehension, when the aspiring soul, raised to the
different spheres of Nirvana by steps of ascending
sanctity, receives increasing peace and satisfaction
from gradual absorption into the Infinite. No creed
passes unaltered through any crucible of national
thought; Indian Buddhism borrowed both form and
colour from races which, in accepting the new faith,
retained their own individuality and modes of
assimilation. They gave as well as received, and
the value of the gift depended on the character of
the giver.
No inscriptions exist on the stones of Boro-Boedoer.
The sculptured reliefs tell their own
story, which admits of diverse interpretations. The
relics of the world-renowned Mystic were dispersed
throughout Asia in the sudden impulse of missionary
enterprise three centuries after his death, and
every Buddhist temple received some infinitesimal
treasure. No record is found of the date when the
precious relic, probably a hair or an eyelash, was
deposited in the great dagoba of Boro-Boedoer, but
an Indian prince sailed with an imposing fleet to
found a Buddhist empire in Java at the opening of
the 7th century A.D., and a subsequent inscription
discovered on the coast of Sumatra commemorates
the completion of a seven-storeyed Vihara, evidently
the colossal Temple of Boro-Boedoer, by the contemporary
King of "Greater Java," the ancient name
of Sumatra. In the tenth century, a reigning
monarch sent his sons to India for religious
education. They brought back in their train artists,
sculptors, monks, priests, and the gorgeous paraphernalia
then used in the ceremonial of Buddhist
worship, but the heart of the ancient faith was
atrophied by the indifference of the people, and the
zealous attempt to galvanise a moribund creed into
fresh life failed even to arrest the progress of decay.
National thought, fickle as the wind, had turned
from an impersonal philosophy to the materialistic
cult of Hindu deities, as the Israelites of old
hankered after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris
in the Golden Calf. No definite creed succeeded in
gaining a permanent hold upon the wandering minds
and shallow feelings of a race whose deepest instincts
reveal the fleeting fancies and inconstant ideas
indigenous to a sea-faring stock, imbued with the
spirit of change and unrest. A magical charm broods
over the mysterious Temple, the materialised dream
of a mighty past rescued from the sylvan sepulchre
of equatorial vegetation, and restored to a vivid
reality beside which the paintings of Egyptian
tombs sink into comparative insignificance. The
seclusion of the memory-haunted pile enhances the
thrill of an unique experience. Vista after vista
opens into the world of long ago so graphically
depicted on the monumental tablets of the processional
paths, while type and symbol point also to
the infinite future intensely realised by Eastern
mysticism. Mortal life was but a fleeting mirage
besides this vision of the life beyond. For the words
"Shadow, Unreality, Illusion," perpetually repeated
by the yellow-robed monks on the beads of the
Buddhist Rosary were inscribed on the inmost heart
of the faithful disciple, who strove to attain that
detachment from the world of sense inculcated by
the creed expressed on the hoary stones of Boro-Boedoer.
The ruined temples of Brambanam memorialise
that phase of Java's religious history, when the
altars of Buddha were finally deserted, and
Hinduism became the paramount creed of the fickle
populace. An archæological report sent to Sir
Stamford Raffles a century ago, describes the
remains of Brambanam as "stupendous monuments
of the science and taste belonging to a long-forgotten
age, crowded together in the former centre of Hindu
faith." A rough country road leads from the little
white railway station, perched on a desolate plain,
to these far-famed temples. A brown village, shaded
by the dark foliage of colossal kanari-trees, shows
the usual fragility of structure in basket-work walls
and roofs of plaited palm-leaves, but the humble
dwellings, destroyed and rebuilt myriad times on the
ancient site of Java's Hindu capital, have supplemented
native workmanship by a multitude of
carven stones, broken statues, and moss-grown
reliefs, for the ruins, theoretically guarded from the
spoiler's hand, are still inadequately protected, and
the grey recha have been used as seats, landmarks,
or stepping-stones over muddy lane and
brimming water-course. The conversion of Java to
the materialistic creed for which she forsook the
subtleties of an impersonal Buddhism, though
shallow was complete, and the doctrine of impermanence,
inculcated by the discarded faith,
continued an essential factor in spiritual development,
for the inconstancy of the national mind only
found a temporary halting-place in each successive
creed which arrested it. The seed was sown, the
bud opened, and the flower faded, with incredible
rapidity, but the growth while it lasted, showed
phenomenal luxuriance. The erection of these
Hindu sanctuaries signalised the zenith of Javanese
power; their fame travelled across the seas, and
numerous expeditions sailed for this early El Dorado
of the Southern ocean. Kublai Khan came with his
Mongol fleet, but was repulsed with loss, and
branded as a felon. A second and stronger attempt
from the same quarter met with absolute defeat.
Marco Polo, compelled to wait through the rainy
season in Sumatra for a favourable wind, came
hither in the palmy days of mediæval Portugal, but
returned discomfited. Goths from the Northern
bounds of Thuringian pine forests followed in their
turn, but the power and prestige of Hindu Java
remained invincible until destroyed by the wayward
fickleness of her own children. Brahminism was
finally discarded for the specious promises of Arabian
invaders, and the lightly-held faith succumbed to
the creed of Islam. Mosques were built, Hindu
temples were forsaken, and Nature's veil of vegetation
was once more suffered to hide altar and statue,
wall and stairway, until every sculptured shrine
became a mere green mound of waving trees,
strangling creepers, and plumy ferns. The memory
of the past was entirely obliterated from the hearts of
the people, and every year buried the relics of the
former religion in a deeper grave.
Siva the Destroyer, and also the Life-Giver, the
Third Person of the Hindu Trinity, together with
Parvati and Brahma, were worshipped here in their
original character, and an exquisite statue of Lora
Jonggran (Parvati in her Javanese guise) remains
enshrined in a richly-decorated chapel, surrounded
by dancing houris, inspired in their sacred measure
by the flute-playing of Krishna. A further instance
of the mode already mentioned by which sentiment
survives dogma in the Malay races, is shown by the
fact that Lora Jonggran still receives the homage
of Javanese women. Flowers are laid at her feet,
love affairs are confided to her advocacy, and as the
shadows deepen across the great quadrangle, a
weeping girl prostrates herself before the smiling
goddess, and, raising brown arms in earnest supplication,
kisses the stone slab at the feet of the
beautiful statue, popularly endowed with some occult
virtue which the loosely-held Mohammedanism of a
later day has failed to discredit or deny. The
temples of Brambanam were erected shortly after the
completion of that upper terrace in the great sanctuary
of Boro-Boedoer which marks the traditional
epoch between Buddhism and the later Hinduism,
including Sakya Munyi among the avatars of
Vishnu. The sacred trees and lions carved here on
the walls of the temple quadrangle, give place in
the galleries to scenes from the great Hindu epic of
the Ramayan. The familiar form of Ganesh, the
elephant-headed God of Wisdom, looms from the
shadows of a vaulted shrine; Nandi, the sacred bull,
stands beneath a carven canopy, and the great
memorial of a bygone faith contains the identical
galaxy of gods found in the Indian temples of the
present day, for the thin veil of Javanese thought
is a transparency rather than a disguise, softening
rather than hiding the clear-cut outlines of the
original idea. The "fatal beauty" of the graceful
waringen-tree has played an ominous part in the
destruction of the Brambanam temples, for the
interlacing roots, like a network of branching veins,
make their devious way through crevice and cranny,
splitting and uplifting the strongest slab, wherein
one tiny crack suffices for the string-like fibres to
gain foothold. Masks and arabesques, fruit and
flowers, fabulous monsters and sacred emblems,
encrust the grey balustrades and bas-reliefs of the
noble stairways. Roof and column teem with
richest ornament, for Hindu art had reached the
climax of splendour when the great city, formerly
surrounding the monumental group of stately
temples, attained to her utmost power and fame.
The Greek influences which prevailed in Northern
Hindustan were translated to Brambanam in their
attributes of dignity and grace, for the flowing robes
and easy postures of the sculptured figures correct
and modify the grotesque and over-laden character
of original Hindu art. The great stone-paved court
once contained an imposing group of twenty pyramidal
shrines, but only three remain in the original
contour of the so-called "pagoda style," peculiar to
the Dravidian temples of Southern India, from
whence Java derived her special form of faith. The
ruins on the opposite side of the grey quadrangle
are mere cone-shaped piles of rubbish, dust, and
broken stone, but the tapering pyramids, with their
graceful galleries and processional terraces, richly
carved and adorned with images, enable us to
reconstruct in imagination the stately beauty of the
architectural panorama once displayed by the temple
courts. Scenes from the Ramayan and Mahabharata
adorn the great blocks of the boundary wall,
sculptured in high relief. The Vedic Powers of
Nature, with Indra as the god of storm and
hurricane, manifest the recognition of that earlier
belief which became submerged in the vast system
of Pantheistic mythology. The faith of further India
takes form and colour from the idiosyncracy of Java,
and the goddess Parvati, or Kali, worshipped under
these different names according to her attributes of
glory or terror, becomes Lora Jonggran, the benignant
goddess of Java, popularly known as "the
maiden of the beauteous form." Four lofty stairways
ascend to the hoary chapels within each
sculptured pyramid, every dusky vault containing
the broken image of the tutelary Deva.
Only separated from Brambanam by a winding
path and a green belt of jungle, stands the great
Buddhist temple of Chandi Sewon, and the colossal
figures flanking the entrance gate indicate a decadent
phase of the ancient creed which Boro-Boedoer
illustrates in the purity of earlier developement.
Chandi Sewon, the "thousand temples," includes
in the number myriad unimportant shrines, ruined,
overthrown, or covered with a green network of
interlacing creepers. The great architectural pile,
built at a uniform level, surrounds the central
sanctuary with five great enclosures. All the
ancient faiths of the world contain foreshadowings
or reflections of Christian truth, and the cruciform
temple which forms the climax of this monumental
erection shows the mystic value attached to the
sacred Sign so frequently encountered in Buddhist
shrines, and known as the Shvastika. The
numerous chapels of Chandi Sewon contained the
galaxy of Tirthankas or Buddhist saints which the
materialism of the Jains added to the impersonal
subtleties of esoteric Buddhism. The blank emptiness
and desertion of this vast sanctuary produces
an impression of unutterable desolation. The weed-grown
courts, the ruined altars, and the moss-blackened
arches, encumbered with indistinguishable
heaps of shattered sculpture, lack all the reposeful
charm of Boro-Boedoer, still a sermon in stone which
he who runs may read. The degenerate creed
memorialised by Chandi Sewon, has failed to impress
itself on the colossal pile which bears melancholy
witness to the evanescent character of the heretical
offshoot from the parent stem. Jungle and palm-forest
in Central Java contain innumerable vestiges
of pyramidal temples, palaces, and shrines; vaults
hidden beneath the shrouding trees have yielded a
rich store of gold, silver, and bronze ornaments,
household utensils, and armour. For many years
the peasants of the region between Samarang and
Boro-Boedoer paid their taxes in gold melted from
the treasure trove turned up by the plough, or dug
from the precincts of some forgotten sanctuary,
buried beneath the rank vegetation of the teaming
soil. The discarded Hindu gods still haunt the
forest depths, and the superstitious native, as he
threads the dark recesses of the solemn woods, gazes
with apprehensive eyes on the trident of Siva, or
the elephant's trunk of Ganesh emerging from the
trailing wreaths and matted tapestry of liana and
creeper, veiling the blackened stone of each decaying
shrine. Nature has proved stronger than Art or
Creed, in the eternal growth beneath an equatorial
sun, of the kingdom over which she reigns in
immortal life. Silently and insidiously she undermines
man's handiwork, and realisation of his futile
conflict with her invincible power enters with
disastrous effect into the popular mind, lacking that
immutable force without which the spiritual temple
of faith rests on a foundation of shifting sand.
Kawi literature, popularised by translation, and
familiar through the medium of national drama,
interprets Javanese creeds and traditions. This
"utterance of poetry" derived from Sanskrit, fell
into disuse after the Mohammedan conquest, though
a few Arabic words became incorporated into the two-fold
language comprising Krama, the ceremonial
speech, and Ngoko, the speech of "thee and
thou," or colloquial form of address. The island of
Bali, and the slopes of the Tengger range, retain a
modification of Hinduism, and Bali treasures a Kawi
version of the Ramayan and Mahabharata epics.
Many inspiring thoughts and noble sentiments,
expressed in story and song, have become well-known
maxims identified with Javanese life. "Rob
no man of due credit, for the sun, by depriving the
moon of her light, adds no lustre to his own."
"As the lotus floats in water, the heart rests in a
pure body." "Ye cannot take riches to the grave,
but he who succoureth the poor in this world shall
find a better wealth hereafter." A babad or
rhythmical ballad of semi-religious character belongs
to every province, but though many details of temple
worship—Buddhist, Hindu, and Mohammedan—may
be gathered from the lengthy scroll, heroic and
princely exploits, myths and traditions, encumber
the sacred text, which Eastern imagination transforms
into a fairy tale. Creeds lose their chiselled
outline, and crumble away in the disintegrating
medium of Javanese thought, which blends them
into each other with changing colour and borrowed
light. The inconstant soul of the Malay knows
nothing of that rigid adherence to some centralising
truth which often forms the heart of a living faith,
and his religious history is an age-long record of
failure, change, desertion, and oblivion, repeated in
varying cadences, and inscribed in unmistakeable
characters on the ruined sanctuaries of old Mataram.
The imperial city of Sourakarta, commonly
abbreviated into "Solo," was the hereditary capital
of the Mohammedan emperors, now mere puppet-princes
held in the iron grasp of Holland. The
present Susunhan, descended from both Hindu and
Arab ancestry, maintains a brilliant simulacrum of
royal state, and his huge Kraton, far surpassing that
of Djokjacarta, contains 10,000 inhabitants. The
pronounced Hindu type, though debased and
degraded, remains noticeable even amid the all-pervading
environment of squalor and disorder,
which dims the gorgeous colour and brilliant
ceremonial, producing the effect of jewels flung in
the dust. A dense throng of brown humanity, clad
and unclad, walks to and fro beneath the dusky
avenues of feathery tamarinds which shield Solo
from the ardour of the tropical sun. Old crones,
with unkempt locks streaming over brown and bony
necks, pass by, their wide mouths distorted and
discoloured with sucking the scarlet lumps of
Sarya, from which the native derives unfailing
consolation, even the Javanese girl showing absolute
disregard of the disfigurement produced by this
favourite stimulant. Deep moats, lichen-stained
walls, and hoary forts, invest Solo with a feudal
aspect, and the grim tower of Vostenberg menaces
the Kraton with bristling cannon, reminding the
hereditary Ruler of his subserviency to modern
Holland, for only a melancholy illusion of past glory
remains to him. The dragon-carved eaves of
the Chinese quarter, the open tokos beneath
waringen boughs, the shadowy passer brightened
by mounds of richly-coloured fruits, and the stuccoed
palaces of Court dignitaries, framed in dark foliage,
give character and interest to the city, where the life
of the past lingers in a series of street pictures
remaining from bygone days of pomp and show.
Ministers of State walk beneath many-coloured
official umbrellas, held by obsequious attendants;
graceful bedayas, in glittering robes, execute
intricate dances, and gamelon players discourse
weird music on pipe and drum. Court ballet-girls,
known as Serimpi, are borne swiftly through the
crowd in gilded litters, and masked actors give
al fresco performances of the historic Wayang-wayang,
represented by living persons, for the actual
"shadow-play" is impossible in broad daylight.
The colour of the mask indicates the character
assumed by the actor. The golden mask signifies
Divinity, heroes wear white, and evil spirits black or
red. Here, as elsewhere, the profile of the grotesque
disguise invariably shows either the Greek, or the
hawk-nose strangely suggestive of Egyptian origin,
and which, as a variation on human physiognomy,
specially commended itself to Mohammedan thought
as a skilful evasion of an inconvenient dogma.
Elsewhere the spirit of concession to alien ideas is
almost unknown, even flower and leaf being conventionalised
on those architectural monuments of Islam
which form the supreme expression of Mussulman
genius. The suppression of national amusements
has ever proved a perilous step, and in the heart of
this ancient kingdom the original setting of Javanese
life remained in stereotyped form. The moving
panorama of the tree-shadowed streets possesses a
strange fascination, and the light of the past lingers
like a sunset glow over the human element of the
changed and modernised city. The twang of double-stringed
lutes, the tinkle of metal tubes, and the
elusive melody of silvery gongs, echo from the ages
whence dance and song descend as an unchanged
inheritance. An itinerant minstrel recites the
history of Johar Mankain, the Una of Java, who
shone like a jewel in the world which could not
tarnish the purity and devotion of one whose heart
entertained no evil thought. In the intricate byways
of the crumbling Kraton, a professional story-teller
draws a squalid crowd of women from their dark
hovels and cellars, with the magic wand of enchantment
wielded by the reciter of heroic deeds from the
Panji, exaggerated out of all recognition by the
addition of fairies and giants, demons and dwarfs, to
the simple human element of the original story.
The apathy and decay of native life, lacking all the
scope and interest common to a strenuous age,
appears galvanised into some fleeting semblance of
vitality by the extravaganza presented to it, for the
language of hyperbole is the natural expression of
Eastern thought, and penetrates into mental recesses
unknown and unexplored by the relater of unvarnished
facts. The quick response of the native mind
to Nature's teaching, and the wealth of tradition
woven round flower and tree, mountain and stream,
foster the love of marvel and miracle in those whose
daily wants are supplied by the prodigality of a
tropical climate, for the innate poetry of the race has
never been crushed out by the weight of practical
necessities.
A permit being obtained to view the interior
of the Susunhan's palace under a Dutch escort,
we present ourselves at the colonnaded portico,
where the Prince Probolingo, brother of the
Susunhan, receives his visitors with simple courtesy.
This descendant of a hundred kings is simply attired
in a dark brown sarong and turban, the kris in his
belt of embroidered velvet ablaze with a huge boss
of diamonds. Attendants, holding State umbrellas
over the favoured guests, usher them through
marble-paved courts, in one of which a little prince
is seated, with furled golden umbrella behind him
to denote his rank, a group of royal children playing
round him, their lithe brown forms half-hidden in
the green shadows of a great tamarind tree. A
superb marble ball-room with crystal chandeliers,
forms an incongruous modern feature of the spacious
Palace, but helps to popularise the so-called "Nail of
the Universe" among the European inhabitants of
Solo, by the splendid entertainments continually
given at the imperial command. The porcelain and
glass rooms convey an idea of the boundless
hospitality bestowed; the thousands of wine-glasses
being especially noticeable, for 800 guests are often
invited at a time. Treasures of linen and costly
embroidery, silken hangings and velvet banners,
gorgeous carpets and mats of finest texture, are
displayed to our admiring eyes, but possession rather
than enjoyment is the keynote of Eastern character,
and the bales and bundles of priceless value, kept in
huge cabinets of fragrant cedar-wood, seldom see
the light of day. Long counting-houses are crowded
with native scribes, their brown bodies naked except
for sarong and kris, the perpetual rattle of the abacus
making a deafening din, for apparently the smallest
sum cannot be added up under Eastern skies without
the assistance of this wire frame with the ever-shifting
marbles. Cramped fingers move wearily
over the yellow parchments, with their long lists of
undecipherable hieroglyphics, and the turbaned
heads are scarcely raised until the entrance of the
Prince necessitates the time-honoured salute of
the dodok, the crouching posture assumed in the
presence of a superior. The needs and luxuries of
the immense royal household render the counting-house
a feature of the utmost importance. The
Prince Probolingo has himself forty wives, and a
Harem in proportion to their numbers, the
Susunhan's Imperial Harem far exceeding that of
his brother. Wonderful tales are told of the fairy-like
loveliness belonging to these inner palaces, with
their treasures of ivory and sandalwood, cedar and
ebony, but they are jealously guarded from intrusion,
and a glimpse of their fantastic glory seldom
permitted to Western eyes. After an exhibition of
gold-encrusted litters and painted coaches of State,
used in royal processions, the Prince, a clever-looking
man of forty, takes wine with his guests.
Each stand of solid silver contains six bottles, the
crouching attendants also carrying silver trays of
tumblers and wine-glasses, a gaily clad servitor with
a huge silver ice-bowl bringing up the rear. After
drinking the health of His Royal Highness in iced
Rhine wine, we make our adieux, and escape from
our splendid pajongs of rainbow hue on the
steps of the Great Entrance, conveying our thanks
through the medium of an interpreter. These
fainéant princes learn no tongue but their own,
greatly to the advantage of their Dutch masters.
The colossal incomes assigned to scions of the royal
stock only serve the double purpose of political
expediency and personal extravagance, for the
luxury of a licentious Court remains unchecked, and
the idea of educating or reforming tributary princes
is unknown in Java. Territorial rights were relinquished
for pecuniary gains, and the entire Court of
the Susunhan is in the pay of the Dutch, the wealth
amassed from the richest island in the world
affording ample compensation for the pensions
lavishly bestowed on the former owners of the
tropical Paradise. The Dutch Resident, in his
capacity of "Elder Brother" to the indigenous race,
claims the full privileges of his assumed position,
but the advancing tide of social reform has even
touched these distant shores, and the alien authority
tends on the whole to the welfare of the community.
Hygienic regulations are compulsory, and even here
the traditions of Holland enjoin an amount of
whitewashing and cleaning up unique in tropical
colonies. The green and vermilion panelled sarongs
of Solo are renowned for their elaborate designs, and
the painting of battek, or cotton cloth, remains
a flourishing industry of the ancient capital. The
intricate beauty of the hand-made patterns far
surpasses that of the woven fabrics wherewith new
mills and factories begin to supply the market.
Centuries of hereditary training, from the days when
royal Solo was a self-supporting city, contribute to
the amazing skill of the battek girls, but the
elaboration of native Art is doomed to decay, for
Time, hitherto a negligeable quantity in this
"summer isle of Eden," begins to reveal a value
unknown to the Javanese past, and as the poetry of
illumination vanished before the prose of the printing
press, so the painting of battek must inevitably give
way to the wholesale methods of Manchester in the
near future of Java, just awakening from her spellbound
sleep to the changed conditions of life and
labour. An exquisite plain, described by de Charnay
as unrivalled even in Java, surrounds Sourakarta
with belts of palm, avenues of waringen, and
picturesque rice-fields of flaming green and vivid
gold. Azure peaks frame the enchanting picture.
The storied heights are rich in traditions of gods and
heroes, with innumerable myths haunting the ruined
temples which cluster round the base of the
mountain range, and suggest themselves as relics of
an earlier creed than Buddhism or Brahminism.
Archaic sculptures, obelisks, and gateways, massive
and undecorated, recall the architecture of Egyptian
sanctuaries, but no record exists which throws any
light on the origin of the extensive monuments of a
forgotten past, though the triple pyramid of Mount
Lawu is still a place of sacrifice to Siva the
Destroyer. Pilgrims climb the steep ascent to lay
their marigold garlands and burn their incense-sticks
at the foot of the rude cairn erected in
propitiation of the Divine wrath, typified by the cloud
and tempest hovering round the jagged pinnacles of
the volcanic range, which frowns with perpetual
menace above the verdant loveliness of plain and
woodland. The instinctive worship seems one of
those hereditary relics of a perished faith so
frequently encountered in Java; a blind impulse for
which no reason can be ascribed by the devotee,
swayed by those mysterious forces of the subconscious
self which seem imperishable elements in
the brown races of the Malay Archipelago. The
native Court attracts myriad parasites, and the
wealthy Chinese half-castes, or Paranaks of Solo,
with their inborn commercial genius, surpass all
competitors in the pursuit of fortune. The three
centuries of mixed marriages have modified Chinese
conservatism, and though the Paranak is severely
taxed, and excluded from all political offices, he
remains supreme in the kingdom of finance, regarded
even by the Dutch as an indispensable factor in the
complicated affairs of the island.
The great passer of Solo becomes an endless
delight, and the interminable corridors, where the
fumes of incense mingle with the breath of flowers,
convey strange suggestions of antiquity. Simple
meals of rice and bananas progress round cooking-pots
of burnished copper. Pink pomelo and purple
mangosteen vary the repast; strips of green banana
leaf folded into cups fastened with an acanthus
thorn, or serving as plates for Dame Nature's
prodigality, provide the accessories of the feast as
well as the provisions. The Javanese populace,
wonderfully free from those household cares which
involve so much time and trouble in Northern
nations strenuously occupied in keeping the wolf
from the door, and left to carry out their own
inventions, have evolved numerous methods of
blending the different metals—steel and iron, brass
and silver. The veinings of the kris, beautiful as
those of any Toledo blade, are produced by the
welding of metals steeped in lime-juice and arsenic,
which destroy the iron and retain the ingrained
pattern. The chains of mingled brass and silver
show exquisite designs and a special charm of colour,
in the soft golden hue and subdued gleam of the
heavy links, with their richly-enamelled talismans
of ruby and turquoise enamel. Soft voices, tranquil
movements, and courteous manners are the age-long
heritage of Malay idiosyncracy, and even in the
crowded passer, with its horde of buyers and
sellers, noise and dispute are non-existent. It is a
market of dreamland, and though echoes of
marching feet and music of native bands remind us
that we are in imperial Sourakarta, the busy hive
of the passer suggests a panoramic picture of
native life, rather than the pushing, jostling crowd
represented by the ordinary idea of a market in that
Western hemisphere which, in bestowing so many
priceless gifts on humanity, has taken from it the
old-world grace of repose.
The port of Sourabaya, supreme in mercantile
importance, ranks as the second city of Java, as it
contains the military headquarters, the principal
dockyards, and the arsenal. Leagues of rice and
sugar-cane lie between Solo and Sourabaya, the landscape
varied by gloomy teak woods, feathery
tamarinds, and stately mango trees. White towns
nestle in rich vegetation, and the green common
known as the aloon-aloon marks each hybrid suburb,
Europeanized by Dutch canals, white bridges,
and red-tiled houses, planted amid a riotous wealth
of palm and banana. A broad river, brimming over
from the deluge of the previous night, flows through
burning Sourabaya; a canal, gay with painted
praus connecting it with the vast harbour,
where shipping of all nations lies at anchor, the
sheltered roads bristling with a forest of masts
and funnels. Bungalows, in gorgeous gardens, flank
dusky avenues of colossal trees, for even Sourabaya,
the hottest place in steaming Java, enjoys "a
boundless contiguity of shade." In the sawa
fields broad-eaved huts, set on stilts above the
swamp, protect the brown boys who frighten birds
from the rice, for the clapping and shouting must be
carried on under shelter from the ardent sun. No
air blows from the rippling water, set with acres of
lotus-beds, the fringed chalices of rose and azure
swaying on their plate-like leaves of palest green.
The heterogeneous character of Sourabaya gives
unwonted interest to the streets, uniquely brilliant
in grouping and colour. Gilded eaves of Chinese
houses, many-tiered Arab mosques, encrusted with
polished tiles of blue and purple, white colonnades
of Dutch bungalows, and pointed huts of woven
basket-work within wicker gate and bamboo fence,
mingle in fantastic confusion to frame a series of
living pictures. Cream-coloured bullocks and
spirited Timor ponies, in creaking waggons and
ramshackle carriages, pass in endless procession.
Bronze-hued coolies balance heavy loads on the
swaying pikolan, a sloping pole of elastic bamboo,
and strolling players, rouged and tinselled, collect
crowds in every open space where a fluttering
tamarind-tree offers a welcome patch of shadow to
each turbaned audience, clad in the paradisaical garb
of the tropics. Graceful Malay women flit silently
past, in pleasing contrast to their burly Dutch
mistresses, clad in a caricature of native garb which
the appalling heat of Sourabaya renders a more
slatternly disguise than even colonial sans géne
accomplishes elsewhere. Orchids spread broad
spathes of scented bloom from grey trunks of courtyard
trees, and cascades of crimson and purple
creepers tumble over arch and wall. Insinuating
Chinamen untie bundles of sarongs, scarves, and
delicate embroideries on the marble steps of hotel
porticoes, where the prolonged "shopping" of the
drowsy East is catered for by the industrious
Celestial, when tokos are closed, and the tradesman
sleeps on the floor amid his piled-up wares, for
the slumber of Java is too deep to be lightly
disturbed, and the solemnity of the long siesta seems
regarded almost as a religious function. In this
far-off land of dreams it seems "always afternoon,"
and the complacency wherewith the entire population
places itself "hors de combat" becomes a perpetual
irritation to the traveller, anxious to seize a golden
opportunity of fresh experience. The sun sinks out
of sight before the sultry atmosphere begins to cool.
The weird "gecko," a large lizard which foretells
rain, screams "Becky! Becky!" in the garden
shadows, and a cry of "Toko! Toko!" echoes from
another unseen speaker of a mysterious language,
while wraith-like forms of his tiny brethren make
moving patterns on the white columns, as the
hungry little reptiles hunt ceaselessly for the
mosquitos which form their staple diet. Lashing
rain and deafening thunder at length cool the fiery
furnace, blue lightning flares on the solid blackness
of heaven, and the storm only dies away when we
start at dawn for Tosari, the mountain sanatorium
of the Tengger. The flat and flooded land glows
with the vivid green of springing rice, tremulous
tamarind and blossoming teak bordering a road gay
with pilgrim crowds, for the great volcano of the
Tengger remains one of Nature's mystic altars,
dedicated to prayer and sacrifice. Moslem girls in
yellow veils jostle brown men with white prayer-marks
and clanking bangles. The sari of India
replaces the sarong of Java, with fluttering folds of
red and purple; children, clad only in silver chains
and medals, or strings of blue beads, dart through the
crowd, from whence the familiar types of Malay and
Javanese personality are absent. We change carts
in a busy roadside passer, which drives a roaring
trade in rice-cakes and fruit, syrups and stews, to
mount through changing zones of vegetation, where
palms give place to tree ferns, and luscious frangipanni
or gardenia yields to rose and chrysanthemum.
From the half-way house of Poespo, a forest road
ascends to Tosari. Sombre casuarina, most mournful
of the pine tribe, mingles with teak and
mahogany in dense woods falling away on either
side from the shadowy path. Innumerable monkeys
swing from bough to bough, eating wild fruits, and
breaking off twigs to pelt the intruders on their
domains. At length the sylvan scenery gives place
to endless fields of cabbage, potatoes, maize, and
onions, for the cool heights of the Tengger range
serve the prosaic purpose of market-garden to
Eastern Java, and all European vegetables may be
cultivated here with success. A patchwork counterpane
of green, brown, and yellow, clothes these steep
slopes, but the extent of the mountain chain, and
the phantasmal outlines of volcanic peaks, absorb
the incongruities grafted upon them. Valerian and
violet border the track between swarthy pines
with grey mosses hanging down like silver beards
from forked branches, and sudden mists shroud the
landscape in vaporous folds, torn to shreds by
gusts of wind, to melt away into the blue sky,
suddenly unveiled in dazzling glimpses between the
surging clouds. A long flight of mossy steps ascends
to the plateau occupied by the Sanatorium, with
wide verandahs and a poetic garden, like some old
Italian pleasaunce, with fountain and sundial, espaliered
orange boughs, and ancient rose-trees overhanging
paved walks, gay parterres, and avenues of
myrtle or heliotrope. Flowers are perennial even
on these airy heights, and dense hedges of datura,
with long white bells drooping in myriads over the
pointed foliage, transform each narrow lane into a
vista of enchantment. Eastern Java spreads map-like
beneath the overhanging precipice, the blue
strait of Madoera curving between fretted peak and
palm-clad isle. The velvety plum-colour of nearer
ranges fades through tints of violet and mauve into
the ethereal lilac of distant summits. The lowlands
gleam with brimming fish-ponds and flooded
sawas, as though the sea penetrated through
creek and inlet to the heart of the green country,
the vague glitter of this watery world investing the
scene with dream-like unreality. Brown campongs
cling to mountain crest and precipitous ledge.
These almost inaccessible fastnesses were colonised
after the Moslem conquest by a Hindu tribe which
refused to relinquish Brahminism. Driven from
place to place by the fanatical hordes of Islam on
the downfall of the Hindu empire, the persecuted
race, a notable exception to native inconstancy and
indifference, retreated by degrees to this mountain
stronghold, where they successfully retained their
religious independence, and defended themselves
from Mohammedan hostility. Brahminism through
centuries of isolation, has assimilated many
extraneous heathen rites, and wild superstitions have
overlaid the original creed. The worship of the
Tenggerese is now mainly directed to the ever-active
crater of the awe-inspiring Bromo, always faced by
the longer side of the windowless communal houses,
built to contain the several generations of the
families which in patriarchal fashion inhabit these
spacious dwellings. Huge clouds of smoke from the
majestic volcano curl perpetually above the surrounding
peaks, and float slowly westward, the thunderous
roar of the colossal crater echoing in eternal menace
through the rarefied air, and regarded as the voice of
the god who inhabits the fiery Inferno. These lonely
hills, ravaged by tempest and haunted by beasts of
prey, are the hiding-places of fear and the cradles of
ever-deepening superstition. Wild fancies sway the
untaught mountaineers, responsive to Nature's
wonders, though powerless to interpret their signification.
The constant struggle for existence
produces a character utterly opposed to that of the
suave and facile Malay. The graces of life are
unknown, but the strenuous temperament of the
Tenggerese is shown by indefatigable industry in the
difficult agriculture of the mountain region, and the
careful cultivation of the vegetables for which the
district is renowned. Day by day, the Tenggerese
women—gaunt, scantily-clad, and almost unsexed
by incessant toil in the teeth of wind and weather—carry
down their burdens to the plain, their backs
bent under the weight of the huge crates, while the
brown and wizened children are prematurely aged
and deformed by their share in the family toil.
The more prosperous inhabitant carries his vegetables
on a mountain pony, trained to wonderful
feats in the art of sliding up and climbing down walls
of rock almost devoid of foothold, for the riding of
Tenggerese youth and maiden rivals that of the
Sioux Indian. Misdirected zeal strips the hills of
forest growth; the scanty pines of the higher zone
serving as fuel, and the ruthless destruction of timber
brings the dire result of decreasing rainfall. Only
bamboo remains wherewith to build the communal
houses, formerly constructed of tastefully blended
woods, and the flimsy substitute, unfitted to resist
drenching rain and raging wind, is dragged with the
utmost difficulty from cleft and gorge along rude
tracks hewn out in the mountain side. Rice, elsewhere
the mainstay of life in Java, has never been
cultivated by the Tenggerese, the sowing and
planting of the precious crop being forbidden to them
during the era of gradual retreat before the
Mohammedan army centuries ago, and the innate
conservatism of the secluded tribe, in spite of life's
altered environment, clings to the dead letter of an
obsolete law. The tigers, once numerous round
Tosari, have retreated into the jungle clothing the
lower hills, and seldom issue from their forest lairs
unless stress of weather drives them upward for a
nightly prowl round byre and pen. The destruction
of covert renders Tosari immune from this past peril,
and the tragic tiger stories related round the hearthstone
of the communal house are becoming oral
traditions of a forgotten day, gathering round themselves
the moss and lichen of fable and myth.
The main interest of Tosari centres round the
stupendous Bromo, possessing the largest crater in
the world, a fathomless cavity three miles in
diameter, veiled in Stygian darkness, and suggesting
the yawning mouth of hell. This bottomless pit,
bubbling like a boiling cauldron, pouring out black
volumes of sulphureous smoke, and clamouring with
unceasing thunder, was for ages a blood-stained altar
of human sacrifice. Every year the fairest maiden
of the Tengger was the chosen victim offered to Siva,
who, in his attribute of a Consuming Fire, occupied
the volcanic abyss. The worship of the Divine
Destroyer has ever been a fruitful source of crime
and cruelty, and a tangible atmosphere of evil lingers
round those hoary temples of India dedicated to the
Avenging Deity, whose fanatical followers are
reckoned by millions. Through the inversion of
creed peculiar to Hindu Pantheism, the propitiation
of Divine wrath has become the fundamental principle
of religion, and pathetic appeals for mercy
continually ascend from darkened hearts to those
unseen powers vividly present to Hindu thought,
which, amid countless errors and degradations, has
never ceased to grasp the central fact of Eternity.
The impalpable air teems with Divinity. Watchful
eyes and clutching hands surround the pilgrim's
path, and unseen spirits dog faltering footsteps as
they stumble through the snares and pitfalls of
earthly life. In the rude tribes of the Tengger,
hereditary faith reflects the uncompromising features
of local environment. The lotus-eating races of the
tropical lowlands, with their feeble grasp on the
sterner aspects of creed and character, have nothing
in common with this Indian tribe, remaining on the
outskirts of an alien civilisation. The creed for
which the early Tenggerese fought and conquered,
has cooled from white heat to a shapeless petrifaction,
and weird influences throng the ruined temple
of a moribund faith, but the shadows which loom
darkly above the mouldering altars still command the
old allegiance, and a thousand hereditary ties bind
heart and soul to the past.
The expedition to the Bromo, by horse or litter,
affords the supreme experience of Javanese volcanoes.
The broken track, knee-deep in mud and
rent by landslips, traverses fields of Indian corn,
rocky clefts, and rugged water-courses. The familiar
flora of Northern Europe fringes babbling brooks,
their banks enamelled with wild strawberries and
reddening brambles. Curtains of ghostly mist lift
at intervals to disclose the magical pink and blue of
the mountain distance, as sunrise throws a shaft of
scarlet over the grim cliff's of the Moengal Pass. A
chasm in the stony wall reveals the famous Sand
Sea below the abrupt precipice, a yellow expanse of
arid desert encircling three fantastic volcanoes. The
pyramidal Batok, the cloud-capped Bromo, and the
serrated Widodaren, set in the wild solitude of this
desolate Sahara, form a startling picture, suggesting
a sudden revelation of Nature's mysterious laboratories.
The deep roar of subterranean thunder, and
the fleecy clouds of sulphureous smoke ever rising
from the vast furnaces of the Bromo, emphasise the
solemnity of the marvellous scene. Native ideas
recognise this terror-haunted landscape as the point
where Times touches Eternity, and natural forces
blend with occult influences. Tjewara Lawang,
"the gate of the spirits," traditionally haunted by
the countless Devas of Hindu Pantheism, bounds
the ribbed and tumbled Sand Sea with a black
bridge of fretted crags, from whence the invisible
host keeps watch and ward over the regions of
eternal fire.
By a fortunate coincidence, the annual festival
of the Bromo is celebrated to-day, when Siva, the
Third Person of the Hindu Triad, is propitiated by a
living sacrifice. Goats and buffaloes were flung
into the flaming crater long after the offering of
human victims was discontinued, but, alas for the
chicanery of a degenerate age! even the terrified
animals thrown into the air by the sacrificing priest
never reach the mystic under-world, their downward
progress being arrested by a skilled accomplice, who
catches them at a lower level, and risks great Siva's
wrath by preserving them for more prosaic uses.
The silence of the Sand Sea is broken to-day by the
bustle of a gay market on the brink of the yellow
plain. The terrific descent through a gash in the
precipice, carved by falling boulders, landslips, and
torrential rains, lands the battered pilgrim in the
midst of a lively throng in festal array. Girls in
rose and orange saris, with silver pins in sleek dark
hair plaited with skeins of scarlet wool, dismount
from rough ponies for refreshment, or gallop across
the Sand Sea to the mountain of sacrifice. The
turbaned men in rough garb of indigo and brown
show less zeal than their womenkind, and betel-chewing,
smoking, or the consumption of syrups
and sweetmeats, prove more attractive than the
religious service, for modern materialism extends
even to these remote shores, and the Avenging God
is often worshipped by proxy.
The Sand Sea was originally the base of the
Tengger volcano, split from head to foot by an
appalling eruption, which forced mud, sand, and lava
from the enclosing walls into the surrounding valley.
Fresh craters formed in the vast depths of sand and
molten metal; the three new volcanoes—Bromo,
Battok, and Widodaren—casting themselves up
from the blazing crucibles hidden beneath the fire-charged
earth. We stand on the thin and
crumbling crust of the globe's most friable surface,
a mere veil concealing fountains of eternal fire,
foaming solfataras, and smoking fumaroles. Circle
after circle, the great belt of volcanic peaks rises
around us, visible outlets of incalculable forces, ever
menacing the world with ruin and havoc.
On the steep descent, a few devout pilgrims offer
preliminary sacrifices of food, or flowers, to the
Devas of the mountains, laying the little treasures
in oval vaults dug by human hands, before entering
the inner courts of the fiery sanctuary. The yellow
Sand Sea, swept by a moaning wind, sends up
whirling eddies, and the dusky haze shimmers in
fantastic outlines, which probably originated the
idea of spiritual presences hovering round the
scene. Grey heather and clumps of cypress-grass
dot the wild Sahara with their dry and colourless
monotony, but give place on the southern side to
patches of fern and turf, the scanty pasture of the
mountain ponies, herding together until sickness or
accident breaks the ranks, when the hapless
sufferer, deserted by his kind, falls an easy prey to
the wild dogs of the Tengger ranges. A heap of
bleaching bones points to some past tragedy, and
terrifies the swerving horses of the native pilgrims.
The ascent of the Bromo is negotiated from the
eastern side to the lip of the gigantic crater.
Slanting precipices of lava, their grey flanks scored
with black gullies below the volcanic ash which
covers the upper slopes, rise to the jagged pinnacles
bordering the black gulf of eternal mystery and
night. A rickety ladder of bamboo, approached
through a chaos of boulders, mounts to the edge of
the profound abyss. The ladder has been renewed
for this Day of Atonement, and worshippers clad in
rainbow hues crowd round the base of the volcano,
while the priests of Siva, in motley robes of brilliant
patchwork, adorned with cabalistic tracery in white,
ascend the swaying rungs, bearing their struggling
victims, bleating, crowing, and clucking in mortal
terror. Stalwart arms toss the black goat with
accurate aim to an assistant priest, who passes on
his clever "catch" to a third expert in the task
of hoodwinking Siva and depriving him of his lawful
prey. Sundry cocks and hens, evidently toothsome
morsels, are then thrown from one priest to another,
and saved for the cooking-pot, but a tough-looking
chanticleer of the Cochin China persuasion is finally
selected, and cast into the seething pit to propitiate
the terrible wrath of the Avenging Deity at the
smallest expense and loss to the astute priesthood.
At the close of the sacerdotal is sacreligious performance,
we mount the shaking ladder to a thatched
shed on the rim of the crater. From hence,
between the dense volumes of smoke, the huge
cavity is visible to a depth of 600 feet. Sallow
clouds of sulphur emerge from a pandemonium of
tumultuous clamour; red-hot stones shoot upward,
but fall back into the chasm before they reach us;
burning ashes strike the smooth walls with a weird
scream, and then whirl back into the darkness;
yellow solfataras rise in foaming jets, with the fierce
hiss of unseen serpents, and bellowing thunders
shake the earth. The superb spectacle of nature's
power in her armoury of terror is unique among the
volcanos of Java, for unless the Bromo blazes in the
throes of a violent eruption, when the ascent to the
crater becomes impossible, no danger exists in
gazing down into the mysterious abyss. At every
gust which rages round this laboratory of Nature,
the vast clouds—black, yellow, and blue—floating
away into space, assume grotesque forms suggesting
primeval monsters or menacing giants, darkening
the skies with their ghostly presence. Driving rain
and a rising gale hasten a rapid descent to the Sand
Sea, but the sudden storm dies away into sunlit
mists. The climb to the Moenggal Pass is complicated
by a series of pools and cascades; the horses
pick their own perilous way, but the management
of the chairs by the noisy coolies demands superhuman
strength and security of hand and foot,
the crazy and battered doolie escaping falls and
collisions by a continuous miracle.
The expedition to Ngandwona, in the heart of
the hills, skirts green precipices and traverses
brown campongs forlorn and neglected, like this
stranded Hindu race, incapable of adjustment to
life's law of change, and retaining the form without
the spirit of the past. The glens lie veiled in cloud,
but the peaks bask in sunshine. Waterfalls dash
through thickets of crimson foxglove, and daturas
swing their fragrant bells over the dancing water.
A little goatherd, leading his bleating flock, plays
on a reed flute to summon a straggler from a distant
crag. The brown figure, in linen waistcloth and
yellow turban, suggests that Indian personality
which has survived ages of exile on these lonely
heights. The route to Ngandwona discloses the
Tengger in a different aspect; the volcanos are far
away, and this central region is rich in pastoral
pictures full of lulling charm. The voice of the
Bromo still breaks the silence of the deep valley
with a mysterious undertone, but only benignant
Devas haunt this flower-filled hollow, remote
alike from the terrors of Nature and the influences
of the external world.
The following day varies the character of the
range, exposed to every vicissitude of temperature
and climate. White billows of fog beat upon the
mountain tops like a silent sea, and blot out the
landscape with an impenetrable veil. Thunder
echoes through the rocky caves with incessant
reverberations, and rain settles down in a drenching
flood. The chill of the wooden Hotel penetrates to
the bone; enthusiasm wanes below zero, and even
scorching Sourabaya appears preferable to this wet
and windy refuge on the storm-swept heights. The
hurricane proves brief in proportion to the violence
displayed, and the walk to Poespo at dawn, behind
the baggage-coolie, is a vision of delight. Violet
mountains lean against the pale blue of a rain-washed
sky, tjewara and teak glisten with jewelled
lustre, and the Tengger, bathed in amethystine
light, lifts itself above the world as the realm of
purity and peace, ever revealed and prophesied by
the glory of mountain scenery.
