Batavian heat—?To Buitenzorg by rail—?Buitenzorg—? Kotta Batoe—?Buffalo—?Sawah land—?Sketching a Javan cottage.

Once in Java, and a visit to Buitenzorg is a matter of course. In the first place, Buitenzorg is to the Dutch possessions in the East what Simla is to British India; and, in the second, it possesses a strong attraction in its famous Botanical Gardens.

After a week of Batavia, the European or Australian traveller begins to want a change. It is not that there is at any time any extraordinary thermometrical heat to be encountered. It is simply that, not being an orchid, he finds it does not suit him to live in the warm damp atmosphere of a hothouse. What he suffers from most is the want of sleep. Probably he has not learnt to take two solid hours of sleep in the afternoon. He says to himself, "Pooh! this is nothing to the sun in India." He remembers that when he was in Australia the thermometer frequently registered 20° higher than it does here. It is all nonsense to call this a hot country, he thinks. So he hails a sadoe and drives off to the Kali Bezar to see the agent of his steamship company, when he ought to have been dressed in the luxurious freedom of pyjamas, and sleeping peacefully upon his great square bed, with the mosquito curtains securely drawn.

When night comes, the heat is apparently just as intense, and he lies awake, saying bad words about the mosquitoes which buzz around him, until the small hours of the morning. When his "boy" wakes him at six o'clock, he feels as if he had had no sleep at all. All the same it is a little cooler now; so he gets up to enjoy the fresh air outside in the verandah. After he has had his coffee and some bananas or a slice of pomelo, and taken his bath, he feels tolerably alive. This impression is heightened by a gallop over the King's Plain; and by the time he has had his breakfast he feels as "fit as anything." So he hardens his heart and does the same thing again to-day, except that, knowing the uselessness of trying to sleep before the temperature falls after midnight, he plays billiards at the club until he is turned out, and then spends the rest of the evening on a friend's verandah, seated in a long chair, consuming long drinks, and smoking long cigars.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the average globe-trotter finds a week of Batavia about enough at a time. He confides his emotions to his friend, who is a resident. This latter says, "Can't sleep? You should go to Buitenzorg; you'll sleep all night there." So he leaves his heavy luggage behind in the hotel, and packs a bag, jumps into a sadoe, and in less than two hours he finds himself in one of the healthiest climates in the world, and in the midst of surroundings as novel as they are delightful.The train by which I had arranged to travel to Buitenzorg left the Weltevreden station at the convenient hour of half-past four in the afternoon. It only stopped once, and accomplished the distance in the fairly good time of one hour and twenty minutes. Here, again, as at Tanjong Priok, I was agreeably surprised with the size and convenience of the stations. The railway employÉs were Chinese and Javanese. The latter were dressed in peaked caps and blue serge coats and trousers, but wore rather unnecessarily waist-clothes and head-bands on the top of their European dress.

In Java, as elsewhere, the Anglo-Saxon abounded. The occupants of the railway carriage were, with two exceptions, English, like myself. There was a member of the Upper House of one of our colonial legislatures and his wife, the sister of a prominent English politician. With them I was already acquainted. But an English gentleman, who occupied one of the corner seats of the compartment, engaged in reading the Field, was a stranger.The train passed by rice-fields, plantations of sugar cane, of bananas, and of Indian corn. On either side of us was a rich and highly cultivated country. There were hedgerows as neat as those which separate our English fields; and here and there a fox-hunter would have observed with disgust that barbed wire fences had spread as far as Java. At regular intervals, bamboo cottages with red-tiled roofs had been built for the signalmen. Among the fields were scattered groups of tropical trees, palms, and bamboos; and more than once we caught far-off glimpses of high mountains. The whole landscape was clothed in a supreme verdure.

As we approached the neighbourhood of Buitenzorg, the sky suddenly became overcast. Tremendous masses of dense black clouds rushed up from the horizon, throwing into relief the slopes of the mountains on which the sun was still shining brilliantly, and deepening the verdure of the rice-fields by their shadows. A few minutes of pelting rain and a flash or two of vivid lightning low down on the horizon, and once more the sky was clear and the landscape smiling and peaceful.

The town of Buitenzorg is situated on the slopes of the great volcanic mountain Salak, in 106° 53' 5" east longitude, and 6° 35' 8" south latitude. Although the elevation is only seven hundred feet above sea-level, the heat is never overpowering in the daytime, and the nights are delightfully cool. The mean temperature at noon, as indicated by the thermometer, is 82° Fahrenheit; but in the dry season as much as 88° is sometimes registered. Moreover while on an average there are five months of dry weather in Java and three in Batavia, three weeks without rain is considered unusual in Buitenzorg. The heat of the sun, therefore, is tempered by a rainfall which is not only very heavy, but very uniform; and when Batavia is steaming with moist heat, and the plains of the interior are scorched and dry, in Buitenzorg the gardens are still verdant and the air still tonic.

Besides Salak, which rises to a height of seven thousand feet, there is another and still loftier mountain mass in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. This is the double-peaked Pangerango and GedÉ. All three mountains are volcanic. Salak, however, has been silent since the eruption of 1699, and the peak of Pangerango is an extinct volcanic cone; the only sign of activity is the light wreath of smoke which is generally to be seen hanging over the summit of GedÉ. The slopes of these great mountains are clothed with a foliage which is kept perennially fresh by the abundant rains. Seen from rising ground, they enrich the landscape with the beauty of their graceful elevations; from the lower levels of the town, and in contrast to the foliage of palm or bamboo, their sheer height is manifested by the intense blueness of the background they afford.

Buitenzorg has long been the favourite resort of the officials and merchants of Batavia. In course of time the train service will no doubt be improved; as it is, busy men run down to see their families, or merely to enjoy the comparative coolness of the air for the "week end," or even for a single night.The town itself contains a population of four thousand inhabitants. It has an excellent club, a museum, a race-course, and several good hotels. The summer residence of the Governor-General is in the centre of a large and beautifully wooded park, in which a number of deer are kept. It is an extensive building, consisting of an elevated central portion with wings on either side. It is built in the usual classical style affected by the Dutch for their public buildings, and is ornamented with pilasters and pediments. Part of the park is occupied by the famous Botanical Gardens, which form the supreme attraction of the place to the scientific visitor. The Governor-General, as the highest official in the Dutch East Indies, receives a salary of 160,000 florins a year. While this personage is at Buitenzorg he may be frequently observed driving down the great avenue of Kanarie trees in his state coach drawn by four horses. In close connection with the palace (as the Governor-General's residence is called), but at some distance from the town, large and convenient barracks have lately been completed for the better accommodation of the European troops.

I had been told not to omit to visit Batoe Toelis, "the place of the written stone," where there is an ancient inscription, and Kotta Batoe with its celebrated bath presided over by a Chinaman. My first expedition was to this latter place. There were three of us bent upon a swim before breakfast, and in order to save time we took a sadoe. The beauty and extent of the view increased as we ascended the slopes of Mount Salak. When we had driven some three miles we left the sadoe, with strict injunctions to the driver to wait till we returned, and proceeded to accomplish our quest on foot. There were three baths in all, natural basins of rock fed by streams of mountain water, and shaded by the dense foliage of lofty trees. One of them is circular in form, and the water is curiously coloured, by some trick of reflection or refraction, to a dull steely blue. A plunge in the clear cool water was well worth the trifling fee we paid to the celestial, and we returned to our hotel with a famous appetite for breakfast.

It was on the occasion of this drive that I first made the acquaintance of that useful domestic animal, the buffalo (Bos Sondaicus). He is a very "fine and large" animal of a mouse colour, with white legs and a patch of white on his quarters; and has long horns lying back on his neck, where they cannot be the slightest use to him. His Javan masters find him very docile, but he has an awkward way with strangers. He is generally to be found under the care of a small boy, who is seated on his broad back, and who touches him with a rod on this side or that according to the direction which he desires the animal to take. I have already described the simple but effective plough to which he is yoked when working the sawahs,[14] and the methods employed by the natives for the cultivation of rice.

From almost any elevated point it is possible to get views of the sawahs in the neighbourhood of Buitenzorg. The form and extent of the separate fields divided by the water-courses vary with the nature of the country. Each field is itself perfectly level, and is separated by as little as half a foot, or as much as four feet, from those immediately above and beneath it. The slopes of GedÉ are covered with such a series of vast and irregular terraces. Seen from Buitenzorg the general effect is not unlike that of the tiers of a theatre, while in the distance the individual terraces show smooth surfaces varying in colour from emerald green to saffron yellow, or flashing with the brightness of still and sunlit waters.

Indeed, there is much to be seen at Buitenzorg with but little expenditure of time or trouble. Close at hand is the Campong, or Chinese town, with its quaint shops and busy market-place. Immediately beneath the hotel numberless bamboo cottages crowded with Javanese peasants can be found for the looking. They lie in the midst of groves of cocoanut palms, hidden away almost as completely as if they were a hundred miles instead of a hundred yards from the Belle Vue.

Page 114.

A JAVANESE COTTAGE.