The traveller who reaches those enchanted gates of the Far East which
swing open at the palm-girt shores of Ceylon, enters upon a new range
of thought and feeling. The first sight of tropical scenery generally
awakens a passionate desire for further experiences of the vast
Archipelago in the Southern Seas which girdles the Equator with an
emerald zone. Lured onward by the scented breeze in that eternal search
for perfection destined to remain unsatisfied where every step marks a
higher ideal than the one already attained, the pilgrim pursues his
endless quest, for human aspiration has never yet touched the goal of
desires and dreams. The cocoanut woods of Ceylon and her equatorial
vegetation lead fancy further afield, for the glassy straits of Malacca
beckon the wanderer down their watery highways to mysterious Java,
where vast forests of waving palms, blue chains of volcanic mountains,
and mighty ruins of a vanished civilisation, loom before the
imagination and invest the tropical paradise with ideal attractions.
The island, seven hundred miles long, and described by Marianne North
as "one magnificent garden of tropical luxuriance," has not yet become
a popular resort of the average tourist, but though lacking some of
those comforts and luxuries found under the British flag, it offers
many compensations in the wealth of beauty and interest afforded by
scenery, architecture, and people. The two days' passage from Singapore
lies through a green chain of countless islets, once the refuge of
those pirates who thronged the Southern seas until suppressed by
European power. The cliffs of Banka, honeycombed with tin quarries, and
the flat green shores of Eastern Sumatra, stretching away to the purple
mountains of the interior, flank the silvery straits, populous with
native _proas_, coasting steamers, _sampans_, and the hollowed log or
"dug-out" which serves as the Malayan canoe. Patched sails of scarlet
and yellow, shaped like bats' wings, suggest gigantic butterflies
afloat upon the tranquil sea. The red roofs of whitewashed towns, and
the tall shafts of white lighthouses emphasise the rich verdure between
the silvery azure of sky and water. The little voyage ends at Tandjon
Priok, nine miles from Batavia, for a volcanic eruption of Mount Salak
in 1699 filled up the ancient harbour, and necessitated the removal of
shipping to a deep bay, as the old city was landed high and dry through
the mass of mud, lava, and volcanic sand, which dammed up the lower
reaches of the Tjiligong river, and destroyed connection with the sea.
The present model harbour, erected at tremendous cost, permits ships of
heavy burden to discharge passengers and cargo with comfort and safety
at a long wharf, without that unpleasant interlude of rocking _sampans_
and reckless boatmen common to Eastern travel. A background of blue
peaks and clustering palms rises beyond the long line of quays and
breakwaters flanked by the railway, and a wealth of tropical scenery
covers a marshy plain with riotous luxuriance. No Europeans live either
in Tandjon Priok or Old Batavia, and the locality was known for two
centuries as "the European graveyard." Flourishing Arab and Chinese
_campongs_ or settlements appear immune from the terrible Java fever
which haunts the morasses of the coast, and the industrial Celestial
who absorbs so much of Oriental commerce, possesses an almost
superhuman imperviousness to climatic dangers.
In the re-adjustment of power after the Fall of Napoleon, Java, invaded
by England in 1811, after a five years' interval of British rule under
the enlightened policy of Sir Stamford Raffles, was restored to the
Throne of Holland. The supremacy of the Dutch East India Company, who,
after a prolonged struggle, acquired authority in Java as residuary
legatee of the Mohammedan Emperor, ended at the close of the eighteenth
century. Perpetual warfare and rebellion, which broke out in Central
Java after the return of the island to the Dutch, taxed the resources
of Holland for five years. Immense difficulties arrested and delayed
the development of the fertile territory, until the "culture system" of
forced labour within a certain area relieved the financial pressure.
One-fifth of village acreage was compulsorily planted with sugar-cane,
and one day's work every week was demanded by the Dutch Government from
the native population. The system was extended to tea and coffee; and
indigo was grown on waste land not needed for the rice, which
constitutes Java's staff of life. Spices and cinchona were also
diligently cultivated under official supervision, and the lives of many
explorers were lost in search of the precious Kina-tree, until Java,
after years of strenuous toil, now produces one-half of that quinine
supply which proves the indispensable safeguard of European existence
on tropic soil. The ruddy bark and scarlet branches of the cinchona
groves glow with autumnal brightness amid the evergreen verdure of the
Javanese hills, and the "culture system," as a financial experiment,
proved, in spite of cavillers, a source of incalculable benefit to the
natives as well as to the colonists of Java. As we travel through the
length and breadth of an island cultivated even to the mountain tops
with the perfection of detail common to the Dutch, as the first
horticulturists of the world, we realise the far-reaching wisdom,
which in a few decades transformed the face of the island, clearing
vast tracks of jungle, and pruning that riot of tropical nature which
destroys as rapidly as it creates. A lengthened survey of Java's
political economy and past history would be out of place in a slight
volume, written as a "compagnon de voyage" to the wanderer who adds a
cruise in the Archipelago to his Eastern itinerary, but the colonial
features of Dutch rule which have produced many beneficial results
demand recognition, for the varied characteristics of national genius
and racial expansion suggest the myriad aspects of that creative power
bestowed on humanity made in the Divine Image, and fulfilling the great
destiny inspired by Heavenly Wisdom.