DJOKJACARTA.

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.