BUITENZORG.
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.
[Footnote 14: In Chapter III.]
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.
[Illustration: A JAVANESE COTTAGE. _Page_ 114.]
I spent one whole morning sketching a cottage which I found within a
stone's throw of the hotel. Without any ceremony, I walked into the
midst of the family circle, and seated myself under the shelter of a
wood shed. Had I known enough Malay, I should certainly have first asked
permission before I ventured upon such an intrusion, for I have found a
sketching-book an almost universal passport to civility. As it was, I
assumed an air of conscious innocence, which I trusted would soon remove
any awkward suspicions which might arise in the mind of the owner of the
house, and proceeded to unpack my sketching-traps. I then quickly
sketched in the group on the verandah, consisting of the mother and
children. Before I had finished they all ran away in alarm, and for the
next half-hour the front of the house was entirely deserted. I suppose
they made up their minds at last that I was harmless, for they gradually
came back and resumed their usual manner of life. The mother was
occupied with keeping two small children in order. Besides these, there
was a little boy and a girl. This latter was the oldest of the family.
She was not so shy as her mother; on the contrary, she arranged herself
in a most becoming attitude against the front of the verandah. Every now
and then the mother showed her teeth and spoke crossly to the baby, and
once when it cried she whipped it with a bit of palm-leaf until it came
to a better mind--which it did promptly. After a time, a Chinaman called
and had a talk with the lady of the house. I think he wanted a load of
firewood. An old lady also came. I could not fathom _her_ business, but,
from the interest she manifested in the children, I expect she was a
relative of the family.
About noon the father came back with a load of wood. He was a man of the
world, and knew all about the performance. After he had looked at the
sketch, the children, and finally the mother, all came round my stool
and had a good long look at my work. Even so the mother would not let
the children dab their toes into my paints, or generally become a
nuisance. For this unexpected manifestation of a sense of the fitness
of things, I felt grateful to her, and, before I went away, found a way
of recompensing the children for the sorrow they must have felt at being
compelled to relinquish such a rare opportunity for getting into
mischief.
Every morning I found some quaint figure with which to enrich my
sketch-book--a sarong-weaver, or a beggar crouching by the wayside, or a
Hadji, with his large umbrella and green turban, the latter marking the
fact of his having accomplished a pilgrimage to Mecca. But, interesting
as were these human studies, my pleasantest recollections of Buitenzorg
centre in the visit which I paid to the Botanical Gardens, under the
guidance of the curator, Dr. Treub.
My account of this, however, and of the gardens generally, I reserve for
the next chapter.
[Illustration: NATIVES SQUATTING.]