WIVES OF ONE OF THE TWO HIGHEST PRINCES IN JAVA.

TRAVELS
IN THE
EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.

By ALBERT S. BICKMORE, M.A.,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN AND LONDON ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETIES,
NEW YORK LYCEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, MEMBER OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY
OF NATURAL HISTORY AND AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY, AND
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN MADISON
UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, N. Y.

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1868.

The right of Translation is reserved.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.

TO
THE GENEROUS FRIENDS OF SCIENCE
IN
BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE,
THROUGH WHOSE LIBERALITY THE TRAVELS
HEREIN DESCRIBED WERE MADE,
THIS VOLUME
Is Respectfully Dedicated.

GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AT BATAVIA.

[See page 30.]

PREFACE.

The object of my voyage to Amboina was simply to re-collect the shells figured in Rumphius’s “Rariteit Kamer,” and the idea of writing a volume of travels was not seriously entertained until I arrived at Batavia, and, instead of being forbidden by the Dutch Government to proceed to the Spice Islands, as some of my warmest friends feared, I was honored by His Excellency, the Governor-General of “the Netherlands India,” with the order given on page 40.

Having fully accomplished that object, I availed myself of the unexampled facilities to travel afforded me in every part of the archipelago, and all except the first six chapters describe the regions thus visited.

The narrative given has been taken almost entirely from my journal, which was kept day by day with scrupulous care. Accuracy, even at any sacrifice of elegance, has been aimed at throughout; and first impressions are presented as modified by subsequent observation.

My sincerest thanks are herein expressed to the liberal gentlemen to whom this volume is dedicated; to Baron Sloet van de Beele, formerly Governor-General of the Netherlands India; to Mr. N. A. T. Arriens, formerly Governor of the Moluccas; to Mr. J. F. R. S. van den Bosche, formerly Governor of the West Coast of Sumatra; to the many officers of the Netherlands Government, and to the Dutch and American merchants who entertained me with the most cordial hospitality, and aided me in every possible way throughout the East Indian Archipelago.

Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A., Sept. 1, 1868.

CONTENTS.

“SAPIE” OXEN FROM MADURA.

[See page 68.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

TRAVELS
IN THE
EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.

CHAPTER I.
THE STRAIT OF SUNDA AND BATAVIA.

On the 19th of April, 1865, I was fifty miles east of Christmas Island, floating on the good ship “Memnon” toward the Strait of Sunda.

I was going to Batavia, to sail thence to the Spice Islands, which lie east of Celebes, for the purpose of collecting the beautiful shells of those seas.

I had chosen that in preference to any other part of the world, because the first collection of shells from the East that was ever described and figured with sufficient accuracy to be of any scientific value was made by Rumphius, a doctor who lived many years at Amboina, the capital of those islands. His great work, the “Rariteit Kamer,” or Chamber of Curiosities, was published in 1705, more than sixty years before the twelfth edition of the “Systema Naturæ” was issued by Linnæus, “the Father of Natural History,” who referred to the figures in that work to illustrate a part of his own writings. When Holland became a province of France, in 1811, and it was designed to make Paris the centre of science and literature in Europe, it is said that this collection was taken from Leyden to that city, and afterward returned, and that during these two transfers a large proportion of the specimens disappeared; and that, finally, what was left of this valuable collection was scattered through the great museum at Leyden. It was partly to restore Rumphius’s specimens, and partly to bring into our own country such a standard collection, that I was going to search myself for the shells figured in the “Rariteit Kamer,” on the very points and headlands, and in the very bays, where Rumphius’s specimens were found.

As we neared the coast of Java, cocoa-nuts and fragments of sea-washed palms, drifting by, indicated our approach to a land very different at least from the temperate shores we had left behind; and we could in some degree experience Columbus’s pleasure, when he first saw the new branch and its vermilion berries. Strange, indeed, must be this land to which we are coming, for here we see snakes swimming on the water, and occasionally fragments of rock drifting over the sea. New birds also appear, now sailing singly through the sky, and now hovering in flocks over certain places, hoping to satisfy their hungry maws on the small fishes that follow the floating driftwood. Here it must be that the old Dutch sailors fabled could be seen the tree—then unknown—that bore that strange fruit, the double cocoa-nut. They always represented it as rising up from a great depth and spreading out its uppermost leaves on the surface of the sea. It was guarded by a bird, that was not bird but half beast; and when a ship came near, she was always drawn irresistibly toward this spot, and not one of her ill-fated crew ever escaped the beak and formidable talons of this insatiable harpy.

But such wonders unfortunately fade away before the light of advancing knowledge; and the prince of Ceylon, who is said to have given a whole vessel laden with spice for a single specimen, could have satisfied his heart’s fullest desire if he had only known it was not rare on the Seychelles, north of Mauritius.

The trades soon became light and baffling. Heavy rain-squalls, with thunder and lightning, were frequent; and three days after, as one of these cleared away, the high mountain near Java Head appeared full a quarter of a degree above the horizon, its black shoulders rising out of a beautiful mantle of the ermine-white, fleecy clouds, called cumuli.

Although we were thirty-five miles from the shore, yet large numbers of dragon-flies came round the ship, and I quickly improvised a net and captured a goodly number of them.

After sunset, there was a light air off-shore, which carried us to within a few miles of the land, and at midnight the captain called me on deck to enjoy “the balmy breezes of the Eastern isles;” and certainly to myself, as well as to the others, the air seemed to have the rich fragrance of new-mown clover, but far more spicy. At that hour it was quite clear, but at sunrise a thick haze rose up from the ocean, and this phenomenon was repeated each morning that we were trying to enter the Strait of Sunda. As we had arrived during the changing of the monsoons, calms were so continuous that for six days we tried in vain to gain fifty miles. When a breeze would take us up near the mouth of the channel, it would then die away and let a strong current sweep us away to the east, and one time we were carried most unpleasantly near the high, threatening crags at Palembang Point, near Java Head. Those who have passed Sunda at this time of the year, or Ombay Strait in the beginning of the opposite monsoon, will readily recall the many weary hours they have passed waiting for a favorable breeze to take them only a few miles farther on their long voyage.

During those six days, at noon the sun poured down his hottest rays, the thermometer ranging from 88° to 90° Fahr. in the shade, and not the slightest air moving to afford a momentary relief. Although constantly for a year I was almost under the equator, these six days were the most tedious and oppressive I ever experienced.

The mountain back of Java Head seemed to be King Eolus’s favorite seat. Clouds would come from every quarter of the heavens and gather round its summit, while the sun was reaching the zenith; but soon after he began to pass down the western sky, lightnings would be seen darting their forked tongues around the mountain-crest: and then, as if the winds had broken from the grasp of their king, thick cloud-masses would suddenly roll down the mountain-sides, lightnings dart hither and thither, and again and again the thunders would crash and roar enough to shake the very firmament.

We are not alone. Six or eight vessels are also detained here—for this Strait of Sunda is the great gate through which pass out most of the valuable teas and costly silks of China and Japan, and these ships are carrying cotton goods to those lands to exchange in part for such luxuries. On the evening of the sixth day a more favorable breeze took us slowly up the channel past a group of large rocks, where the unceasing swell of the ocean was breaking, and making them sound in the quiet night like the howling and snarling of some fierce monster set to guard the way and unable to prevent his expected prey from escaping.

With the morning came a fine breeze, and, as we sailed up the strait, several small showers passed over the mountains, parallel to the shore, on the Java side; and once a long cloud rested its ends on two mountains, and unfolded from its dark mass a thin veil of sparkling rain, through which we could see quite distinctly all the outlines and the bright-green foliage of the valley behind it. The highly-cultivated lands near the water, and on the lower declivities of the mountains, whose tops were one dense mass of perennial green, made the whole view most enchanting to me; but our captain (who was a Cape Cod man) declared that the sand-hills on the outer side of Cape Cod were vastly more charming to him. On the shallows, near the shore, the clear sea-water took a beautiful tint of emerald green in the bright sunlight, and here we passed long lines of cuttle-fish bones and parts of mysterious fruits where the tides met, that were setting in different directions.

Nearly all the islands in the strait are steep, volcanic cones, with their bases beneath the sea; the bright-green foliage on their sides forming an agreeable contrast with the blue ocean at their feet when the waves roll away before a strong breeze; but when it is calm, and the water reflects the light, as from a polished mirror, they appear like gigantic emeralds set in a sea of silver.

As we approached Angir, where ships bound to and from China frequently stop for fresh provisions, we saw, to our great alarm, a steamship! Was it the pirate Shenandoah, and was our ship to be taken and burnt there, almost at the end of our long voyage? I must confess that was what we all feared till we came near enough to see the “Stars and Stripes” of the loyal flag of our native land.

Here many Malays paddled off in their canoes to sell us fruit. We watch the approach of the first boat with a peculiar, indescribable interest. It contains two young men, who row. They are dressed in trousers and jackets of calico, with cotton handkerchiefs tied round their heads. This is the usual dress throughout the archipelago, except that, instead of the trousers or over them, is worn the sarong, which is a piece of cotton cloth, two yards long by a yard wide, with the two shorter sides sewn together, so as to make a bag open at the top and bottom. The men draw this on over the body, and gather it on the right hip; the loose part is then twisted, and tucked under the part passing around the body, so as to form a rude knot. There is a man in the stern, sitting with his feet under him, steering the canoe, and at the same time helping it onward with his paddle. He is dressed in a close-fitting red shirt? No! He is not encumbered with any clothing except what Nature has provided for him, save a narrow cloth about his loins, the usual working-costume of the coolies, or poorer classes. He brings several kinds of bananas, green cocoa-nuts, and the “pompelmus,” which is a gigantic orange, from six to eight inches in diameter. He seems perfectly happy, and talks with the most surprising rapidity. From an occasional word that may be half English, we suppose, like traders in the Western world, he is speaking in no moderate manner of the value of what he has to sell.

Mount Karang, back of Angir, now comes into view, raising its crest of green foliage to a height of five thousand feet; a light breeze takes us round Cape St. Nicholas, the northwest extremity of Java. It is a high land, with sharp ridges coming down to the water, thus forming a series of little rocky headlands, separated by small sandy bays. These, as we sail along, come up, and open to our view with a most charming panoramic effect. Near the shore a few Malays are seen on their praus, or large boats, while others appear in groups on the beaches, around their canoes, and only now and then do we catch glimpses of their rude houses under the feathery leaves of the cocoa-nut palm.

We are in the Java Sea. It seems very strange after being pitched and tossed about constantly for more than a hundred days, thus to feel our ship glide along so steadily; and after scanning the horizon by the hour, day after day, hoping to be able to discern one vessel, and so feel that we had at least one companion on “the wide waste of waters,” now to see land on every side, and small boats scattered in all directions over the quiet sea. That night we anchored near Babi Island, on a bottom of very soft, sticky clay, largely composed of fragments of shells and coral. A boat came off from the shore, and, as the coxswain could speak a little English, I took my first lesson in Malay, the common language, or lingua franca, of the whole archipelago. As it was necessary, at least, that I should be able to talk with these natives if I would live among them, and purchase shells of them, it was my first and most imperative task, on reaching the East, to acquire this language. The Malay spoken at Batavia, and at all the Dutch ports and posts in the islands to the east, differs very much from the high or pure Malay spoken in the Menangkabau country, in the interior of Sumatra, north of Padang, whence the Malays originally came: after passing from island to island, they have spread over all Malaysia, that is, the great archipelago between Asia, Australia, and New Guinea. Perhaps of all languages in the world, the low or common Malay is the one most readily acquired. It contains no harsh gutturals or other consonants that are difficult to pronounce. It is soft and musical, and somewhat resembles the Italian in its liquid sounds; and one who has learned it can never fail to be charmed by the nice blending of vowels and consonants whenever a word is pronounced in his presence. The only difficult thing in this language is, that words of widely different meaning sometimes are so similar that, at first, one may be mistaken for another. Every European in all the Netherlands India speaks Malay. It is the only language used in addressing servants; and all the European children born on these islands learn it from their Malay nurses long before they are able to speak the language of their parents. Such children generally find it difficult to make the harsh, guttural sounds of the Dutch language, and the Malays themselves are never able to speak it well; and, for the same reason, Dutchmen seldom speak Malay as correctly as Englishmen and Frenchmen.

We are now off the ancient city of Bantam, and we naturally here review the voyages of the earliest European navigators in these seas, and the principal events in the ancient history of this rich island of Java.

The word Java, or, more correctly, “Jawa,” is the name of the people who originally lived only in the eastern part of the island, but, in more modern times, they have spread over the whole island, and given it their name. The Chinese claim to have known it in ancient times, and call it Chi-po or Cha-po, which is as near Jawa as their pronunciation of most foreign names at the present day.

It was first made known to the Western world by that great traveller, Marco Polo, in his description of the lands he saw or passed while on his voyage from China to the Persian Gulf, in the latter part of the thirteenth century. He did not see it himself, but only gathered accounts in regard to it from others. He calls it Giaua, and says it produces cloves and nutmegs, though we know now that they were all brought to Java from the Spice Islands, farther to the east. In regard to gold, he says it yielded a quantity “exceeding all calculation and belief.” This was also probably brought from other islands, chiefly from Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes.

In 1493, one year after the discovery of America by Columbus, Bartholomew Dias, a Portuguese, discovered the southern extremity of Africa, which he called the Cape of Storms, but which his king said should be named the Cape of Good Hope, because it gave a good hope that, at last, they had discovered a way to India by sea. Accordingly, the next year, this king[1] sent Pedro da Covilham and Alfonso de Payva directly to the east to settle this important question. From Genoa they came to Alexandria in the guise of travelling merchants, thence to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Aden. Here they separated—Payva to search for “Prester John,” a Christian prince, said to be reigning in Abyssinia over a people of high cultivation; and Covilham to visit the Indies, it having been arranged that they should meet again at Cairo or Memphis. Payva died before reaching the principal city of Abyssinia, but Covilham had a prosperous journey to India, where he made drawings of the cities and harbors, especially of Goa and Calicut (Calcutta), and marked their positions on a map given him by King John of Portugal. Thence he returned along the coast of Persia to Cape Guardafui, and continued south to Mozambique and “Zofala,” where he ascertained that that land joined the Cape of Good Hope, and thus was the first man who knew that it was possible to sail from Europe to India. From Zofala he returned to Abyssinia, and sent his diary, charts, and drawings to Genoa by some Portuguese merchants who were trading at Memphis.

On receiving this news, King Emanuel, who had succeeded King John, sent out, during the following year, 1495, four ships under Vasco di Gama, who visited Natal and Mozambique; in 1498 he was at Calcutta, and in 1499 back at Lisbon.

In 1509 the Portuguese, under Sequiera, first came into the archipelago. During the next year Alfonso Albuquerque visited Sumatra, and in 1511 took the Malay city Malacca, and established a military post from which he sent out Antonio d’Abreu to search for the Spice Islands. On his way eastward, D’Abreu touched at Agasai (Gresik) on Java.

In 1511 the Portuguese visited Bantam, and two years later Alvrin was sent from Malacca with four vessels to bring away a cargo of spices from a ship wrecked on the Java coast while on her way back from the Spice Islands.

Ludovico Barthema was the first European who described Java from personal observation. He remained on it fourteen days, but his descriptions are questionable in part, for he represents parents as selling their children, to be eaten by their purchasers, and himself as quitting the island in haste for fear of being made a meal of.

In 1596 the Dutch, under Houtman, first arrived off Bantam, and, finding the native king at war with the Portuguese, readily furnished him with assistance against their rivals, on his offering to give them a place where they could establish themselves and commence purchasing pepper, which at that time was almost the only export.

The English, following the example of the Portuguese and the Dutch, sent out a fleet in 1602, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These ships touched at Achin, on the western end of Sumatra, and thence sailed to Bantam.

In 1610 the Dutch built a fort at a native village called Jacatra, “the work of victory,” but which they named Batavia. This was destroyed in 1619, and the first Dutch governor-general, Bolt, decided to rebuild it and remove his settlement from Bantam to that place, which was done on the 4th of March of that year. This was the foundation of the present city of Batavia. The English, who had meantime maintained an establishment at Bantam, withdrew in 1683.

In 1811, when Holland became subject to France, the French flag was hoisted at Batavia, but that same year it was captured by the English. On the 19th of August, 1816, they restored it to the Dutch, who have held it uninterruptedly down to the present time.

In glancing at the internal history of Java, we find that, for many centuries previous to A. D. 1250, Hinduism, that is, a mixture of Buddhism and Brahminism, had been the prevailing religion. At that time an attempt was made to convert the reigning prince to Mohammedanism. This proved unsuccessful; but so soon afterward did this new religion gain a foothold, and so rapidly did it spread, that in 1475, at the overthrow of the great empire of Majapahit, who ruled over the whole of Java and the eastern parts of Sumatra, a Mohammedan prince took the throne. Up to this time the people in the western part of Java, as far east as Cheribon (about Long. 109°), spoke a language called Sundanese, and only the people in the remaining eastern part of the island spoke Javanese; but in 1811 nine-tenths of the whole population of Java spoke Javanese, and the Sundanese was already confined to the mountainous parts of the south and west, and to a small colony near Bantam.

Soon after founding Batavia, the Dutch made an alliance offensive and defensive with the chief prince, who resided near Surakarta. Various chiefs rebelled from time to time against his authority, and the Dutch, in return for the assistance they rendered him, obtained the site of the present city of Samarang; and in this way they continued to increase their area until 1749, when the prince then reigning signed an official deed “to abdicate for himself and for his heirs the sovereignty of the country, conferring the same on the Dutch East India Company, and leaving them to dispose of it, in future, to any person they might think competent to govern it for the benefit of the company and of Java.” Seven years before this time the empire had been nominally divided, the hereditary prince being styled Susunan, or “object of adoration,” whose descendants now reside at Surakarta, near Solo; and a second prince, who was styled Sultan, and whose descendants reside at Jokyokarta. Each receives a large annuity from the Dutch Government, and keeps a great number of servants. Their wives are chosen from all the native beauties in the land, and the engraving we give from a photograph represents those of one of the highest dignitaries in full costume, but barefoot, just as they dress themselves on festive occasions to dance before their lord and his assembled guests.

The next day when the sea-breeze came, about one o’clock, we sailed up through the many islands of this part of the coast of Java. They are all very low and flat, and covered with a short, dense shrubbery, out of which rise the tall cocoa-nut palm and the waringin or Indian fig. This green foliage is only separated from the sea by a narrow beach of ivory-white coral sand, which reflects the bright light of the noonday sun until it becomes positively dazzling. Where the banks are muddy, mangrove-trees are seen below high-water level, holding on to the soft earth with hundreds of branching rootlets, as if trying to claim as land what really is the dominion of the sea.

POULTRY VENDER.

This dense vegetation is one of the great characteristics of these tropical islands; and the constantly varied grouping of the palms, mangroves, and other trees, and the irregular contour and relief of the shores, afford an endless series of exquisite views. As we passed one of the outer islands, its trees were quite covered with kites, gulls, and other sea-birds.

The next evening we came to the Batavia road, a shallow bay where ships lie at anchor partially sheltered from the sea by the many islands scattered about its entrance. The shores of this bay form a low, muddy morass, but high mountains appear in the distance. Through this morass a canal has been cut. Its sides are well walled in, and extend out some distance toward the shipping, on account of the shallowness of the water along the shore. At the end of one of these moles, or walls, stands a small white light-house, indicating the way of approaching the city, which cannot be fully seen from the anchorage.

When a ship arrives from a foreign port, no one can leave her before she is boarded by an officer from the guardship, a list of her passengers and crew obtained, and it is ascertained that there is no sickness on board. Having observed this regulation, we rowed up the canal to the “boom” or tree, where an officer of the customs looks into every boat that passes. This word “boom” came into use, as an officer informed me, when it was the custom to let a tree fall across the canal at night, in order to prevent any boat from landing or going out to the shipping.

Here were crowds of Malay boatmen, engaged in gambling, by pitching coins. This seemed also the headquarters of poultry-venders, who were carrying round living fowls, ducks, and geese, whose feet had been tied together and fastened to a stick, so that they had to hang with their heads downward—the very ideal of cruelty.

Before we could land, we were asked several times in Dutch, French, and English, to take a carriage, for cabmen seem to have the same persistent habits in every corner of the earth. Meanwhile the Malay drivers kept shouting out, “Crétur tuan! crétur tuan!” So we took a “crétur,” that is, a low, covered, four-wheeled carriage, drawn by two miniature ponies. The driver sits up on a seat in front, in a neat baju or jacket of red or scarlet calico, and an enormous hemispherical hat, so gilded or bronzed as to dazzle your eyes when the sun shines.

Though these ponies are small, they go at a quick canter, and we were rapidly whirled along between a row of shade-trees to the city gate, almost the only part of the old walls of the city that is now standing. The other parts were torn down by Marshal Daendals, to allow a freer circulation of air. Then we passed through another row of shade-trees, and over a bridge, to the office of the American consul, a graduate of Harvard; and, as Cambridge had been my home for four years, we at once considered ourselves as old friends.

Before I left America, Senator Sumner, as chairman of our Committee on Foreign Relations, kindly gave me a note of warm commendation to the representatives of foreign powers; and Mr. J. G. S. van Breda, the secretary of the Society of Sciences in Holland, with whom I had been in correspondence while at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, gave me a kind note to Baron Sloet van de Beele, the governor-general of the Netherlands India. I immediately addressed a note to His Excellency, enclosing these credentials, and explaining my plan to visit the Spice Islands for the purpose of collecting the shells figured in Rumphius’s “Rariteit Kamer,” and expressing the hope that he would do what he could to aid me in my humble attempts to develop more fully the natural history of that interesting region. These papers our consul kindly forwarded, adding a note endorsing them himself.

As the governor-general administers both the civil and military departments of all the Dutch possessions in the East, I could not expect an immediate reply. I therefore found a quiet place in a Dutch family, with two other boarders who spoke English and could assist me in learning their difficult language, and, bidding Captain Freeman and the other good officers of the Memnon farewell, took up my abode on shore.

Batavia at present is more properly the name of a district or “residency,” than of a city. Formerly it was compact and enclosed by walls, but these were destroyed by Marshal Daendals, in 1811. The foreigners then moved out and built their residences at various places in the vicinity, and these localities still retain their old Malay names. In this part of the city there are several fine hotels, a large opera-house, and a club-house. There are two scientific societies, which publish many valuable papers on the natural history, antiquities, geography, and geology, of all parts of the Netherlands India. These societies have valuable collections in Batavia, and at Buitenzorg there is a large collection of minerals and geological specimens. The “King’s Plain” is a very large open square, surrounded by rows of shade-trees and the residences of the wealthier merchants. Near this is the “Waterloo Plain.” On one of its sides is the largest building in Batavia, containing the offices of the various government bureaus, and the “throne-room,” where the governor-general receives, in the name of the king, congratulations from the higher officials in that vicinity.

The governor-general has a palace near by, but he resides most of the time at Buitenzorg, forty miles in the interior, where the land rises to about a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the climate is much more temperate.

A river, that rises in the mountains to the south, flows through the city and canal, and empties into the bay. Many bridges are thrown over this river and its branches, and beautiful shade-trees are planted along its banks.

All the houses in these Eastern lands are low, rarely more than one story, for fear of earthquakes, which, however, occur in this part of the island at long intervals. The walls are of bricks, or fragments of coral rock covered with layers of plaster. The roof is of tiles, or atap, a kind of thatching of palm-leaves. A common plan is, a house part parallel to the street, and behind this and at right angles to it an L or porch, the whole building being nearly in the form of a cross.

In front is a broad veranda, where the inmates sit in the cool evening and receive the calls of their friends. This opens into a front parlor, which, with a few sleeping-rooms, occupies the whole house part. The L, when there is one, usually has only a low wall around it, and a roof resting on pillars. It is therefore open on three sides to the air, unless shutters are placed between the pillars. This is usually the dining-room. Back of the house is a square, open area, enclosed on the remaining three sides by a row of low, shed-roofed houses. Here are extra bedrooms, servants’ quarters, cook-rooms, bath-rooms, and stables. Within this area is usually a well, surrounded with shade-trees. The water from this well is poured into a thick urn-shaped vessel of coral rock, and slowly filters through into an earthen pot beneath; it is then cooled with ice from our own New-England ponds. Thus the cold of our temperate zone is made to allay the heat of the tropics. Several shiploads of ice come from Boston to this port every year. At Surabaya and Singapore large quantities are manufactured, but it is as soft as ice in ice-cream. When one is accustomed to drinking ice-water, there is no danger of any ill effect; but, on returning from the eastern part of the archipelago where they never have ice, to Surabaya, I suffered severely for a time, and, as I believe, from no other cause. In the frequent cases of fever in the East it is a luxury, and indeed a medicine, which can only be appreciated by one who has himself endured that indescribable burning.

The cook-room, as already noticed, is some distance from the dining-room, but this inconvenience is of little importance in those hot lands. The Malays are the only cooks, and I do not think that cooking as an art is carried to the highest perfection in that part of the world, though I must add, that I soon became quite partial to many of their dishes, which are especially adapted for that climate. The kitchen is not provided with stoves or cooking-ranges, as in the Western world, but on one side of the room there is a raised platform, and on this is a series of small arches, which answer the same purpose. Fires are made in these arches with small pieces of wood, and the food is therefore more commonly fried or boiled, than baked. There is no chimney, and the smoke, after filling the room, finally escapes through a place in the roof which is slightly raised above the parts around it.

As I am often questioned about the mode of living in the East, I may add that always once a day, and generally for dinner, rice and curry appear, and to these are added, for dinner, potatoes, fried and boiled; steak, fried and broiled; fried bananas (the choicest of all delicacies), various kinds of greens, and many sorts of pickles and sambal, or vegetables mixed with red peppers. The next course is salad, and then are brought on bananas of three or four kinds, at all seasons; and, at certain times, oranges, pompelmuses, mangoes, mangostins, and rambutans; and as this is but such a bill of fare as every man of moderate means expects to provide, the people of the West can see that their friends in the East, as well as themselves, believe in the motto, “Carpe diem.” A cigar, or pipe, and a small glass of gin, are generally regarded as indispensable things to perfect happiness by my good Dutch friends, and they all seemed to wonder that I could be a traveller and never touch either. It is generally supposed, in Europe and America, that housekeepers here, in the East, have little care or vexation, where every family employs so many servants; but, on the contrary, their troubles seem to multiply in direct ratio to the number of servants employed. No servant there will do more than one thing. If engaged as a nurse, it is only to care for one child; if as a groom, it is only to care for one horse, or, at most, one span of horses; and as all these Malays are bent on doing every thing in the easiest way, it is almost as much trouble to watch them as to do their work.

JAVANESE AND FAMILY.

The total population of the Residency of Batavia is 517,762. Of these, 5,576 are Europeans; 47,570 Chinese; 463,591 native; 684 Arabs; and 341 of other Eastern nations.

All the natives are remarkably short in stature, the male sex averaging not more than five feet three inches in height, or four inches less than that of Europeans. The face is somewhat lozenge-shaped, the cheekbones high and prominent, the mouth wide, and the nose short—not flat as in the negroes, or prominent as in Europeans. They are generally of a mild disposition, except the wild tribes in the mountainous parts of Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, Timor, Ceram, and a few other large islands. The coast people are invariably hospitable and trustworthy. They are usually quiet, and extremely indolent. They all have an insatiable passion for gambling, which no restrictive or prohibitory laws can eradicate.

They are nominally Mohammedans, but have none of the fanaticism of that sect in Arabia. They still retain many of their previous Hindu notions, and their belief may be properly defined as a mixture of Hinduism and Mohammedanism. A few are “Christians,” that is, they attend the service of the Dutch Church, and do not shave their heads or file their teeth. They are cleanly in their habits, and scores of all ages may be seen in the rivers and canals of every city and village, especially in the morning and evening. The sarong, their universal dress, is peculiarly fitted for this habit. When they have finished their baths, a dry one is drawn on over the head, and the wet one is slipped off beneath without exposing the person in the least. The females wear the sarong long, and generally twist it tightly round the body, just under the arms. Occasionally it is made with sleeves, like a loose gown. A close-fitting jacket or baju is worn with it.

The men have but a few straggling hairs for beards, and these they generally pull out with a pair of iron tweezers. The hair of the head in both sexes is lank, coarse, and worn long. Each sex, therefore, resembles the other so closely that nearly every foreigner will, at first, find himself puzzled in many cases to know whether he is looking at a man or a woman. This want of differentiation in the sexes possibly indicates their low rank in the human family, if the law may be applied here that obtains among most other animals.

Every day I went out to collect the peculiar birds and beautiful butterflies of that region, my favorite place for this pleasure being in an old Chinese cemetery just outside the city, where, as the land was level, the earth had been thrown up into mounds to keep the bones of their inmates from “the wet unfortunate places,” just as in China, when far from any mountain or hill. A Malay servant followed, carrying my ammunition and collecting-boxes. At first I supposed he would have many superstitious objections to wandering to and fro with me over the relics of the Celestials, but, to my surprise, I found his people cultivating the spaces between the graves, as if they, at least, did not consider it sacred soil; yet, several times, when we came to the graves of his own ancestors, he was careful to approach with every manifestation of awe and respect.

A small piece of land, a bamboo hut, and a buffalo, comprise all the worldly possessions of most coolies, and yet with these they always seem most enviably contented.

They generally use but a single buffalo in their ploughs and carts. A string passing through his nostrils is tied to his horns, and to this is attached another for a rein, by which he is guided or urged to hasten on his slow motions. This useful animal is distributed over all the large islands of the archipelago, including the Philippines, over India and Ceylon; and during the middle ages was introduced into Egypt, Greece, and Italy. It thrives well only in warm climates. From its peculiar habit of wallowing in pools and mires, and burying itself until only its nose and eyes can be seen, it has been named the “water-ox.” This appears to be its mode of resting, as well as escaping the scorching rays of the sun, and the swarms of annoying flies; and in the higher lands the natives make artificial ponds by the roadside, where these animals may stop when on a journey. They are generally of a dark slate-color, and occasionally of a light flesh-color, but rarely or never white. They are so sparsely covered with hair as to be nearly naked. They are larger than our oxen, but less capable of continued labor. They are usually so docile that even the Malay children can drive them, but they dislike the appearance of a European, and have a peculiar mode of manifesting this aversion by breathing heavily through the nose. At such times they become restive and unmanageable, and their owners have frequently requested me to walk away, for fear I should be attacked. When the females are suckling their young, they are specially dangerous. A large male has been found to be more than a match for a full-grown royal tiger.

On most of the islands where the tame buffalo is seen, wild ones are also found among the mountains; but naturalists generally suppose the original home of the species was on the continent, and that the wild ones are merely the descendants of those that have escaped to the forests. The Spaniards found them on the Philippines when they first visited that archipelago.

RAHDEN SALEH.

RAHDEN SALEH’S PALACE.

The plough generally used has both sides alike, and a single handle, which the coolie holds in his right hand while he guides the buffalo with the left. The lower part of the share is of iron, the other parts of wood. It only scratches the ground to the depth of six or eight inches—a strange contrast to our deep subsoil ploughing. In these shallow furrows are dropped kernels of our own Indian maize and seeds of the sugar-cane. Sometimes the fields are planted with cocoa-nut palms about twenty yards apart, more for their shade, it appears, than for their fruit, which is now hanging in great green and yellow clusters, and will be ripe in a month. Beneath these trees are blighted nuts, and in many places large heaps of them are seen, gathered by the natives for the sake of the husk, from which they make a coarse rope.

Among these trees I was surprised to hear the noise, or more properly words, “Tokay! tokay!” and my servant at once explained that that was the way a kind of lizard “talked” in his land. So snugly do these animals hide away among the green leaves that it was several days before I could satisfy myself that I had secured a specimen of this speaking quadruped.

During my hunting I enjoyed some charming views of the high, dark-blue mountains to the south. One excursion is worthy of especial mention. It was to the palace of Rahden Saleh, a native prince. This palace consisted of a central part and two wings, with broad verandas on all sides. On entering the main building we found ourselves in a spacious hall, with a gallery above. In the centre of the floor rose a sort of table, and around the sides of the room were chairs of an antique pattern. Side-doors opened out of this hall into smaller rooms, each of which was furnished with a straw carpet, and in the centre a small, square Brussels carpet, on which was a table ornamented with carved-work, and surrounded with a row of richly-cushioned chairs. Along the sides were similar chairs and small, gilded tables. On the walls hung large steel engravings, among which I noticed two frequently seen in our own land: “The Mohammedan’s Paradise,” and one of two female figures personifying the past and the future. In front of the palace the grounds were tastefully laid out as small lawns and flower-plats, bordered with a shrub filled with red leaves. An accurate idea of the harmonious proportions of this beautiful palace is given in the accompanying cut. It is the richest residence owned by any native prince in the whole East Indian Archipelago.

The Rahden at the time was in the adjoining grounds, which he is now forming into large zoological gardens for the government at Batavia. When a youth, he was sent to Holland, and educated at the expense of the Dutch Government. While there, he acquired a good command of the German and French languages, was received as a distinguished guest at all the courts, and associated with the leading literati. In this manner he became acquainted with Eugene Sue, who was then at work on his “Wandering Jew,” and—as is generally believed—at once chose the Rahden as a model for his “Eastern prince,” one of the most prominent characters in that book. But it is chiefly as a landscape-painter that the Rahden is most famous. A few years ago there was a great flood here at Batavia, which proved a fit subject for his pencil; and the painting was so greatly admired, that he presented it to the King of Holland. When I was introduced to him, he at once, with all a courtier’s art, inquired whether I was from the North or the South; and on hearing that I was not only from the North, but had served for a time in the Union army, he insisted on shaking hands again, remarking that he trusted that it would not be long before all the slaves in our land would be free.

I had not been out many times collecting before I found myself seized one night with a severe pain in the back of the neck and small of the back—a sure sign of an approaching fever. The next day found me worse, then I became somewhat better, and then worse again. The sensation was as if some one were repeatedly thrusting a handful of red-hot knitting-needles into the top of my head, which, as they passed in, diverged till they touched the base of the brain. Then came chills, and then again those indescribable darting pains. It seemed as if I could not long retain the command of my mind under such severe torture. At last, after seven days of this suffering, I decided to go to the military hospital, which is open to citizens of all nations on their paying the same price per day as in the best hotels. The hospital consisted of a series of long, low, one-story buildings placed at right angles to each other, and on both sides facing open squares and wide walks or gardens, which were all bordered with large trees and contained some fine flowers. In each of the buildings were two rows of rooms or chambers of convenient size, which opened out on to a wide piazza, where the sick could enjoy all the breezes and yet be sheltered from the sun. Every morning the chief doctor came round to each room with assistants and servants, who carefully noted his directions and prescriptions. He was a German, and appeared very kindly in his manner; but when the time arrived to take medicine, I found he had not only assigned for me huge doses of that most bitter of all bitter things—quinine—but also copious draughts of some fluid villanously sour. The ultimate result of these allopathic doses was, however, decidedly beneficial; and after keeping perfectly quiet for a week, I was well enough to return to my boarding-house, but yet was so weak for some time that I could scarcely walk.

Our consul, who had been kindly visiting me all the while, now came with a letter from His Excellency the governor-general that was amply sufficient to make me wholly forget my unfavorable initiation into tropical life. It was addressed to the “Heads of the Provincial Governments in and out of Java,” and read thus: “I have the honor to ask Your Excellency to render to the bearer, Mr. Albert S. Bickmore, who may come into the district under your command in the interest of science, all the assistance in your power, without causing a charge to the public funds or a burden to the native people.”

Besides honoring me with this kind letter, His Excellency generously wrote the consul that he would be happy to offer me “post-horses free over all Java,” if I should like to travel in the interior. But it was with the hope of reaching the Spice Islands that I had come to the East, and, after thanking the governor-general for such great consideration and kindness, I began making preparations for a voyage through the eastern part of the archipelago. I had brought with me a good supply of large copper cans with screw covers. These were filled with arrack, a kind of rum made of molasses and rice. Dip-nets, hooks, lines, and all such other paraphernalia, I had fully provided myself with before I left America. Yet one paper, besides a ticket, was needed before I could go on board the mail-boat, and that was a “permission to travel in the Netherlands India.” This paper ought to have been renewed, according to law, once every month; but the governor-general’s letter was such an ample passport, that I never troubled myself about the matter again during the year I was journeying in the Dutch possessions.

CHAPTER II.
SAMARANG AND SURABAYA.

On the 7th of June, as the twilight was brightening in the eastern sky, I left my new Batavia home, and was hurriedly driven to the “boom.” A small steamer was waiting to take passengers off to the mail-boat that goes to Celebes, Timor, and Amboina, the capital of the Spice Islands.

My baggage all on board, I had time to rest, and realize that once more I was a wanderer; but lonesome thoughts were quickly banished when I began to observe who were to be my companions, there on the eastern side of the world, so far from the centre of civilization and fashion; and just then a real exquisite stepped on board. He was tall, but appeared much taller from wearing a high fur hat, the most uncomfortable covering for the head imaginable in that hot climate. Then his neckcloth! It was spotlessly white, and evidently tied with the greatest care; but what especially attracted my attention were his long, thin hands, carefully protected by white kid gloves. However, we had not been a long time on the steamer, where every place was covered with a thick layer of coal-dust, before Mr. Exquisite changed his elegant apparel for a matter-of-fact suit, and made his second appearance as a littérateur, with a copy of the Cornhill Magazine. As he evidently did not intend to read, I borrowed it, and found it was already three years old, and the leaves still uncut. It contained a graphic description of the grounds about Isaac Walton’s retired home—probably the most like the garden of Eden of any place seen on our earth since man’s fall.

The other passengers were mostly officials and merchants going to Samarang, Surabaya, or Macassar, and I found that I was the only one travelling to Amboina. The general commanding the Dutch army in the East was on board. He was a very polite, unassuming gentleman, and manifested much interest in a Sharpe’s breech-loader I had brought from America, and regarded it the most effective army rifle of any he had seen up to that time. He was going to the headquarters of the army, which is a strongly-fortified place back of Samarang. It was described to me as located on a mountain or high plateau with steep sides—a perfect Gibraltar, which they boasted a small army could maintain for an indefinite length of time against any force that might be brought against it. About five months later, however, it was nearly destroyed by a violent earthquake, but has since been completely rebuilt.

One genial acquaintance I soon found in a young man who had just come from Sumatra. He had travelled far among the high mountains and deep gorges in the interior of that almost unexplored island, and his vivid descriptions gave me an indescribable longing to behold such magnificent scenery—a pleasure I did not fancy at that time it would be my good fortune to enjoy before I left the archipelago.

All day the sky was very hazy, but we obtained several grand views of high volcanoes, especially two steep cones that can be seen in the west from the road at Batavia. A light, but steady breeze came from the east, for it was as yet only the early part of the eastern monsoon. When the sun sank in the west, the full moon rose in the east, and spread out a broad band of silver over the sea. The air was so soft and balmy, and the whole sky and sea so enchanting, that to recall it this day seems like fancying anew a part of some fascinating dream.

This word monsoon is only a corruption of the Arabic word musim, “season,” which the Portuguese learned from the Arabians and their descendants, who were then navigating these seas. It first occurs in the writings of De Barros, where he speaks of a famine that occurred at Malacca, because the usual quantity of rice had not been brought from Java; and “the mução” being adverse, it was not possible to obtain a sufficient supply. The Malays have a peculiar manner of always speaking of any region to the west as being “above the wind,” and any region to the east as being “below the wind.”

June 8th.—Went on deck early this morning to look at the mountains which we might be passing; and, while I was absorbed in viewing a fine headland, the captain asked me if I had seen that gigantic peak, pointing upward, as he spoke, to a mountain-top, rising out of such high clouds that I had not noticed it. It was Mount Slamat, which attains an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirty English feet above the sea—the highest peak but one among the many lofty mountains on Java, and, like most of them, an active volcano. The upper limit of vegetation on it is three thousand feet below its crest. The northern coast of Java is so low here that this mountain, instead of appearing to rise up, as it does, from the interior of the island, seemed close by the shore—an effect which occurs in viewing nearly all these lofty peaks while the observer is sailing on the Java Sea. M. Zollinger, a Swiss, says that at sunrise the tops of these loftiest peaks are brightened with the same rose-red glow that is seen on Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc when the sun is setting, and once or twice I thought I observed the same charming phenomenon. The lowlands and the lower declivities of all the mountains seen to-day are under the highest state of cultivation. Indeed, this part of Java may be correctly described as one magnificent garden, divided into small lots by lines of thick evergreens, and tall, feathery palm-trees. This afternoon we steamed into the open roadstead of Samarang during a heavy rain-squall; for though the “western monsoon,” or “rainy season,” is past, yet nearly every afternoon we have a heavy shower, and every one is speaking of the great damage it is likely to do to the rice and sugar crops which are just now ripening. The heavy rain-squall cleared away the thick haze that filled the sky, and the next morning I went on shore to see the city. A few miles directly back of it rises the sharp peak of Ungarung to a height of some five thousand feet, its flanks highly cultivated in fields, and its upper region devoted to coffee-trees. Somewhat west of this, near the shore, I noticed a small naked cone, apparently of brown, volcanic ashes, and of so recent an origin that the vigorous vegetation of these tropical lands had not had time to spread over its surface. Back of Ungarung rise three lofty peaks in a line northwest and southeast. The northernmost and nearest is Mount Prau; the central, Mount Sumbing; and the southern one, Mount Sindoro.

Mount Prau receives its name from its shape, which has been fancied to be like that of a “prau,” or native boat, turned upside down. It was the supposed residence of the gods and demigods of the Javanese in ancient times, and now it abounds in the ruins of many temples; some partially covered with lava, showing that earthquakes and eruptions have done their share in causing this destruction. Many images of these ancient gods in metal have been found on this mountain. Ruins of enormous temples of those olden times are yet to be seen at Boro Bodo, in the province of Kedu, and at Brambanan, in the province of Matarem. At Boro Bodo a hill-top has been changed into a low pyramid, one hundred feet high, and having a base of six hundred and twenty feet on a side. Its sides are formed into five terraces, and the perpendicular faces of these terraces contain many niches, in each of which was once an image of Buddha. On the level area at the summit of the pyramid is a large dome-shaped building, surrounded by seventy-two smaller ones of the same general form. According to the chronology of the Javanese, it was built in A. D. 1344.

At Brambanan are seen extensive ruins of several groups of temples, built of huge blocks of trachyte, carefully hewn and put together without any kind of cement. The most wonderful of those groups is that of “The Thousand Temples.” They actually number two hundred and ninety-six, and are situated on a low, rectangular terrace, measuring five hundred and forty by five hundred and ten feet, in five rows, one within another; a large central building, on a second terrace, overlooks the whole. This was elaborately ornamented, and, before it began to decay, probably formed, with those around it, one of the most imposing temples ever reared in all the East. According to the traditions of the Javanese, these buildings were erected between A. D. 1266 and 1296.

These structures were doubtless planned and superintended by natives of India. They were dedicated to Hindu worship, and here the Brahmins and Buddhists appear to have forgotten their bitter hostility, and in some cases to have even worshipped in the same temple. The Indian origin of these works is further proved by images of the zebu, or humped ox, which have been found here and elsewhere in Java, but it does not now exist, and probably never did, in any part of the archipelago.

As two Malays rowed me rapidly along in a narrow, canoe-like boat, I watched the clouds gather and embrace the high head of Mount Prau. Only thin and fibrous cumuli covered the other lofty peaks, but a thick cloud wrapped itself around the crest of this mountain and many small ones gathered on its dark sides, which occasionally could be seen through the partings in its white fleecy shroud. The form of the whole was just that of the mountain, except at its top, where for a time the clouds rose like a gigantic, circular castle, the square openings in their dense mass exactly resembling the windows in such thick walls.

Eastward of Ungarung are seen the lofty summits of Merbabu and Mérapi, and east from the anchorage rises Mount Japara, forming, with the low lands at its feet, almost an island, on Java’s north coast.

Like Batavia, Samarang is situated on both sides of a small river, in a low morass. The river was much swollen by late rains, and in the short time I passed along it, I saw dead horses, cats, dogs, and monkeys borne on its muddy waters out to the bay, there perhaps to sink and be covered with layers of mud, and, if after long ages those strata should be elevated above the level of the sea and fall under a geologist’s eye, to become the subject of some prolix disquisition. This is, in fact, exactly the way that most of the land animals in the marine deposits of former times have come down to us—an extremely fragmentary history at best, yet sufficient to give us some idea of the strange denizens of the earth when few or none of the highest mountains had yet been formed.

WATERING THE STREETS, BATAVIA.

A TANDU.

Through this low morass they are now digging a canal out to the roads, so that the city may be approached from the anchorage by the canal and the river. This canal is firmly walled in, as at Batavia. From the landing-place to the city proper the road was a stream of mud, and the houses are small and occupied only by Malays and the poorer classes of Chinese. In such streets two coolies are occasionally seen carrying one of the native belles in a tandu. The city itself is more compact than Batavia, and the shops are remarkably fine. It was pleasant to look again on some of the same engravings exposed for sale in our own shops. The finest building in the city, and the best of the kind that I have seen in the East, is a large one containing the custom and other bureaus. It is two stories high, and occupies three sides of a rectangle. I was told that they were fifteen years in building it, though in our country a private firm would have put it up in half as many months. There are several very fine hotels, and I saw one most richly furnished. Near the river stands a high watch-tower, where a constant lookout is kept for all ships approaching the road. From its top a wide view is obtained over the anchorage, the lowlands, and the city. Toward the interior rich fields are seen stretching away to the province of Kedu, “the garden of Java.” A railroad has been begun here, which will extend to Surakarta and Jokyokarta, on the east side of Mount Mérapi, and will open this rich region more fully to the world.[2]

The church of the city, which is chiefly sustained here as elsewhere by the Dutch Government, is a large cathedral-like building, finished in the interior in an octagonal form. One side is occupied by the pulpit, another by the organ, and the others are for the congregation. At the time I entered, the pastor was lecturing in a conversational but earnest manner to some twenty Malays and Chinese, gathered around him. At the close of his exhortation he shook hands with each in the most cordial manner.

From this church I went to the Mohammedan mosque, a square pagoda-like structure, with three roofs, one above the other, and each being a little smaller than the one beneath it. It was Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, and large numbers were coming to pay their devotions to the false prophet, for his is the prevailing religion in this land. By the gate in the wall enclosing the mosque were a well and a huge stone tank, where all the faithful performed the most scrupulous ablutions before proceeding to repeat the required parts of the Koran. It was pleasant to see that at least they believed and practised the maxim that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” From the gate I walked up an inclined terrace to the large doorway, and at once saw, from the troubled expression on the faces of those who were kneeling on their straw mats outside the building, that I had committed some impropriety; and one answered my look of inquiry by pointing to my feet. I had forgotten that I was treading on “holy ground,” and had therefore neglected “to put off my shoes.” Opposite the entrance is usually a niche, and on one side of this a kind of throne, but what was the origin or signification of either I never could learn, and believe the common people are as ignorant as myself in this respect. Their whole ceremony is to kneel, facing this niche, and repeat in a low, mumbling, nasal tone some parts of the writings of their prophet. Their priests are always Arabs, or their mestizo descendants, the same class of people as those who introduced this faith. Any one who has been to Mecca is regarded as next to a saint, and many go to Singapore or Penang, where they remain a year or two, and then return and declare they have seen the holy city. The first conversions to Mohammedanism in any part of the archipelago occurred at Achin, the western end of Sumatra, in 1204. It was not taught by pure Arabs, but by those descendants of Arabs and Persians who came from the Persian Gulf to Achin to trade. Thence it spread slowly eastward to Java, Celebes, and the Moluccas, and northward to the Philippines, where it was just gaining a foothold when the Spanish arrived. Under their rule it was soon eradicated, and supplanted by Catholic Christianity. Bali is almost the only island where the people can read and write their native tongue, and have not partially adopted this religion. On the continent it spread so rapidly that, within one hundred years after the Hegira, it was established from Persia to Spain; but, as its promulgators were not a maritime people, it did not reach Achin until five hundred and seventy-two years after the Hegira, and then its followers had so little of the fanaticism and energy of the Arabs, that it was more than three hundred years in reaching Celebes, and fully establishing itself on that island. The Malay name for this religion is always “Islam.”

On our way back to the mail-boat we passed quite a fleet of fishing-boats, at the mouth of the river. They are generally made alike at both ends, and look like huge canoes. Some have high lantern-shaped houses perched on the stern, as if to make them more unsightly. Here they all have decks, but those at Batavia are merely open boats.

The next day we continued on our course to the eastward, around the promontory formed by Mount Japara, whose sides are so completely scored by deep ravines that little or none of the original surface of the mountain can be seen. Dr. Junghuhn, who has spent many years studying in detail the mountains of Java, finds that above a height of ten thousand feet but very few ravines exist. This height is the common cloud-level, and the rains that they pour out, of course, only affect the mountain-sides below that elevation, hence the flanks of a mountain are sometimes deeply scored while its top remains entire. The substances of which these great cones are chiefly composed are mostly volcanic ashes, sand, and small fragments of basalt or lava, just the kind of materials that swift torrents would rapidly carry away.

The volcanoes of Java are mostly in two lines: one, commencing near Cape St. Nicholas, its northwestern extremity, passes diagonally across the island to its southeastern headland on the Strait of Bali. The other is parallel to this, and extends from the middle of the Strait of Sunda to the south coast in the longitude of Cheribon. They stand along two immense fissures in the earth’s crust, but the elevating power appears only to have found vent at certain separate points along these fissures. At these points sub-aërial eruptions of volcanic ashes, sand, and scoriæ have occurred, and occasionally streams of basaltic and trachytic lava have poured out, until no less than thirty-eight cones, some of immense size, have been formed on this island. Their peculiar character is, that they are distinct and separate mountains, and not peaks in a continuous chain.

The second characteristic of these mountains is the great quantity of sulphur they produce. White clouds of sulphurous acid gas continually wreath the crests of these high peaks, and betoken the unceasing activity within their gigantic masses. This gas is the one that is formed when a friction-match is lighted, and is, of course, extremely destructive to all animal and vegetable life.

At various localities in the vicinity of active volcanoes and in old craters this gas still escapes, and the famous “Guevo Upas” or Valley of Poison, on the flanks of the volcano Papandayang, is one of these areas of noxious vapors. It is situated at the head of a valley on the outer declivity of the mountain, five hundred or seven hundred feet below the rim of the old crater which contains the “Telaga Bodas” or White Lake. It is a small, bare place, of a pale gray or yellowish color, containing many crevices and openings from which carbonic acid gas pours out from time to time. Here both Mr. Reinwardt and Dr. Junghuhn saw a great number of dead animals of various kinds, as dogs, cats, tigers, rhinoceroses, squirrels, and other rodents, many birds, and even snakes, who had lost their lives in this fatal place. Besides carbonic acid gas, sulphurous acid gas also escapes. This was the only gas present at the time of Dr. Junghuhn’s visit, and is probably the one that causes such certain destruction to all the animals that wander into this valley of death. The soft parts of these animals, as the skin, the muscles, and the hair or feathers, were found by both observers quite entire, while the bones had crumbled and mostly disappeared. The reason that so many dead animals are found on this spot, while none exist in the surrounding forests, is because beasts of prey not only cannot consume them, but even they lose their lives in the midst of these poisonous gases.

It was in such a place that the deadly upas was fabled to be found. The first account of this wonderful tree was given by Mr. N. P. Foersch, a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company. His original article was published in the fourth volume of Pennant’s “Outlines of the Globe,” and repeated in the London Magazine for September, 1785. He states that he saw it himself, and describes it as “the sole individual of its species, standing alone, in a scene of solitary horror, on the middle of a naked, blasted plain, surrounded by a circle of mountains, the whole area of which is covered with the skeletons of birds, beasts, and men. Not a vestige of vegetable life is to be seen within the contaminated atmosphere, and even the fishes die in the water!” This, like most fables, has some foundation in fact; and a large forest-tree exists in Java, the Antiaris toxicaria of botanists, that has a poisonous sap. When its bark is cut, a sap flows out much resembling milk, but thicker and more viscid. A native prepared some poison from this kind of sap for Dr. Horsfield. He mingled with it about half a drachm of the sap of the following vegetables—arum, kempferia galanga, anomum, a kind of zerumbed, common onion or garlic, and a drachm and a half of black pepper. This poison proved mortal to a dog in one hour; a mouse in ten minutes; a monkey in seven; a cat in fifteen; and a large buffalo died in two hours and ten minutes from the effects of it. A similar poison is prepared from the sap of the chetek, a climbing vine.

The deadly anchar is thus pictured in Darwin’s “Botanic Garden:”

“Fierce in dread silence, on the blasted heath,

Fell Upas sits, the hydra-tree of death!

So, from one root, the envenomed soil below,

A thousand vegetative serpents grow!

In shining rays the steady monster spreads

O’er ten square leagues his far-diverging head,

Or in one trunk entwists his tangled form,

Looks o’er the clouds, and hisses at the storm;

Steeped in fell poison, as his sharp teeth part,

A thousand tongues in quick vibration dart,

Snatch the proud eagle towering o’er the heath,

Or pounce the lion as he stalks beneath;

Or strew, as martial hosts contend in vain,

With human skeletons the whitened plain.”

All the north coast of Java is very low, often forming a morass, except here and there where some mountain sends out a spur to form a low headland. As we neared Madura this low land spread out beneath the shallow sea and we were obliged to keep eight or ten miles from land. On both sides of the Madura Strait the land is also low, and on the left hand we passed many villages of native fishermen who tend bamboo weirs that extend out a long way from the shore.

Here, for the first time, I saw boats with outriggers. Each had one such float on the leeward side, while, on a kind of rack on the windward side, was placed a canoe and every thing on board that was movable. Each boat carries two triangular sails, made of narrow, white cloths, with occasionally a red or black one in the middle or on the margins by way of ornament.

Just before entering the road of Surabaya we passed Gresik, a small village of Chinese and other foreigners, situated immediately on the beach. It is an old site and famous in the early history of Java, but the houses seemed mostly new, and their red-tiled roofs contrasted prettily with their white ridge-poles and gable-ends. It was here, according to the Javanese historians, that the Mohammedan religion was first established on their soil.

At Surabaya there appears to be much more business than at Batavia, and we found a larger number of vessels at anchor in the roads. At Batavia, the anchorage is somewhat sheltered by the islands at the mouth of the bay. At Samarang, the anchorage is quite exposed during the western monsoon, and the swell and surf are sometimes so great that boats cannot land, but at Surabaya the shipping is perfectly sheltered from all gales. There are, however, strong tidal currents, on account of the size of the bay, at the anchorage, and the narrow straits that connect it with the sea. These straits, though narrow, are not dangerous, and this may be said to be the only good harbor that is frequented on the island of Java. On the south coast, at Chilachap, there is a safe and well-sheltered anchorage, but it has very little trade.

At evening, when the water is ebbing, flocks of white herons range themselves in lines along its retreating edge, and calmly await the approach of some unlucky fish. Then the fishing-boats come up from the east, spreading out their white sails, and forming a counterpart to the lines of white herons along the shore.

The natives, unable to walk to their huts on the banks, have a most novel and rapid mode of navigating these mud-flats. A board about two feet wide, five or six feet long, and curved up at one end like the runner of a sled, is placed on the soft mud, and the fisherman rests the left knee on it while he kicks with the right foot, in just the way that boys push themselves on their sleds over ice or snow. In this way they go as fast as a man would walk on solid ground.

Like Batavia and Samarang, Surabaya[3] is situated on both sides of a small river, on low land, but not in a morass, like the old city of Batavia, and yet much nearer the shipping. This river has been changed into a canal by walling in its banks. Near its entrance it is lined on one side with nice dwelling-houses, and bordered with a row of fine shade-trees. Back of these dwellings is the government dock-yard. It is very carefully built, and contains a dry-dock, a place to take up ships like our railways, ample work-shops, and large sheds for storing away lumber. They were then building six small steamers and two or three boats, besides a great dry-dock for the largest ships. Here was the Medusa, the ship that led the allied Dutch, English, French, and American fleet in the attack on Simonosaki, at the entrance of the Inland Sea in Japan. The many scars in her sides showed the dangerous part she had taken in the attack, and I have frequently heard the Dutch officers speak with a just pride of the bravery and skill of her officers in that engagement. Formerly, ships could only be repaired by being “thrown down” at Onrust, an island six miles west of the road at Batavia; but now nearly all such work is done in this yard. It was most enlivening to hear the rapid ringing of hammers on anvils—a sound one can rarely enjoy in those dull Eastern cities.

The government machine-shop is another proof of the determination of the Dutch to make for themselves whatever they need, and to be independent of foreign markets. Here they make many castings, but their chief business is manufacturing steam-boilers for the navy. Nine hundred Javanese were then in this establishment, all laboring voluntarily, and having full liberty to leave whenever they chose. Most of the overseers even are natives, and but few Europeans are employed in the whole works. They all perform their allotted tasks quietly and steadily, without loud talking or any unnecessary noise. Some of them are so skilful that they receive nearly two guilders per day. These facts show the capabilities of the Javanese, and indicate that there may yet be a bright future for this people. Here the standard weights and measures for the government are manufactured; and as an instance of the longevity of this people, when they are correct in their habits, the director told me that one native had worked for fifty-seven years in that department, and for some time had been assisted by both his sons and grandsons. He had just retired, and the director had been able to obtain for him a pension of full pay on account of the long time he had been in the service. There were three others still in the works, who also began fifty-seven years ago. Such cases are the more remarkable, because these natives are usually unable to labor at the age of thirty-five or forty, on account of their dissolute habits. Most of their machinery is not as nicely finished as that imported from Europe, but it appears to be quite as durable. Yet the fact that some Javanese have the capacity to do nice work was proved by one in charge of the engraving-department, whose fine lines would have been creditable to many a European. A merchant also has a similar machine-shop on a still greater scale.

Near by are the government artillery-works, where all the parts of wood and iron and the saddles and harnesses are manufactured, every thing but the guns. The wood used is carefully-seasoned teak. It is extremely durable, and combines in a good degree both lightness and strength. The leather is made by the natives from hides of the sapi, or cattle of Madura, the only kind seen here in Surabaya. It is light and flexible, and somewhat spongy compared to that made from our Northern hides. When it is wet it “spots,” the wet places taking a darker color, which they retain when the leather again becomes dry. The director of the works thought that these defects might be remedied by adopting some other mode of tanning it. The leather made from the hide of the buffalo is thin, and, at the same time, excessively rigid.

The streets of Surabaya are narrow compared to those of Batavia; but they are far better provided with shade-trees of different species, among which the tamarind, with its highly compound leaves, appears to be the favorite. Here, as in all the other chief cities of the archipelago, the dusty streets are usually sprinkled by coolies, who carry about two large watering-pots. In the centre of the city, on an open square, is the opera-house, a large, well-proportioned building, neatly painted and frescoed within. In the suburbs is the public garden, nicely laid out, and abounding in richly-flowering shrubs. There were a number of birds peculiar to the East: a cassowary from Ceram, a black-swan from Australia, and some beautiful wild pheasants (Gallus) from Madura. Of this genus, Gallus, there are two wild species on that island and in Java. One of these, Gallus bankiva, is also found in Sumatra and the peninsula of Malacca. A third species is found in the Philippines, but none is yet known in the great islands of Borneo and Celebes or in any of the islands eastward. On the peninsula of Malacca, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Spice Islands, the Malay word ayam is used, but on the Philippines and Java the Javanese word manuk is frequently heard—it has hence been inferred that the Malays and Javanese were the first to domesticate it, and distribute it over the archipelago. Temminck regards the Gallus bankiva as the progenitor of our common fowl. If he is right in this conjecture, it was probably brought into Greece by the Persians, for the Greeks sometimes called it the “Persian bird.”[4] Its early introduction into Europe is shown by representations of it on the walls of the Etruscan tombs, and Mr. Crawfurd states that it was found in England more than two thousand years ago. The small variety known to us as “the Bantam,” is not a native of Java, but received that name because it was first seen by European traders on Japanese junks which came to that city to trade.

All the Malay race, except the Javanese, have the most inordinate thirst for gambling, and their favorite method of gratifying this passion is cock-fighting. This is forbidden by the Dutch Government; but in the Philippines the Spanish only subject the gamblers to a heavy tax, and the extent to which it is indulged in those islands is indicated by a yearly revenue of forty thousand dollars from this source alone.

The passion for this vice among the Malays is also shown in their language; for, according to Mr. Crawfurd, there is one specific name for cock-fighting, one for the natural and one for the artificial spur of the cock, two names for the comb, three for crowing, two for a cock-pit, and one for a professional cock-fighter.

But to return to the garden, where, among more interesting objects, were some images of the Brahman or Buddhist gods, worshipped by the ancient Javanese. One, particularly monstrous, appeared to have the body of a man and the head of a beast. A favorite model was to represent a man with the head of an elephant, seated on a throne that rested on a row of human skulls.

Hinduism was undoubtedly introduced into the archipelago in the same way as Mohammedanism—namely, by those who came from the West to trade, first into Sumatra, and afterward into Java and Celebes. This commercial intercourse probably began in the very remotest ages; for, according to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the Egyptians used tin in manufacturing their implements of bronze two thousand years before the Christian era, and it is more probable that this tin came from the Malay peninsula than from Cornwall, the only two sources of any importance that are yet known for this valuable metal, if we include with the former the islands of Billiton and Banca. In the “Periplus of the Erythræan Sea,” written about A. D. 60, it is stated that this mineral was found at two cities on the western coast of India, but that it came from countries farther east. In this same descriptive treatise it is also mentioned that the malabrathrum, a kind of odoriferous gum imported from India for the use of the luxurious Romans, was found at Barake, a port on the coast of Malabar, but that it likewise came from some land farther east; and malabrathrum is supposed by many to be the modern benzoin, a resin obtained from the Styrax benzoin, a plant only found in the lands of the Battas, in Sumatra, and on the coast of Brunai, in the northern part of Borneo.

A KLING.

NATIVE OF BILUCHISTAN.

Although we gather from the records of Western nations these indications of products coming from the archipelago in the earliest ages, yet we have no information in regard to the time that the Hindu traders, who sailed eastward from India and purchased these valuable articles, succeeded in planting their own religion among those distant nations. The annals of both the Malay and Javanese are evidently fanciful, and are generally considered unreliable for any date previous to the introduction of Mohammedanism. Simple chronological lists are found in Java, which refer as far back as A. D. 78; but Mr. Crawfurd says that “they are incontestable fabrications, often differing widely from each other, and containing gaps of whole centuries.”

The people who came from India on these early voyages were probably of the same Talagu or Telugu nation as those now called by the Malays “Klings” or “Kalings,” a word evidently derived from Kalinga, the Sanscrit name for the northern part of the coast of Coromandel. They have always continued to trade with the peninsula, and I met them on the coast of Sumatra. Barbosa, who saw them at Malacca when the Portuguese first arrived at that city, thus describes them:[5] “There are many great merchants here, Moor as well as Gentile strangers, but chiefly of the Chetis, who are of the Coromandel coast, and have large ships, which they call giunchi” (junks). Unlike the irregular winds that must have greatly discouraged the early Greeks and Phœnicians from long voyages over the Euxine and the Mediterranean, the steady monsoons of the Bay of Bengal invited those people out to sea, and by their regular changes promised to bring them within a year safely back to their homes.

The United States steamship Iroquois was then lying in the roads, and our consular agent at this port invited Captain Rodgers, our consul from Batavia, who was there on business, and myself, to take a ride with him out to a sugar-plantation that was under his care. In those hot countries it is the custom to start early on pleasure excursions, in order to avoid the scorching heat of the noonday sun. We were therefore astir at six. Our friend had obtained a large post-coach giving ample room for four persons, but, like all such carriages in Java, it was so heavy and clumsy that both the driver and a footman, who was perched up in a high box behind, had to constantly lash our four little ponies to keep them up to even a moderate rate of speed. Our ride of ten miles was over a well-graded road, beautifully shaded for most of the way with tamarind-trees. Parallel with the carriage-roads, in Java, there is always one for buffaloes and carts, and in this manner the former are almost always kept in prime order. Such a great double highway begins at Angir, on the Strait of Sunda, and extends throughout the whole length of the island to Banyuwangi, on the Strait of Bali. It passes near Bantam and Batavia, and thence along the low lands near the north coast to Cheribon and Samarang, thence south of Mount Japara and so eastward. This, I was informed, was made by Marshal Daendals, who governed Java under the French rule in 1809. There is also a military road from Samarang to Surakarta and Jokyokarta, where the two native princes now reside. Java also enjoys a very complete system of telegraphic communication. On the 23d of October, 1856, the first line, between Batavia (Weltevreden) and Buitenzorg, was finished. Immediately after, it was so rapidly extended that, in 1859, 1,670 English miles were completed. A telegraphic cable was also laid in that year from Batavia up the Straits of Banca and Rhio to Singapore; but, unfortunately, it was broken in a short time, probably by the anchor of some vessel in those shallow straits. After it had been repaired it was immediately broken a second time, and in 1861 the enterprise was given up, but now they are laying another cable across the Strait of Sunda, from Angir to the district of Lampong; thence it will extend up the west coast to Bencoolen and Padang, and, passing across the Padang plateau, through Fort de Rock and Paya Kombo, come to the Strait of Malacca, and be laid directly across to Singapore.

These Javanese ponies go well on a level or down-hill, but when the road becomes steep they frequently stop altogether. In the hilly parts of Java, therefore, the natives are obliged to fasten their buffaloes to your carriage, and you must patiently wait for those sluggish animals to take you up to the crest of the elevation.

Our road that morning led over a low country, which was devoted wholly to rice and sugar-cane. Some of these rice-fields stretched away on either hand as far as the eye could see, and appeared as boundless as the ocean. Numbers of natives were scattered through these wide fields, selecting out the ripened blades, which their religion requires them to cut off one by one. It appears an endless task thus to gather in all the blades over a wide plain. These are clipped off near the top, and the rice in this state, with the hull still on, is called “paddy.” The remaining part of the stalks is left in the fields to enrich the soil. After each crop the ground is spaded or dug up with a large hoe, or ploughed with a buffalo, and afterward harrowed with a huge rake; and to aid in breaking up the clods, water to the depth of four or five inches is let in. This is retained by dikes which cross the fields at right angles, dividing them up into little beds from fifty to one hundred feet square. The seed is sown thickly in small plats at the beginning of the rainy monsoon. When the plants are four or five inches high they are transferred to the larger beds, which are still kept overflowed for some time. They come to maturity about this time (June 14th), the first part of the eastern monsoon, or dry season. Such low lands that can be thus flooded are called sawas. Although the Javanese have built magnificent temples, they have never invented or adopted any apparatus that has come into common use for raising water for their rice-fields, not even the simple means employed by the ancient Egyptians along the hill, and which the slabs from the palaces at Nineveh show us were also used along the Euphrates.

Only one crop is usually taken from the soil each year, unless the fields can be readily irrigated. Manure is rarely or never used, and yet the sawas appear as fertile as ever. The sugar-cane, however, quickly exhausts the soil. One cause of this probably is that the whole of every cane is taken from the field except the top and root, while only the upper part of the rice-stalks are carried away, and the rest is burned or allowed to decay on the ground. On this account only one-third of a plantation is devoted to its culture at any one time, the remaining two-thirds being planted with rice, for the sustenance of the natives that work on that plantation. These crops are kept rotating so that the same fields are liable to an extra drain from sugar-cane only once in three years. On each plantation is a village of Javanese, and several of these villages are under the immediate management of a controleur. It is his duty to see that a certain number of natives are at work every day, that they prepare the ground, and put in the seed at the proper season, and take due care of it till harvest-time.[6]

The name of the plantation we were to see was “Seroenie.” As we neared it, several long, low, white buildings came into view, and two or three high chimneys, pouring out dense volumes of black smoke. By the road was a dwelling-house, and the “fabrik” was in the rear. The canes are cut in the field and bound into bundles, each containing twenty-five. They are then hauled to the factory in clumsy, two-wheeled carts called pedatis, with a yoke of sapis. On this plantation alone there are two hundred such carts. The mode adopted here of obtaining the sugar from the cane is the same as in our country. It is partially clarified by pouring over it, while yet in the earthen pots in which it cools and crystallizes, a quantity of clay, mixed with water, to the consistency of cream. The water, filtering through, washes the crystals and makes the sugar, which up to this time is of a dark brown, almost as white as if it had been refined. This simple process is said to have been introduced by some one who noticed that wherever the birds stepped on the brown sugar with their muddy feet, in those places it became strangely white. After all the sugar has been obtained that is possible, the cheap and impure molasses that drains off is fermented with a small quantity of rice. Palm-wine is then added, and from this mixture is distilled the liquor known as “arrack,” which consequently differs little from rum. It is considered, and no doubt rightly, the most destructive stimulant that can be placed in the human stomach, in these hot regions. From Java large quantities are shipped to the cold regions of Sweden and Norway, where, if it is as injurious, its manufacturers are, at least, not obliged to witness its poisonous effects.

After the sugar has been dried in the sun it is packed in large cylindrical baskets of bamboo, and is ready to be taken to market and shipped abroad.[7]

Three species of the sugar-cane are recognized by botanists: the Saccharum sinensis of China; the Saccharum officinarum of India, which was introduced by the Arabs into Southern Europe, and thence transported to our own country[8] and the West Indies; and the Saccharum violaceum of Tahiti, of which the cane of the Malay Archipelago is probably only a variety. This view of the last species is strengthened by the similarity of the names for it in Malaysia and Polynesia. The Malays call it tabu; the inhabitants of the Philippines, tubu; the Kayans of Borneo, turo; the natives of Floris, between Java and Timur, and of Tongatabu, in Polynesia, tau; the people of Tahiti and the Marquesas, to; and the Sandwich Islanders, ko.

It is either a native of the archipelago or was introduced in the remotest times. The Malays used to cultivate it then as they do now, not for the purpose of making sugar, but for its sweet juice, and great quantities of it are seen at this time of year in all the markets, usually cut up into short pieces and the outer layers or rind removed. These people appear also to have been wholly ignorant of the mode of making sugar from it, and all the sugar, or more properly molasses, that was used, was obtained then as it is now in the Eastern islands, namely, by boiling down the sap of the gomuti-palm (Borassus gomuti).[9]

Sugar from cane was first brought to Europe by the Arabs, who, as we know from the Chinese annals, frequently visited Canpu, a port on Hanchow Bay, a short distance south of Shanghai. Dioscorides, who lived in the early part of the first century, appears to be the earliest writer in the West who has mentioned it. He calls it saccharon, and says that “in consistence it was like salt.” Pliny, who lived a little later in the same century, thus describes the article seen in the Roman markets in his day: “Saccharon is a honey which forms on reeds, white like gum, which crumbles under the teeth, and of which the largest pieces are of the size of a filbert.” (Book xii., chap. 8.)

This is a perfect description of the sugar or rock-candy that I found the Chinese manufacturing over the southern and central parts of China during my long journeyings through that empire, and at the same time it is not in the least applicable to the dark-brown, crushed sugar made in India.

CHAPTER III.
THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE TROPICAL EAST.

June 15th.—At 8 A. M. we left our anchorage off Surabaya, and steamed down the Madura Strait for Macassar, the capital of Celebes. Along the shores of the strait were many villages of fishermen, and bamboo weirs extending out to a distance of five or six miles from both the Java and Madura shores, and showing well how shallow the water must be so far from land. During the forenoon it was nearly calm, but the motion of the steamer supplied a pleasant air. In the afternoon the wind rose to a light breeze from the east. At noon we passed Pulo Kambing (“Goat Island”), a small, low coral island off the south coast of Madura. Near by was a fleet of small fishing-boats, each containing two men, who were only protected from the broiling sun by a hat and a narrow cloth about the loins. These boats and other larger ones farther out to sea were extremely narrow, and provided with outriggers.

Madura receives its name from a Hindu legend, which makes it the abode of the demigod, Baladewa. It has but one mountain-range, and that crosses it from north to south. It is, therefore, not well watered, and unsuitable for raising rice; and many of its people have been obliged to migrate to the adjoining fertile shores of Java. The coffee-tree is raised on this island, but the land is best adapted for pasturage of the sapi, which is similar in its habits to our own neat-cattle, and never wallows in mires and morasses like the buffalo. In the mountains on the western part of Java, a wild species, the banteng (Bos sondaicus), is still found. It is not regarded as the source of the sapi, but a fertile cross is obtained from the two, and this intermediate breed is said to be the one used on Bali and Lombok. The sapi is found on all the islands to and including Timur, on Borneo, Celebes, and the Spice Islands, and has been introduced into the Philippines since their discovery, and now lives in a wild state on Luzon, just as the cattle of the pampas in South America, which have also descended from the domesticated breeds imported by the Spaniards.

On the eastern end of the island, which is quite low, great quantities of salt are obtained by evaporating water in “pans,” or small areas enclosed with low dikes, like rice-fields. It is also manufactured in a similar manner at several places on the north coast of Java and on the western shore of Luzon, in the province of Pangasinan. Generally the coasts of the islands throughout the archipelago are either too high, or so low as to form merely muddy morasses, which are mostly covered with a dense growth of mangroves. In some places on the south coast of Java, sea-water is sprinkled over sand. When this water has evaporated, the process is repeated. The sand is then gathered, and water filtered through it and evaporated by artificial heat. In Borneo, and among some of the Philippines, marine plants are burned, and the lye made from their ashes is evaporated for the sake of the salt contained in the residuum. All through the interior, and among the mountains, houses are built for storing it, and officials are appointed to dispose of it to the natives. The quantity yearly manufactured for the government at all the various places is about 40,000 koyangs, or 80,000 tons; but it is not allowed to be shipped and used until it is five years old, and a supply of 200,000 koyangs, or 400,000 tons, is therefore constantly kept on hand. It is deposited in the government store-houses by individuals at one-third of a guilder per picul. It is then transported and sold at a great profit by the government, which monopolizes the traffic in this necessary condiment, and obtains a large portion of its revenue in this manner.[10]

In the afternoon we were abreast the high Tenger (i. e., wide or spacious) mountains. Here is the famous “Sandy Sea,” a strange thing on an island covered with such luxuriant vegetation as everywhere appears in Java. To reach it one has to climb an old volcano to a height of about 7,500 feet above the sea, when he suddenly finds himself on the rim of an old crater of an irregular elliptical form, with a minor axis of three and a half and a major axis of four and a half miles. It is the largest crater in Java, and one of the largest in the world. Its bottom is a level floor of sand, which in some places is drifted by the wind like the sea, and is properly named in Malay the Laut Pasar, or “Sandy Sea.” From this sandy floor rise four cones, where the eruptive force has successively found vent for a time, the greatest being evidently the oldest, and the smallest the present active Bromo, or Brama, from the Sanscrit Brama, the god of fire. The position and relation of this Bromo, as compared to the surrounding crater, is entirely analogous to those that exist between Vesuvius and Monte Somma. The outer walls of this old mountain are of trachytic lava, and Dr. Junghuhn thinks its history may be summed up thus: first, a period when the trachyte was formed; this was followed by a period of trachytic lavas, then of obsidian; fourth, of obsidian and pumice-stone; fifth, the sand period, during which an enormous quantity of sand was thrown out, and the present sandy floor formed with the cones rising from it; and sixth, the present ash-period, during which only fine ashes are thrown out from time to time, and steam and sulphurous acid gas are constantly emitted.

The earliest descriptions of this crater represent it nearly as it is seen at the present day; but great eruptions, similar to the one supposed to have occurred, have been witnessed by Europeans since they first came to Java. In the year 1772 the volcano Papandayang, which is near the south coast of Java, and about in Long. 108° E., threw out such an immense quantity of scoriæ and ashes, that Dr. Junghuhn thinks a layer nearly fifty feet thick was spread over an area within a radius of seven miles; and yet all this was thrown out during a single night. Forty native villages were buried beneath it, and about three thousand souls are supposed to have perished between this single setting and rising of the sun. Dr. Horsfield, who drew up an account of this terrible phenomenon from the stories of the natives, wrongly supposed that “an extent of ground, of the mountain and its environs, fifteen miles long, and full six broad, was by this commotion swallowed up within the bowels of the earth.”

On the 8th of July, 1822, Mount Galunggong, an old volcano, but a few miles northeast of Papandayang, suffered a far more terrible and destructive eruption. At noon on that day not a cloud could be seen in the sky. The wild beasts gladly sought the friendly shades of the dense forest; the hum of myriads of insects was hushed, and not a sound was to be heard over the highly-cultivated declivities of this mountain, or over the rich adjoining plain, but the dull creaking of some native cart drawn by the sluggish buffalo. The natives, under shelter of their rude huts, were giving themselves up to indolent repose, when suddenly a frightful thundering was heard in the earth; and from the top of this old volcano a dark, dense mass was seen rising higher and higher into the air, and spreading itself out over the clear sky with such an appalling rapidity that in a few moments the whole landscape was shrouded in the darkness of night.

Through this thick darkness flashes of lightning gleamed in a hundred lines, and many natives were instantly struck down to the earth by stones falling from the sky. Then a deluge of hot water and flowing mud rose over the rim of the old crater, and poured down the mountain-sides, sweeping away trees and beasts and human bodies in its seething mass. At the same moment, stones and ashes and sand were projected to an enormous height into the air, and, as they fell, destroyed nearly every thing within a radius of more than twenty miles. A few villages, that were situated on high hills on the lower declivities of the mountain, strangely escaped the surrounding destruction by being above the streams of hot water and flowing mud, while most of the stones and ashes and sand that were thrown out passed completely over them, and destroyed many villages that were farther removed from the centre of this great eruption.

The thundering was first heard at half-past one o’clock. At four the extreme violence of the eruption was past; at five the sky began to grow clear once more, and the same sun that at noon had shed his life-giving light over this rich landscape, at evening was casting his rays over the same spot then changed into a scene of utter desolation. A second eruption followed within five days, and by that time more than twenty thousand persons had lost their lives.

When the mountain could be ascended, a great valley was found, which Dr. Junghuhn considers analogous to the “Val del Bove” on the flanks of Ætna, except that a great depression among these movable materials could not have such high, precipitous walls as are seen in that deep gulf. This eruption was quite like that of Papandayang, except that there was a lake in the bottom of this crater which supplied the hot water and the mud, while all the materials thrown out by the former volcano were in a dry state. In a similar way it is supposed the great crater and the “Sandy Sea” of the Tenger Mountains were formed in ancient times. On these Tenger Mountains live a peculiar people, who speak a dialect of the Javanese, and, despite the zealous efforts of the Mohammedan priests, still retain their ancient Hindu religion.

In the evening, fires appeared on the hills near the sea. This was the last we saw of Java, which, though but one-sixth of the area of Borneo, and one-third that of Sumatra, is by far the most important island in the archipelago. It is to the East Indies what Cuba is to the West Indies. In each there is a great central chain of mountains. Both shores of Cuba are opposite small bodies of water, and are continuously low and swampy for miles, but in Java only the north coast borders on a small sea. This shore is low, but the southern coast, on the margin of the wide Indian Ocean that stretches away to the Antarctic lands, is high and bold, an exception which is in accordance with the rule that the higher elevations are opposite the greater oceans, or, more properly, that they stand along the borders of the ocean-beds or greatest depressions on the surface of our globe. In Java, where the coast is rocky, the rocks are hard volcanic basalts and trachytes, which resist the action of the sea, and the shore-line is therefore quite regular; but in Cuba there is a fringing of soft coral rock, which the waves quickly wear away into hundreds of little projecting headlands and bays, and on the map the island has a ragged border. In its geological structure, Cuba, with its central axis of mica slates, granitic rocks, serpentines, and marbles, has a more perfect analogue in Sumatra; for in Java the mountains, instead of being formed by elevations of preëxisting strata, are merely heaps of scoriæ, ashes, sand, and rock, once fluid, which have all been ejected out of separate and distinct vents. The area of Java is estimated at 38,250 square geographical miles; that of Cuba at about 45,000. The length of Java is 575 geographical or 666 statute miles; that of Cuba 750 statute miles. But while the total population of Cuba is estimated only at a million and a half, the total population of Java and Madura is now (1865), according to official statements, 13,917,368.[11] In 1755, after fifteen years of civil war, the total population of Java and Madura was but 2,001,911. In a single century, therefore, it has increased more than sixfold. This is one of the beneficial effects of a government that can put down rebellions and all internal wars, and encourage industry. In Cuba, of a total area of thirty million acres, it was estimated, in 1857, that only 48,572 were under cultivation, or, including pasturage, 218,161 acres. In Java and Madura, last year (1864), the cultivated fields and the groves of cocoa-nut palms covered an area of 2,437,037 acres. In Cuba, from 1853 to 1858, the yearly exports were from 27,000,000 to 32,000,000 of dollars, and the imports of about the same value. In Java, last year, the imports amounted to 66,846,412 guilders (26,738,565 dollars); and the exports to the enormous sum of 123,094,798 guilders (49,237,919 dollars). During 1864 twenty-four ships arrived from the United States, of 12,610 tons’ capacity, and three sailed for our country, of a united capacity of 2,258 tons.[12]

Both of these great islands abound in forests, that yield large quantities of valuable timber. Java furnishes the indestructible teak, from which the Malays and Javanese fitted out a fleet of three hundred vessels that besieged Malacca, two years after it had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese. In like manner the Spaniards, between 1724 and 1796, built with timber from the forests of Cuba an armada that numbered one hundred and fourteen vessels, carrying more than four thousand guns. From the Cuban forests come the indestructible lignum-vitæ, and the beautiful mahogany. Those jungles shelter no wild animals larger than dogs, but these in Java are the haunts of wild oxen, tigers, one large and two small species of leopard, the rhinoceros, two wild species of hog, and five species of weasel. Two of the latter yield musk; and one, the Viverra musanga, of the size of a cat, is also found in the Philippines. Six species of deer are found on this island, and two of them, the Cervus rufa and Cervus mantjac, are sometimes domesticated.[13] The elephant is not found in Java, though it lives in Sumatra, Borneo, and the peninsula. Also the wild horse of Sumatra or Celebes does not exist in Java.

Among the more noticeable birds of Java is a beautiful species of peacock, the Pavo spicifer. It was represented to me as quite abundant in some places along the south coast. The natives make very beautiful cigar-holders from fine strips of its quills. In Sumatra it is not found, but is represented by an allied species. Of pigeons, Java has no less than ten species. The web-footed birds are remarkably few in species and numbers. A single duck, a teal, and two pelicans, are said to comprise the whole number. The white heron has already been noticed, and besides this, ten other species have been described. One of the smallest birds in Java, and yet, perhaps, the most important, from its great numbers, is the rice-eater, Fringilla oryzivora, a kind of sparrow. Great flocks of these birds are continually annoying the Malays as soon as the rice is nearly grown. The natives have a very simple and effective mode of driving them away. In the midst of a field a little bamboo house, sufficient to shelter its occupant from the rain and scorching sunshine, is perched high up on poles above the rice-stalks. Around each field are placed rows of tall, flexible stakes, which are connected together by a string. Many radiating lines of such stakes extend from the house to those along the borders, and the child or old person on watch has simply to pull any set of these lines in order to frighten away the birds from any part of the field. There are seven species of owls, and when the hooting of one is heard near any house, many of the natives believe that sickness or some other misfortune will certainly come to the inmates of that dwelling. Of eagles and falcons, or kites, eight species are mentioned. One of the kites is very abundant at all the anchorages, and so tame as to light on the rigging of a ship quite near where the sailors are working. When it has caught any offal in its long talons, it does not fly away at once to a perch to consume the delicious morsel at its leisure, like many birds of prey, but is so extremely greedy that it tears off pieces with its beak and swallows them as it slowly sails along in the air.

When we begin to examine the luxuriant flora of these tropical islands, almost the first tree that we notice by the shore is the tall, graceful cocoa-nut palm. Occasionally it is found in small clumps, far from the abode of man, for instead of being reared by his care, it often comes to maturity alone, and then invites him to take up his abode beneath its shade, by offering him at the same time its fruit for food, and its leaves as ample thatching for the only kind of a hut which he thinks he needs in an unchanging, tropical climate.

As it stands along the shore, it invariably inclines toward its parent, the sea, for borne on the waves came the nut from which it sprang, and now fully grown, it seeks to make a due return to its ancestor by leaning over the shore and dropping into the ocean’s bosom rich clusters of its golden fruit. Here, buoyed up by a thick husk which is covered with a water-tight skin, the living kernel safely floats over the calm and the stormy sea, until some friendly wave casts it high up on a distant beach. The hot sun then quickly enables it to thrust out its rootlets into the genial soil of coral sand and fragments of shells, and in a few years it too is seen tossing its crest of plumes high over the white surf, which in these sunny climes everywhere forms the margin of the deep-blue ocean.

When the nut is young, the shell is soft and not separate from the husk. In a short time it turns from a pale green to a light yellow. The shell is now formed, and on its inner side is a thin layer, so soft that it can be cut with a spoon. The natives now call it klapa muda, or the young cocoa-nut, and they rarely eat it except in this condition. As it grows older, the exterior becomes of a wood-color, the husk is dry, and the shell hard and surrounded on the inside with a thick, tough, oily, and most indigestible layer, popularly known as “the meat” of the nut. This is the condition in which it is brought to our markets, but the Malays seldom or never think of eating it in this condition, and only value it for its oil. To obtain this the nut is broken, and the meat scraped out with a knife. This pulp is then boiled in a large pan, when the oil separates, floats on the top, and is skimmed off. This oil is almost the only substance used for lighting in the East, where far more lights are kept burning, in proportion to the foreign population, than in our own temperate zone, notwithstanding our long winter evenings, it being the custom there for each man to light his house and veranda very brilliantly every evening; and, if it is a festive occasion, rows of lamps must be placed throughout his grounds.

The natives also are fond of such display. The common lamp which they have for burning cocoa-nut oil is nothing but a glass tumbler. This is partly filled with water, a small quantity of oil is then poured in, and on this float two small splints that support a piece of pith in a vertical position for a wick. When the oil is first made, it has a sweet, rich taste, but in such a hot climate it soon becomes extremely rancid, and that used for cooking should not be more than two or three days old. The cool, clear water which the young nuts contain is a most refreshing drink in those hot climates, far preferable, according to my taste, to the warm, muddy water usually found in all low lands within the tropics. Especially can one appreciate it when, exposed to the burning sun on a low coral island, he longs for a single draught from the cold sparkling streams among his native New-England hills. He looks around him and realizes that he is surrounded by the salt waters of the ocean—then one of his dark attendants, divining his desire, climbs the smooth trunk of a lofty palm, and brings down, apparently from the sky, a nectar delicious enough for the gods.

This tree is of such importance to the natives that the Dutch officials are required to ascertain as nearly as possible the number of them in their several districts. In 1861 there were in Java and Madura nearly twenty millions of these trees, or more than three to every two natives.

Near the cocoa-nut grows the Pandanus, or “screw-pine,” which may be correctly described as a trunk with branches at both ends. There are two species of it widely distributed over the archipelago. The flowers of one, the P. odoratissimus, are very fragrant and highly prized among the Malays. In some places mats and baskets are made from its leaves. Its woody fruit is of a spherical form, from four to six inches in diameter, and its surface is divided with geometrical precision by projections of a pointed pyramidal or diamond shape.

On the low lands, back from the shore, where the soil has been enriched with vegetable mould, the banana thrives. Unlike the cocoa-nut tree, it is seldom seen where it has not been planted by the hand of man. The traveller, therefore, who is worn out with his long wanderings through the thick, almost impassable, jungles, beholds with delight the long, green, drooping leaves of this tree. He knows that he is near some native hut where he can find a shelter from the hot sun, and slake his thirst with the water of the cocoa-nut, and appease his hunger on bananas and boiled rice, a simple and literally a frugal meal. Out of the midst of these drooping leaves hangs down the top of the main stem, with its fruit decreasing in size to the end. Some near the base are already changing from a dark green to a bright golden yellow. Those are filled with delicious juices, and they melt in your mouth like a delicately-flavored cream. Such bananas as can be purchased in our markets have been so bruised, and taste so little like this fruit at its home in the tropics, or at least in the East Indian islands, that they scarcely serve to remind one of what he has been accustomed to enjoy. The number of the varieties of bananas and the difference between them is as great as among apples in our own land.

Botanists call this tree the Musa paradisiaca, for its fruit is so constantly ripening throughout the year, and is such a common article of food, that it corresponds well to “the tree that yielded her fruit every month,” and whose “leaves were for the healing of the nations.”

Besides these plants, there are also seen on the low lands Aroideæ, Amaranthaceæ, papilionaceous or leguminous plants, and poisonous Euphorbiaceæ. The papaw (Carica papaya) thrives luxuriantly on most soils. The natives are always fond of it, and I found it a most palatable fruit, but the Europeans in the East generally consider it a too coarse or common fruit to be placed on the table. It was evidently introduced by the Portuguese and Spanish from the West Indies, and the Malay name papaya comes from the Spanish papayo.

At the height of one thousand feet ferns appear in very considerable numbers, and here also the useful bamboo grows in abundance, though it is found all the way down to the level of the sea. Practically this is a tree, but botanically it is grass, though it sometimes attains a height of seventy or eighty feet. It is used by the natives for the walls of their huts. For this purpose it is split open and pressed out flat, and other perpendicular and horizontal pieces hold it in place. It is also used for masts, spear-handles, baskets, vessels of all kinds, and for so many other necessary articles, that it seems almost indispensable to them. Its outer surface becomes so hard when partially burned, that it will take a sharp, almost cutting edge, and the weapons of the natives were probably all made in this manner previous to the introduction of iron. At the present time sharpened stakes, ranjaus, of this kind are driven into the ground in the tall grass surrounding a ladang or garden, so that any native with naked feet (except the owner) will spear himself in attempting to approach. I saw one man, on the island of Bum, who had received a frightful, ragged wound in this way.

Above one thousand feet the palms, bananas, and papilionaceous plants become fewer, and are replaced by the lofty fig or waringin, which, with its high top and long branches, rivals the magnificent palms by the sea-shore. The liquidambar also accompanies the fig. Orchidaceous plants of the most wonderful forms appear on the forest-trees, and are fastened to them so closely, that they seem to be parts of them. Here the ferns also are seen in great variety. Loranthaceæ and Melanostomaceæ are found in this zone. To this region belongs the beautiful cotton-wood tree. Its trunk is seldom more than ten or twelve inches in diameter, and rises up almost perpendicularly thirty feet. The bark is of a light olive-green, and remarkably smooth and fair. The limbs shoot out in whorls at right angles to the trunk, and, as they are separated by a considerable space, their open foliage is in strong contrast to the dark, dense jungle out of which they usually rise. They thrive well also along the banks of rivers. In Java these trees are frequently used as telegraph-posts—a purpose for which they are admirably adapted on account of their regularity. Besides, any thing but a living post would quickly decay in these tropical lands. The fruit is a pod, and the fibrous substance it yields is quite like cotton. I found it very suitable for stuffing birds.

Over this region of the fig comes that of oaks and laurels. Orchidaceous plants and melastomas are more abundant here.

Above five or six thousand feet are Rubiaceæ, heaths, and cone-bearing trees; and from this region we pass up into one where small ferns abound, and lichens and mosses cover the rocks and hang from the trees. The tropical world is now beneath us, and we are in the temperate zone.

The tops of all those volcanic mountains that are still in a state of eruption are usually bare; and in others so large a quantity of the sulphur they produce is washed down their sides by the rains that the vegetation is frequently destroyed for some distance below their summits.

One of the great privileges of a residence in the tropics is to enjoy the delicious fruits of those regions in all their perfection. Of all those fruits, in my opinion, the mangostin ought unquestionably to be considered the first. This tree, a Garcinia, is about the size of a pear-tree. Its Malay name is manggusta, whence our own, but it is more generally known in the archipelago by the Javanese name manggis. It flourishes in most of the islands from the south coast of Java to Mindanao, the southernmost of the Philippines. On the continent it yields well as far up the Peninsula of Malacca as Bankok, in Siam, and in the interior to 16° N., but on the coast of the Bay of Bengal only to 14° N. The attempts to introduce it into India have failed, but the fruit is sometimes sent from Singapore after it has been carefully coated with wax to exclude the air. In Ceylon they have only partially succeeded in cultivating it. All the trials to raise it in the West Indies have proved unsuccessful, so that this, the best of all tropical fruits, is never seen on our continent. Its limited geographical range is the more remarkable, for it is frequently seen flourishing in the East Indian islands on all kinds of soils, and there is reason to suppose that it has been introduced into the Philippines within a comparatively late period, for in 1685 Dampier did not notice it on Mindanao. The fruit is of a spherical form, and a reddish-brown color. The outer part is a thick, tough covering containing a white, opaque centre an inch or more in diameter. This is divided into four or five parts, each of which usually contains a small seed. This white part has a slightly-sweet taste, and a rich yet delicate flavor, which is entirely peculiar to itself. It tastes perhaps more like the white interior of a checkerberry than any other fruit in our temperate climate. The thick covering is dried by the natives and used for an astringent.

FRUIT MARKET.

Several fruits claim the second place in this scale. Some Europeans would place the rambutan next the mangostin, and others would prefer the mango or the duku. The rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum) is nearly as large as an apple-tree. The fruit is globular in form, and an inch or an inch and a half in diameter. The outside is a bright-red rind, ornamented with coarse, scattered bristles. Within is a semi-transparent pulp, of a slightly acid taste, surrounding the seed. This tree, like the durian and the mangostin, is wholly confined to the archipelago, and its acid fruit is most refreshing in those hot lands. At Batavia it is so abundant in February and March, that great quantities almost line the streets in the market parts of the city, and small boats are seen filled to overflowing with this bright, strawberry-colored fruit.

The mango-tree (Mangifera indica) is a large, thickly-branching tree, with bright-green leaves. Its fruit is of an elliptical form, and contains a flat stone of the same shape. Before it is ripe it is so keenly acid, that it needs only to be preserved in salt water to be a nice pickle for the table, especially with the universal curry. As it ripens, the interior changes from green to white, and then to a bright yellow. A tough outer skin being removed, there is seen a soft, almost pulpy, but somewhat fibrous mass within. Some of these fruits are extremely rich, and quite aromatic, while others have a sharp smack of turpentine. They even vary greatly in two localities, which may be but a few miles apart. Rumphius informs us that it was introduced into the moluccas by the Dutch in 1655. It has also been introduced into Zanzibar and Madagascar. When the Spaniards first visited the Philippines it was not noticed, but now it is very common in those islands, and considerable quantities of it are shipped to China, where I was frequently assured it was very delicious; but those who have tasted this or any other tropical fruit from only one locality are by no means competent judges. At Singapore I found some very nice ones that had been brought down from Siam. It also flourishes in India, and Mr. Crawfurd thinks, from the fact that the Malay and Javanese names are evidently only corruptions of the old Sanscrit, that it was originally brought into the archipelago from the continent, and should not be regarded as indigenous.

The duku is another highly-esteemed fruit. The tree is tall, and bears a loose foliage. From its trunk and limbs little branchlets grow out, bearing in long clusters the fruit, which is about the size of a robin’s egg. The outer coating of this fruit is thin and leathery, and of a dull-yellow color. This contains several long seeds, surrounded by a transparent pulp, which is sweet or pleasantly acid. The seeds themselves are intensely bitter. The natives, however, invariably prefer the durian to all other fruits. The Durio zibethinus is a very large tree. Its fruit is spherical in form, six or eight inches in diameter, and generally covered with many sharply-pointed tubercles. This exterior is a hard shell. Within it is divided into several parts. On breaking the shell, a seed, as large as a chestnut, is found in each division, surrounded by a pale-yellow substance of the consistency of thick cream, and having an odor of putrid animal matter, so strong that a single fruit is enough to infect the air in a large house. In the season for this fruit the whole atmosphere in the native villages is filled with this detestable odor. The taste of this soft, salvy, half-clotted substance is well described by Mr. Crawfurd as like “fresh cream and filberts.” It seems paradoxical to state that the same substance may violate a man’s sense of smell, and yet gratify his sense of taste at the same time, but the natives certainly are most passionately fond of it, and I once met a foreigner who assured me that when he had once smelled this fruit he could never be satisfied till he had eaten some of it. Its simple odor is generally quite enough for all Europeans. It thrives well in Sumatra, Java, the Spice Islands, and Celebes, and is found as far north as Mindanao. On the continent forests of it exist on the Malay Peninsula, and it is successfully raised as far north in Siam as the thirteenth or fourteenth parallel. On the coast of the Bay of Bengal it is grown as far north as Tenasserim, in Lat. 14° N. It flourishes well on all the kinds of soils in this area, but all attempts have failed to introduce it into India and also into the West Indies. Its Malay name durian comes from duri, a thorn, and is thus applied on account of the sharp, thorny points of the pyramidal tubercles that cover its shell. The fact, that the Malay name is the one used wherever the fruit is known, indicates that it originated in a Malay country, and this view is strengthened by the circumstance that, while I was crossing Sumatra, I passed through large forests mostly composed of these trees in the high lands near the sources of the Palembang River.

Another far-famed fruit is the bread-fruit. It grows on a tree, the Artocarpus incisa, which attains a height of forty or fifty feet. It will be noticed at once by the stranger, on account of its enormous, sharply-lobed leaves, which are frequently a foot wide and a foot and a half long. The fruit has nearly the form of a melon, and is attached by its stem directly to the trunk or limbs. It is regarded of little value by the Malays, but farther east, in the Society Islands, and other parts of the South Sea, it furnishes the natives with their chief sustenance. Just before it is ripe it is cut into slices and fried, and eaten with a thick, black molasses, obtained by boiling down the sap of the gomuti-palm. When prepared in this manner it tastes somewhat like a potato, except that it is very fibrous. The seeds of this fruit in the South Sea are said, when roasted, to be as nice as chestnuts, but I never saw the Malays make any use of them. From the Pacific Islands it has been introduced into the West Indies and tropical America. Another species of this genus, the A. integrifolia, bears the huge “jack-fruit,” which very closely resembles the bread-fruit. Sometimes it attains a weight of nearly seventy-five pounds, so that one is a good load for a coolie. The only part which the natives eat is a sweet, pulpy substance enveloping each seed.

June 16th.—This morning the gigantic mountain on Bali, Gunung Agung, or “The Great Mountain,” towered up abeam of us against the southern sky. According to Mr. Crawford it attains an elevation of twelve thousand three hundred and seventy-nine feet, or four hundred and thirty-three feet higher than the far-famed Peak of Teneriffe.

These mountains are only a continuation of the chain which traverses Java, and Bali may be regarded as almost a part of Java, as it has quite the same flora and fauna, and is only separated from that island by a narrow strait. Here the Asiatic fauna of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java reaches its most eastern boundary. On Lombok, the next island eastward, a wholly different fauna is seen, having well-marked affinities with that of Australia. According to the traditions of the Javanese, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, and Sumbawa, were all formerly united, and afterward separated into nine different parts, and when three thousand rainy reasons shall have passed away they will be reunited. The dates of these separations are given as follows:

Palembang (the eastern end of Sumatra) from Java, A. D. 1192.

Bali from Balembangan (the eastern end of Java), A. D. 1282.

Lombok from Sumbawa, A. D. 1350.

All these dates are absurdly recent, and besides, the separations, in all probability, did not occur in the order given above. When we compare the fauna of the continent with that of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, we find that Sumatra has the greatest number of species identical with those of the Peninsula of Malacca; that Borneo has a somewhat less proportion, and that Java has the largest number peculiar to itself. Thence we conclude that Java was the first of these islands that was separated from the continent, that Borneo was next detached, and Sumatra at the latest period. Bali was probably separated from Java at a yet more recent date.

Mr. Sclater was the first to notice the fact that the dividing line between the Asiatic fauna and that of Australia must be drawn down the Strait of Macassar, and this observation has only been confirmed by all who have collected in those regions since. Mr. A. R. Wallace further ascertained that this line should be continued southward, through the Strait of Lombok, between the island of that name and Bali. He visited the latter island, and thus contrasts its birds with those of Lombok: “In Bali we have barbets, fruit-thrushes, and woodpeckers; on passing over to Lombok these are seen no more, but we have an abundance of cockatoos, honeysuckers, and brush-turkeys (Megapodiidæ), which are equally unknown in Bali, and every island farther west. The strait here is but fifteen miles wide, so that we may pass in two hours from one great division of the earth to another, differing as essentially in their animal life as Europe does from America.”

The royal tiger of Sumatra and Java is also found on that part of Bali nearest Java, but neither this nor any other feline animal exists on Lombok.

Monkeys, squirrels, civets, and others are seen west of this dividing line, but not east of it. Wild hogs are distributed over all the larger islands from Sumatra to New Guinea, and even occur as far eastward as Ceram. The flora of these islands is not divided in this manner, but maintains quite the same character from the northern end of Timur to the eastern end of Java.

In 1845 Mr. Earl pointed out the fact that Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, all stand on a plateau which is only covered by a shallow sea. They therefore not only were formerly connected, as the similarity of their faunæ shows, but are at the present day, and a line on the map, which indicates where the sea reaches a depth of one hundred fathoms, shows exactly where the great basins of the Pacific and Indian Oceans really begin. Northward this line unites the Philippines to Asia, and also proves that Formosa, the Lew-Chew and Japanese Islands, and the Kuriles, are all parts of the same great continent. Judging from what is known of their fauna, Mr. Wallace thinks the separation of the Philippines from the continent occurred before that of Java, and since that epoch they have undergone very considerable changes in their physical geography.

In 1478, when the Hindu religion was driven out of Java, it took refuge in Bali, where it exists to the present day. The natives here, as in India, are divided into four castes. The first and highest includes only the priests; the second, the soldiers; the third, the merchants; and the fourth, and lowest, comprises the common laborers. According to Mr. Crawford, who visited the island, the wives of the soldiers frequently sacrifice themselves by stabbing with the kris, and the body is afterward burned, and “with the princes, the sacrifice of one or two women is indispensable.” The high mountains on Bali contain a number of lakes or tarns, which supply many streams, and the natives are thus enabled to irrigate their land so completely, that about twenty thousand tons of rice are annually exported to other parts of the archipelago, after a population of nearly three-quarters of a million is supplied. In 1861 Java had only a population of three hundred and twenty-five to a square mile, while Bali was supposed to have nearly five hundred, and it is probably the most densely populated island in these seas at the present time.

The Hindu religion also prevails over a part of Lombok. On this island a huge mountain rises up, according to the trigonometrical measurements of Baron van Carnbée, to a height of twelve thousand three hundred and sixty English feet, and probably overtops every other lofty peak in the whole archipelago.

CHAPTER IV.
CELEBES AND TIMUR.

June 18th.—We anchored this evening close in to the coast of Celebes on a shallow plateau, which is really only a slightly-submerged part of the island itself. This word Celebes is not of native origin, and was probably introduced by the Portuguese, who were the earliest Europeans that visited this island. It first appears in the historical and descriptive writings of De Barros,[14] who informs us that it was not discovered until 1525, fourteen years after the Portuguese first came to the Moluccas; but at that time they were only anxious to find the regions where the clove and the nutmeg grew. Afterward they were induced to search for this island from the rumors that came of the gold found here; and, indeed, to this day, gold is obtained in the northern and southwestern peninsulas. At first, Celebes was supposed to consist of many islands, and this belief appears to have given it a name in a plural form. It consists of a small, irregular, central area and four long limbs or peninsulas, and De Cauto[15] very aptly describes it as “resembling in form a huge grasshopper.” Two of these peninsulas extend to the south, and are separated from each other by the Gulf of Boni: one takes an easterly direction, and the other stretches away six degrees to the north and northeast. In the southwest peninsula, which is the only one that has been completely explored, two languages are spoken—the Mangkasara, in the native tongue, or Mangkasa, in the Malay (of which word, “Macassar,” the name of the Dutch capital, is only a corruption), and the Wugi or Bugi, which was originally more particularly limited to the coast of the Gulf of Boni. North of Macassar, in the most western part of the island, is another people—the Mandhar—who speak another language. On the island of Buton, which ought to be considered a part of the peninsula east of the Gulf of Boni, another language is spoken. The eastern peninsula is unexplored. The northern contains the people speaking the Gorontalo and the Menado languages.

The primitive religion of most of these natives is supposed to have been some form of Hinduism. De Cauto says: “They have no temples, but pray looking up to the skies with their heads raised,” which he regards as conclusive evidence that “they had a knowledge of the true God.” According to the records of the Macassar people,[16] the Mohammedan religion was first taught them by a native of Menangkabau, a province on the plateau in the interior of Sumatra, north of the present city of Padang. This occurred just before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1525, and the native annals say that the doctrine of the false Prophet and of Christianity were presented to the prince of Macassar at the same time, and that his advisers pressed him to accept Mohammedanism, because “God would not allow error to arrive before truth.”

In the interior live a people called by the coast tribes Turaju, who are represented as head-hunters, and even cannibals. Barbosa[17] makes a similar statement in regard to all the natives of this island in his time. He says, when they came to the Moluccas to trade, they were accustomed to ask the king of those islands to kindly deliver up to them the persons he had condemned to death, that they might gratify their palates on the bodies of such unfortunates, “as if asking for a hog.”

As we steamed up the coast to Macassar, the mountains in the interior came grandly into view. They appear much more connected into chains than in Java. One of them, Lompo-batung, rises to a height of eight thousand two hundred feet above the sea, and is probably the loftiest peak on the whole island.

The harbor of Macassar is formed by a long, curving coral reef, with its convex side from the shore. At a few places this reef rises above the surface of the water and forms low islands; but, in the heavy gales of the western monsoon, the sea frequently breaks over it into the road with such violence as to drive most of the native praus on shore. Near it were fleets of fishing-boats, and this was the first place in these tropical seas where I found a fish that, according to my taste, was as nice as those which come from the cold waters that bathe our New-England shores.

In the road were many praus of forty or fifty tons’ burden, and some even twice as large. In the beginning of the western monsoon they go in great numbers to the Arru Islands, the principal rendezvous[18] for the people of Ceram, Goram, the Ki Islands, Tenimber, Baba, and the adjacent coast of New Guinea. Mr. Wallace, who was particularly seeking the birds of paradise, went in one of these rude vessels to the Arrus, a distance of one thousand miles. When Mr. Jukes was at Port Essington, in January, 1845, two of these praus were there. One had made the passage from Macassar in ten, and another in fifteen days. But, on these long voyages, many never return. In the last of the month a third came into that port and reported that four others, more than had arrived safely, had just foundered during a heavy gale, and that the crew of only one was salved. Many go every year to the islands off the eastern end of Ceram and to the neighboring coast of Papua, and sometimes along its northern shores to Geelvink Bay. These long voyages indicate that the Bugis are now what the Malays were when the Portuguese first came to the East, namely, the great navigators and traders of the archipelago. They carry to all these localities English calicoes and cotton goods of their own manufacture, also Chinese gongs and large quantities of arrack. They bring in return tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl shell, pearls, birds of paradise, and tripang, which appears to be the common Malay name for all kinds of Holothurians, or “sea-cucumbers.” These latter animals abound on every coral reef throughout the archipelago, just above and below low-water level. As many as twenty different sorts are recognized of perhaps half as many species. That kind is considered the most valuable which is found on the banks of coral sand which are bare, or nearly bare, at low tide, and are covered with a short, green sea-weed. After the animals are collected, the intestines are removed, and they are boiled in sea-water, in some places with the leaves of the papaw, and in others with the bark of a mangrove-tree which gives them a bright-red color. After they have been boiled, they are buried in the ground till the next day, when they are spread out to dry in the sun. Sometimes they are not buried in the ground, but dried at once on a framework of bamboo-splints over a fire. They are now ready to be shipped to China, the only market for this disgusting article. There the Celestials make of them one of their many favorite soups. It is said that the Chinese cooks boil them some time with pieces of sugar-cane to partially neutralize their rank flavor. Many are also gathered in the Gulf of Siam and sent up the China Sea. Mr. Crawfurd has been unable to discover any mention of tripang by the Portuguese writers, and this he regards as one proof, among others, “that the Chinese, who chiefly carry on this trade, had not yet settled in the archipelago when the Portuguese first appeared in it.” There are yearly shipped from Macassar some fourteen thousand piculs of this article, of a value of nearly six hundred thousand dollars! A few cargoes, chiefly of coffee, from Menado and the interior, are exported each year directly to Europe, but ships usually have to go to China for a return-freight. In 1847 Macassar was made a free port, in imitation of Singapore.

Our steamer came alongside a well-built iron pier, the only one of any kind I had yet seen in the East. Though the mail then came but once a month, there seemed to be no great excitement. A small group of soldiers, with red and yellow epaulets, came down and looked on in a most unconcerned manner, while a number of coolies gathered and began carrying the cargo on shore—for trucks and drays are modern innovations that have not yet appeared in these distant regions, not even to any considerable degree in Batavia. The sea-water here is remarkably pure and clear. As we were hauling in to the pier, several boys kept swimming round and round the ship, and shouting out, “Képing tuam! képing tuan!” that is, “A small piece of money, sir! a small piece of money, sir!” and I found that when I threw a copper coin as large as a cent, so that it would strike the water edgewise, even at a distance of ten feet from them, some one would invariably catch it before it reached the bottom. This is quite as wonderful skill as is shown by any of the natives in the South Seas.

From the pier a street leads up to a large common, and on the right side is Fort Rotterdam, which was built soon after 1640, when the Dutch first formed a settlement on the island, though they had been trading with the natives since 1607. In 1660 they had driven away their rivals the Portuguese, had conquered the natives of Macassar, and fully established their authority over all this part of the island. Opposite the fort is the “Societeit,” or Club-House—for every place of any considerable size in the Netherlands India has one or two of these pleasant resorts, where newspapers and periodicals are received, and all the social Europeans gather in the cool evenings to enjoy a “pijt”—a small glass of gin with bitters—or “a potje van bier,” in just the way that Irving pictures the happy moments of Rip van Winkle. Any member may introduce a stranger, who is at once considered one of the fraternity; and I formed many pleasant acquaintances and passed many pleasant hours in this way. Beyond the club-house, on a street beautifully shaded with tamarind-trees, are the hotel and residence of the governor. I called on him, for, as I was travelling under the patronage of the government, it was expected that I should present myself before the highest official of each place that I might chance to visit, and thus express my sense of the kindness of the government toward me; and, at the same time, do what the etiquette of the land required. The governor here most kindly offered me post-horses free, if I would stop and travel in the territory under his immediate command. After the heat of the day was passed, two of my merchant-friends gave me a ride through the town, and a mile or two out into the adjoining country, to visit the tombs of the native princes who ruled that region before the arrival of Europeans. These tombs had, originally, been enclosed in a house, but the roof was already gone, and the walls were rapidly crumbling away. At the foot and head of each grave was a square pillar. Near by were the ruins of a building which may have been the residence of one of these princes. It was, like the house enclosing the tombs, about thirty feet square, with an entrance on one side. In the front, and right and left sides, were two ranges of holes, probably designed for windows. The upper ones were small, but the lower ones were a foot and a half in diameter. Its walls were eighteen inches thick, and of the common coral rock. Several steps led up to the entrance, and this and the windows were grotesquely ornamented. De Cauto informs us that these people were accustomed “to burn their dead, and collect the ashes in urns, which they inter in separate fields, where they erect chapels, and for a year the relatives bring food, which they place on their tombs, and which the dogs, cats, and birds carry off.”

We then took a delightful walk through the adjoining forest of waringin-trees and cocoa-nut and betel-nut palms, and again and again I wished I could have photographic views of the scenery around us to show to my friends, for words utterly fail to convey any idea of the rich grouping of the palms and shrubbery, and festooning vines about us, as the setting sun shot into the luxuriant foliage long, horizontal pencils of golden light.

Here we found the coffee-tree growing wild, and near by we came to the tomb of a rich native merchant. It was a low, square building, surmounted by a dome, and the whole enclosed by a wall about two feet high, whose outer surface was covered with blue plates of porcelain. As we approached, a monotonous, nasal chanting greeted our ears. It was made by a native priest, who was repeating long prayers from the Koran, by the grave of his departed friends. The notes of his minor, melancholy chant echoed and reëchoed widely through the quiet forest, and were the more impressive because they seemed to come from the abode of the dead. He invited us in, and showed us his books, which were written by hand, and yet all the characters were as neat and regular as copperplate. In the grounds was a papaw-tree with a branch which bore at its summit leaves and fruit like the parent stem.

On the 20th of June we sailed for Kupang, a port near the southern end of the island of Timur. The southern extremity of the southwestern peninsula of Celebes is low, with mountains of moderate height rising in the interior. As we steamed past it on our way southward to Sapi Strait, between Sumbawa on one side and Commodo and Floris[19] on the other, we found that the eastern monsoon had already freshened to a strong breeze, but it was steady, and the sky and sea reminded one of “the trades.” Many flying-fish sprang out of the sea, as if too happy to remain in their more proper element.

On the second morning from Macassar, Gunong Api, “The Burning Mountain,” rose up majestically before us. Its high top, five thousand eight hundred feet above the level of the sea, was hidden by horizontal clouds, strati, which parted while we were observing the mountain, and let down a band of bright sunlight over its dark sides. It is not a single but a double peak—the one to the northwest appearing from the deep valleys and ravines in its sides to be the older. On the eastern flanks of this peak, near the shore, there appears to be an old crater, whose outer wall has been washed away by the sea. For one-third of the distance from the shore to the top of this peak there is some shrubbery in the bottoms of the deep ravines; but the remaining two-thirds are quite bare. At its top, this mountain ends in a small truncated cone. The southwestern peak seems to have recently formed, for, from its top down to the shore, on the southeast side, there is one continuous sheet of fine volcanic materials, scored only by narrow grooves with perpendicular sides. When viewed in profile, the unbroken sweep of its sides, from its summit to the sea, was most majestic. It was so regular, that it was difficult to believe it had not been shaped by the hand of man. By this time we were in the midst of the strait between Sumbawa and Commodo, and soon we passed on the left hand Gillibanta, whose highest point is only twelve hundred feet above the sea. Its name in Javanese means the “one that disputes the way.” It is merely the remnant of an old crater, whose northwestern wall has disappeared beneath the sea. The southerly dip of the successive overflows of lava was plainly to be seen.

On our right was Sumbawa, with its high mountains, and near its southeastern end is Sapi, or Cattle Bay, which gives its name to the strait. In a peninsula on the northern side of this island is Mount Tomboro, which suffered such a terrible eruption, and caused so much destruction of human life, in 1815. The first intimation that the people of Java received of this frightful phenomenon was a series of explosions, so closely resembling the reports of cannon, that at Jokyokarta, in Java, a distance of four hundred and eighty miles, troops were marched toward a neighboring post that was supposed to have been attacked. At Surabaya, gunboats were sent out to assist ships that were thought to be trying to defend themselves against pirates in the Madura Strait; and at two places on the coast, boats put off to search for ships that were imagined to be in distress. These reports occurred on the 5th of April, and continued for five days, when the sky over the eastern part of Java began to be darkened by falling ashes, and for four days they could not see the sun. Mr. Crawfurd says that at Surabaya the sky for several months did not become as clear as it usually is in the southeast monsoon. Northward from Sumbawa the reports accompanying this eruption were heard as far as the island of Ternate, near Gilolo, a distance of seven hundred and twenty geographical miles, and so distinctly, that the Resident sent out a boat to look for the ship which was supposed to have been firing signals. To the westward these reports were heard at Mokomoko, a post near Bencoolen, which is no less than nine hundred and seventy geographical miles in a right line—as far as from New York to the Keys off the southern extremity of Florida. The ashes that were poured into the air during this eruption fell to the eastward, or against the prevailing wind, as far as the middle of Floris, about two hundred and ten geographical miles; and westward on Java, in the mountains of Cheribon, about two hundred and seventy miles from the volcano. So great was the quantity of ashes thrown out at this time, that it is estimated that on the island of Lombok, about ninety miles distant, forty-four thousand persons perished in the famine that followed. Dr. Junghuhn thinks that, within a circle described by a radius of two hundred and ten miles, the average depth of the ashes was at least two feet; this mountain, therefore, must have ejected several times its own mass, and yet no subsidence has been noticed in the adjoining area, and the only change that has been observed is, that during the eruption Tomboro lost two-thirds of its previous height.[20] The captain of a ship dispatched from Macassar to the scene of this terrible phenomenon states: “On approaching the coast, I passed through great quantities of pumice-stone floating on the sea, which had at first the appearance of shoals, so much so that I sent a boat to examine one, which, at the distance of less than a mile, I took for a dry sand-bank, upward of three miles in length, with black rocks in several parts of it.” This is the kind of stones I saw floating over the sea as we were approaching the Strait of Sunda. Besides the quantities of this porous, foam-like lava, that are thrown directly into the sea by such eruptions, great quantities remain on the sides of the volcano, and on the surrounding mountains, and much of that is conveyed, during the rainy monsoon, by the rivers to the ocean. The land at the southeast extremity of Sumbawa appears to be composed of a light-colored clay, the strata of which have been greatly plicated.

Several ugly rocks rise in this strait. The largest is named, in the native tongue, “The Eye of the Devil,” and it winked at us most wickedly out of the white surf as we passed. While in the Java Sea, before entering the strait, we had only light winds; but, as we came into the Indian Ocean, we experienced a strong breeze from the southeast. The current, which had been with us and against the wind, was met off the southwest promontory of Floris by a current with the wind from the east, and at once the sea rose up into pyramidal masses, or formed waves that rolled over and broke against the wind, like those from the windward quarter of a ship which is sailing “on a wind.” High mountains also line the Commodo and Floris side, but the scenery became especially grand as we rounded the southwest promontory of the latter island. It reminded me of the pictures of the precipitous coast of Scotland, except that, while those rocks are all bare, these are all covered with the trailing plants that have gained a foothold in the crevices of these precipices. Floris is also called Endé, from the principal port of that name on its southern coast. The trade of this place is mostly with Sandal-wood Island. It is also called Mangerai, the name of the chief place on its northern shore. The people of the latter port trade mostly with the Bugis and Malays. In the coves and bays on the northern coast near this strait many pirates formerly took shelter. They were merely Malays or Bugis from Bali, Sumbawa, or Celebes. In the interior there is a people whose hair is frizzled. A similar one also live in the interior and mountainous part of Solor, Pintar, Lombata, and Ombay. Those living on the sea-coast belong to the brown or Malay race. On the south coast there is a tribe called Rakka, who are reported to be the worst kind of cannibals, accustomed not only to devour their enemies, but the bodies of their deceased relatives.

At sunset we could just discern the outline of Sumba or Sandal-wood Island. It appeared uniformly high, as it has always been described. Mr. Jukes passed near its southeast point, while on a voyage in her Britannic Majesty’s ship Fly from northern Australia to Surabaya. He describes it as composed of ranges of hills that rise immediately from the sea to a height of two thousand feet. The strata of these hills are nearly level, and appeared to be composed of comminuted coral. This would indicate that the island had undergone a great elevation during the later tertiary period. It is probably composed mostly of volcanic rocks, like the adjacent islands. Its area is about four thousand geographical square miles. The most frequented harbor is near the middle of the northern shore. Vessels go there from Surabaya, in the latter part of the western monsoon, to purchase the active little ponies peculiar to this island, and return in the beginning of the eastern monsoon, after having remained there about three months. These horses are considered more valuable than those from any other part of the archipelago, except the Batta lands, in the interior of Sumatra. When a ship arrives, her crew at once scatter over the whole island, visiting all the various campongs, or villages, to make their purchases. A Dutch officer, who has travelled over the island, informs me that these people have quite different features from the natives of the adjoining island of Savu, especially the females, whose faces are much broader. They are said to have a peculiar language, and to be a separate nation; but I judge from all I could learn that they form merely a subdivision of the Malay family. The captain of an American whale-ship, which was wrecked on one of the southern points, complained to me that the natives stole every thing he brought on shore, and threatened him and his crew with violence; but I think it was only because he could not speak Malay, and because each party misunderstood the intentions of the other.

At noon the next day we saw the lofty peak of Mount Romba rising up on Floris. It is said to be only seven thousand feet in height, but it appeared to us as high as Mount Slamat in Java. At the eastern end of the island, opposite Adenara and Solor, is a small Portuguese settlement, called Laruntuka. The extreme length of the island is about two hundred geographical miles, and its area a fraction larger than Sandal-wood Island. It yields much sandal-wood, and the natives state that copper is found there, but gold and iron are not known to occur. While in this part of the Indian Ocean, generally in the morning, we had strong breezes from the southeast, which moderated at noon, and increased again at sunset. They varied considerably in the hour they began, and in their strength and duration, and were quite unlike the steady trades.

At 2 P. M., on our third day from Macassar, we sighted the island of Semao, off the bay of Kupang. Its northern end is only a rock, sparsely covered with trees. It has no mountains, and most of its beaches are composed of coral sand.

After dark that evening we anchored near the village of Kupang, which is situated on the south side of a great bay, some twelve miles wide and twenty long. This is a fine harbor now in the eastern monsoon, but during the western monsoon it is so slightly protected by the northern end of Semao that the sea may be said to roll directly in from the open ocean. At such times the steamer is obliged to seek a partial shelter under the lee of a small island on the north side of the bay. Whalers, and merchant-ships bound to and from China in the western monsoon, however, frequently call here, because it is the only harbor of any kind near the southern end of the island. If the projected line of steamers between northern Australia, Surabaya, Batavia, and Singapore, is established, this port would be one of the places they would visit. The village is situated on a sandy beach, that is terminated on either hand by cliffs of coral rock, which the sea has worn out into caves and small projecting points of the most grotesque forms. It has a population estimated at from six to seven thousand. Its chief exports are tripang, beeswax from the interior, and a sandal-wood, which is said to be the best in the whole archipelago. They raise several kinds of the nicest oranges. The Mandarin orange, probably brought originally from China, is the most delicious of any kind of this fruit that I ever tasted. I doubt very much whether our West India Islands, or Sicily, or any other part of the world, can compete with Timur in the rich flavor of its oranges. The hills around the village are only covered with a scanty vegetation, through which the coral rock outcrops, and in every direction the whole country, except in the valleys, presents a most barren and uninviting aspect, compared to the richly-clothed shores of Java, and most of the other islands we have seen. Indeed, none of the hills and high ridges throughout all the southern half of the island are covered with such dense forests as are seen in the eastern and northern parts of Java, and the middle and northern parts of Celebes, and over all the higher parts of Borneo and Sumatra.

As we passed through Sapi Strait, I noticed that, although both shores were green, yet forests appeared to be wanting both on Sumbawa and Floris, and this is also said to be true of Sandal-wood Island. It is also asserted that this is somewhat the condition of the eastern end of Java and the southern end of Celebes. Probably the cause of this partial sterility is chiefly owing to the circumstance that the southeast monsoon, which continues here most of the year, from about March till November, comes over the dry, desert-like interior of Australia, and does not become saturated with moisture on its passage over the Arafura Sea. Most of the precipitation, therefore, that does take place on Timur, must occur on the southeast side of the water-shed, and it is possible that extensive forests may exist on that part of the island. The northern half of the island, which is owned by the Portuguese, is far more fertile, and if it were thickly inhabited, and properly cultivated, might yield large crops of coffee. On landing, the most surprising of all the objects that meet the eye are the natives. At that time there were at least six different kinds in this same village, besides descendants of Malay mothers, and Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and probably American fathers, of every possible degree of mixture, a perfect Gordian knot for the ablest ethnologist. Each of these varieties of natives had some peculiarity in dress, and one wore the hair long and frizzled; but I doubt whether they could be referred to the true Papuan type. They appeared to be fair specimens of the aborigines, who have been already mentioned as inhabiting the interior of Floris, Solor, Omblata, Pintar, and Ombay. The natives of Savu are described as belonging to this same group, which Mr. Crawfurd calls the Negro-Malayan race. The Rajah of Savu was at Kupang while we were there, and certainly was nearly of pure Malay blood.

Contrary to what would be supposed, from its position, the island of Rotti, off the southern end of Timur, is inhabited by a lank-haired race, who are probably Malays. They were represented to me, by the Resident of Kupang, as a most peaceable people, and very different in this respect from the wild natives of Timur. On the southeast coast of Timur, near Mount Alias, there is said to be a tribe of black people whose hair is frizzled, and, instead of being evenly distributed over the scalp, is collected into little tufts, a characteristic which seems to separate the Papuans from all other people. Mr. Earl says[21] that some of the people on the table-land back of Dilli have “opaque yellow complexions, the exposed parts of the skin being covered with light-brown spots or freckles,[22] and the hair is straight, fine, and of a reddish hue, or dark-auburn color. Every intermediate variety of hair and complexion between this and the black, or deep-chocolate color, and the short tufted hair of the mountain Papuan, is found in Timur.” This statement would indicate that all the intermediate shades of difference were the results of a mixture of the Malayan and Papuan blood, and this seems to be the probable origin of the whole Negro-Malayan race. Its position in that part of the archipelago nearest Papua is in entire accordance with this hypothesis.

Tradition says that the Rajah of Kupang formerly sacrificed a young virgin to the sharks and crocodiles once every year, but this was generally regarded as a fable, until a gentleman visited the island of Semao, some twenty years ago, and asserted that a rajah pointed out to him a place on the beach of a bay near the southeast point of that island, where “it was their custom after harvest to bring sugar-cane, rice, fowls, eggs, pigs, dogs, and a little child, and offer them to the evil spirits,” and the rajah further declared, that he had witnessed this murderous rite himself.

As we were to remain only one day, and I was chiefly interested in collecting shells, I at once engaged a Malay guide to conduct me to a village near the shore, a mile westward toward Semao. Our road was a bridle-path, a few large stones having been removed, but the ragged coral rock everywhere projects so completely through the thin soil, that it was a constant wonder to me how the natives could travel barefoot with such apparent ease. We soon came to half a dozen circular huts, enclosed by a low stone wall. They were the most wretched abodes for human beings that I saw in all my journeys over the archipelago. The walls, instead of being made of boards or flattened bamboos, as in the other islands, are composed of small sticks about three feet high, driven into the ground. These supported a conical roof, thatched with palm-leaves. Ugly-looking pigs, with long bristles on their backs, were rooting about these detestable hovels. Soon after, we passed a burial-place. A low wall enclosed a small irregular plat, that was filled with earth. This contained one or more graves, each of which had for its foot and head stones small square pyramidal blocks of wood, with the apex fixed in the ground. The next village we entered contained only a dozen huts. A pack of wolf-like dogs saluted us with a fierce yelping and barking, and my attendant, after much shouting and bustle, roused the inmates of one of these miserable dwellings. The men were gone to fish, but the women and children came out to gaze at us, and when their dull apprehensions finally allowed them to realize that we had come to purchase shells, and had a good supply of small copper coins, they briskly hunted about, and soon brought me a large number of nautilus-shells of enormous size. The children were nearly all entirely naked, and the women only wore a sarong, fastened at the waist and descending to the knees. This scanty clothing they supplied by coyly folding their arms across their breasts as they approached to sell their shells. Those of the nautilus, they all agreed in saying, did not come from their own shores, but from Rotti; and a gentleman, who had been along all the neighboring shores, assured me that he had seen the natives there dive for them, in about two fathoms at low tide, and bring them up alive, and that in this way great numbers are gathered for food.

The latter part of the western monsoon, or the changing of the monsoons, was recommended to me as the most favorable time to collect these rare animals. Besides the nautilus, I obtained many species of Pteroceras, Strombus, and many beautiful cones and cypræas.

The coral rocks on the hills that we crossed contained specimens apparently of living species, at a height which I judge was five hundred feet above the level of the sea. I marked the whole in my notebook as merely a coral reef of very recent elevation. Since returning, and comparing this observation with the careful description of that region given by Mr. Jukes,[23] in his voyage of the Fly, I find he expresses the same view, having seen this same late formation at an estimated height of six hundred feet above the sea; and a plateau, which rises in the interior to the height of one thousand feet, he also suspects is of the same origin. Mr. Schneider, however, has described a “kalk formatie,” about Kupang, which, from its position on the map, would seem to be identical with that seen by Mr. Jukes and myself. This formation Mr. Schneider refers to the age of the “Coral Rag,” of the Jura, in England. Other fossiliferous strata he regards as belonging to the old Oölitic period, or the Lias, and underlying all he thinks is a “diorite, or dioritic porphyry and amorphous dioritic porphyry—the last, like that found in Humboldt’s Bay, on the north coast of New Guinea, and much like the amorphous dioritic porphyry of Australia.” Copper-veins are found more or less wherever the Jurassic beds appear, but in the greatest quantity nearest the diorite.

On the evening of the 24th we steamed out of Kupang Bay, and along the northwest coast of Timur, for Dilli; and all the way to that port we were so completely under the lee of the land, that we had only calms, and light airs from the southeast and east-northeast. With these light winds we always had a very clear sky; but on coming round the southwestern end of Floris, and also on entering Kupang Bay, each time when there was a strong breeze from the east, the sky was remarkably thick and hazy. Our captain, who has made many voyages, at all seasons, in these seas, informs me that the sky is almost always thick when the eastern monsoon has become strong. This coast of Timur is not low, like the north coast of Java, but rises immediately up from the sea, in a succession of hills. No gigantic and lofty peaks can be seen, as in Java, and in all the islands east to and including Ombay; the peaks along the water-shed, on Timur, generally rising to not more than four or five thousand feet, and Lakaan, which is regarded as the highest in that chain, is supposed to be only six thousand. The soil appears to be very infertile, yet when the sun was approaching the western horizon, and the cumuli, floating in the pure air, slowly drew along their changing shadows over the innumerable hills and valleys, the whole scene was nearly as delightful as my first view of the tropics in coming up the Strait of Sunda. There is no road in the interior of the island, and every one who will travel the shortest distance, must go on horseback along the sandy beaches.

This afternoon we passed Pulo Gula Batu, “Sugar-Loaf Island.” It is quite high, with steep, almost perpendicular sides, which have a white, chalky appearance, and appear to be composed of strata of coral rock, which would indicate that it had recently been elevated above the sea. At sunset we entered Ombay Passage, the one that ships from England and America usually choose when going to China in the western monsoon, and frequently when returning in the eastern monsoon. One was just then drifting down into the Indian Ocean, on her homeward voyage. This was the first vessel we had seen since we passed down Sapi Strait, and left the Java Sea. It was then nearly calm, and yet I saw flying-fish come out of the water and go a considerable distance before plunging into it again, thus proving that they must sustain themselves in the air chiefly by a vibrating motion of their great pectoral fins. The sun was now sinking behind the high, dark peaks of the island of Pintar.

At daylight next morning we were steaming into a little bay surrounded by hills of fifteen hundred to two thousand feet. At the head of the bay and around its southern shore extended a narrow strip of level land, bordering the bases of these high hills. On the low land are two miserable forts, and a few houses and native huts. These comprise the city of Dilli, the Portuguese capital in all these waters. Of all the nations in Europe, the Portuguese were the first to discover the way to the Indies by sea. Then, for a time, they enjoyed an undisputed monopoly over the Eastern trade; but now the northern half of this island, the eastern end of Floris, the city of Macao in China, and Goa in Hindustan, are the only places of importance in all the East that continue in their hands. The common, or low Malay language, has been more affected by the Portuguese than any other nation, for the simple reason that those early navigators brought with them many things that were new to the Malays, who therefore adopted the Portuguese names for those articles. The last governor of this place had run away a few months before we arrived, because he had received no pay for half a year, though his salary was only five hundred guilders per month; and a merchant at Macassar told me that, when he arrived at that city, he did not have the means to pay his passage back to Europe. The first inquiry, therefore, that was made, was whether we had brought a new governor. The captain’s reply was, that he had but one passenger in the first cabin, and the only place he appeared to care to see in that region was the coral reef at the mouth of the harbor.

The native boats that came off with bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges, and fowls, were all very narrow, only as wide as a native at the shoulders. Each was merely a canoe, dug out of a single small tree, and built up on the sides with pieces of wood and palm-leaves. They were all provided with outriggers. It was then low water, and the reef was bare. It had not been my privilege to visit a coral reef, and I was most anxious to see one, but I could not make up my mind to risk myself in such a dangerous skiff. The captain, with his usual kindness, however, offered me the use of one of his large boats; and as we neared the reef, and passed over a wide garden richly-tinted with polyps, with here and there vermilion star-fishes scattered about, and bright-hued fishes darting hither and thither like flashes of light, a deep thrill of pleasure ran along my nerves, which I shall never forget to the end of my days. Here in an hour I collected three species of beautiful star-fishes, and sixty-five kinds of shells, almost all of the richest colors. The coral rocks, thus laid bare by the receding tide, were all black, and not white, like the fragments of coral seen on shores. This reef is scarcely covered at high water, and therefore breaks off all swell from the ocean; but, unfortunately, the entrance is narrow, and the harbor is too small for large ships. Only two vessels were there at that time. One was a brig from Amboina, that had come for buffaloes, or for sapis, and the other was a small topsail schooner from Macassar, that had come for coffee, which is raised in considerable quantities on the plateau back of Dilli, and is brought down on the backs of horses. Long lines of them were seen ascending and descending the winding paths on the steep hill-sides back of the village. These declivities were sparsely covered with trees, but a thick grove of cocoa-nut palms grew on the low land bordering the bay. The name Dilli, according to Mr. Crawfurd, is identical with that of the Malay state on the northeastern side of Sumatra, which we call Delli, and he suspects from this fact that this area was settled by a colony of Malays from Sumatra in the earliest times. The word Timur, in the Malay, means “East,” and this island was probably the limit of their voyages in that direction, hence its name. Immediately off the harbor of Dilli lies Pulo Kambing, or Goat Island, a common name for many islands in the archipelago. On both this island and Pintar the highest peaks are at the southern end. North of Dilli the coast is steep, and the mountains rise abruptly from the sea. The sides of all these elevations are deeply scored with valleys that have been formed by the denuding action of rain.

From Dilli we steamed northward along the southeast coast of Wetta, a high, mountainous island. Its coasts are occupied by Malays, and its interior by a black, frizzled-haired people, allied to the inhabitants of Timur. The bloody practice of “head-hunting” still exists among them. North of Timur is Kissa, the most important island in this part of the archipelago. In the early part of the present century this was the seat of a Dutch residency. It is a low island, and the rice and maize consumed by its inhabitants are chiefly imported from Wetta. Its people, however, carry on a very considerable trade with the surrounding islands, and are said to be far in advance of the natives of Amboina in point of industry. Southeast of Kissa lies Letti, for the most part high and hilly, but level near the sea. Kloff[24] describes the natives as tall and well formed, and having light-brown complexions. The men wear no other dress than a piece of cloth wrapped around the waist. The women sometimes wear, in addition to this dress, a kabaya, open in front. Polygamy is not found, and adultery is punishable with death or slavery. When the Dutch occupied these islands, they induced the natives to change these sentences into exile to the Banda Islands, where men were needed to cultivate the nutmeg-trees. Neither Mohammedanism nor Hinduism has been introduced into these islands; they only pay homage to an image of human shape placed on a heap of stones that has been raised under a large tree near the centre of the village. When a marriage or death, or any remarkable event occurs, a large hog or buffalo, which has been kept and fattened for the purpose, is slaughtered. They are especially anxious to obtain elephants’ teeth, and hoard them up as the choicest treasures.

The morning after leaving Dilli, Roma appeared on our starboard hand. It is very high and mountainous. In 1823 it suffered very severely from a violent hurricane, which also caused a frightful destruction on Letti. On the latter island the cocoa-nut trees were levelled to the ground over considerable areas. This disaster was followed by a drought, which destroyed all their crops, and produced great mortality among the cattle, through lack of food. The hurricane also caused the bees to desert the island for a time—a serious loss to the inhabitants, as wax and honey are among their chief exports. These are taken to the Arru Islands, and thence to Macassar and Amboina. When a chief dies, his wife takes his place in the council, a privilege rarely granted to a woman among these Eastern nations. East of Letti is Lakor, a dry coral bank, raised twenty feet above the sea.

Damma soon after came into view. It is also high and mountainous, and has a lofty volcanic peak at its northeastern extremity. In 1825 it was pouring forth great quantities of gas. At its foot is a sulphur-spring, such as exist at many places in Java and Celebes, in the immediate vicinity of existing volcanic action. The doctor of Captain Kloff’s ship, the Dourga, sent some of the crew to bathe in this spring, and he states that “though they were so affected with rheumatism as to be not only unfit for duty but in a state of great misery, the use of this water contributed greatly to the improvement of their health.” Springs of this kind are found in the district of Pekalongan, west of Mount Prau, and are frequented by many foreigners, but I never heard that any remarkable cure has ever been effected by the use of their waters. The nutmeg-tree grows wild on Damma, and the canari also thrives here. Thirty years after the Dutch deserted this island, the whole population were found to have completely relapsed into barbarism, but some of the natives of Moa, Letti, Roma, and Kissa, continue to be Christians, and five or six native schoolmasters are now located among those islands. Southeast of Damma lies Baba. Its people have the odd custom of rubbing lime into their hair, even from infancy. An English vessel that was trading here was boarded by these wild natives, and all her crew were butchered. Another vessel suffered a like fate at Timur-laut, that is, “Timur lying to seaward,” an island about one hundred miles long, and one-third as wide in its broadest part. It is customary here for each family to preserve the head of one of their ancestors in their dwelling, and, as if to remind them all of his valorous deeds and their own mortality, this ghastly skull is placed on a scaffold opposite the entrance. When a young woman marries, each ankle is adorned with heavy copper rings, “to give forth music as she walks.” Their war customs are like those of the Ceramese. It is said that among the mountains of this island a black, frizzled-haired people exist. If this should prove true, they will probably be found to be like the inhabitants of Timur and Ombay, and not referable to the Papuan type. The inhabitants of all these islands are constantly separated by petty feuds, or carrying on an open warfare with each other.

We were now fully in the Banda Sea, and on the 28th of June the summit of the Gunong Api, or “Burning Mountain” of that group, appeared above the horizon, but, as I afterward revisited these beautiful islands, a description of them is deferred to a future page. As we steamed away from the Bandas, we passed out of the region of continuous dry weather and began to enter one where the wet and dry seasons are just opposite to what they are in all the wide area extending from the middle part of Sumatra to the eastern end of Timur, including the southern half of Borneo and the southern peninsulas of Celebes. In all that region the eastern monsoon brings dry weather, though occasional showers may occur; but at Amboina, and on the south coast of Ceram and Buru, this same wind bears along clouds that pour down almost incessant floods. At Amboina I was assured that sometimes it rained for two weeks at a time, without apparently stopping for five minutes, and from what I experienced myself I can readily believe that such a phenomenon is not of rare occurrence.

In the northern part of Celebes, at Ternate, and in the northern part of Gillolo, and the islands between it and New Guinea, and also on the shores of the western part of that great island, the wet and dry seasons are not well defined. This exceptional area is mostly included within the parallels of latitude two degrees north and two degrees south of the equator. North of it the wind at this time of year is from the southwest, instead of from the southeast. This dry southeast monsoon bends round Borneo, and becomes the southwest monsoon of the China Sea, supplying abundant rains to the northern parts of Borneo and the Philippines. It has its origin near Australia, and thence it pushes its way first toward the northwest and then toward the northeast across the whole Philippine group. It appears in Timur in March, and reaches the southern part of the China Sea in May.

CHAPTER V.
AMBOINA.

June 29th.—We are this morning approaching Amboina, the goal of my long journey, and the most important of the Spice Islands. Amboina is both the name of the island and its chief city. In form the island is nearly elliptical, and a deep, narrow bay, fourteen miles long, almost divides it longitudinally into two unequal parts. That on the west, which forms the main body of the island, is called Hitu; and that on the east Laitimur, which in Malay means “the eastern leaf.” Both are composed of high hills which rise up so abruptly from the sea that, though this bay for one-third of its length is nearly four miles wide, yet it perfectly resembles a frith or broad river. Along the shores are many little bays where praus are seen at anchor, and on the beaches are small groves of the cocoa-nut palm, which furnish food and shade to the natives dwelling in the rude huts beneath them. Higher up the hill-sides, large, open areas are seen covered with a tall, coarse grass; but the richly-cultivated fields on the flanks of the mountains in Java nowhere appear. These grassy hill-sides are the favorite burial-places with the Chinese, for they rarely or never carry back the bones of their friends to the sacred soil of the Celestial Land from these islands as they do from California. Such graves are always horseshoe-shaped, just as in China, and their white walls make very conspicuous objects on the green hill-sides. Above the open areas, in the wooded regions, we notice a few places filled with small trees that have a peculiar bright-green foliage. Those are the gardens of clove-trees which have made this island so famous throughout the world.

It is now the rainy season here, and thick rain-clouds at first completely enshrouded us; but as we passed up the bay they slowly broke away, and revealed on either hand high hills and mountains, which, on the Hitu side, began to assume a most wonderful appearance. The strong easterly wind pushed away the thick, white clouds from the exposed sides of all these elevations, and caused them to trail off to the west like smoke from hundreds of railroad engines, until every separate peak appeared to have become an active volcano that was continually pouring out dense volumes of white, opaque gas; and as these hills rose tier above tier to high, dark mountains which formed the background, the whole scene was most awe-inspiring, especially in this land where eruptions and earthquakes are frequent, and only a comparatively thin crust separates one from the earth’s internal fires.

Near the mouth of the bay the water is very deep, but eight or nine miles within it is sufficiently shallow for an anchorage. Here also the hills on the east or Laitimur side are separated from the beach by a triangular, level area, about a paal[25] long, and on this has been built the city of “Amboina” or “Ambon,” in the native language. Viewed from the anchorage, the city has a pleasing appearance, its streets being broad, straight, and well shaded. About half way from its southern end is Fort Nieuw Victoria. Landing at a quay we passed through this old stronghold out into a pretty lawn, which is surrounded by the Societeit, or Club-House, and the residences of officials and merchants. The total population of the city is about fourteen thousand. Of these, seven hundred are Europeans, three hundred Chinese, and four hundred Arabs. The others are natives. The entire population of the island is about thirty-two thousand. Like all the cities and larger settlements in the Dutch possessions, Amboina is divided into a native kampong or quarter, a Chinese kampong, and a quarter where foreigners reside. The natives are directly under the control of a rajah or prince, and he, in turn, is responsible to a Dutch assistant resident. In a similar manner the Chinese are subject to a “Captain China,” who, in the larger cities, has one or more assistants or “lieutenants.” He, likewise, must report himself to the assistant resident. In this way each separate people is immediately ruled by officers chosen from its own nation, and consequently of the same views and prejudices. Justice is thus more perfectly administered, and the hostile feelings which each of these bigoted Eastern nations always entertains against every other are thus completely avoided.

On leaving Batavia, Cores de Vries & Co., who then owned all the mail-steamers in the Netherlands India, kindly gave me a letter of credit so that I might draw on their agents from place to place, and wholly avoid the trouble and danger of carrying any considerable sum with me. This letter further recommended me to the kind attention of all their employés, and Mr. Var Marle, their agent at this place, at once said that I must make his house my home while I remained in that part of the archipelago; and this unexpected and very generous invitation was still more acceptable, as both he and his good lady spoke English. A chamber was assigned me, and a large room in an adjoining out-building, where I could store my collections and pack them up for their long transit to America; and thus I was ready to commence my allotted work without the least delay. I then called on His Excellency the Governor of the Spice Islands, who received me in the most cordial manner, and said that boats, coolies, and whatever other assistance I might need, would be immediately ordered whenever I wished.

Amboina has long been famous for its shells, and the Dutch officials have been accustomed for years to purchase very considerable quantities as presents for their friends in Europe. The natives, therefore, are in the habit of gathering them for sale, and a few have become extensive traders in these beautiful objects. It was soon noised abroad that a foreigner had come from a land even farther away than “Ollanda,” as they call Holland, solely for the purpose of purchasing shells; and immediately, to my great delight, basketful after basketful of the species that I had always regarded as the rarest and most valuable began to appear, every native being anxious to dispose of his lot before his fellows, and thus obtain a share of the envied shining coin, which I was careful to display to their gloating eyes before I should say I had bought all I desired. Competition, here as elsewhere, had a wonderfully depressing effect on the price of their commodities, judging from what they asked at first and what they were finally willing to take. The trade, however, became more brisk day after day, and some natives came from long distances partly to sell their shells and partly to see whether “that man” could be sane who had come so far and was spending, according to their ideas, so much money for shells. At first I bought them by the basketful, until all the more common species had been obtained, and then I showed the natives the figures in Rumphius’s “Rariteit Kamer” of those species I still wished to secure, and at the same time offered them an extra price for others not represented in that comprehensive work. One species I was particularly anxious to secure alive. It was the pearly nautilus. The shell has always been common, but the animal has seldom been described. The first was found at this place, and a description and drawing were given by Rumphius. Afterward a dissection and drawing were given by Professor Owen, of the British Museum, and his monograph probably contains the most complete anatomical description that has ever been made of any animal from a single specimen. He worked, as he himself described it to me, with a dissecting-knife in one hand and a pencil in the other. So little escaped his pen and pencil, that very little information has been added by later dissections. I was so anxious to secure one of these rare animals, that I felt that, if I should obtain one and a few more common species, I could feel that my long journey had been far from fruitless. Only the second day after my arrival, to my inexpressible delight, a native brought me one still living. Seeing how highly I prized it, he began by asking ten guilders (four Mexican dollars) for it, but finally concluded to part with it for two guilders (less than one Mexican dollar), though I should certainly have paid him fifty if I could not have obtained it for a less price. It had been taken in this way: the natives throughout the archipelago rarely fish with a hook and line as we do, but, where the water is too deep to build a weir, they use instead a bubu, or barrel of open basket-work of bamboo. Each end of this barrel is an inverted cone, with a small opening at its apex. Pieces of fish and other bait are suspended from within, and the bubu is then sunk on the clear patches of sand on a coral reef, or more commonly out where the water is from twenty to fifty fathoms deep. No line is attached to those on the reefs, but they are taken up with a gaff. Those in deep water are buoyed by a cord and a long bamboo, to one end of which a stick is fastened in a vertical position, and to this is attached a piece of palm-leaf for a flag, to make it more conspicuous. In this case it happened that one of these bubus was washed off into deeper water than usual, and the nautilus chanced to crawl through the opening in one of the cones to get at the bait within. If the opening had not been much larger than usual, it could not possibly have got in. It was at once placed in a can containing strong arrack. I then offered twice as much for a duplicate specimen, and hundreds of natives tried and tried, but in vain, to procure another during the five months I was in those seas. They are so rare even there, that a gentleman, who had made large collections of shells, assured me that I ought not to expect to obtain another if I were to remain at Amboina three years. Rumphius, who usually is remarkably accurate in his descriptions of the habits of the mollusks he figures, says it sometimes swims on the sea; but this statement he probably received from the natives, who made such a mistake because many empty shells are frequently found floating on the ocean. When the animal dies and becomes separated from the shell, the latter rises to the surface of the sea on account of the air or other gas contained in the chambers. It is then swept away by the wind and tide to the shore of a neighboring island. When the natives are questioned as to where these shells come from, they invariably reply, “The sea;” and as to where the animal lives, they merely answer, “Dalam,” “In the deep.” The dead shells are so abundant on these islands, that they can be purchased in any quantity at from four to ten cents apiece.

My first excursion from the city of Amboina was with a gentleman to a large cocoa-garden, which he had lately planted on the high hills on the Hitu side. A nice boat or orangbai—literally, “a good fellow”—took us over the bay to the little village of Ruma Tiga, or “Three Houses.” The boatmen were gayly dressed in white trousers with red trimmings, and had red handkerchiefs tied round their heads. A small gong and a tifa or drum, made by tightly stretching a piece of the hide of a wild deer over the end of a short, hollow log, gave forth a rude, wild music, and at least served to aid the boatmen in keeping time as they rowed. Occasionally, to break the monotony of their labor, they sang a low, plaintive song. Instead of steering straight for the point which we wished to arrive at on the opposite side of the bay, our helmsman kept the boat so near the shore that we really passed round the head of the bay, twice as far as it would have been in a right line. This mode of hassar steering, or, as the sailors express it in our language, “hugging the shore,” I afterward found was the one universally adopted in all this part of the archipelago. When we landed, I had the pleasure to find, just beneath low-water level, hundreds of black sea-urchins, with needle-like spines nearly a foot long, and so extremely sharp and brittle, that it was very difficult to get the animals out of the little cavities in the rocks where they had anchored themselves fast with their many suckers. Near by, the villagers were busy boiling down the sap of the sagaru-palm for the sugar it contains. According to my taste it is much like maple-sugar. Up to the time that Europeans first came to the East, this was the only kind of sugar known to the natives, and large quantities of it are still consumed among the islands here in the eastern part of the archipelago.

From the beach, a narrow footpath led through a grove of palm-trees into a thick forest, and then zigzagged up a steep hill-side, until it reached a small plateau. Here were the young cocoa-trees, filled with their long, red, cucumber-like fruit. The original forest had been felled and burned, and these trees had been planted in its place. Almost the only difficulty in cultivating the cocoa-tree here is in removing the grass and small shrubs which are continually springing up; yet the natives are all so idle and untrustworthy that a gentleman must frequently inspect his garden himself, if he expects it to yield a fair return. This tree,[26] the Theobroma cacao, Lin., is not a native of the East. It was discovered by the Spaniards in Mexico during the conquest of that country by Cortez. From Mexico they took it to their provinces in South America and the West India Islands. At present it is cultivated in Trinidad, and in Guiana and Brazil. It probably thrives as well here as in Mexico, and is now completely supplanting the less profitable clove-tree.

The chief article of food of the natives working in this garden is our own yellow Indian corn, another exotic, also introduced into the East by Europeans. It is now raised in every part of the archipelago in such quantities as to form one of the chief articles of food for the natives. The Dutch never use it, and generally think it strange that it should be made into bread for the very nicest tables in our land. I never knew the natives to grind it or pound it. They are accustomed to roast it on the ear after the kernels have become quite hard and yellow. Our house in this tropical garden was merely a bamboo hut, with a broad veranda, which afforded us an ample shelter from the pouring rains and scorching sunshine. I had been careful to take along my fowling-piece, and at once I commenced a rambling hunt through the adjoining forest. Large flocks of small birds, much like our blackbird, were hovering about, but they so invariably chose to alight only on the tops of the tallest trees, that I was a long time securing half a dozen specimens, for at every shot they would select another distant tree-top, and give me a long walk over tangled roots and fallen trees in the dense, almost gloomy, jungle. As evening came on, small green parrots uttered their shrill, deafening screams, as they darted to and fro through the thick foliage. A few of these also entered my game-bag.

In these tropical lands, when the sun sets, it is high time for the hunter to forsake his fascinating sport and hurry home. There is no long, fading twilight, but darkness presses closely on the footsteps of retreating day, and at once it is night. On my return, my friend remarked in the coolest manner that I had secured us both a good supper; and before I had recovered from my shock at such a suggestion, the cook had torn out a large handful of rich feathers from the skins, and all were spoiled for my collection; however, I consoled myself with the thought that it did not fall to the good lot of every hunter to live in the midst of such a wondrous vegetation and feast on parrots. In the evening, a full moon shed broad oscillating bands of silver light through the large polished leaves of the bananas around our dwelling, as they slowly waved to and fro in the cool, refreshing breeze. Then the low cooing of doves came up out of the dark forest, and the tree-toads piped out their long, shrill notes. That universal pest, the mosquito, was also there, singing his same bloodthirsty tune in our ears. Our beds were perched on poles, high above the floor of the hut, that we might avoid such unpleasant bedfellows as large snakes, which are very common and most unceremonious visitors. That night we were disturbed but once, and then by a loud rattling of iron pots and a general crashing of crockery; instantly I awoke with an indefinite apprehension that we were experiencing one of the frightful earthquakes which my friend had been vividly picturing before we retired. The natives set up a loud hooting and shouting, and finally the cause of the whole disturbance was found to be a lean, hungry dog that was attempting to satisfy his appetite on what remained of our parrot-stew.

My chief object on this excursion was to collect insects; and among some white-leaved shrubs, near the shore, I found many magnificent specimens of a very large, richly-colored Papilio. The general color of the upper surface of its wings was a blue-black, and beneath were large patches of bright red. Another was a blue-black above, with large spots of bright blue. The wings of these butterflies expand five or six inches, and they seem almost like small birds as they flit by.

It was my desire not only to obtain the same shells that Rumphius figures, but to procure them from the same points and bays, so that there could be no doubt about the identity of my specimens with his drawings. I therefore proposed to travel along all the shores of Amboina and the neighboring islands, and trade with the natives of every village, so as to be sure of the localities myself, and, moreover, get specimens of all the species alive, and thus have ample material for studying their anatomy. I now realized the value of the letter with which His Excellency the Governor-General had honored me at Batavia. I had only to apply to the assistant resident, and he at once kindly ordered a boat and coolies for me at the same rate as if they were employed by the government, which was frequently less than half of what I should have been obliged to pay if I had hired them myself; and besides, many times I could not have obtained boats nor coolies at any price; and when the Resident ordered them to come at a certain hour, I always found them ready.

My first excursion along the shores of the island was on the north coast of Hitu. Two servants accompanied me, to aid in arranging the shells, and carrying bottles of alcohol to contain the animals. From the city of Amboina, a boat took us over the bay to Ruma Tiga, where several coolies were waiting with a “chair” to carry me over the high hills to the opposite shore. This “chair,” or palanquin, is merely a common arm-chair, with a bamboo fastened on each side. A light roof and curtains on the sides keep out the rain or hot sunshine. Usually eight or more coolies are detailed to each chair, so that one-half may relieve the others every few moments. The motion is much like that on horseback, when the horse is urged into a hurried walk, and is neither extremely unpleasant nor so very delightful as some writers who have visited these islands have described it. In China, where only two coolies carry a chair, the motion is far more regular and agreeable. This is the only mode of travelling in all the islands where horses have not been introduced, and where all the so-called roads are mere narrow footpaths, except in the villages.

From the shore we climbed two hills, and on their crests passed through gardens of cocoa-trees.[27] The road then was bordered on either side with rows of pine-apples, Ananassa sativa, a third exotic from tropical America. It thrives so well in every part of the archipelago, without the slightest care, that it is very difficult to realize that it is not an indigenous plant. The native names all point out its origin. The Malays and Javanese call it nanas, which is merely a corruption of the Portuguese ananassa. In Celebes it is sometimes called pandang, a corruption of pandanus, from the marked similarity of the two fruits. In the Philippines it is generally called piña, the Spanish word for pine-cone, which has the same origin as our name pine-apple. Piña is also the name of a cloth of great strength and durability, made by the natives of the Philippines, from the fibres of its leaves. The Malays, on the contrary, seldom or never make any such use of it, though it grows so abundantly in many places that any quantity of its leaves could be obtained for the simple trouble of gathering them. The fruit raised here is generally regarded as inferior to that grown in the West Indies, and the Dutch consider the variety known as “the West Indian ananas,” that is, one that has been recently introduced, as the best. The finest specimens of this fruit are raised in the interior of Sumatra and on the islands about Singapore, and great quantities are exposed for sale in the market at that city.

From the crest of the first range of hills we descended to a deep ravine, and crossed a bridge thrown over a foaming torrent. This bridge, like most the Dutch possessions, was covered with a roof, but left open on the sides. The object of the roof and its projecting eaves is to keep the boards and planks beneath dry, for whenever they are frequently soaked with rain they quickly decay in this tropical climate. The coolies here lunched on smoked fish and sago-cake, their common fare, and quenched their thirst with draughts from the rapid stream. Their ragged clothing and uncombed hair made them appear strangely out of keeping with the luxuriant vegetation surrounding us. Crossing another high range, we caught a view of the blue ocean, and soon descended to the village of Hitu-lama, “Old Hitu.” The rajah received me most kindly into his house, and assigned me a chamber. Large numbers of children quickly gathered, and the rajah explained to them that I had come to buy shells, insects, and every curious thing they might bring. As it was high water, and good shells could only be found at low tide, I asked them to search for lizards, and soon I was surprised to see them coming with a number of real “flying-dragons,” not such impossible monsters as the Chinese delight to place on their temples and vases, but small lizards, Draco volans, each provided with a broad fold in the skin along either side of the body, analogous to that of our flying-squirrel, and for a similar purpose, not really for flying, but to act as a parachute to sustain the animal in the air, while it makes long leaps from branch to branch. Another lizard, of which they brought nearly a dozen specimens in a couple of hours, had a body about six inches long and a tail nearly as much longer. Knowing how impossible it is to capture these agile and wary animals, I tried to ascertain how they succeeded in surprising so many, but they all refused to tell, apparently from superstitious motives, and to this day the mystery is unsolved. When these specimens were brought to me they were always in small joints of bamboo, and when one escaped the natives generally refused to try to catch it in their hands.

As the tide receded, shells began to come in; at first the more common species, and rarer ones as the ebbing ceased. My mode of trading with these people was extremely simple, my stock of Malay being very limited. A small table was placed on the veranda in front of the rajah’s house, and I took a seat behind it. The natives then severally came up and placed their shells in a row on the table, and I placed opposite each shell or each lot of shells whatever I was willing to give for them, and then, pointing first to the money and then to the shells, remarked, Ini atau itu, “This or that,” leaving them to make their own choice. In this way all disputing was avoided, and the purchasing went on rapidly. Whenever one man had a rare shell, and the sum I offered did not meet his expectations, another would be sure to accept it if no more was given; then the first would change his mind, and thus I never failed to obtain both specimens. It was a pleasure that no one but a naturalist can appreciate, to see such rare and beautiful shells coming in alive, spotted cypræas, marbled cones, long Fusi, and Murices, some spiny and some richly ornamented with varices resembling compound leaves. The rarest shell that I secured that day was a living Terebellum, which was picked up on a coral reef before the village, at low-tide level. Afterward I procured another from the same place; but so limited does its distribution appear to be, that I never obtained a live specimen at any other locality.

At sunset I walked out with the rajah along the shore of the bay. Before us lay the great island of Ceram, which the rajah called, in his musical tongue, Ceram tana biza, “The great land of Ceram,” for indeed, to him, it was a land, that is, a continent, and not in any sense a pulo or island. The departing sun was sinking behind the high, jagged peaks of Ceram, and his last golden and purple rays seemed to waver as they shot over the glassy but gently-undulating surface of the bay, and the broad, deeply-fringed leaves of the cocoa-nut palms on the beach took a deeper and richer hue in the glowing sunlight. Then a dull, heavy booming came out of a small Mohammedan mosque, which was picturesquely placed on a little projecting point, almost surrounded by the purple sea. This was the low rolling of a heavy drum, calling all the faithful to assemble and return thanks to their Prophet at the close of the departing day. The rajah then left me to wander along the shore alone, and enjoy the endless variety of the changing tints in the sea and sky while the daylight faded away along the western horizon.

It was in this bay that the Dutch first cast anchor in these seas, and this thought naturally carries us back to the early history of the Moluccas, so famous for their spices, and so coveted by almost every nation of Europe, as soon as enterprise and action began to dispel the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition which had enveloped the whole of the so-called civilized world during the middle ages. Antonio d’Abreu, a Portuguese captain, who came here from Malacca, in 1511, is generally regarded as the discoverer of Amboina and Banda, but Ludovico Barthema (Vartoma), of Bologna, after visiting Malacca and Pedir, in Sumatra, according to his own account, reached this island as early as 1506, yet his description of the Moluccas is so faulty that Valentyn thinks he never came to this region, but obtained his information from the Javanese and Arabs, who, as early at least as 1322, visited these islands to purchase spices.[28] The Dutch first came to the East in the employment of the Portuguese, and in this manner became acquainted with its geography and its wealth. Their earliest expedition sailed from Holland in 1594, under Houtman. His fleet first visited Bantam and the island of Madura. At the latter place the natives seized some of his crew, and obliged him to pay two thousand rix dollars to ransom them. On the 3d of March, 1599, he arrived here off Hitu-lama. A serious and continual warfare then began between the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, for the possession of the Moluccas, which lasted until 1610, when the Dutch became masters of these seas, and monopolized the lucrative trade of the nutmeg and the clove. The English also tried to secure this valuable prize, but the Dutch finally compelled them to leave this part of the archipelago, and have continued to hold it, except for a short time in the early part of the present century.

The guest-chamber of my host, the rajah, was so open at the eaves that a current of damp air blew over me all night, and I had a strong reminder of the Batavia fever the next day. However, I continued along the shore to Hila, where an assistant resident is stationed, whose district also includes a part of the neighboring coast of Ceram. In the days when the clove-tree was extensively cultivated in Amboina, this was an important place, but now it has become almost deserted. It is chiefly famous for its fine mangoes, the fruit of the Mangifera Indica.

The Resident here had two fine specimens of an enormous hermit crab, the Birgos latro. The habits of this animal are most remarkable. Its food is the cocoa-nut, and, as the ripe nuts fall from the tree, it tears off the dry husks with its powerful claws until the end of the shell where the three black scars are found is laid bare. It then breaks the shell by hammering with one of its heavy claws, and the oily, fattening food within is obtained by means of the pincer-like claws attached to its hinder joints—so perfectly is this animal adapted to its peculiar mode of life. They are esteemed great delicacies after they have been well fed for a time, and these two unfortunates were destined for the table.

A rest of a couple of days stayed the fever, and a boat was ordered to take me to Zyt, the next village, where I reaped another rich harvest of beautiful shells. Here I purchased many Tritons, which the natives had brought over from the neighboring coast of Ceram. They are quite similar to the Tritons of the Mediterranean, which in mythological times were fancied to be the trumpets used by Neptune’s attendants to herald the approach of the grim god, when he came up from the depths of the ocean, and was whirled by foaming steeds over its placid surface. The next village we visited was completely deserted, except by the rajah and his family. The cause of this strange exodus was some misunderstanding between the rajah and his people; and as the Dutch Government claims the right to appoint each native prince, and had refused to remove this rajah, all his people had deserted their homes and moved off to the various neighboring kampongs, a quiet and probably an effective mode of remonstrance. Near all these villages the beaches are lined with cocoa-nut palms, and this is frequently the only indication that you are approaching a kampong, unless, as occasionally happens, a thin column of smoke is observed slowly rising from out the tall tree-tops. When I wished to take water with me in our canoe, I naturally asked the rajah if he could provide us with a bottle, but he only smiled to think I could be so unaccustomed to tropical life, and ordered a servant to climb one of the cocoa-nut palms above us, and cut off some of its clusters of large green fruit. These we could carry anywhere, and open when we pleased, and a few strokes with a heavy cleaver at once furnished us with a sparkling fountain.

At Assilulu, the next village, I found the rajah living in such style as I had always fancied a rich Eastern prince enjoyed. His house was in the centre of a large village, and located on the side of a steep hill. It covered three large terraces, and, when viewed from the landing below, appeared like a temple. At this place, besides many rare shells, I purchased several large cassowary-eggs, which had been brought over from Ceram. They are about as long as ostrich-eggs, but somewhat less in diameter, and of a green color. The bird itself belongs to the ostrich family, its feathers being imperfectly developed and separate from each other, and suitable only to aid it to run. One species has a spine on each wing to enable it to defend itself, but the usual mode of attack is by striking with the beak. In size it is twice as large as a full-grown turkey. It is not found wild on any island west of Ceram, and those reported from Java were all undoubtedly carried there from this part of the archipelago. Here also I bought of the rajah a number of superb skulls of the babirusa, Babirusa alfurus, literally “the hog-deer,” a name well chosen, for its long tusks would at once suggest to these natives the antlers of the deer, the only other wild animal of any considerable size found on these islands. These skulls came from Buru, the eastern limit of this remarkable species of hog.

For some time one of my servants kept alluding to several wonderful and most valuable curiosities which this wealthy rajah was so fortunate as to possess—curiosities indeed, according to his glowing descriptions, compared to the shells I was continually buying. At last I asked him to say to the rajah, that I would be greatly obliged to him if he could show me such rare wonders, being careful not to add, that possibly I should like to purchase one or more; for I had a strong suspicion that the rajah had offered to give him all over a certain sum that I might pay for them, if he could induce me to purchase them. In these Eastern lands, when you send a servant to buy any thing, you have the unpleasant certainty in your mind, that a large part of “the price” will certainly lodge in his pocket; however, if you go to purchase yourself, such exorbitant prices will be demanded, that you will either come away without the article you need, or have the unpleasant reflection afterward that you have been cheated worse than if you had sent your servant and allowed him to levy his blackmail.

As I had anticipated, the rajah was not loath to show me his treasures. They were merely half a dozen glass rings, evidently made by cutting off a piece of a glass rod nine or ten inches long, and half an inch in diameter. This piece, having been heated, was bent into a ring and the two ends united by fusion. Instead of expressing surprise and delight, as all who were looking on seemed to expect, I coolly began explaining to the rajah what they were and how they were made. A look of surprise and incredulity appeared on the faces of all, and the rajah at once, in a most solemn manner, averred that so far from their being the work of man, they had been taken out of the heads of snakes and wild boars! Despite the dignified bearing the occasion was supposed to demand, I could not refrain from a smile as I remarked that I had seen many heads of those animals myself, but never before had I heard that they carried such circular jewels in their brains. “Have you ever seen one of these taken out yourself?” I asked. “Oh, no! They come from Tana Ceram (the land or continent of Ceram).” All who were listening, now fearing that their rajah might be worsted in the discussion, and being ready on every occasion to show that they were loyal subjects, abruptly ended the argument by the unqualified assertion that every thing was exactly as the rajah had said; and, as I was his guest, I changed the conversation to another topic. When I returned to the city of Amboina, I looked at once in the “Rariteit Kamer,” confident that Rumphius would explain this remarkable and, as I afterward found, common belief; for, though the rajah probably did not believe what he said, his credulous subjects doubtless never thought before of calling in question such a generally-accepted notion; such a query would, in their view, have indicated a weak instead of an inquiring mind. This is one of the obstacles in the way of advancement among these people. Rumphius says that many rings were brought by the Portuguese and sold to the natives, who prize them very highly. This accounted for their origin; and afterward, when I came to travel over the empire of China, and noticed how that people value similar rings of jade (nephrite), and remembered that the coast of Ceram, opposite Assilulu, was once frequented by the people of that empire, who came to purchase cloves and nutmegs, it occurred to me that possibly it was from them that the Amboinese had learned to place so high a value on such simple objects, and had obtained their first specimens. Java is perhaps the only island in the archipelago where such ornaments could have been made by the natives, but I do not find that they are especially prized there, or that they have been dug up with other relics of previous ages.

Off this coast lie three islands, the Three Brothers, and on their shores the natives found a number of rare shells. In the streets of the village considerable quantities of cloves that had been gathered on the neighboring hill-sides were exposed to the sun on mats between the frequent showers, but the culture of that spice has been so neglected of late years, that this was the only place where I saw the fruit in all the Moluccas. The clove-tree (Carophyllus aromaticus) belongs to the order of myrtles, which also includes the pomegranate, the guava, and the rose-apple. The trunk of the full-grown tree is from eight to twelve inches in diameter, and occasionally much more. Its topmost branches are usually forty or fifty feet from the ground, though I have seen a tree not larger than a cherry-tree fully loaded with fruit. It was originally confined to the five islands off the west coast of Gilolo, which then comprised the whole group known as “the Moluccas,” a name that has since been extended to Buru, Amboina, and the other islands off the south coast of Ceram, where the clove has been introduced and cultivated within a comparatively late period. On those five islands it begins to bear in its seventh or eighth year, and sometimes continues to yield until it has reached an age of nearly one hundred and fifty years; the trees, therefore, are of very different sizes. Here at Amboina it is not expected to bear fruit before its twelfth or fifteenth year, and to cease yielding when it is seventy-five years old. Its limited distribution has always attracted attention, and Rumphius, who describes it as “the most beautiful, the most elegant, and the most precious of all known trees,” remarks: “Hence it appears that the Great Disposer of things in His wisdom, allotting His gifts to the several regions of the world, placed cloves in the kingdom of the Moluccas, beyond which, by no human industry, can they be propagated or perfectly cultivated.” In the last observation, however, he was mistaken, for since his time it has been successfully introduced into the island of Penang, in the Strait of Malacca, and Sumatra, Bourbon, Zanzibar, and the coast of Guiana and the West India Islands. The clove is the flower-bud, and grows in clusters at the ends of the twigs. The annual yield of a good tree is about four pounds and a half, and the yearly crop on Amboina, Haruku, Saparua, and Nusalaut, the only islands where the tree is now cultivated, is 350,000 Amsterdam pounds.[29] It is, however, extremely variable and uncertain—for example, in 1846 it was 869,727 Amsterdam pounds, but in 1849 it was only 89,923, or little more than one-tenth of what it was three years before. Pigafetta informs us that, when the Spanish first came to the Moluccas, there were no restrictions on the culture or sale of the clove. The annual crop at that time, 1521, according to the same authority, reached the enormous quantity of 6,000 bahars, 3,540,000 pounds of “uncleaned,” and 4,000 bahars, 2,360,000 pounds of “cleaned” cloves, about seventeen times the quantity obtained at the present time. Though this statement at first appears incredible, it is strengthened by the fact that the two ships of Magellan’s fleet that reached Tidore, one of the Spice Islands, were filled with cloves during a stay of only twenty-four days. When the buds are young they are nearly white, afterward they change to a light green, and finally to a bright red, when they must at once be gathered, which is done by picking them by hand, or beating them off with bamboos on to cloths spread beneath the trees. They are then simply dried in the sun, and are ready for the market. In drying, their color is changed from red to black, the condition in which we see them. They are gathered twice a year, at about this time, in June, and again in the last of December. The leaves, bark, and young twigs also have some peculiar aroma, and at Zanzibar the stems of the buds are also gathered and find a ready sale. The favorite locations of this tree are the high hill-sides, and it is said that it does not thrive well on low lands, where the loam is fine and heavy. The soil best adapted to it appears to be a loose, sandy loam. In its original habitat it grows chiefly on volcanic soil, but in Amboina and the other islands, where it is now cultivated, it has been found to flourish well on loams formed by the disintegration of recent sandstone and secondary rocks. The native name for this fruit is chenki, perhaps a corruption of the Chinese tkeng-ki, “odoriferous nails.”[30] The Dutch name for clove is kruid-nagel, “herb-nail,” and for the trees nagelen-boomen, “nail-trees.” Our own name clove comes from the Spanish clavo (Latin clavus), a nail, which has also been given them on account of the similarity of these buds to nails.

Although cloves form a favorite condiment among all nations, the natives of these islands where they grow never eat them in any form, and we have no reason to suppose they ever did. The only purpose for which the Amboinese use them, so far as I am aware, is to prepare neat models of their praus and bamboo huts, by running small wire through the buds before they are dried. The Dutch purchase and send to Europe so many of these models, that almost every ethnological museum contains some specimens of this skilful workmanship. The clove probably came into use originally by accident, and I believe the first people who fancied its rich aroma, and warm, pungent taste, were the Chinese. The similarity of the native name to that of the Chinese, and its marked difference, according to De Cauto, from that of the Brahmins or Hindus, lends probability to this view. When the Portuguese first came to these islands, the Chinese, Arabs, Malays, Javanese, and Macassars, were all found here trading in this article. Of the two former nations, the Chinese were probably the first to reach this region, though the Arabs sailed up the China Sea and carried on a large trade with the Chinese at Canpu, a port in Hangchau Bay, south of the present city of Shanghai, in the thirteenth century, or fully two hundred years before the Portuguese and Spaniards arrived in these seas.

The first notice of cloves in Europe occurs in a law passed during the reign of Aurelian the First, between A. D. 175 and 180, where they are mentioned as forming an article of commerce from India to Alexandria; for the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea formed at that time the chief highway of Eastern trade. From these islands the cloves were first taken by the Malays and Javanese to the peninsula of Malacca, where they passed into the hands of the Telingas or Klings, who carried them to Calicut, the old Capital of Malabar. Thence they were transported to the western shores of India and shipped across the Arabian Sea, and up the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to Cairo. These frequent transfers so increased the original price, that in England, before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, thirty shillings were paid for them per pound, or one hundred and sixty-eight pounds sterling per hundred-weight, which was three hundred and sixty times their original price. It was to make this immense profit that the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English, were all so anxious to find a passage to the East by sea, and why, when these islands had been discovered, each strove to monopolize the trade itself, and all carried on such a persistent and piratical warfare for many years. So long as cloves were not cultivated elsewhere, and there was no competition in the European markets, the Dutch Government made a handsome profit by means of its monopoly; but when they were raised in other places, the consumption of such a luxury not increasing with the supply, the previous high price began at once to decline, and for many years the income of the government in these islands has not been equal to its expenses in the same region. Some have supposed that a further reduction in the price would be followed with a corresponding greater demand, until its consumption would become as general and as large as that of pepper; but this view is opposed by the common decision of mankind—that pepper is a necessary article of food, and that the clove is only a luxury. If no attempt had been made to keep up the price of this commodity to such a high figure in the European markets, there would have been a less incentive to other nations to introduce it into their own colonies, and thus the market would not have been overstocked so soon, and the price would not have fallen so low as to make the Spice Islands a source of loss instead of profit, except within a recent date.

All the rajahs I met were strict Mohammedans, and, improving the privileges of their sect, had more than one wife. Soon after arriving at each rajah’s house, I was invariably asked whether or not I was married, and for a long time I could not imagine why I was so closely quizzed, until the proverbial jealousy of these people occurred to me. Each wished to know how strict a watch he was to keep over his fascinating harem; and as I was obliged to answer all such queries in the negative, I never even saw one of their wives. At meals only the rajah and myself sat at the table; and as I had two servants, and each of these princes nearly a score, we were always well served, considering our fare. Two articles never failed to appear—chickens and rice—and to these fish was usually added; and for luncheon and dessert always the richest bananas. One kind, the pisang Ambon, or “Amboina banana,” is very common in that region, but the one I soon learned to prefer, and the one that my servants were always ordered to procure if possible, wherever we chanced to halt, was the pisang mas, or “golden banana,” a small variety, with a peculiarly rich, honey-like flavor, and a bright golden skin when it is fully ripe. This rajah, I noticed, was particular to seat me at the table so that I could only look out at the front door. The first query he proposed at dinner was, how we are accustomed to eat in our land, adding that, after all, no style suited him so well as dispensing with knives and forks altogether, and adopting the simpler and more natural mode of using one’s fingers—a style so common, that each rajah usually keeps a supply of finger-bowls, and frequently these are worth more than all the crockery and other glassware on the table beside. While I was most zealously explaining in reply the superiority of our custom, there arose a suppressed giggle behind me; the secret was out—the rajah’s wives had been allowed to leave their close prison and look at me, while I was so placed that I could not, without the greatest rudeness, turn round so as to steal a glance at them. But as this noise was evidently not a part of the proposed programme, I repressed my curiosity, and continued my description. One topic especially they never seemed weary of hearing about, and that was my experience as a soldier. There was something strangely fascinating to their rude imaginations in the scenes of blood through which I have had to pass. At first I had some difficulty in translating my stories into good Malay, but one of my servants fortunately spoke a little Dutch, and supplied me with a word or sentence, as the case demanded.

From Assilulu I set off, during a heavy rain-storm, over a neighboring mountain for the southwest shore, and after a long walk over the rocks, sand, and shingle, we reached Lariki, where there was once a fort with a garrison, but now the ruins of the fort, and a few old, rusty guns are all that remain; and the only official stationed there is an opziener or “overseer.” In two days, at that place, I so increased my collection, that I had to hire eight coolies to transport it, each carrying two baskets—one on either end of a pole about four feet long. The baskets are made of an open framework of bamboo, covered inside with palm-leaves, and are therefore very light and durable. The most common shell there is the little cypræa caput-serpentis, or “serpent’s-head cowry,” which has a close resemblance, both in form and color, to the head of a snake.

From Lariki the opziener accompanied me to the neighboring kampong of Wakasihu. Our narrow footpath wound along the side of a rugged, projecting crag, and the view from the outer point was very imposing. The stormy monsoon was at its height. The heavy swell rolling in from the open ocean broke and flung its white spray and clotted foam far and wide over the black rocks left bare by the ebbing tide. Thick clouds, heavily freighted with rain, were driven by the strong wind against the rugged coast and adjoining mountains. The cocoa-nut palms that grew just above high-water level, and leaned over toward the sea, twisted and shook their plumy crests in a continual strife with the angry storm, and above them the branches of great evergreens moaned and piped as they lashed to and fro in the fitful gusts of the tempests.

At Wakasihu the old white-bearded rajah, hearing of our approach, came out to welcome us. The opziener explained to him the object of my coming, and immediately he ordered a large tifa, that hung under an adjoining shed, to be beaten, as a warning to his people that their rajah required them all to assemble at once before his house. The news quickly spread that a foreigner had come to purchase shells, and the old men, young men, women, and children all came with the treasures that had been accumulating for months, and even years, in their miserable dwellings. Here many perfect specimens of the richly-colored Cassis flammea appeared, and also that strangely-marked shell, the Cypræa mappa, or “map cowry,” so named from the irregular light-colored line over its back where the two edges of the mantle meet when the animal is fully expanded. They had crawled into the bubus that had been sunk for fish at a depth of several fathoms.

The trading was carried on only in Malay, but when I offered a price, which was higher or lower than they had expected, they frequently consulted with each other in their own peculiar dialect or bahasa. This the opziener, who was a native of the city of Amboina, was as totally unable to understand as I. He also assured me that even the natives at Lariki, from which we had walked in half an hour, could only understand an occasional word of the bahasa of this village, and that the people of neither village could understand a word of the bahasa of Assilulu, two or three hours’ walk beyond Lariki. In fact, as a rule, every community that is under one rajah, and this is generally but one village, has its own peculiar dialect, which is so different from the dialects of every adjoining village, that all are obliged to learn Malay in order to carry on any trade or hold any communication with their nearest neighbors. The bahasa is never a written language, and appears to be constantly changing, for, at the city of Amboina, the natives have completely lost their dialect since the foreigners settled among them, and now can only speak with each other in Malay. The great diversity in the native dialects, and the general adoption of Malay, existed at least as early as when the Spaniards first navigated these waters, for De Barros says: “Two facts give reason to believe that the inhabitants of these islands consist of various and diverse nations. The first is the inconstancy, hatred, and suspicion with which they watch each other; and the second, the great variety of their languages; for it is not the same with them and the Bisayans (the inhabitants of Bisaya, one of the Philippines), where one language prevails with all. The variety, on the contrary, is so great that no two places understand each other’s tongue. Even the pronunciation differs widely, for some form their words in the throat, others at the point of the tongue, others between the teeth, and others in the palate. If there be any tongue through which they can understand each other, it is the Malay of Malacca, to which the nobles” (rajahs and capalas) “have lately addicted themselves since the Moors” (Arabs) “have resorted to them for the clove.” The Malays and Javanese probably visited these regions long before the Arabs; and they, and not the Arabs, were the people who first taught these natives the Malay language.