Chapter XXIII: Garoet and Papandayang 312 (7)

The Djokja passer is a large and important daily gathering, but corrugated-iron and tiled sheds in formal rows have pretty nearly robbed it of all a passer’s picturesqueness. Model municipal government, Dutch system and order, are too pronounced to please one whose eye has seen what a few palm-thatched booths and umbrellas, and a few tons of scattered fruits and peppers, can produce in that picnic encampment by Boro Boedor’s groves or in the open common at Tissak Malaya.

We had been promised great finds in the way of old silver and krises in a street of Chinese pawnshops opening from one corner of the passer; but the promises were not realized. The betel-boxes, buckles, and clasps in charge of these wily “uncles” of Djokja were plain and commonplace, and not a jeweled nor a fancy kris of any kind was to be seen, after all the repute of Djokja’s riches in these lines of native metal-work. Hundreds of sarongs, each with a dangling ribbon of a ticket, were stowed away on the shelves of these pawnshops, proofs of the improvidence and small necessities of these easy-going, chance-inviting people; and while we were haggling over a veined kris-blade with the most obdurate Chinese that ever kept a pawn-shop, a timid little woman stole in and offered her sarong to the arrogant, blustering old rascal. He scowled and scolded and stormed at the frightened little creature, shook out and snapped the finely patterned battek as if it were a dust-cloth, and still muttering as if making threats of blood and vengeance, made out a ticket, and threw it at her with a few silver cents. We wanted nothing more from that shop, save the head of the “uncle” on a trencher or impaled on a kris’s point.

With a shameless eye to revenue only, the government has long continued to sell pawnbrokers’ licenses at auction to the highest bidder, after a brief relapse from the year 1869 to 1880, when the experiment was tried of selling licenses to any one at a moderate rate. The great income from such licenses fell away so amazingly that the auctions were resumed, and the improvident natives handed over again to the merciless Chinese pawnbrokers, who charge interest even up to ninety per cent., and usually retain everything that crosses their counters. M. Emile Metzger, in a communication to the “Scottish Geographic Magazine” (vol. iv., 1888), gives fifty thousand florins a year as the annual revenue during the eleven years when the other system prevailed, which soon increased to as much as one million, sixty-five thousand florins a year when licenses were again auctioned to the highest bidder.

The Sultan of Djokja has a kraton, or palace inclosure, a mile square in the very heart of the city, the great entrance-gates fronting on a vast _plein_ or _platz_, where waringen-trees have been clipped and trained to the shape of colossal state umbrellas, great green pajongs planted in permanence in the outer court or approach to the throne, as a badge of royalty. The huge Burmese elephants, that play an important part in state processions, trumpet in one corner; and strangely costumed retainers are coming and going, some of them as gaily uniformed as parrakeets, and others reminding one of the picadors and matadors in the chorus of “Carmen.” Surrounded by this indoor army of gorgeous musicians, singers, dancers, bearers of fan and pajong, pipe and betel-boxes, the sultan’s court is as splendidly staged as in the last century; and when this “regent of the world” and “vicegerent of the Almighty,” as his titles translate, goes abroad in state procession, the spectacle is worth going far to see, the Djokjans assure one. Twenty different kinds of pajongs belong to this court—those flat umbrellas that are the oldest insignia of royalty in all the East, and are sculptured on Boro Boedor’s walls through all the centuries pictured there. From the sultan’s own golden pajong with orange border, the gold-bordered pajong of the crown prince, the white pajongs of sultanas and their children and of concubines’ children, down to the green, red, pink, blue, and black pajongs of the lesser officials and nobles, all pajongs are exactly ordered by court heraldry—the pajong the definite symbol of rank, a visiting-card that announces its owner’s consequence from afar. Strange accompaniments these, however, for a sultan who plays billiards at the club and a sultana who takes a hand at whist.

The old Taman Sarie, or Water Kastel, in the suburbs, built by a Portuguese architect in the middle of the last century for the great sultan Manko Boeni, is an Oriental Trianon, a paradise garden of the tropics, where former greatness spent its hours of ease in cool, half-underground chambers and galleries such as Hindu princes have made for themselves in every part of India. The Taman Sarie is sadly deserted now. The most important buildings were shaken to formless mounds by earthquakes—the last great Djokja earthquake of 1867, when so many lives were lost, making the complete ruins that are covered with vines and weeds. The ornamental waters are choked with weeds and rubbish; the carved stonework is black with mold and lichens; the caves, grottoes, tunnels, staircases, and galleries around the wells are dripping and slippery with green mosses; and the rose-gardens and shrubberies are fast going to jungle. A few pavilions remain, whose roof gables are as deeply recurved as those of Burmese temples, but for the most part all the once splendid carved and gilded constructions are but wrecks and refuges for bats and lizards. The Water Kastel in its better days stood in the midst of a lake, reached only by boat or a secret tunnel; and here the old sultan Hamanku Bewono IV and his harem whiled away their leisure hours, even when an army thundered at the gates.

On one unfortunate day he kept Marshal Daendels waiting in the outer court for an hour beyond the time appointed for an interview, while the sultan and his women made merry, and the gamelan sounded gaily from the Water Kastel’s galleries. Daendels, growing weary, suddenly pushed through the retainers to the mouth of the tunnel, and appeared to the dallying sultan in the Water Kastel without announcement or further ceremony, and with still less ceremony seized the sultan by the arm and led him back to Dutch headquarters, where the interview took place. Another version of this Water Kastel tradition describes the mad marshal as making a dash down terraces and staircases to a water-pavilion sunk deep in foliage at the edge of a tank, where, in a shady cellar of a sleeping-room, shielded and cooled by a water curtain falling in front of it, he dragged the sultan from his bed, and carried him off to headquarters. The _opas_ and the chattering old guardian, who led us about the Kastel’s labyrinths, plunged into the green gloom of a long, mossy staircase that led to the platform on which the sultan’s sleeping-room opened, to show us the “unlucky bed” and prove by it their particular or favored version of the irruption of Marshal Daendels. The bedstead or couch is an elaborately carved affair, and must once have been the chief ornament of this cool cave-like retreat; but in the reek and gloom of the late afternoon this water boudoir seemed too suggestive of rheumatism, malaria, and snakes by wholesale to invite one to linger, or to suggest repose on the “unlucky bed,” which insures an early death to the one who touches it.

Another water-chamber was provided in the Sumoor Gamelan (“Musical Spring”), a deep circular well or tank near the ruined banquet-hall, with vaulted chambers opening around it—just such echoing places of green twilight, where it must be cool on the hottest noonday, as one may see in the old palaces at Lucknow, Futtehpore Sikri, and Ahmedabad, in the fatherland whence the ruling princes of Java came. There is, too, a great oval tank with beautiful walls, parapets, and pavilions, well worthy of a Hindu palace; and in this secluded place there lived for many decades a sacred white or dingy yellow turtle with red eyes, an albino to whom the people made offerings and paid homage. The Taman Sarie has great fascination for one, and at sunset something of romance seems to linger in the old gardens and grottoes, the picturesque courtyards and galleries; and one could imagine scores of legends and harem’s mysteries belonging there—that anything and everything had happened there by that lake that burns a rose-red when the palms are silhouetted against the high sunset sky. A group of children played hide-and-seek about the once august court, supple, nimble little bronze fauns, with the carefully folded kerchiefs on their heads their only garments—kerchiefs that they arrange with the greatest care and deliberation many times a day, holding the ends of the cloth with agile toes while they pat and crease and coax the fine folds into the prescribed order of good form. These children dashed through the shrubberies, leaped balusters and walls as lightly and easily as wild creatures, and ran up tall trees like squirrels, to gather tasseled orchids and some strange blue flowers that we pointed to with suggestive coppers, and they hailed us as old friends when we came again.

There were delightful drives to be taken in and around Djokja in the cool of the afternoon, the tamarind- and waringen-shaded streets leading to bowery suburbs, that gave wider views out over the fertile plain with the winding Oepak River, or toward the beautiful blue mountain cones that slumbered to northward. There were always the most decorative palm-trees in the right place to outline themselves against the rosy sunset sky, and the drives back to the hotel through the quick twilight and sudden darkness gave many views into lamp-lighted huts and houses—genre pictures of native life, Dutch-Indies interiors, where candle-light or firelight illuminated family groups and women at their homely occupations, that should inspire a new, a tropical school of Dutch painters. The graves of the old Hindu princes of Mataram crown a beautiful wooded hill south of the city near the sea-shore, and are still worshiped and garlanded by their people.

Through our now near friend, august patron, and protector, the kindly assistant resident, we received word at sunrise that the independent Prince Pakoe Alam V (“Axis of the Universe”) and his family would graciously receive us the next morning at nine o’clock; and that meanwhile our patronage was invited for a topeng, or lyric dance, to be given by Prince Pakoe Alam’s palace troupe on that evening for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in the Lombok war. This Lombok war had been brought to a close that week by the capture of the treacherous Balinese sultan who had so tyrannized over the Sassaks, and was then on his way to be paraded with the victorious soldiers before the governor-general in a grand triumph or review at Batavia.

I had a long, quiet afternoon at the Hotel Toegoe to give again to the enormous folios of Wilsen’s drawings of Boro Boedor, while my companions napped, the palm-branches hung motionless in the garden, and only a few barefooted servants moved without sound—that deathly silence of tropic afternoon life that is sometimes a boon, and sometimes an exasperation and irritation to one accustomed to doing his sleeping by dark and not turning day into night. Finally the pale skeleton of an invalid, who was my next neighbor on the long porch, lifted his pitiful voice, and was helped out to his chair, and then our imperturbable Amat stirred from his leisured sleep on the flags beyond, meditated for a while, twisted his kerchief turban anew, disappeared, and returned with the tea-tray, silent, impassive, and automatic, as if under some spell. A graceful little woman peddler came to the porch’s edge—a pretty, gentle creature with dark, starry Hindu eyes, clear-cut features, even little white teeth, and crinkly hair. It was delight enough to watch this pretty creature’s flash of eyes and teeth, and her manners were most beguiling as she proffered her sarongs—intricately figured batteks from Cheribon and Solo, silk plaided ones from Singapore, and those of Borneo shot through with glittering threads. Nothing could have been more graceful and charming than the naïve appeals of the little peddler woman, and nothing could have presented more extreme and unfortunate contrast than to have the sockless and waistless young Dutch matron of the opposite portico step down and run to the garden gate at sound of a military band. Few women since Atalanta’s time have been able to run gracefully; and this thick-ankled young matron, with her flapping mule slippers, scant sarong, and shapeless jacket, outdid all descriptions and caricatures of “the woman who runs.” A friendly cavalier in gaudy battek pajamas, who had been talking to the lady, and blowing clouds of pipe-smoke into her face the while, gaily danced an elephantine fandango as the band went sounding down the street to give its sunset concert in the park.

When tea was taken to the lady’s porch after this divertisement, she took a banana to the edge, and called, “Peter! Peter!” There was a rustle and crash of boughs overhead, and a great ape, nearly the size of a man, swung from one tree-branch to another, snatched the banana, and bounded back into the tree, where it peered cunningly at us while he ate. After that every rustle in the shrubbery made us jump; we kept umbrellas at hand for defense, and made solemn compact that no one of us should be left asleep unguarded while doors and windows were open to this dreadful reminder of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

XXI

PAKOE ALAM: THE “AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE”

As the lines of the topeng-players are always delivered in the ancient Kawi, or classic language of Java, one has need to brush up beforehand, and to wish for a libretto, a book of the opera, to keep in hand as the lyric drama progresses. Sir Stamford Raffles’s “History of Java” furnishes one a general glimpse of the ancient literature of the island, and by many translations acquaints one with the great epics. This old literature is Hindu in form and origin; and Kawi, the classic or literary language of the past, in which all the history, early records, epic and legendary poems, and the books of religion and the law are written, is closely related to Sanskrit and Pali. The famous myths and legends of India are included in this literature, and the Ramayan and Mahabharata appear, incomplete but unaltered, in the Javanese epics known as the Kandas and the Parvas. Besides these two great works, there is the “Arjuna Vivaya,” giving an account of the exploits of the Indian Arjuna, the real hero of the Mahabharata; and there is still another romantic legendary poem, the “Bharata Yuddha,” in which many of the incidents and the heroes of the Mahabharata are presented in Javanese settings with Javanese names. All these Kawi books are known to the people by translations in modern Javanese, and by their frequent presentation in the common dramatic entertainments, the wayang-wayang, or shadow-plays, of even the smallest villages.

Many “Books of Wisdom” and of exhortation to pious and righteous living survive in Kawi literature; but with all that Hindu civilization brought, it bequeathed nothing that could be called Buddhist literature, and the bulk of ancient Javanese literature is decidedly secular and profane—sentimental and romantic poems, love-tales in verse, that continue to extreme lengths. The Arab conquest has left almost no impress upon the language. Although schools were established, and a considerable body of Arabic literature came with the Mohammedan conquerors, but little save _bababs_, romantic chronicles of the loves of imaginary princes and heroes, have been added to Javanese literature in the four centuries since Islam’s conquest. The spoken language of the Javanese shows few traces of Arabic, and the written language is also unchanged—a neater, more beautiful and graceful system of ornamental characters than either Arabic or Persian.

The old Kawi epics are popularized by the theater, the topeng, and the common wayang-wayang, or shadow-dance of puppets, where a manager delivers the well-known lines. Of these three dramatic forms the topeng is the highest, the most classic and refined presentation, a lyric drama very like the No dance of Japan, and doubtless, like the No dance, had a religious origin. A topeng troupe has its _dalang_, or manager, who prompts, sometimes explains, and often delivers all the lines for the masked actors; and there is a gamelan, or orchestra, of four or more musicians, and a chorus which chants accompanying and explanatory verses as the action proceeds. Great princes maintain their own private topeng troupes, and in their palace presentations, and always in the presence of native royalties, the actors go without masks. The topeng’s gamelan consists of two sets of the circles of tiny gongs (_gong_ or _agong_, a pure Javanese word and instrument), that are struck with wooden sticks, and two wood and two metal gambang kayu (wood and metal bars of different length and thickness mounted on a boat-shaped frame), or native xylophones, to which single instrument the name “gamelan” is so often given in the West.

The common wayang-wayang of the people is a modification of the same masked or puppet drama that was in vogue long before the Mohammedan conquest. As the religion of Islam forbade the representation of the human figure, the susunhan ordered the puppets to be so distorted that the priests could not call them images of human beings, and that even then only their shadows, thrown on a curtain, should be seen. Hence the exaggerated heads, the beaks and noses, of the cardboard jumping-jacks which, pulled by unseen strings, serve to maintain an interest in the national history and legends, and by preludes and lines, chanted in classic Kawi, preserve acquaintance with the literary language among the common people. There is a form of wayang-wayang half-way between this puppet-show and the real drama, in which the actors themselves are visible, wearing distorted masks; but the plays are of modern times, in the common dialect, and the manager often improvises his lines and scenes as the play progresses. With these popular dramas there rank the performances of the graceful _bedaya_, or dancing-girl, whose tightly folded sarong, floating scarf-ends, measured steps, outward sweep of the hand, and charming play of arm and wrist recall the Japanese _maiko_. Although the winsome bedaya is sculptured on Boro Boedor’s recording walls, there is nothing there to indicate the puppet-play, nor anything from which it might have evolved, although from other records ethnologists claim that the Javanese possessed this dramatic art when the Hindus came. A love of the drama in the form of the topeng and the wayang-wayang was so ingrained in the tastes and fixed in the customs of the people that the Mohammedan conquerors could not suppress those popular amusements, and were finally content to modify them in trifling points. The Dutch were also wise enough never to interfere with these harmless pleasures of the people, the greatest distraction and delight of these sensitive, emotional, innately esthetic and refined Javanese, who will sit through shadow-plays for half the night, and are moved to frenzy and tears by the martial and romantic exploits of their national heroes.

All of society,—the two hundred of Djokja’s superior circle,—European and native together, gathered at the Societeit’s marble hall on the night of the topeng. That exalted being, the resident, entered in his modestly gilded uniform; and all the company rose, and stood until he and Prince Pakoe Alam had advanced and seated themselves in the two arm-chairs placed in front of the chairs of the rest of the audience. “Our best people are all here to-night,” said our amiable table d’hôte acquaintance of the Hotel Toegoe; and we looked around the lofty white hall, where row upon row of robust, prosperous-looking Europeans sat in state attire. All the men wore heavy cloth coats, either richly frogged military jackets or the civilian’s frock or cutaway, only a few wearing conventional black dress-coats, and none the rational white duck clothes of the tropics. The Dutch ladies were dressed in rich silks, brocades, and even velvets, and fanned vigorously as a natural consequence, while more of mildew fumes than of sachet odors came from these heavy cloth and silk garments, whose care and preservation are so difficult in the tropics. One was reminded of those tropical burghers in crimson velvet coats who received Lord Macartney and Staunton in a red velvet council-room at Batavia just one century before. The native officers and their families were naturally more interesting to a stranger—splendid-looking Javanese men, who stood and walked like kings, all wearing the battek kerchief or turban folded in myriad fine plaitings, richly patterned sarongs, and the boat-handled kris showing at the back of the short black military jacket. Many of these native officials had constellations of stars and decorations pinned to their breasts, and their finely cut features, noble mien, and graceful manners declared them aristocrats and the fine flower of an old race. Their wives, shy, slender, graceful women in clinging sarongs and the disfiguring Dutch jacket, wore many clasps and buckles and jeweled knobs of ear-rings. They seemed to have inherited all the Hindu love of glittering, glowing jewels, and the Buddhist love of flowers and perfumes, each little starry-eyed, flower-like woman redolent of rose or jasmine attar, and wearing some brilliant blossom in the knot of satin-black hair. The women had thrust their pretty brown feet into gold-heeled mule slippers, that clicked musically on the tiles as they walked, while the children comfortably rubbed their bare feet on the cool white floor.

A few Chinese families, nearly all of them Paranaks, or half-castes, to the island born, were there; the women in gay embroidered satins, jeweled and diamonded out of all reason, and the children gay as cockatoos and parrakeets in their bright little coats and caps and talismanic ornaments. Rows of shadowy, silent natives, opas, lantern- and pajong-bearers, and attendants of every kind, crouched in rows among the great columns of the portico—gallery gods who squatted spellbound, rapt, and freely tearful in their enjoyment of the splendid topeng produced that night.

Prince Pakoe Alam’s artists rendered for the sake of military charities a four-act lyric drama, dealing with the adventures of mythical Panji, a hero of Hindu times, who is said to have introduced the kris to Java. The gamelan’s music was all soft harmonies, tender, weird, sad melodies in plaintive minor key, that accompanied the action throughout. The high-pitched nasal recitatives, the squeaks and squawks and stamps of fencing warriors, the slow posing, the stilted and automatic movements of all the actors, were enough like the No dance of Japan to confuse one greatly. All the actors were magnificently costumed and accoutred, their dresses, armor, and weapons being historic properties of the Pakoe Alam family, that had figured on festal occasions in the topengs of a century and more. In the first act four women in silk sarongs and velvet jackets did a regular Delsarte dance, with all those theatrical poses, sweeps, and gestures with the devitalized arm and wrist that the trainers of the would-be beautiful are teaching in America. Dark-robed attendants, identical with the mutes and invisible supers of the Japanese stage, crawled around behind the principals, arranging costumes, handing and carrying away weapons, as needed. Then deliberate mortal combat raged to slow music; and after it the harmless automatic dance was resumed. There was one tedious act where warriors in modern military jackets, worn with sarongs, indulged in long-drawn recitatives in Kawi; there were prolonged fan, spear, and bow drills; and one fine final act, where heroes, stripped to the waist in old style, with bodies powdered yellow, and half protected by gorgeously gilded breast-plates, fenced with fury and some earnest.

At the end of the first act nearly every man in the audience rose and went out, each mopping his brows and whewing great breaths of air from his lungs. Some few returned with cups of coffee, glasses of pink lemonade, and tall beakers of soda-water for the perspiring ladies wedged in their chairs. These men stayed outside after that act, declaring themselves only during intermissions, when they rushed cooling drinks to their partners at the front. At the end of three hours Panji triumphed over all his enemies, the performance ended, chairs scraped loudly as the audience stirred, the applause was long, and the sighs of relief profound.

After the resident had made the tour of the room and honored the most distinguished ones, and the European dancing was about to begin, the native ladies withdrew; and as we saw these most interesting figures leaving, we, who had risen at five o’clock that morning, and expected to repeat the act the next morning, followed the beauties in golden slippers out to the picturesque confusion of lantern- and pajong-bearers at the carriage entrance. Dancing as it is done in Djokja could not keep us longer awake that night, though we have regretted ever since that we did not wait to see how many of the broadcloth-coated men and their partners in winter gowns survived one vigorous continental waltz on a marble floor, or if an anteroom was converted into an emergency hospital for treating heat prostrations.

With the exemplary early rising the tropics enjoin, we had been up for hours—had enjoyed the dash of a dipper-bath, breakfasted, written letters, visited the passer, the pawnshops, and the photographer—before it was time to join the assistant resident’s party and drive to the palace of Prince Pakoe Alam. The carriages went through several gateways, past a guard house and sentries, before they drew up in an inner court before an open pringitan, or audience-hall, eighty feet square, whose great, low-spreading roof, resting only on heavy teak columns, was all open to the air. The prince, his crown prince, and his second son, who is the father’s aide-de-camp, were waiting to receive us as we alighted, all three dressed in conventional European military uniforms, with many medals and orders illuminating their coat fronts, and only the native turban on the old prince’s head suggesting anything Javanese in attire. The prince spoke Dutch, his sous English and French as well as Dutch; and each gave us cordial welcome and courteous greetings before they offered an arm to conduct us back to the cool inner part of the pringitan, where the young princesses were waiting. We went far in over the shining marble floor, away from all glare and reflection of the vast sanded court, to a region of tempered shadow, where the wife, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter of the prince stood beside a formal semicircle of chairs. The ladies spoke only Dutch and Malay, but they did the honors most gracefully, and with the two princes to interpret, conversation moved along smoothly. These princesses wore sarongs and jackets and gilded mule slippers, but their simple costumes were brightened by many jeweled clasps and brooches and great, glittering knobs of ear-rings, and both had coronals of pale-yellow flowers around the knot of black hair drawn low at the back of the head, in foreign style. Their complexions were the pure pale yellow of the true Javanese aristocracy, not the pasty greenish yellow of the higher-class women of China. They had very pretty manners, combining gentleness and dignity, and they put the conventional questions as to our homes and journeys with great earnestness and seeming interest.

The old prince, whose high military rank makes him an offset and check upon the Sultan of Djokja, and who, by his lineage and connections with the imperial house of Solo, almost ranks the sultan, is very literally a serene highness, a most gracious and courtly host, whose dignity and charming address befit his rank and exalted name. His lands and mills and highly improved estates bring him a large private income; and progressive as he may be, I am sure his people speak of him admiringly as a gentleman of the old school—and that old school must have been an admirable one in Java, where the native manners are as fine as in Japan. Prince Pakoe Alam received a foreign military education in his youth, and his sons have enjoyed still greater advantages to fit them for the still newer order. They are the most charming, natural, and unaffected young men, unspoiled and with truly princely mien and manners. To be told hereafter that a young man has the manners of a prince will mean a great deal in simple courtesy, fine finish, and perfection, to those who remember these Javanese princes, the handsome young Pakoe Alams. The natural refinement and charm that one is sensible of in even the lowliest Javanese have their fullest and finest flowering in these princely ones; and that delightful hour spent in the vast shady white pringitan offset many misadventures in Java.

Rows of red-coated and -cowled servitors sat around the edges of the pringitan’s shining floor, holding the state pajongs and hooded spears of ceremony; and a full gamelan and a group of singers, in the same bright court livery, squatted in rows facing us at the far front of the hall, awaiting the signal to begin. The artists of the previous night, all the singers and musicians of the full topeng troupe, lifted up their voices to the tinkling, softly booming, sonorous airs of the gamelan and delighted us with a succession of chants throughout our stay. The young princes led us “down front,”—for the whole strange scene in which we found ourselves was very like a theater,—and, in the strong glare of the footlights of daylight, explained the several instruments of the native orchestra. Then in from the wings—“enter right,” as the play-books would say—came a procession of servants, swinging racks of decanters and glasses, and bearing bowls of ice, trays of fruits, wafers, and sweets. Abject minions sidled over the floor, and mutely offered us iced wines or aërated waters, moving awkwardly about in the ignominious attitude of the dodok, like so many land-crabs. “Light-boys” crouched and crawled behind each smoker, handing cigars, holding burning punk-sticks, or extending trays to receive the ashes, maintaining their abject position during all our stay. One never gets used to this abasement of the dodok, often as he may see it; and after the first absurdity and humor of it wears off, it is irritating and humiliating to see one human being thus belittle himself before another. One suspects that there was more of fear than reverence in its first observance, and that it comes from centuries of tyranny and oppression rather than from any spontaneous expressions of humility and admiration. This group of household retainers, sidling and jerking over the floor with something between the gait of a toad and a crab, seemed to mar the perfect dignity and decorum of the occasion. These same attendants strode into the sunlit court with the free, splendid tread of Javanese men, only to crouch to their heels at the pringitan’s edge, make the simbah’s imploring obeisance with clasped hands to the forehead, repeating the simbah if they caught a princely eye, while they sidled grotesquely over the pringitan floor and crouched like dogs at the master’s feet.

There was a carved screen behind us, closing off an inner space, where broad divans invited to informal ease, and many beautiful objects were disposed. We were taken there by the old prince to see the great gold-bound “Menac,” or family record of the Pakoe Alams—an immense volume with jeweled covers, resting on a yellow satin cushion. This family history was put in this splendid form a hundred years ago by Prince Pakoe Alam II, a literary highness who possessed considerable artistic talent, and maintained a staff of artists and writers in his palace, who were busied for years in tracing and illuminating, under his instructions, this one precious manuscript. Javanese calligraphy, which is even more decorative and ornamental than Arabic or Persian, makes beautiful pages; and each page, gracefully written in black, gold, or colors, is also bordered and illuminated more lavishly than any old Flemish missal. The beautiful ornamental letters, medallions, and miniatures, the tangle of graceful arabesques, and the glow of soft colors and gold, relieved with touches and dashes of black, make the Pakoe Alam’s “Menac” a treasure of delight for a whole morning’s inspection; but we had only time to turn its leaves, see the more remarkable pages, and obtain a general dazzling idea of its quality. The “Axis of the Universe” is a bibliophile and collector by inheritance, and there were many precious manuscript books, unique éditions de luxe in jeweled bindings, that we could have given hours to inspecting. There is one particular book of Arabian tales, rivaling the family “Menac” in the beautiful lettering and rich illumination, that was sent to the Amsterdam Colonial Exposition some years ago, and naturally excited surprise and admiration among European book-collectors.

Conversation never lagged during this morning call, and the little second prince was regretful that we had given up a trip to the sweltering end of the island, where the Bromo smokes. “The Bromo is the only ‘lake of fire’ in the world, you know,” said the prince, proudly. And soon after, in answer to a question, he said, “No, I have never been in Europe, but I have been all over Java”—this last with an emphasis that became one to the island born, and appreciative of all its wonderful beauties.

When we praised and extolled the scenery of Java, he asked naïvely, “Is America not beautiful, then? Have you no mountains, no beautiful scenery there?” And when we answered patriotically to the facts,—Niagara, the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, Mount Rainier, and Alaska,—he asked in amazement, “Then why do you travel to other countries?”

The old prince announced the approaching marriage of his granddaughter to the son of the Prince of Malang, and asked that we would attend the fêtes which he would give in celebration of the affair a fortnight later; but with all of the other India beckoning, we could not prolong our stay in Java; and we took leave of our princely hosts then, to hasten to the train, promising, as one always does in every pleasant place, to come again when time would allow for a fuller enjoyment of this Javanese Djokja, that we had only begun to know as we were leaving.

XXII

“TJILATJAP,” “CHALACHAP,” “CHELACHAP”

“Tjilatjap! Tjilatjap!” Often as one may sound those syllables aloud, they seem absurd; and the very idea of spending the night in a town of such name, of buying a railway ticket with that name printed on it, and asking to have one’s luggage labeled to that destination, was enough to tickle the fancy. Could there be solemn men and serious women living there? and had the station a sign-board? and could the pale, grave little Dutch children keep their faces straight and glibly pronounce the name of that town without sneezing?

Whether it is printed “Tjilatjap,” “Chalachap,” or “Chelachap,” it at once suggests enough puns to spare one printing them, and surely no town on the north side of the equator could support such a name with any dignity.

But Tjilatjap is one of the oldest foreign settlements in Java, the one good harbor on the whole south coast; and the “Tjilatjap fever” is a distinguished specialty of the region that surpasses all the deadly forms of fever in Java. The place proved to be such a cemetery for European troops that the government was finally forced to abandon the extensive barracks, magazines, and fortifications it had once constructed there. A considerable white population remains, however, and the passer is one of great local importance to the natives. The completion of the railway brought new life to the old settlement; and with such easy access, Tjilatjap is well worth visiting, if it were only to see its shade-trees. All the post-roads running into the town, every street and lane, are such continuous isles, arcades, and tunnels of living green that one is repaid for coming, even after all the other teak and tamarind, kanari and waringen avenues he may have seen elsewhere in Java. Not the allées of Versailles, nor the _cryptomeria_ avenues of Japan, can surpass these tree-lined streets of Tjilatjap, the endless vistas of straight trunks and arching branches, the lofty canopies of solid, impenetrable shade, rejoicing one in every part of the town. Tamarind may be the coolest and waringen the densest shade, but kanari-trees give the most splendid and inspiring effect, and Tjilatjap is the place of their greatest perfection.

We drove during the late afternoon and until dusk through kanari avenues, whose great green cathedral aisles, with fretted arches a hundred feet overhead, dwarfed everything that moved or stood beneath them; and then under cool, feathery tamarind bowers, and past arrays of noble teak, everywhere exclaiming with delight. The use of the big-leaved teak for street and post-road shade-trees seemed to me the acme of botanical extravagance,—as ill ordered as putting Pegasus to a cart,—since we of the temperate zone are used to even speaking of that expensive timber with respect. While we drove through the magnificent avenues in the late afternoon light, past parade-grounds and parks, over canals and along their embankments, the rising mists and the solid blue vapors massing in the distances were so much actual, visible evil—malaria almost in tangible form. One felt that he should dine on so many courses of quinine only, taking the saving sulphate first with a soup-spoon, if he expected to survive the mad venture into Tjilatjap’s fever-laden air. A crowded, neglected cemetery gave one further creeps and gruesome thoughts; and the evil-smelling sugar and copra warehouses on the harbor front seemed to seal our doom—that old ignorant instinct or idea asserting itself that the bad smell must necessarily be the bad air. There is a beautiful view from the old military encampment out over the land-locked harbor, with a glimpse of the open ocean through a narrow entrance. The dark mass of Noesa Kambangan (“Floating Island”) rises beyond the silvery waters—a tropical paradise deliberately depopulated by the Dutch as a strategic measure, that there might be no temptation of sustenance to induce an attack or siege from that quarter. The island is mountainous, and contains much fine scenery, many floral marvels, curious stalactite caverns of holy repute where Siva is secretly worshiped, hot springs, and even gold-mines, and is famous in the old Javanese poems and legends. The great surf of the Indian Ocean beats upon its precipitous south shore, where the clefts and caves in the bold cliffs are inhabited by myriads of sparrows, who build there their edible nests. Nest-hunting furnishes employment to the few islanders, and, like everything else, is strictly regulated and taxed by the colonial government. The nest-hunters only pursue their perilous quest after the young sparrows are well grown each season, as only new, fresh, one-season-old nests serve to make the “bad vermicelli” soup Celestial gourmets adore; and the hunters are often suspended over the cliffs by ropes in order to reach their carefully hidden homes. The glutinous white lumps are as much esteemed in Java as in China, and this rare dainty commands a high price from the moment it is secured.

There is a typical little country colonial hotel at Tjilatjap—a large building containing the offices, drawing-room, and dining-room in the center of a garden, with long, low buildings at either side of it, where rows of bedrooms open upon the long arcade or bricked porch, which is a general corridor, screened off into as many little open sitting-rooms, each with its table, lamp, and lounging-chairs. After our malarial drive we were served an excellent dinner, which concluded with a dessert course of kanari _ambon_, the “Java almond,” or nut of the kanari-tree, soaked in brandy. The kanari ambon has the shape and shell of a butternut; but the long, solid white kernel is finer and firmer than even an almond, and of a richer, more distinct and delicate flavor. These nuts of the Tjilatjap region are superior to those grown elsewhere in Java, but we learned this too late, when we tried to buy them elsewhere.

After the sun fell the air grew heavier and hotter—a stifling, sodden, steaming, reeking atmosphere of evil that one could hardly force in and out of the lungs. We gasped at intervals all through the long evening, and wondered if some vast vacuum bell had not been dropped down over Tjilatjap, while we batted flying things from our faces and swept them from the writing-table. Lizards ran over the walls, of course; and one pale-gray, clammy thing was picked from the bed-curtains, and thrown out with a sickening “ugh!” The invisible one, in agony, called for “_Becky! Becky! Becky!_” and a hoarser voice cried for “_Tokee! Tokee! Tokee!_” of whom we had never heard before.

Wearily, without rustle of leaves, stir, or any provocation, a sullen rain began to fall, and saturating the atmosphere, made it that much heavier. The rain ceased as wearily as it had begun, and the awful, sodden stillness was only broken by the slow, heavy drip of the listless foliage, and the occasional thud of a falling mango. Far, far away, faintly in the air was heard a smothered booming, moaning sound—the ceaseless surf of the Indian Ocean. Overhead there was darkness, profound and intense, beyond even heat-lightning’s illumining, with a more impenetrable blackness where the double rows of ancient kanari-trees shaded the street beyond the hotel garden. The possibilities of its effects, the awful, desperate depression that loneliness in such surroundings would surely cause, made me wonder how great was the proportion of suicides’ graves in that damp, weedy cemetery we had driven past in the gloaming.

Then three guests came over from the other part of the hotel, and, spreading themselves out on chairs in the section of porch beyond our partition screen, began conversation, all in Dutch consonants and palatal garglings, with a volume and lung-power, a fervor and emphasis, that made the languid air vibrate and the mangos fall in showers. Their voices could have easily been heard at the harbor’s edge or the railway-station, in a stamp-mill or in a boiler factory; and the humor of it—the three Dutchmen in the stilly night bellowing away as if conversing through a half-mile of fog—greatly relieved the sodden melancholy of the malarial evening. Clouds of dense, rank, Sumatra tobacco-smoke rose from the talkers’ mouths in volumes to match their voices, and until long past midnight those three men on a silent porch conversed _more Hollandico_, the roar of voices and the pungent smoke sending us dreams of Chicago fires and riots, passing freight-trains, and burning forests.

We had been warned betimes that there would be no opportunity to lunch at wayside stations or from compartment baskets during the long ride from Tjilatjap to Garoet, and we planned accordingly. Our gentle Moslem, who made such inconsequent, irresponsible child’s play at waiting on us, was shown the bread and the cold buffalo beef, and bidden make sandwiches in plenty. I even went into details as to salt and pepper, the “mustard” and “no mustard” varieties, and insisted on white paper only for wrapping, before leaving him to the task.

After all Tjilatjap’s evil name, we never had any ill effects from venturing into it, and we had a sense of complacent rejoicing when we took train, that next morning, for Maos on the main line of the railway, and knew that a few hours would put us beyond the _terra ingrata_.

Nearly always, in our railway rides in Java, we had the first-class compartments to ourselves; and we often looked longingly, despite the heat, at the crowded second-class compartments, where many Europeans, nice, intelligent-looking people and interesting families, traveled in sociable numbers. The only companions ever of our first-class solitude were, once, the chief constructor of the railways, who for a sudden short trip had dispensed with his official car; and, again, a young Holland geologist and mining expert returning from a season’s survey in Borneo—both traveling at government expense. Only the more extravagant planters, native princes, tourists, and officials with passes or under orders seem to use the first-class cars, although the additional comforts and the extra space are actual necessaries of travel in the tropics. That the second-class carriages were always well filled with Europeans showed that at least one thrifty notion of the Hollanders’ home survived transplantation in this matter of railway fares. From the two chance fellow-passengers whom we had the fortune to meet on the train I derived enough, by a day’s steady questioning and comment, to atone for the dearth of travelers’ talk I had suffered before. Both men were cyclopedias of things Javanese, geologic and botanical, and those were very red-letter days in the guide-bookless land.

There was always interest enough in watching the people by the way; and as the through railway-trains were then novelties of a few days’ and weeks’ experience in that section of Middle Java, the station platforms were crowded with native sight-seers. Native officials and their trains of attendants, Mohammedan women with gorgeous head-gear and the thinnest pretenses of veils, stolid planters with obsequious, groveling servants, and planters’ wives, barefooted, wrapped in scant sarongs, and as often wearing red velvet jackets and other traveling toilets of eccentric combination, the costume of the tropics and a Northern winter at the same time—processions of these entertained us not a little as they went their way to the other compartments of the long train.

After the scorching hours spent running through swamp and jungle, we drew near the mountains; life became more bearable, and we beckoned our Moslem at the next stopping-place.

“Bring the sandwiches; they are not in this basket.” He looked blankness, as if a little vaguer and more becalmed in mind than usual. “The sandwiches that you made at the Tjilatjap hotel this morning,” I explained slowly. “Where are they?”

“Oh, I eat them—jus’ now,” said the soft-voiced one, naïvely, his hand unconsciously traveling to the digestive region and comfortably stroking it.

Language was useless at such a crisis, and sadly, silently, I resigned myself to the rest of the ten hours’ empty ride. An hour later we reached Tjiawi, near which the finest pineapples of the island are grown; and we bought them on the platform, great fragrant, luscious globes of delight, regardless of the almost prayerful requests made to us on arrival, that we would not touch a pineapple in Java. We did a tourist’s whole duty to specialties of strange places for that one day, buying the monster nanas in most generous provision; and we made up for all previous denials and lost pineapple opportunities as we tore off the ripe diamonds of pulp in streaming sections that melted on the tongue; nor did we feel any sinking at heart nor dread of the future for such indulgence. Then, at Tissak Malaya, we bought strings of mangosteens through the car-windows. But after the light, evanescent, six-o’clock breakfast of the country, these noonday feasts of juicy fruits did not satisfy one for long, and soon we hungered again.

At Tjipeundeui, in the shadow of the great volcanic range that walls the west, a local chief, or village head man, was foremost on the station platform, that was crowded with cheerful, chattering groups of natives, hung over with bundles as if come from a fair. With great excitement the chief announced that the Goenoeng Galoengoeng, or “Great Gong Mountain,” was in eruption again. Two weeks before it had rumbled, as its name indicates it has a habit of doing, and sent out a shower of stones that ruined a large coffee-plantation, scorching and half burying the budding trees in the hot rocks, pebbles, and sand. It had begun rumbling and shaking again, the village wells had emptied, and the people had fled, remembering too well the eruption of 1822, when one hundred and fifteen villages were destroyed, twenty thousand people were killed, and plantations ruined for twenty miles around by the rain of hot stones and ashes, and the hot water and mud overflowing from the blown-out crater. But such a gentle, happy, cheerful, chattering lot of refugees as they were, saving their best sarongs and finery by wearing them, and tying the rest of their treasures in shapeless bundles, as they went picnicking forth to visit relatives until the volcanic disturbance might subside! They were not a whit more care-worn or anxious than the crowd on the next station platform, where two or three hundred pleasure-seekers were returning from a famous country passer, whose rare meetings attract people from afar. Even the chief of the volcanic village radiated joy and pride all over his wrinkled old brown face as he related the moving events occurring in his bailiwick. Eruptions were evidently his pastime, a diversion quite in his line, since he had only come down to the railway to see his family off to a place of safety, while he would return, play Casabianca on his burning heath, and have it out with the resounding Galoengoeng at his leisure.

We had an hour to wait at Tjibatoe station before the Garoet train left, and the refreshment-room keeper offered tea and biscuits—the inevitable, omnipresent Huntley & Palmer biscuits, that are the mainstay and salvation, the very prop and stay and staff, of tourist life in Netherlands as well as British India, and for whose making the great Reading bakers buy the entire tapioca-crop of Java each year. After a short wait in the room, redolent of gin and schnapps and colonial tobacco, a boy sauntered in the back door with an iron tea-kettle, and the proprietor was about to make the tea with that warm water, when we chorused a protest. He good-naturedly allowed me to gather up tea-pot, tea-kettle, small boy, and all, and go a hundred yards down the road, climb a bamboo ladder laid against a bank, and restore the cooling kettle to its place on the home fire in the airiest, dearest little fancy basket of a home, in which one could imagine grown people playing “keep house.” A bright-eyed little woman stirred the fire, gave me a box to sit upon, and herself crouched before the sullen tea-kettle, chattering and crooning like a child at play. “_Bodedit? Bodedit?_” (“Does it boil? Does it boil?”) she asked seriously, putting her ear to the spout, or sliding the lid and peering into the still interior; but it finally did boil energetically. We made the tea; and, at risk of every bone, I descended that slanting half-ladder in a gentle rain, and returned to enjoy quite a feast that the kind refreshment-room keeper had conjured up in the meantime.

XXIII

GAROET AND PAPANDAYANG

Rain blurred the landscape for all of the half-hour run from Tjibatoe down to Garoet, and we lost the panorama of splendid mountains that surround the great green Garoet plain, embowered in the midst of which is the town of Garoet, a favorite hill and pleasure-resort of the island. We did catch glimpses now and then, however, of dark mountain masses looming above and through the clouds, and of flooded rice-fields and ripening crops, with scarecrows and quaint little baskets of outlooks perched high on stilts, where young Davids with slings lay in wait for birds. Boys leading flocks of geese, and boys astride of buffaloes made other pictures afield, and in the drizzling rain of the late afternoon we were whirled through the dripping avenues to the Hotel Hork, home of Siamese royalties and lesser tourists, health- and pleasure-seekers, who visit this volcanic and scenic center of the Preanger regencies.

Our sitting-room porch at this summer hotel, with an endless season, looked on a garden, whose formal flower-beds, bordered with stones and shells, classic vases, and other conventions of their kind, reminded one at once of by-places in Europe; and so also did the bust of Mozart and the copy of Thorwaldsen’s “Venus,”—until one noted their protecting palm- and mango-trees. This Garoet hotel is one of the institutions of Java, and the Vrouw van Hork and her excellent Dutch housekeeping are famed from Anjer Head to Banjoewangi. All the colonial types were represented at the long table d’hôte, and every language of Europe was heard. There were always nice neighbors at table, able and anxious to talk English, and the cheery Dutch ladies were kindness and friendliness personified. At no other resort on the island did we receive such a pleasant impression of the simplicity, refinement, and charm of social life in the colony. But, although two thousand feet above sea-level, in a climate of mildly tempered eternal spring, the ladies all wore the sarong and loose dressing-sacque in the morning, as in scorching Batavia or lowland Solo. Even on damp and chilly mornings, when a light wrap was a comfortable addition to our conventional muslin gowns, the Garoet ladies were bare-ankled and as scantily clad as the Batavians; and there were shock and real embarrassment to me in seeing in sarong and sacque the dignified elderly matron who had been my charming dinner neighbor the night before.