On the Road to Sindanglaya
Long before sunrise, the sound of merry voices arose from the valley. Already the natives were bathing in the Tjidani, and, when the light came, the primeval life on which the sun had gone down was reproduced in the model-like scene spread out before us. Our kreta for the journey over the Poentjak Pass had been ordered for six o'clock, but with un-Oriental punctuality it was a quarter-past live when the sound of carriage wheels broke in upon our dreams.
While we sipped our morning coffee,—Java hotel coffee has improved since Miss Scidmore anathematised it in 1899,—the sun's rays began to peep over the shoulder of the Salak, and dispelled the morning mists on river and valley. The Salak's fretwork crater stood out entirely clear—his form a purple background to the picture gradually unfolding itself. Nature was everywhere awake. Children's voices in play blended with the songs of early workers proceeding to the fields. Butterflies flitted and floated like detached petals from the flowers. Distance converted human figures into larger butterflies, yellow and orange, pink and blue and red. If it were beautiful in the evening, the scene was enchanting in the morning, and it was with reluctance that we obeyed the summons to early breakfast, and followed our barang into the kreta to begin the journey to Sindanglaya.
It was half-past six o'clock when we were salaamed out of the courtyard of the Bellevue by the hotel "boys."
The kreta was not a handsome affair. In fact it was one of the most disreputable vehicles it has ever been our misfortune to travel in, and when we made acquaintance of the road it had to travel over we must give the owner credit for an abundant faith in the toughness of the kreta. It was a cross between the carromata of the Philippines and a covered dog-cart. There was no aid to mount. By a series of gymnastics we managed to get into the driver's seat—our own was behind his but also facing to the front. In attempting to get there, a sudden movement of the team sent us plunging into the barang, and, in extricating ourselves, head came in contact with the roof and hat went overboard.
Eventually we went off with a bound along the main street of Buitenzorg, scattering the fowls obtaining a precarious living in the roadway, and sending cats and dogs and goats flying for safety into the houses.
We had now time to examine the points of our team. It was composed of three tiny Battak ponies. Two were brown, and one a piebald in which a dingy chestnut strove for mastery with a dingier white. No two ponies were the same in size. One was in the shafts; the other two were in traces alongside. They tapered in size from right to left—the piebald on the left. The giant of the group had a nasty temper, and when lashed, as he was frequently during the drive, vented his anger upon the patient brute doing the lion's share of the work in the shafts. Upon the whole they did their work extremely well, for a great deal was asked of them, and they scarcely deserved the almost continuous flogging to which they were subjected by our driver.
Having travelled over the road from Buitenzorg to Sindanglaya by the Poentjak, without reserve, we advise pilgrims to Sindanglaya to patronise the road from Tjiandjoer. The local guide book remarks with truth: "The main road to the Poentjak being very steep, it does not afford a quick mode of travelling. At Toegoe, an extra team of horses must be added—or karbouws (water buffaloes) used instead of the horses, to pull the carriage at a slow pace up the mountain. Good walkers may, therefore, be advised to do this part of the road on foot, which will take them about an hour and a half. By doing so they will be more able to admire this marvellous work of Governor-General Daendels."
We suspect there is a touch of Dutch satire in this last remark. We have travelled the road, and we are not prepared to parody the old Scot's saying:—
"If you'd seen this road before it was made,
You'd lift up your hands and bless General Wade"
Daendels may have been an admirable gentleman, a brave soldier, and a clever administrator, but his engineering skill did not equal his other qualities. It would have been much better if the road had never been made. Surely no highway was ever more badly graded, and we are not astonished that a practical people like the Dutch set themselves to construct a more sensible road by way of Tjitjoeroeg and Soekaboemie. We have seen paved mountain paths in China more inaccessible, but not much, and when we dashed up to the Sindanglaya Hotel at 12.15, we thought more highly of the team that had pulled us over the Pass than we could have believed when we formed our first early morning prejudices.
Needless to say, it is not a road for a motor car. It would be inadvisable to adopt this route to Sindanglaya if the party included ladies. But, if they have a taste for mountaineering, baggage should be sent by rail to Tjiandjoer under the care of some of the party, and carriages dispensed with at Toegoe and the remainder of the journey made on foot. As it was, a good deal of our journey up had to be made on foot over unblinded loose road metal.
Going down the other side the driver led the ponies for about a quarter of a mile, and then joined us in the kreta. That downward trip was the most perilous we ever made in anything that runs on wheels, except a train journey from Manila to Malolos during the Filipino insurrection in 1899. Jack London, the Californian novelist, once told us that life would not be worth living if it were not for the thrills. We had more thrills than we care to have crowded into one hour on that down-grade run from Poentjak to Sindanglaya. Several times, we retrimmed at the request of the driver, and we kept the barang from falling upon him, while he manipulated our three rakish adventurers from Battak. When an unusually severe lurch nearly precipitated us into the deep storm-water channel on the left or the carefully-irrigated paddy fields on the right, Jehu turned round and grinned a grin of fiendish appreciation, whilst we thanked with fervour the merciful Providence who preserved us from destruction, and wondered how long one could hold out with a broken limb, without surgical help, should the worst happen. It is the unexpected that happens. We got to Sindanglaya without any more serious damage than a bottle of Odol distributed amongst our best clothes.
Governor-General Daendels seems to have had a high opinion of this remarkable highway. We read: "The obstinacy with which he carried through his scheme of constructing the main road to the Preanger Regencies across this summit is really amazing. He never shrank from the terrible death-rate among the wretched labourers, nor from the difficulties and enormous cost to keep such a road in good condition, for, especially in the west monsoon, heavy rain-showers are continually washing the earth off the road. Yet it was by no means necessary." Let this be Governor-General Daendels' epitaph!
Had not one's attention been distracted by the eccentric performances of the kreta, one might well have admired the scenery. Close at hand, the road teems with fascinating pictures of native life. Only occasionally does one see a really beautiful face, but there is a pretty shyness such as one seldom sees on the roads of a European country. Although we read of the thirty millions of people in Java, there is still, apparently, room for more, and nearly every woman has a brown baby slung upon the hip and others dragging on her sarong, or seeking to efface themselves behind her none too ample form. At intervals, old women or young children keep shop, either in nipa huts or on mats under the shade of a kanari-tree. In the kampongs or collections of neat little huts which punctuate the way, a pasar (market) is being held, haberdashers with cheap glass and fancy wares being in juxtaposition with dealers in sarongs and the sellers of fruits and vegetables. On the stoeps of some of the houses, groups of women spin or weave cloth for the native sarong; some make deft use of the sewing machine of foreign commerce.
The road is fringed by a variety of trees and plants which only a botanist would attempt to describe. Colour is given to this fringe by the magenta bougainvillea, the red hibiscus, the pale blue convolvulus, the variegated crotons, and the orange and red of the lantana, and at places the poinsettia provides a predominating red head to the hedge-like greenery. Palms and tree ferns and feathery clumps of young bamboo are called to aid by Nature's landscape gardener; but they do not shut out the verdure-clad ravines that mark a waterway or the terraced rice-fields which climb almost to the top of the highest summits.
We thought we had seen the acme of perfection in rice cultivation and irrigation in China and Japan. But here in Java, we have seen more to excite the admiration in this respect than in either of these countries. One can only marvel at the completeness of the system of irrigation. Rice is in all stages of cultivation, from the flooded paddy field to the grain in the ear being reaped by the gaily coloured butterflies of women. Water buffaloes drag a primitive plough through the drenched soil, while the bright-faced young ploughboy, by what appears to be a superhuman effort, balances himself precariously on the implement.
On the left, we pass tea gardens, the tufty bushes low to the ground. What strikes us first is the amazing regularity of the rows and the cleanness of the ground. An aroma of tea in the making escapes from the roadside factory and agreeably assails our sense of smell as we jolt past in our kreta.
We reached Kampong Toegoe at nine o'clock, refreshed both men and beasts, and harnessed two more ponies with long rope traces to help us to the summit of the Pass, which was reached at eleven o'clock. Here we made a deviation on foot to the Telega Warna (Colour-changing Lake) while the ponies rested for the downward journey. The path is a difficult one, and the lake itself is less interesting than the lovely vegetation by which it is surrounded. Ferns and bracken cover the hillside, pollipods predominating, orchids cling to tree stems, and higher up, the curious nest-fern and various forms of plant life attract attention. Tree is woven to tree by a network of mighty lianas.
The lake itself lies in what must have been the crater in the prehistoric period of activity of Megamendoeng. It is 100 metres in width, circular in shape, and about 100 fathoms deep. Fish are found in the lake, and they are regarded with veneration by the natives.
The steepness of the heavily wooded wall that rises hundreds of feet sheer round three sides reminds one of the geyser-studded old crater of Unzen, in the island of Kyushiu in Japan, "Its gleaming mirror," the guide book says, "exhibits a wonderful luxury of tints and colours, shifting and changing whenever the gentle mountain breeze ruffles the smooth surface." We did not stay a sufficiently long time to experience any wonderful changes on the lake itself, but the surroundings are loaded with charm. The visitor to Sindanglaya should certainly not neglect to make the trip to the lake. We would recommend an excursion on foot from the hotel.
Once over the Pass, the view on the other side of the large basin-shaped plateau in which Sindanglaya lies is more attractive than on the Buitenzorg side, and, as we were to find on the following morning, a better idea is obtained of the wonderful industry of the people, and the remarkable extent to which the cultivation of the mountain slopes is carried on by them.