EASTERN JAVA, LOMBOCK, TIMOR, AND THE ARU ISLANDS.
Greatly pleased with their visit to the tea and coffee plantations, our friends returned to Bandong. On the way back they had an accident that for a few moments was quite exciting, and threatened serious results. While descending a long hill the brake of the carriage gave way, and the horses started on a full gallop; they were quite out of the control of the driver, and the two footmen were left a long way behind. The driver managed to turn his team into a side road at the risk of an overturn, and gave them a little practice in running up hill instead of down. Gradually they reduced their pace, and some workmen in a field close at hand came to his assistance, and held the horses till the grooms could come up. One of the springs of the carriage was broken, in the severe shaking they had received, but otherwise the vehicle was not much injured.
It was necessary to stop a day at Bandong to have the carriage repaired, and the delay enabled the boys to learn something more about the country.
VOLCANO IN EASTERN JAVA.
They ascertained that, if they had the time to spare, they could go to the eastern capitals of Java along good roads, and through a succession of mountains and plains. They would see volcanoes, both active and silent, and might possibly have a practical acquaintance with an earthquake, or an eruption of one of the burning mountains. Frank was a little doubtful of the safety of such a journey when he learned that one volcano had thrown out, in a single night, ashes and scoriæ to the depth of fifty feet over an area of several miles, destroying forty villages and three thousand people; and another volcano had overwhelmed everything within twenty miles of it, and caused the deaths of twenty thousand persons. But the Doctor assured him that the eruption of a volcano was not so sudden that those who wished to get away could not do so, and the majority of the burning mountains of the world were accustomed to give warning weeks and sometimes months ahead.
RUINS NEAR SOURABAYA.
The eastern capitals of Java are Samarang and Sourabaya, but they are capitals only of the provinces of the same names. Both of them are important commercial points; and there is a railway from Samarang which is intended in course of time to unite with the one from Batavia. Samarang is about two hundred and fifty miles from Batavia, or nearly half-way from one end of the island to the other; while Sourabaya is close to the eastern extremity, and not far from the island of Madura. The country around Sourabaya is quite flat, and very fertile; and the roads sometimes run for miles in perfectly straight lines. Back towards the interior, when the hilly region is reached, there is a magnificent forest, where tigers abound; and the hunter is rewarded by frequent shots at the beautiful Java peacock. The country is full of ruins of temples and palaces; and there are many evidences that it was once occupied by a people greatly advanced in architecture and the fine arts.
"But what should we find if we went beyond Java?" Fred asked.
Just as he spoke the door opened, and a gentleman entered. He proved to be their host of the coffee plantation, who had heard of their accident, and called to congratulate them on their escape from injury. After an exchange of civilities, he seated himself, and asked if he could be of any service; and, turning to Fred, he said,
"I heard your question as I entered the room, and think I can answer it. I have made the journey around the Dutch possessions in the East, and will try to tell you about them."
Both the boys expressed their delight at the chance of learning something of the islands of the Oriental Seas. The gentleman said he had an hour to spare, and would endeavor to enable them to pass it agreeably; and if they wanted to take any notes of what he said, they were welcome to do so.
They were desirous and ready, and he began at once.
"I have twice made the journey," said he; "once by steamer, and once by native boats."
"Do the steamers run there regularly?" one of the boys inquired.
"Certainly," was the reply; "the company whose ship brought you from Singapore to Batavia sends a steamer every month to make the tour of the Dutch East Indies. It leaves Batavia on the 15th of the month, and Sourabaya on the 22d; and goes to Macassar, Menado, Ternate, Boeroe, Amboina, Banda, and Timor, and then returns to Sourabaya and Batavia. The voyage takes about a month, and the steamer remains in each port from twenty-four to forty-eight hours."
"What a delightful voyage it must be," said Frank; "and how much does it cost?"
AN ISLAND PORT.
"A ticket for the round trip," the gentleman replied, "costs three hundred dollars, and sometimes more. You have already found that steamship fares in the East are dear; and this line forms no exception to the rule. In return for your money you have all the comforts the ship can give; and you may live on board all the time she remains in port at the different stopping-places.
"If you go by a native boat you will be much longer on the way; but you can visit more places than the steamer stops at, and can see more of the life of the East. We will drop that part of the subject, and consider what you might see in some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, supposing you should go there; we haven't time for all of them.
"The colonial possessions of the Dutch in the Archipelago comprise about six hundred thousand square miles, with a population of twenty-five millions. They include the whole of Java and Madura, the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and large portions of Borneo and Sumatra. Consequently, you can make a long journey without once going out of the Dutch territory."
WILD FIG-TREE.
"The first place I visited, after leaving Sourabaya, was the island of Lombock. There is not much of interest in the principal port, which is called Ampanam, as the place is small, and the inhabitants are not particularly enterprising. There are some groves of wild fig-trees close to the town; and one of my amusements was to shoot the green pigeons and orioles that abounded there. Some of the trees are almost covered with the hanging-nests of the orioles; and, as they are rarely disturbed by the natives, I found them so tame that it required no skill at all to get near enough to shoot them.
A VILLAGE IN LOMBOCK.
"Several miles out in the country from Ampanam is the village where the Rajah of the island lives; it is called Mataram, and no native of the lower classes is allowed to ride on horseback through it. If you should happen to be travelling there, and had your Javanese servant mounted on a horse, he would be obliged to walk from one end of the town to the other, and lead his animal.
VIEW NEAR MATARAM.
"There is a fine volcano in Lombock, about eight thousand feet high. Mr. Wallace tells a good story in connection with this volcano, and the plan by which the Rajah took the census of the population of the island.
"You must know that the principal product of Lombock is rice, and the taxes are paid in this article. Each man, woman, and child contributed a small measure of rice once a year; but it passed through many hands before it reached the treasury, and a little of it clung to each hand that it touched. The result was that the Rajah did not get half of what was due him, and all his officers conspired to tell him that the crops were short in some districts, and many people had died in others; and no matter what he did to find out the truth, they managed to prevent his learning it. He determined to take a census of his people, but did not know how to go at it, as his officers would suspect what it was for, and would make out the population according to the rice that he received the previous year. He thought a long time over the matter, and finally hit on a plan so shrewd that nobody suspected there was any census at all.
"For several days he appeared to be very sick at heart; and finally he called his officers together, and told them he had been summoned to go to the top of the great fire-mountain to hear a revelation from the spirit who ruled the island. The spirit had come to him in a vision, and said he must go there at once, or the island would be destroyed.
WHERE THE GREAT SPIRIT AND THE RAJAH MET.
"Of course they made arrangements immediately, and a grand procession accompanied the Rajah to the designated spot. From the foot of the mountain to the summit he was escorted by a few priests and attendants; and as he neared the crater he ordered them to remain behind, under the shadow of a great rock, while he went alone to meet the spirit. He remained away for a long time; the fact is, he lay down and took a comfortable nap, and it was naturally thought that the spirit had a great deal to say to him.
"When he returned he was silent and sorrowful, and did not speak a word for three days. Then he summoned his officers, and told them what the spirit had said. He described the spirit as having a face of burnished gold, and a voice that sounded like distant thunder.
"'Oh, Rajah!' the spirit said, 'much plague, and sickness, and fever are coming on the earth—on men, and horses, and cattle; but as you and your people have obeyed me and come to the mountain, and have been good and faithful, I will tell you how you can avoid the pestilence.
"'You must make twelve sacred krisses; and to make them, every village and every district must send a bundle of needles—a needle for every head in the village. And when any disease appears in a village, one of the krisses shall be sent there; if every house in that village has sent the right number of needles, the disease shall cease immediately; but if the number of needles has not been exact, then all shall die!'
"So the princes and chiefs made haste to collect the needles; and they were very exact about it, for they feared that, if a single needle should be wanting in any case, the whole village would perish. When the needles were collected, the Rajah received them; then he had a workman come and make twelve krisses from those needles; but the papers that were around the needles, and told the name of each village, and the number of men, women, and children in it, he carefully preserved, and put away in his private chest.
"When the rice-tax came in that year, and the quantity fell short, the Rajah said to the officers that there was some mistake about it. He then told them the exact number of inhabitants in that village, according to the packages of needles, and it did not take long to set the matter right. The result was that the Rajah grew very rich, and his fame went out through all the islands and countries of the East."
"A capital story," said Frank; and the opinion was emphatically endorsed by Fred.
"It is evident," the latter remarked, "that the kriss, or dagger, is held in great respect in Lombock."
"Certainly," said the gentleman, in reply; "there is no part of the Archipelago where it is more honored, and where the wealthy natives have so much money invested in this weapon. Very often they have them with golden handles set with jewels; and I have seen some that cost thousands of dollars. Every man carries one of these knives, and frequently it is the only property he can boast of possessing. The blade is twisted; and when it is used it makes a frightful wound."
"That is what the Malays 'run a-muck' with, is it not?" Frank asked.
"Yes; and Lombock is one of the most famous places in the East for that amusement. The island, though close to Java, is independent, and the Rajah does pretty much what he pleases as long as he remains on good terms with his Dutch neighbors. The taxes are not heavy, but the laws are very severe. Small thefts are punished with death; and it is a rule of the country that a person found in a house after dark, without the owner's consent, may be killed, and his body thrown into the street, without fear that anybody will ask a question about the matter.
"The word 'amok' means 'kill;' and the Malays kill others in the expectation that others will kill them. Running amok is the fashionable way of committing suicide; a man grows desperate from any cause, and determines to put an end to his life, and to kill as many others as he can before he is killed himself. He grasps his kriss handle, and stabs somebody to the heart; then he rushes down the street, shouting 'amok! amok!' and stabbing everybody he can reach. People rush on him with knives, spears, daggers, guns, or other weapons, and despatch him as soon as possible—as they would a mad dog. Sometimes five or ten persons are killed by the man before he is brought down; and I know one instance where sixteen were killed or wounded by a native running amok.
"The Malays are excellent workers of steel, and the weapons they make are difficult to surpass in fineness and beauty. The marvellous thing is that they will accomplish so much with the rudest implements; a smith has a small forge, a hammer or two, and a few files, and with these and one or two other things he will turn out work that astonishes the skilled artificers of Sheffield. A Malay gunsmith produces weapons that shoot with precision, and are bored with perfect accuracy; but the boring is done without any machinery whatever. This is the apparatus:
GUN-BORING IN LOMBOCK.
"There is an upright pole which is thrust through a bamboo basket; its top is fastened to a cross-bar, and the bottom is equipped with an iron ring in which boring-irons can be fitted. The barrel to be bored is set in the ground, the basket is filled with stones to give it weight, and two boys turn the cross-bar to make the boring-iron revolve. The barrel is bored in sections about eighteen inches long; and these are welded together, and afterwards bored to the required size.
NATIVES OF TIMOR.
"Considerably to the eastward of Lombock is the island of Timor, which is interesting because it is one of the few places where the Portuguese have a local habitation and a name in the Malay Archipelago. Timor is about three hundred miles long by sixty wide, and is partly occupied by the Dutch and partly by the Portuguese. The Dutch settlements are at the western end, and their principal town is Coupang; it has a mixed population of Malays, Chinese, and Dutch, in addition to the natives, who are closely allied to the natives of Papua, or New Guinea, and have very little affinity with the Malay race. They are of a dirty brown color, and have large noses and frizzled hair, so that they strongly resemble the negro.
DELLI, PORTUGUESE TIMOR.
"The seat of the Portuguese part of Timor is at Delli, a miserable village of thatched huts, with a mud fort, and very little appearance of civilization. The governor's house is a trifle better than the rest, but not much; and the place has a reputation for fever that is not at all agreeable for a stranger. I don't think much of Delli, and never heard of any one who did.
"The Portuguese government in Timor is a very shadowy affair, and the sooner it comes to an end the better. It has been there three hundred years, and yet there is not a mile of road in the interior of the country, and the agricultural resources of the island have received no development. The example of the Dutch in Java seems to be quite lost on the Portuguese, who oppress the inhabitants in every possible way, and plunder them without fear of punishment."
Frank asked if Timor was one of the islands where the bird of paradise is found.
"No," replied the gentleman; "but it is not far from there to the Aru Islands, where the Great Bird of Paradise lives. I went from Timor to Aru in a native boat, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way. We were caught in a storm, and anchored near a small island off the coast of Aru; the Malay anchor is a stick of wood from the fork of a tree, with a stone to give it weight, and, as it has only one fluke, you can never be sure that it goes down so as to seize the bottom. Ours bothered us so that we had to throw it several times, and when we finally got it to hold we were not twenty yards from the rocks where the wind was driving us.
"But a miss is as good as a mile, and we were safe on shore the next morning, very thankful at our escape.
"I had an opportunity to go to the forest to see the process of shooting the Great Bird of Paradise, and went at once. Quite a trade is carried on in these birds, and the skill of the natives is devoted to capturing them without staining their plumage with blood, or allowing the birds to injure it during their struggles.
"The birds have a curious habit of getting up dancing-parties in the month of May, when their plumage is finest. They assemble before sunrise in a tree that has plenty of room among its branches for them to move about, and as soon as the sun is fairly up they begin their dancing. They elevate their plumes as peacocks display their tails, stretch their necks, raise their wings, and hop from branch to branch in a state of great excitement.
NATIVES OF ARU SHOOTING THE GREAT BIRD OF PARADISE.
"The natives hunt through the forest till they find a tree where the birds assemble. They go there in the evening and build a screen of leaves over the fork of the tree, and just before daylight they climb up there ready for business. They keep perfectly still till the birds are busily engaged in their dance, and then they shoot with blunt-pointed arrows. The bird is stunned and falls to the ground, and before he recovers he is seized by a boy who is waiting for him; the bird's neck is broken without injuring the skin, and thus the prize is secured without staining the feathers with blood."
Fred asked if, when one bird was shot, the rest did not fly away.
"Not by any means," was the answer. "They are so busy with displaying their feathers to each other, that they do not take notice of the disappearance of one of their number until they are greatly reduced. The morning I went out to see the business, I was stationed in a little bower about a hundred yards from the tree where the birds were, so that I could see all that went on. There were twenty-one birds there, all beautiful males, and they made the prettiest sight of the kind that ever came before my eyes. The natives shot fifteen of them, and finally one of the birds was not hit hard enough to prevent his screaming as he fell. The others then took the alarm, and in two minutes they were all out of sight."
A NATIVE ANCHOR.