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.