The million-footed crowd of travelling humanity has trodden Tandjang Priok out of all beauty and pleasantness. It is nothing now but a heap of dust rendered compact by a coating of basalt and bricks, and bearing on its flat surface some half-dozen square squat sheds, the whitewashed walls of which glare intolerably in the sunlight that beats upon the barren place all day long. But, a little further down the shore, eastwards from the harbour, the natural beauty of the country re-asserts itself. There are wide, shallow bays, where the water sleeps in the shadow of overhanging trees; sandy points, one projecting beyond the other across shimmering intervals of sea; and, alternating with open spaces where a few bamboo huts are clustered together amidst a plantation of young banana trees, great tracts of woodland that come down to the very margin of the water. In one place where the narrow beach broadens out a little, some half dozen shanties, one of which might, by courtesy, be styled a bathing-lodge, have found standing-room between the wood and the water. Some homesick exile from France has christened the handful of bamboo posts and atap leaves: Petite Trouville. In the dry season, when Batavia is parched with heat and choked with dust, people come hither for a plunge into the clear cool waves, and for some hours of blissful idleness in the shadow of the broad-branched njamploeng trees, which mirror their dark leafage and clusters of white wax-like blossoms in the tide.
The day some friends took me to see the place was one of the last in April, when the rains were not yet quite over. We had left Batavia at half-past five, when the Koningsplein was still white with rolling mists and the stars had but just begun to fade in the greyish sky. The train had borne us along some distance on our way to Tandjong Priok, ere the sun rose. Rather, ere it appeared. There had been no heralding change of colour in the eastern sky; only the uncertain light that lay over the landscape had gradually strengthened; and, all at once, at some height above the horizon a triangular splendour burst forth, a great heart of flame which was the sun. The pools and tracts of marshy ground flooded by the recent rains were ridged with long straight parallel lines of red. The dark tufts of palm trees here and there shone like burnished bronze. And where they grew denser, in groups and little groves, the blue mist hanging between the stems was pierced by lances of reddish light.
At Tandjong Priok station, we alighted amidst a crowd of natives, dock-labourers and coal-heavers, on their way to the ships. They took the road in true native style, one marching behind the other, laughing and talking as they went. And we followed them, in our jolting sadoos, along a sunny avenue, planted with slim young trees, as far as to the bend of the road; then we left it and entered the wood on the right, which we had for some time been skirting.
A rough track led through it. Our sadoos jolted worse than ever in the ruts left by the broad-wheeled carts of the peasantry. We alighted and made our way as best we could through the grass-grown clearings of the jungle. The sun was but just beginning to warm the air. White shreds of mist still hung among the tree-stems, and swathed the brushwood. The grass underfoot was white with dew, glistening with myriads of brilliant little points where the yellow sunlight touched it. The broadly curved banana leaves, and the feathery tufts of the palm trees overhead began to grow transparent, standing out in light green against the shining whiteness of the sky. There was an inexpressible vitality and exhilaration in all things, in the fine pure air, cool as well water, in the sparkle of the dew-lit grass, in the bushes with large round drops trembling on every leaf, in the pungent scent of the lantana that on every side displayed its clusters of pink, mauve and orange red blossoms. It was good to feel wet through on the tramp through the drenched tangle, to feel the blood tingling in the finger tips, the lungs full of quickening air, and the sunshine right in your eyes. It was good to be alive.
After a while, we came to a little campong, some five or six bamboo huts, grouped together in an open space of the wood. Some naked children were playing around a fire of sticks and dry leaves. Under a shed, a woman stood pounding rice in a hollowed-out wooden block, whilst another carrying a child in her slendang, talked to her. There were no men about, save one old fellow, white-haired and decrepit, who sat in his doorway, mending nets. In that sunny forest clearing, that was the one thing suggestive of the neighbouring sea.
Past the village there are several tanks of brackish water, where fish is bred for Chinese consumption. Tangles of green weed floated on the surface, which, in places, seemed to be filmed over with oily colours. A man walked along the shore, dredging. Beyond, the wood recommenced. But it was less dense there; great patches of sunlight lay on the ground, and the sky showed everywhere through the stems. As we issued out of the dappled shade, we beheld the sea.