Buffaloes at grass.
Avenue leading to the Botanical Garden.
It is said that these bamboo houses, covered with atap, withstand the shock of earthquakes, frequent in this country, much better than brick buildings with tiled roofs. However that may be, their rural aspect harmonizes with the landscape: and they are delightful to inhabit, cool under the noonday heat, and proof against the torrential rains, which, at Buitenzorg, fall every day, between two and four in the afternoon. I lived for some time in a little pavilion,—wooden floor, pàgar walls, and a roof of atap; a pleasanter abode I never knew. It was almost like living in a hermit's cell out in the woods. I was never sure whether the soft creaking noises heard all night through came from the bamboo grove in the garden, or from the bamboo in my wall. The crickets seemed to sing in my very ears; and a faint, sweet smell pervaded the little room, such as breathes from the leafage, dead and living, of a forest. Like a cenobite's cell, too, my pavilion was not meant for a storehouse of worldly treasures. Even if moths and rust did not corrupt, thieves would have quite exceptional facilities for breaking through and stealing them. "Breaking through" is too energetic and vigorous a term; with an ordinary penknife, one might cut away enough of the walls to admit a battalion of burglars. Reading, one day, a French translation of Don Quixote, I rested the ponderous folio, which tired my arms, against the wall. It instantly gave way, sinking in, as if it had been a canvas awning. I do not doubt that, with my embroidery scissors, I might have cut out an elegant open-work pattern in it.
The morning after my arrival, I was up betimes and on my way to the Botanical Garden. It was early as yet, a little after sunrise, and the air felt as cool and as pure as well-water. A frost-like dew had whitened the grass; shreds of mist hung between the trees, trailed along the hillside, and floated like low white clouds in the depths of the ravine, where the river foamed past over the boulders of its rocky bed. And, in the branches, the birds were twittering and singing their little hearts out. I met some natives on the way to their morning bath hugging themselves in the folds of the "baju," the women among them having the "slendang" drawn over their heads. They walked at a brisk pace, very different from the listless movements of pedestrians in the sultry streets of Batavia. The type was of another kind, a slightly oval face, with a thin nose somewhat aquiline in design, and very brilliant eyes; the complexion of a clear yellowish brown, with a touch of red in the lips. They had an elastic gait, and the free carriage of the head peculiar to hillfolk. Some of the young girls were absolutely pretty.
A Nipah Palm.
The Brantas River. Malang.