Carriers walking by the side of their lumbering, bullock-drawn pedati, which creaks along the sun-scorched roads.
This field of radiant lotus blossoms, and the sombre and solemn waringin avenue, contrasting glories, seem to me to be the crowning beauties of the Buitenzorg garden. The name of Buitenzorg, by the bye, is an innovation. Natives still call the town by its ancient name of Bogor, which it bore in the glorious age when it was the capital of the Hindoo realm of Padjadjaran. A Muslim conqueror, Hassan Udin, son of the Sheik Mulana, destroyed it; and a new town was reared on the ruins, but legends of its bygone glory still haunt the imagination of the country folk. In the tales which they repeat to one another of an evening, the splendour of the ancient empire, and the wisdom and unconquerable valour of its founder are still remembered. Tjioeng Wonara was his name; and his son and successor, the victorious Praboe Wangi, was even greater than he. In the craggy hill-tops of the Gedeh range, popular tradition sees the ruins of the splendid palace he built himself on the heights; the hall where the throne of gold and ivory stood; the temple, where he worshipped the gods; the domes of his harem; and the battlemented towers which his unconquerable warriors kept against the world, a thousand years ago. The southern wall of the Gedeh-crater surrounds, as an impregnable bulwark, the palace and temple courts.
The Hindoo period, however, has left in this neighbourhood records more authentic than Praboe Wangi's fancy-built palace on the heights. Near a native kampong, which derives its name from this proximity, the so-called Batu Tulis is found, a field covered with a quantity of stone slabs, some lying prone, others still upright, adorned with figures in bas-relief and covered with inscriptions. The legend on the largest of these memorial tablets, traced in ancient Javanese characters, has been deciphered; it celebrates the virtues and victories of a Hindoo king. And the worn-away superscriptions and rude effigies discernible on the other stones probably commemorate contemporary princes and warriors. The Bogor country-folk greatly venerate these relics of a glorious past.
Palm trees and Arancaria.
A tall gloomy avenue of kenari trees, the sky but faintly showing through their sombre branches.
Submerged rice-fields.