Javanese Lady.
Waterfalls.
The Tji-mahi falls.
On the point of etiquette, the Javanese, moreover, are infinitely more punctilious than any western people of our period. I believe they might even be said to surpass the Spaniards of the time of Philip II, in the elaborateness of their code of manners and in their strict adherence to its requirements. Every possible circumstance and occurrence in life have been foreseen, and the appropriate conduct noted down in the unwritten law of the "adat"; the attitude, the gesture, and the set phrase, are all prescribed, down to the smallest detail. Nor is it a question of phraseology only; the very language is subject to the regulations of the adat, which distinguishes three separate and altogether different kinds of Javanese, according as a man speaks to his superior, his equal, or his inferior. For speech to one higher in rank, there is the "Kromo"; commands to a subordinate are given in "Ngoko"; friends familiarly converse in a third idiom into which elements of the other two enter. The theory of these three kinds of Javanese is a science by itself, and one not easily acquired by a westerner. At the same time, it is imperatively necessary to him, if he would gain the esteem of the natives; for the use of a Ngoko word when a Kromo term should have been employed, would mark the offender with an indelible brand of vulgarity and ill-breeding. When the Bible was being translated into Javanese, this peculiarity of etiquette proved a considerable difficulty; and the missionaries had to consult countless authorities and compare a thousand precedents, before they could settle the question whether Christ should address Pilate in Kromo or in Ngoko, or in the third idiom. A solecism would have fatally injured the "prestige" of the new religion: and its ministers could not have escaped the accusation of being "koerang atjar" which being translated into English means "ill-bred." It was in order to avoid this qualification, that my friend and I seeing the country folk at the "passar" squat down in the dusty road, passed on, without so much as looking at them.
Towards eleven o'clock, we reached the highest point of our journey—a ledge upon the mountain-side called Njadas Pangeran. Here, the hills on our right suddenly fell away, and the broad green plains of Cheribon lay disclosed, dazzling with sunlight and living water. At our feet, away far below, lay a brown hamlet in the midst of sawahs, like a lark's nest in a field of clover; and the hills through which we had threaded our way, since dawn, hung in the western distance like massy clouds, tinted with brown and violet, and an exquisite pale, half-transparent blue. We paused here for some minutes, to rest the horses, whilst we gathered armsful of a splendid orchid which grew in profusion on the hillside—great shiny snow-flakes of blossoms, with a touch of carmine on the curling petals; and then resumed the journey along a road which steadily sloped to the bottom of the valley. A muddy river runs through it, which we crossed on a primitive kind of ferry—the carriage, horses, and all standing on a raft, which a score of natives dragged and pushed across the shallow water. On the other bank, the road began to ascend again; we had reached the base of Tjerimai, and a drive of some two or three hours more, along a smooth road that passed by prosperous sugarcane plantations waving in the breeze with thousands of glossy green streamers, brought us at length to our destination—the little bamboo cottage upon the hillside, whither my friends repaired for a spell of coolness and a breath of mountain air, when the heat rendered the sojourn on their estate in the plains unendurable. It was about four in the afternoon when we entered the garden gates, and the air was as fresh as in the early morning. The breeze rustled through the tall flower-laden njamploeng-trees on the roadside; there was a smell of water and moist stones in the air; I heard the murmur of a brook over its rocky bed. This was the country of which hot, dust-stifled Batavia was the capital. The thing seemed scarcely credible.
