"A seller of fruit and vegetables his baskets dangling from the ends of a bamboo yoke."
But, among the crowd of orientals, no Europeans are seen, save such as rapidly pass in vehicles of every description, from the jolting dos-à-dos onwards—with its diminutive pony almost disappearing between the shafts—to the elegant victoria drawn by a pair of big Australian horses. But, even when driving, the noon-day heat is dangerous to the Westerner; and the European inmates of the hotel are all in the dark cool verandahs, enjoying a dolce far niente enlivened by chaffering with the natives and drinking iced lemonades, the ladies—here is another surprise for the newcomer!—all attired in what seems to be the native dress of sarong and kabaya! A kabaya is a sort of dressing-jacket of profusely-embroidered white batiste, fastened down the front with ornamental pins and little gold chains; and under it is worn the sarong, a gaudily-coloured skirt falling down straight and narrow, with one single deep fold in front, and kept in place by a silk scarf wound several times round the waist, its ends dangling loose. With this costume, little high-heeled slippers are worn on the bare feet; and the hair is done in native style, simply drawn back from the forehead, and twisted into a knot at the back of the head. Altogether, this style of attire is original rather than becoming.
And, if this must be confessed of the ladies' costume, what must be said of the garb some men have the courage to appear in? A kabaya, and—may Mrs. Grundy graciously forgive me for saying it! for how shall I describe the indescribable, save by calling it by its own by me never-to-be-pronounced name?—A kabaya and trousers of thin sarong-stuff gaily sprinkled with blue and yellow flowers, butterflies, and dragons!
"Pine-apples and mangosteen, velvety rambootan and smooth-skinned dookoo."
But all this is only an induction into that supreme mystery, celebrated at noon, the rice-table. Here is indeed, "un étouffement nouveau." All things pertaining to it work together for bewilderment. To begin with; it is served up, not in any ordinary dining-room, but in the "back gallery," a place which is a sight in itself, a long and lofty hall, supported on a colonnade, between the white pillars of which glimpses are caught of the brilliantly-flowering shrubs and dark-leaved trees in the garden without. In the second place, it is handed round by native servants, inaudibly moving to and fro upon bare feet, arrayed in clothes of a semi-European cut, incongruously combined with the Javanese sarong and head-kerchief. And, last not least, the meal itself is such as never was tasted on sea or land before. The principal dish is rice and chicken, which sounds simple enough. But on this as a basis an entire system of things inedible has been constructed: besides fish, flesh, and fricassees, all manner of curries, sauces, pickles, preserved fruit, salt eggs, fried bananas, "sambals" of fowl's liver, fish-roe, young palm-shoots, and the gods of Javanese cookery alone know what more, all strongly spiced, and sprinkled with cayenne. There is nothing under the sun but it may be made into a sambal; and a conscientious cook would count that a lost day on which he had not sent in at the very least twenty of such nondescript dishes to the table of his master, for whose digestion let all gentle souls pray! And, when to all this I have added that these many and strange things must be eaten with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, the reader will be able to judge how very complicated an affair the rice-table is, and how easily the uninitiated may come to grief over it. For myself, I shall never forget my first experience of the thing. I had just come in from a ride through the town, and I suppose the glaring sunlight, the strangely-accoutred crowd, the novel sights and sounds of the city must have slightly gone to my head (there are plenty of intoxicants besides "gin" vide the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table). Anyhow, I entered the "back gallery" with a sort of "here-the-conquering-hero-comes" feeling; looked at the long table groaning under its dozens of rice-bowls, scores of dishes of fowls and fish, and hundreds of sambal-saucers, arrayed between pyramids of bananas, mangosteens, and pine-apples, as if I could have eaten it all by way of "apéritif;" sat me down; heaped my plate up with everything that came my way; and fell to. What followed I have no words to express. Suffice it to say, that in less time than I now take to relate it, I was reduced to the most abject misery—my lips smarting with the fiery touch of the sambal; my throat the more sorely scorched for the hasty draught of water with which, in my ignorance, I had tried to allay the intolerable heat; and my eyes full of tears, which it was all I could do to prevent from openly gushing down my cheeks, in streams of utter misery. A charitable person advised me to put a little salt on my tongue, (as children are told to do on the tail of the bird they want to catch). I did so; and, after a minute of the most excruciating torture, the agony subsided. I gasped, and found I was still alive. But there and then I vowed to myself I would never so much as look at a rice-table again.
"The big kalongs hanging from the topmost branches in a sleep from which the sunset will presently awaken them."
I have broken that vow: I say it proudly. It is but a dull mind which cannot reverse a first opinion, or go back upon a hasty resolve. And now I know how to eat rice, I love it. Still, that first meal was a shock. It suddenly brought home to the senses what up to that minute had been noted by the understanding only: the fact of my being in a new country. The glare of the garden without, the Malay sing-song of those dark bare-footed servants, the nondescript clothes of the other guests, united with the tingling and burning in my throat to make me realise the stupendous change that had come over my universe, the antipodal attitude of things in Europe and things in Java. I had the almost bodily sensation of the intervening leagues upon leagues, of the dividing chasm on the unknown side of which I had just landed. And it fairly dizzied me.