Average Americans must confess if, since early geography days, they have not remembered carefully that one tiny island in the group of Moluccas off the east end of Java—an island so tiny that even on the school atlases used in Buitenzorg it is figured the size of a pea, and on the maps for the rest of the world is but a nameless dot in the clustered dots of the group that would better be named the Nutmeg Isles, since the bulk of the world’s supply of that spicy fruit comes from their shores.
Then, away down there, out of the world, I was taken to task for that chief sin and offending of my country against other countries—the McKinley Bill of so long ago.
“Why, we couldn’t make any money out of tobacco while such a law was in existence,” said one Sumatra planter.
“But we are concerned with the prosperity of our own American tobacco-growers. It is for the Dutch government to make laws to benefit the tobacco-planters of Sumatra.”
“Ah! but you have new and better laws now since that last revolution in the States, and we are all planting all the tobacco we can. We shall be very prosperous now.”
VII
IN A TROPICAL GARDEN
The Buitenzorg passer proper is housed in a long, tiled pavilion facing an open common, on which the country folk gather with their produce twice a week, and, overflowing, stretch in a scattering encampment down the broad street leading from the gate of the Botanical Garden. The permanent passer, or regular bazaar in the covered building, is stocked with the staples and substantials of life, and is open every day. The town tailors have their abode under that cover, and squat in rows before their little American hand-sewing machines, and sew the single seam of a sarong skirt, or reel off a native jacket, while the customer waits. It is the semi-weekly, early morning, outdoor market of chattering country folk that most delights and diverts a stranger, however. The lines of venders, strung along the shady street and grouped under palm-patched umbrellas in the open, provide horticultural and floral exhibits of the greatest interest, and afford the most picturesque scenes of native life. The long street of the Tjina kampong beyond is dull and monotonous by comparison, for when Dutch rules force the Chinese to be clean and orderly all picturesqueness and character are gone from their quarter. All the tasseled lanterns and strips of vermilion paper will not “tell” artistically without their concomitant grease and dirt.