Afterwards when we came to visit India, it was most curious and interesting to see the results of the different policies pursued by the two nations towards the conquered race. Ours, the enlightened policy—the education of the native, raising him to a state fit to govern or participate in the government of his country. That of the Dutch, a policy of repression, reducing the native to the part of the hired labourer, making themselves into simple tax-gatherers.
It is to Governor-General van Bosch that Java owes its great prosperity. He it was who developed the magnificent resources of the rich island by the introduction of the culture system. I would refer any who are interested in this subject to Mr. Money's excellent book, "Java; or, How to govern a Colony."
We suffered much in Java from the inconvenience of Dutch and Malay being the only two languages spoken. No interpreter was obtainable, and even at the booksellers which we went to in the afternoon there was no guidebook to be found in English, French, or German.
Sauntering along the canal, we saw the primitive mode they have here of watering the streets. A man with two large watering-pots slung over each shoulder runs along with the rose inclined forwards. I need not say that the watering-pots are soon exhausted, though the supply is always at hand in the canal; but it struck us that the man spent most of his time in running up and down the steps to the water. It must be so pleasant to have a bath whenever you feel inclined, as the Malay women do by stripping off the loose jacket and plunging in, washing the sarong at the same time as themselves in the stream. When we got home, "Ali," the old Malay servant assigned to us, with his cock-eye and pleased grin, brought us five o'clock tea—as great an institution in Java as England. The cups and saucers stand always ready in each bedroom, and the water and milk (for it is always hot milk) are boiled at the cooking-stove, round which the "boys" are busy in the passage. Ali does not know one word of English, but quickly guesses our signs, and with the Malays in making oneself understood it is more often than not a question that "there are none so deaf as those who won't hear."
The Governor-General, Herr von Rees, gave us an audience at the Palace in the evening. The Palace gives us an idea of oriental magnificence, with marble halls and galleries, and reception-rooms hung with costly upholstery. The balcony is lighted with crystal chandeliers, and crowds of servants in the scarlet uniform of the Government are waiting about within call. The Governor-General is an exceedingly shrewd, clever man, who has raised himself from the lowest position in the Civil Service. The salary is 14,000l. a year, and the position of Governor of such great possessions as the Netherlands Indies is one of so much importance that it may be compared to the Vice-royalty of Hindoostan. Java alone sends home a surplus revenue of 3,000,000l. yearly to the mother country, or has done so, I ought to say, until now, for the interminable war in Acheen has swallowed up her surplus this year, and bids fair to do so for many more. The interior of the country is governed by Dutch residents, who give their instructions to a native prince or regent, who carries out the details. Coffee, tea, cochineal, and sugar are the chief produce and exports, though there has been great depression in the latter trade during the last year, which has given rise to a commercial crisis, when several very old-established houses have been included in the general crash. Cinchona calisaya, or quinine, is also largely exported.
We dined with Mr. MacNeill, the English Consul, in his pretty house. We had not been seated at dinner above a few minutes before the white tablecloth was covered with every species of insect in the animal world—moths with yellow wings, ants, mosquitoes, beetles great and beetles small. Tortoiseshell covers were provided to keep them out of the wine-glasses, and many green lizards capered on the white wall opposite. Blessed above other countries is England in this much, that with her cold moist atmosphere, one is not troubled with the invasion of a plague of insects. It surely is the great drawback to the charms of tropical life, enjoyed mostly in the cool of the evening, when the insects are also most actively enjoying themselves.
We tasted a mangosteen for the first time this evening. It is a dark purple fruit with a thick rind, the size of an apple. The fruit inside is white, and has the most delicate flavour. I should call it an insidious flavour, for you hardly know in what it consists, but it is most delicious. Better than the mangosteen I like the mango, a long pear-shaped fruit with a yellow skin, full of juice, and most luscious. The taste reminded me of the fruit of the passion-creeper, which when ripe and shrivelled is excellent, only much more acrid than the mango. Another fruit which is very common here has brilliant red hairy bristles, and contains inside a white fruit, the size of a plover's egg, but I am ashamed to say I never mastered its name. Pine-apples, cut into lumps, and bananas, very different in their size and taste to the little shrivelled bananas of export we are accustomed to at home, are served at every meal.
Mr. MacNeill after dinner took us to a representation of "Il Barbière" by an Italian opera company subsidized from Italy with Government help. The Governor came in state, and on his entrance the Dutch national anthem was played. The doors of the theatre stand open on to the broad piazza, where people promenade between the acts, and some have their servants waiting with wine and refreshments. Ladies wear morning dress, but with the gentlemen a black coat is de rigueur, though "ducks" may be worn underneath. The galleries were full of half-castes, who here take a good position, the Javanese still continuing to wear the native costume. Beginning at 8 p.m., it was eleven before the ballet was over.
Tuesday, December 23rd.—We left the Weltervreden Station on the Königsplein at ten in the morning. The stations are large and whitewashed, tiled in blocks of wood, since tiling of some sort the Dutch must have. The carriages are on the American plan, save that the first-class have morocco-covered armchairs. We passed through a portion of the native quarter on the outskirts of the town. The mat huts are made of plaited palm branches, and thatched with the same unplaited. Bamboo poles form the framework and support the projecting roof, which gives shade to the house. These huts lay hidden in a jungle formed of bamboo groves, whose straight spiky branches look like the fingers of an outstretched hand pointing downwards. Banana-trees there were, whose palm leaves, fringed and jagged, are only distinguished by this from the ordinary palm, and cocoa-nut groves. These had their golden halo of fruit under the shade of their fringing, feathery arms, and notches cut in their slender stems by the natives, who climb up by them to gather the fruit.
The country we passed through was under cultivation for rice-fields, which we saw in their different stages of development. The ground is made into terraces, every one a little lower than the other, and carefully fenced round with earthwork. Each one is a bed of water, in which the rice is growing, some already coming up in tender green shoots, and others like a field of grass growing some feet high. The water is kept trickling over from each little dyke into the next bed. Some we saw being ploughed by dun and smoke-coloured buffaloes, with their humps and straight black horns turned back, that gives such a blank and idiotic look to their faces. The colour of the earth was in some parts such a brilliant red, that in California it would be said to denote the presence of gold.