We arrived at Buitenzorg at noon. This place is noted for the Botanical Gardens, which are thought to be the finest in the world. It is the mountain resort of the Batavians, but is really only 300 feet higher than the town. One of the high two-wheeled carts drawn by one pony, whilst another is roped outside the shafts to help in pulling, took us up to the Bellevue Hotel.
At the Bellevue from the verandah at the back there is a celebrated view. It is certainly one of the most enchanting and superb views possible to imagine. I will try to describe it.
The mountains are in the distance, tropical jungle creeping to their very summits, though always hidden during the rainy seasons by clouds. Jungle, jungle, varying only in depth and shade, till we begin to distinguish yet in the far distance some of the bananas and palms which form its densest undergrowth. Then tall palms raise up their graceful heads quite near, swaying them gently in answer to the soft summer breeze. Away over there in the corner there are red-tiled roofs, in the midst of the cocoa-nut grove, with dots of colour flitting about. In front of us the muddy yet silvery waters of the Tjidani River come flowing straight towards us, till the stream suddenly turns at right angles to itself, and hurries away in its changed course. A little bamboo house, belonging to the cultivators of the cocoa-nut grove, forms the apex of the triangle. Shouts and merry laughter come up all day from the brown figures who swim, and dive, and duck about in the shallow water beneath.
It was very beautiful, and we sat out in the verandah all the afternoon, talking with an old Dutch naturalist, who was delighted with his bottles containing a lovely chameleon and some scorpions newly captured. Meanwhile the strange afternoon stillness reigned round the lifeless courtyard.
In the evening we had a lovely drive in the Botanical, or Palace Gardens, as they are now called. We drove into the shade of a mighty avenue, the trees meeting at the top, and leaving us a perspective vista that faded into green dimness. The stems of the trees were not seen, for ferns and creepers grew up them, and tropical parasites circled and hung in festoons from the branches of one tree to another. We came unexpectedly at the end to the palace and the lake.
The palace with its little squat dome and turrets, produces a general effect of black and white. How fond the Dutch are of black and white, whether in their marble pavements, or in the stripes on the wooden flower-pots in the garden, whether in the shutters of the houses, or in the lines on the sashes and skirtings of their houses. At the side of the palace we left the carriage, and were told to wander through the bamboo grove. Here we found hidden away in a garden some old monuments, weather-beaten and stained, of an English officer and one or two of the Governors, it seemed a strange little burying-ground.
Banyan-trees, Buitenzorg, Java.
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