From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

There are some peculiar physical features in this part of the world. The Malayan Archipelago lies midway between Asia and Australia, belonging to neither, and yet belonging to both. It is a very curious fact, brought out by Wallace, whose great work on "The Malayan Archipelago" is altogether the best on the subject, that this group of islands is in itself divided by a very narrow space between the two continents, which it at once separates and unites. Each has its own distinct fauna and flora. The narrow Strait of Bali, only fifteen miles wide, which separates the two small islands of Bali and Lombok, separates two distinct animal and vegetable kingdoms, which are as unlike as are those of the United States and Brazil. One group belongs to Asia, the other to Australia. Sumatra is full of tigers; in Borneo there is not one. Australia has no carnivora—no beasts that prey on flesh—but chiefly marsupials, such as kangaroos.

There are a good many residents in the East who think Holland, in the management of her dependencies, has shown a better political economy than England has shown in India. An English writer (a Mr. Money), in a volume entitled "How to Govern a Colony," has brought some features of the Dutch policy to the notice of his countrymen. I will mention but one as an illustration. Half a century ago Java was very much run down. A native rebellion which lasted five years had paralyzed the industry of the country. To reanimate it, a couple of years after the rebellion had been subdued, in 1832, the home government began a very liberal system of stimulating production by making advances to planters, and guaranteeing them labor to cultivate their estates. The effect was marvellous. By that wise system of helping those who had not means to help themselves, a new life was at once infused into all parts of the island. Out of that has grown the enormous production of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. Now Java not only pays all the expenses of her own government, (which India does not do, at least without contracting very heavy loans,) but builds her own railroads, and other roads and bridges, and supplies the drain of the Acheen war, and remits every year millions to the Hague to build railroads in Holland.

Is it too much to believe that there is a great future in store for South Eastern Asia? We talk about the future of America. But ours is not the only continent that offers vast unoccupied wastes to the habitation of man. Besides Australia, there are these great islands nearer to Asia, which, from the overflow of India and China, may yet have a population that shall cultivate their waste places. I found in Burmah a great number of Bengalees and Madrasees, who had crossed the Bay of Bengal to seek a home in Farther India; while the Chinese, who form the population of Singapore, had crept up the coast. They are here in Java, in every seaport and in every large town in the interior, and there is every reason to suppose that there will be a yet greater overflow of population in this direction. Sumatra and Borneo are not yet inhabited and cultivated like Java, but in their great extent they offer a magnificent seat for future kingdoms or empires, which, Asiatic in population, may be governed by European laws, and moulded by European civilization.

One thing more before we cross the Equator—a word about nature and life in the tropics. I came to Java partly to see the tropical vegetation, of which we saw but little in India, as we were there in winter, which is at once the cold and the dry season, when vegetation withers, and the vast plains are desolate and dreary. Nature then holds herself in reserve, waiting till the rains come, when the earth will bloom again. But as I could not wait for the change of seasons, I must needs pass on to a land where the change had already come. We marked the transition as we came down the Bay of Bengal. There were signs of changing seasons and a changing nature. We were getting into the rainy belt. In the Straits of Malacca the air was hot and thunderous, and we had frequent storms; the heavens were full of rain, and the earth was fresh with the joy of a newly-opened spring. But still we kept on till we crossed the Equator. Here in Java the rainy season was just over. It ends with the last of March, and we arrived at the beginning of April. For months the windows of heaven had been opened, the rains descended, and the floods came; and lo! the land was like the garden of the Lord. Here we had at last the tropical vegetation in its fullest glory. Nothing can exceed the prodigality and luxuriance of nature when a vertical sun beats down on fields and forests and jungles that have been drenched for months in rain. Vegetation of every kind springs up, as in the temperate zone it appears only when forced in heated conservatories (as in the Duke of Devonshire's gardens at Chatsworth), and the land waves with these luxuriant growths. In the forest creeping plants wind round the tall trunks, and vines hang in festoons from tree to tree.

But while the tropical forest presents such a wild luxuriance of growth, I find no single trees of such stature as I have seen in other parts of the world. Except an occasional broad-spreading banyan, I have seen nothing which, standing alone, equals in its solitary majesty the English oak or the American elm. Perhaps there is a difference in this respect between countries in the same latitude in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. An English gentleman whom we found here in charge of a great sugar plantation, who had spent some years in Rio Janeiro, told me that the trees of Java did not compare in majesty with those of Brazil. Nor is this superiority confined to South America. Probably no trees now standing on the earth equal the Big Trees of California. And besides these there are millions of lofty pines on the sides of the Sierra Nevada, which I have seen nowhere equalled unless it be in the mighty cedars which line the great Tokaido of Japan. On the whole, I am a little inclined to boast that trees attain their greatest height and majesty in our Western hemisphere.

But the glory of the tropics is in the universal life of nature, spreading through all her realms, stirring even under ground, and causing to spring forth new forms of vegetation, which coming up, as it were, out of the darkness of the grave, seek the sun and air, whereby all things live.

Of course one cannot but consider what effect this marvellous production must have upon man. Too often it overpowers him, and makes him its slave, since he cannot be its master. This is the terror of the Tropics, as of the Polar regions, that nature is too strong for man to subdue her. What can he do—poor, puny creature—against its terrible forces; against the heat of a vertical sun, that while it quickens the earth, often blasts the strength of man, subduing his energy, if not destroying his life? What can man do in the Arctic circle against the cold that locks up whole continents in ice? Much as he boasts of his strength and of his all-conquering will, he is but a child in the lap of nature, tossed about by material forces as a leaf is blown by the wind. The best region for human development and energy is the temperate zone, where nature stimulates, but does not overpower, the energies of man, where the winter's cold does not benumb him and make him sink into torpor, but only pricks him to exertion and makes him quicken his steps.

The effect of this fervid climate shows itself not only upon natives, but upon Europeans. It induces a languor and indisposition to effort. It has two of the hardest and toughest races in the world to work upon, in the English in India and the Dutch in Java, and yet it has its effect even upon them, and would have a still greater were it not that this foreign element is constantly changing, coming and going, whereby there is all the time a fresh infusion of European life. Here in Java the Dutch have been longer settled than the English in India; they more often remain in the island, and the effect of course is more marked from generation to generation. The Dutchman is a placid, easy-going creature, even in his native Holland, except when roused by some great crisis, like a Spanish invasion, and then he fights with a courage which has given him a proud name in history. But ordinarily he is of a calm and even temper, and likes to sit quietly and survey his broad acres, and smoke his pipe in blissful content with himself and all the world beside. When he removes from Holland to the other side of the world, he has not changed his nature; he is a Dutchman still, only with his natural love of ease increased by life in the tropics. It is amusing to see how readily his Dutch nature falls in with the easy ways of this Eastern world.

If I were to analyze existence, or material enjoyment in this part of the world, I should say that the two great elements in one's life, or at least in his comfort, are sleep and smoke. They smoke in Holland, and they have a better right to smoke in Java; for here they but follow the course of nature. Why should not man smoke, when even the earth itself respires through smoke and flame? The mountains smoke, and why not the Dutch? Only there is this difference: the volcanoes sometimes have a period of rest, but the Dutch never. Morning, noon, and night, before breakfast and after dinner, smoke, smoke, smoke! It seems to be a Dutchman's ideal of happiness. I have been told of some who dropped to sleep with the cigar in their lips, and of one who required his servants to put his pipe between his teeth while he was yet sleeping, that he might wake up with the right taste in his mouth. It seemed to me that this must work injury to their health, but they think not. Perhaps there is something in the phlegmatic Dutch temperament that can stand this better than the more mercurial and excitable English or American.

And then how they do sleep! Sleep is an institution in Java, and indeed everywhere in the tropics. The deep stillness of the tropical noon seems to prescribe rest, for then nature itself sinks into repose. Scarcely a leaf moves in the forest—the birds cease their musical notes, and seek for rest under the shade of motionless palms. The sleep of the Dutch is like this stillness of nature. It is profound and absolute repose. For certain hours of the day no man is visible. I had a letter to the Resident of Solo, and went to call on him at two o'clock. He lived in a grand Government House, or palace; but an air of somnolence pervaded the place, as if it were the Castle of Indolence. The very servant was asleep on the marble pavement, where it was his duty to keep watch; and when I sent in my letter, he came back making a very significant gesture, leaning over his head to signify that his master was asleep. At five o'clock I was more fortunate, but even then he was dressed with a lightness of costume more suitable for one who was about to enter his bath than to give audience.