CHAPTER V.
[COMPOSED BY STERN.]
About ten o’clock in the morning there was an unusual bustle on the principal highway which leads from the district Pandaglang to Lebak. “Principal highway” is, perhaps, too good a name for a wide footpath, which people called out of politeness, and from want of a better term, “the way;” but if you started with a carriage and four from Serang, the capital of Bantam,[1] with the intention of going to Rankas-Betong, the new capital of the Lebak district, you would be sure to reach your destination some time or other. So it was a road. It is true you often stuck in the mud, which in the Bantam lowlands is so heavy, clayey, and sticky, that travellers are often obliged to ask the assistance of the inhabitants of the villages in the neighbourhood—even of those who are not in the neighbourhood, for villages are not numerous in these regions;—but if you did succeed at last in getting the assistance of a score of husbandmen, it did not take long [[52]]to get horses and carriage again on firm ground. The coachman smacked his whip, the running boys—in Europe you would call them, I think, “palfreniers,”—but no, you have nothing in Europe which can give you an idea of these running boys.—These incomparable running boys, with their short thin switches, tearing alongside of the four horses, making indescribable noises, and beating the horses under the belly to encourage them, till—the vexatious moment arrived when the carriage once more sank in the mud. Then the cry for help was renewed; you waited till assistance was proffered, and then slowly resumed the journey. Often when I passed that way, I expected to meet a carriage with travellers of the last century, who had stuck in the mud, and been forgotten. But this never happened to me. Therefore I suppose, that every one who went that way, arrived at last at his destination. You would be mistaken, if you thought that all the roads in Java were in the same bad state. The military road with many branches, which Marshal Daendels[2] constructed with great sacrifice of men, is indeed a masterpiece, and you are struck with wonder at the energy of the man, who, notwithstanding many obstacles, [[53]]raised up by envious opponents at home, dared the displeasure of the population, the discontent of the chiefs, and succeeded in performing a task, that even now excites and merits the admiration of every visitor.
No post-horses in Europe, not even in England, Russia, or Hungary can be compared with those of Java. Over high mountain ridges, along the brow of precipices that make you shudder, the heavy-laden travelling carriage flies on at full speed. The coachman sits on the box as if nailed to it, hours, yes, whole days successively, and swings the heavy lash with an iron hand. He can calculate exactly where and how much he must restrain the galloping horses, in order that, after descending at full speed from a mountain declivity, he may on reaching that corner * * *
“O God” (cries the inexperienced traveller),——“we are going down a precipice, there’s no road,——there’s an abyss!” * *
Yes, so it seems. The road bends, and just at the time when one more bound of the galloping animals would throw the leaders off the path, the horses turn, and sling the carriage round the corner. At full gallop they run [[54]]up the mountain height, which a moment before was unseen——and the precipice is behind you. Sometimes the carriage is only supported at the bend by the wheels on the inside of the curve: centrifugal force has raised the outside ones off the ground. It needs a great deal of coolness, not to shut one’s eyes, and whoever travels for the first time in Java, generally writes to his family in Europe, that he has been in danger of his life; but he whose home is in Java laughs at that.
Reader, it is not my intention, particularly at the commencement of this history, to waste time in describing places, scenery, or buildings.—I am too much afraid of disheartening you, by what would resemble prolixity; and therefore, until I feel that I have won your attention, till I observe in your glances and in your countenance that the destiny of the heroine, who jumps somewhere from a fourth storey, interests you, I shall not make her hover in the air, with a bold contempt for all the laws of gravitation, so long as is necessary for the accurate description of the beauty of the landscape, or the building, that seems to be put in somewhere to give occasion for a voluminous essay on mediæval architecture. All those castles resemble each other. They are invariably of heterogeneous architecture; the main building always dates from some earlier reign than the wings which are added to it afterwards under the reign of such and such a king. The towers are in a dilapidated state. * * * Reader, there are no [[55]]towers. A tower is an idea, a dream. There are “half towers,” and turrets. The fanaticism which wanted to put towers to the edifices that were erected in honour of this or that saint, did not last long enough to finish them; and the spire, designed to point out heaven to believers, is generally supported by two or three low battlements on the huge base, which makes you think of the man without thighs at the fair. The towers of village churches only, with their spires, are finished.
It is not very flattering to Western civilisation, that the enthusiasm for an extensive work has very seldom prevailed long enough to see that work finished. I do not now speak of undertakings whose completion was necessary to defray the expenses: whoever wants to know exactly what I mean, must go and see the Cathedral at Cologne. Let him think of the grand conception of that building in the soul of the architect;—of the faith in the hearts of the people, which furnished him with the means to commence and continue that labour;—of the influence of the ideas, which required such a colossus to serve as a visible representation of unseen religious feeling—and let him compare that enthusiasm with the train of ideas, that some centuries afterwards stopped the labour.