The heavy expense of building in Batavia, and the anxious vigilance exercised over those of the community who are sick, will best be understood from the fact that one single new ward, making up from 60 to 80 beds, cost the government about 60,000 guilders (£5000). One of the buildings, at a little distance from the rest, is set apart for female invalids, as also for lunatics and sick prisoners. Attached to this hospital is a school of midwifery for the instruction of native women in obstetrics, which at the period of our visit was attended by sixteen women from various islands in the Malay Archipelago, and which, in a land where the birth of a child is accompanied by so many superstitious and hideous ceremonies, cannot fail to be followed by most beneficial results.
One very important and useful establishment is the Javanese medical school (Geneeskundige School voor Inlanders), which, founded in 1851 by Mr. Bosch, at that period chief of the medical staff, is intended to supply the sons of the more prominent natives of Java and the adjacent islands with a thorough training in and acquaintance with the art of medicine as practised in Europe. Government defrays the travelling expenses of these youths, as also all expenses of maintenance and education. Among the four-and-twenty scholars here, we saw sons of native princes of Java, Palembang, Celebes, Amboina, Ceram, Sumatra, and Borneo, who intended following up the profession; and it is worthy of remark that two natives of Menado in the island of Celebes of the
savage cannibal race of the Alfuras, were pointed out to us as among the most apt and docile of the scholars! Those of the students who are Christians, are clothed in the dress of Europeans, the rest, chiefly Mahométans, wear Oriental attire. Instruction is imparted in Malay, since as a rule not one of the students on entering the college understands a word of Dutch. For the same reason the books usually employed in instruction cannot be made use of, while, owing to the poverty of the Malay language, any translation into it must be fraught with difficulty. All technical names are therefore converted into Latin. The course of instruction is carried on the first year in the class-room, the second by the bed-side of the patient, or the dead body. After strict and thorough examination each pupil receives a diploma as a "Doctor—Java," besides a monthly salary of from £2 2s. to £2 10s., and an outfit of the most important drugs and surgical instruments. By this system some fifty young men have already returned to their homes as physicians and government officials, and thus greatly contribute to the extension of European civilization.
In the chief streets of Batavia the stranger comes upon some small open watch-houses, or rather huts, consisting simply of four poles and a roof of palm thatch, in which is suspended a long, slender piece of wood (Tong-tong), which is used for three different objects. The Javanese who in this little hut is watching over the property and personal safety of the inhabitants, strikes the Tong-tong with a sort of drum-stick, in
order to announce the hours of the night, or to give notice of the outbreak of a fire, or in case of any one running a-muck. This singular phenomenon, in which a Malay with open knife or drawn dagger rushes madly through the streets, and seeks to kill every one he encounters, occurs perhaps a dozen times a year. The first murder is very probably intentional, the offspring of hate or revenge, but that once accomplished, the murderer, usually under the influence of opium, runs recklessly forward through the streets, with the wild cry of "Amok"—"Amok" (Kill!—Kill!), knocking down and stabbing whoever he encounters. As one can only approach the miscreant at the peril of one's life, there is kept in these watch-houses a peculiarly constructed weapon of long wooden staves, and shaped at the upper end not unlike a hay-fork, with which the desperate wretch can be seized. The various methods in which the Tong-tong is struck at once conveys notice as to which one of the three announcements conveyed by the instrument it is the watchman's object to make.
The natives, although they divide themselves into the Java and Sunda nations, belong nevertheless to the same race, viz. the Malay, and are readily recognizable by their short thickset form, round face, wide mouth, short narrow nose, small black eyes, by their brown complexion, verging on yellow, and their luxuriant but always rough and coarse hair. As to their moral characteristics, the Javanese are a mild, easily contented, temperate, simple, industrious people. The principal occupation of the 10,000,000 inhabitants of
Java and Madura, is agriculture, which with them is at least equally, if not in a much higher degree, understood by them than by any other Asiatic community, with the exception of the Chinese. This is apparent from the neatness and careful cultivation of their fields, the excellent condition of their farm-stock, the careful observance of seed-time and harvest, and above all by their regular irrigation of the soil. When Java first became known to Europeans, the chief produce of the island consisted of rice, leguminous vegetables, indigo, and cotton. Intercourse with Europe has superadded to these two American products, maize and tobacco, and one African, coffee.[35] The Javanese have even less time for the mechanical arts than for agricultural pursuits, yet in the construction of boats and dwelling-houses, as also in making agricultural implements, shields and weapons of war, they have more aptitude than the majority of the people of the Malay Archipelago.[36] The only other stuff, except cotton, of which they make clothing is silk, chiefly the raw, coarse, Chinese silk; all endeavours to naturalize the silk production in these islands having failed hitherto.
In addition to the ordinary language used for communication and every-day purposes there are in Java two special idioms,—Javanese in the centre and east of the island, and Sunda in the west of the island. The small river Losari in the province of Cheribon on the north side of the island indicates the boundary line of the two languages. Owing to the circumstance that both the idioms are used in Cheribon, many writers have deduced thence the origin of the name of that province, which signifies in Javanese "mingled," or mixed. The Javanese tongue, which of the two is far the more highly cultivated, has been a written language for untold ages, and its alphabet is universally used among the Sunda groups as well as in the adjoining Malay groups. Various inscriptions in stone and brass carry us back in the history of Java to the 12th century, and it would almost seem that the Javanese at that period had already attained the same degree of civilization as when four centuries later the Europeans for the first time landed on their soil.
Of the original Javanese language there are three dialects,—the language of the populace (Ngoko), or low Javanese, the ceremonial language (Kromo), known as high Javanese, and the old mystical dialect, or Kawi.