in the East, accompanying each coach, who are incessantly on and off the waggon, yelling and cracking their long whips at the horses to keep them to their speed. About every five paals, or 4 3⁄4 miles (English), the cattle and the runners are changed, so that an unvarying speed is attained. All along the roads stretches the telegraphic wire, which unites Batavia in one direction with Angier (75 miles) and Surabaya (543 miles).[43] The wood of which each post is constructed is the Kapok tree, a species of Gossypium, or cotton tree, and here for the first time we saw the slender, tightly-strained wires suspended on the stem of a luxuriant green tree. Thus, if the experiment succeeds, the elsewhere naked, dead telegraph-poles will here be made at once useful and productive, as each post that supports the wire will produce a small quantity of cotton.
Buitenzorg possesses one of the finest and most extensive botanical gardens in the world. It was laid out as far back as 1817, during the vice-royalty of Baron van Capellen. The distribution of the various orders is contrived equally to assist and promote the instruction of the general observer, and to accustom the naturalist to the phenomena of Eastern vegetation. Each order of plants has its own area. The various species of palms are the most extensively represented, and there is scarcely one of the
genus, whether ornamental or useful, found in the Netherland Indies or Australia, of which a representative is not to be found here. The superintendence of this garden has been intrusted to that indefatigable hortulanus, Mr. J. C. Teijsmann, who in his department assisted to the utmost the objects of the Novara Expedition. He not only presented us with duplicates of all the more valuable plants in his very extensive collection, but also with valuable seeds. By such kind co-operation we found ourselves provided with some twenty various species of fibrous plants, amongst others the well-known Ramé-shrub (Boehmeria utilis), and that useful species of wild plantain, the Musa textilis (from the leaves of which is manufactured Manila hemp), as also twenty-four different species of rice. Of these latter two were of special interest, one needing no watering, but flourishing best in mountainous, dry soil, the other being chiefly used by the natives for the preparation of a dye.
Mr. Teijsmann has the great merit of having been the first to introduce into Java the cultivation of the valuable and costly Vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia), by using artificial means of fructification, after all the many expensive experiments previously made had failed, because the insect which effects the fructification of the plant in its original climate, the West Indies, is not found in Java. At present the yield is so great, that not alone does Mr. Teijsmann annually secure and send to market several hundredweights of this aromatic pod, but several other landowners have applied themselves
to the laying out of Vanilla plantations. The fruit, from six to ten inches in length, by three to five lines in width, of a dark brown colour, flexible, and somewhat unctuous to the touch, requires about five months to ripen. They are carefully dried, first in the shade and afterwards in the sun, and are then packed away in bundles in air-tight metal cases. One hundred pounds of fresh pods yield about one pound of the Vanilla of commerce. Formerly the value of a pound of Vanilla was as high as £6 sterling, but it is at present sold at about £4.
In the beautifully situated Hotel Bellevue, where we lived while at Buitenzorg, we chanced to become acquainted with a curious individual, a young negro named Aquasie Boachi, son of an African prince of Coomassie, the chief city of the kingdom of Ashantee on the Gold Coast,[44] who, while a child of nine years, had been sent by the colonial government to Europe, in order to be educated in Germany. It was the intention to make apparent what early education and instruction can do for the negro, and how the present low state of the black race is principally attributable to their oppression hitherto, and to the limited application, in their case, of European civilization. The experiment proved most satisfactory. Aquasie Boachi speaks German, English, Dutch, and French quite fluently, and holds a diploma, as mining engineer, from the
mining academy of Freiberg in Saxony. He is a pupil of the celebrated Professor Bernhard Cotta, whom he still remembers with affection and gratitude. As Aquasie had become a Christian he could not, save at the risk of his life, return to his heathenish native land, to the bosom of his own family. The Dutch Government accordingly, regarding him in the light of a victim to philanthropical experiments, at present pays the young miner out of the state funds about £400 per ann., and occasionally employs him on mining researches. Aquasie had resolved to settle for life in Germany, where, as he told us, he felt himself thoroughly at home, but the climate did not agree with him, upon which he returned to Java, and had since occupied himself in coffee-culture.
From the terrace of the hotel one enjoys a magnificent prospect bounded by the mountains around. On the right rises a lofty peak, whose summit-cone has been cloven into three pinnacles, the Gunung Salak 7204 feet (English), an extinct volcano, from which, however, in 1699 issued immense volumes of sand and mud, accompanied by columns of flames, tremendous bellowings, and convulsions of the soil. The torrent of liquid mud hurried along trunks of trees, carcasses of animals, tame as well as wild, crocodiles and fish, and, still preserving its character of a mud torrent, rushed into the sea near Batavia, stopping up the mouths of several rivers and brooks. Since then this colossal hill, torn to its innermost core by this fearful eruption, has remained silent, and peaceful fields, alternating with luxuriant forest,
stretch upwards to the very flanks of its once dreaded summit. To the left of Gunung Salak, and in appearance and elevation far more imposing, stands out the Gedee Range. Its highest point is the tapering regular cone of Gunung Pangerango, still further to the left of which rises, almost equal in height, the bare rocky wall of the still active crater of Gunung Gedeh, from the abyss of which there occasionally issued light clouds of vapour. But this exquisite landscape unveils itself to the ravished view of the beholder only during the early hours of morning. By 10 A.M. thin vapours have gathered round those lofty summits, which gradually accumulate as noon approaches, until by 3 P.M. there is almost invariably a dense mass of clouds resting over the entire range, which very frequently dissolve with fearful violence in the shape of tremendous tropical thunder-storms. The annual rainfall at Buitenzorg would seem to be higher than at any other spot on the face of the earth. During some years it occasionally attains the depth of 200 inches (English), which is far beyond the utmost known in Central or Southern America.[45]