Besides specimens of fruits, there is a comprehensive technical collection in the Botanical Museum—fibres, commercial specimens of rattan, india-rubber, and gutta-percha, barks for tanning purposes, Peruvian barks, vegetable oils, indigo samples, various kinds of meal, resins and damars. There is also a section devoted to forest and staple produce.
Fuller details of the gardens and environs of Buitenzorg may be found in the handbook published by Messrs. G. Kolff and Co., Batavia.
One need not be wholly a scientific investigator to appreciate the beauties of Buitenzorg. There is here one view which has been described over and over again, oftentimes in the language of hyperbole—the view of the Tjidani Valley from the verandah of Bellevue Hotel. It is, indeed, difficult to avoid the use of extravagant language in the attempt to describe this beauty spot of Nature.
Though he was writing of a beautiful woman, F. Marion Crawford might have been describing some beautiful landscape when he wrote in his own exquisite style:—
"I think that true beauty is beyond description; you may describe the changeless faultless outlines of a statue to a man who has seen good statues and can recall them; you can, perhaps, find words to describe the glow and warmth and deep texture of a famous picture, and what you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor spiritual smile can tell half the truth of a beautiful living thing."
The noble Roman, prompted to exclaim "Behold the Tiber" as he stood on the summit of Kinnoull Hill and gazed upon the fertile valley of Scotland's noblest stream, saw no fairer sight than this veritable Garden of Eden in Equatorial Java.
Seen in the afternoon when the setting sun is casting long shadows over the landscape, the scene in the Tjidani Valley is calculated to arouse the artistic senses of the most insusceptible. Miles away, the Salak raises his majestic cone against the blue sky. In the distance, the mountain forms a purple background for the picture, purple flecked with soft white patches of floating cloud. Beneath his massive form, colour is lost in shadowy but closer at hand are the dark pervading greens of the trees and vegetation, palms and tree ferns and banana trees helping by their graceful form to provide the truely tropical features, while the equally graceful clumps of bamboo sway and creak in the light breeze, their pointed leaves supplying that perpetual flutter and movement which one associates with the birches and beeches of one's native land. The cultivated patches on hillside and valley are rich in colour. Here, the yellow paddy is ripening for the sickle; there, it is bright green; alongside, the patient buffaloes are dragging a clumsy wooden plough through water-covered soil to prepare for the next crop. The lake-like patches reflect weird outlines, and one almost imagines that they catch the brilliant colours from the sun-painted clouds.
Down the valley, crossing the picture from left to right is the river—the Tjidani,—a broad shallow stream when we saw it, in which men, women and children are constantly bathing. From the compact kampong nestling among the trees, the native women, clad in bright coloured sarongs, came with babies, who take to the water as if it were their natural element. Merry shouts of laughter ascend from the valley as the youngsters splash about and chase each other. Everything suggests beauty and peace and contentment, and as one drinks in the scene it is borne in upon one that the comparison with the Garden of Eden is not inapt. What could one wish for more than a beautiful, bounteous land and a happy, contented people!