Across the Equator: A Holiday Trip in Java

by Thomas H. Reid

Daendels may have been an admirable gentleman, a brave soldier, and a clever administrator, but his engineering skill did not equal his other qualities. It would have been much better if the road had never been made. Surely no highway was ever more badly graded, and we are not astonished that a practical people like the Dutch set themselves to construct a more sensible road by way of Tjitjoeroeg and Soekaboemie. We have seen paved mountain paths in China more inaccessible, but not much, and when we dashed up to the Sindanglaya Hotel at 12.15, we thought more highly of the team that had pulled us over the Pass than we could have believed when we formed our first early morning prejudices.

Needless to say, it is not a road for a motor car. It would be inadvisable to adopt this route to Sindanglaya if the party included ladies. But, if they have a taste for mountaineering, baggage should be sent by rail to Tjiandjoer under the care of some of the party, and carriages dispensed with at Toegoe and the remainder of the journey made on foot. As it was, a good deal of our journey up had to be made on foot over unblinded loose road metal.

Going down the other side the driver led the ponies for about a quarter of a mile, and then joined us in the kreta. That downward trip was the most perilous we ever made in anything that runs on wheels, except a train journey from Manila to Malolos during the Filipino insurrection in 1899. Jack London, the Californian novelist, once told us that life would not be worth living if it were not for the thrills. We had more thrills than we care to have crowded into one hour on that down-grade run from Poentjak to Sindanglaya. Several times, we retrimmed at the request of the driver, and we kept the barang from falling upon him, while he manipulated our three rakish adventurers from Battak. When an unusually severe lurch nearly precipitated us into the deep storm-water channel on the left or the carefully-irrigated paddy fields on the right, Jehu turned round and grinned a grin of fiendish appreciation, whilst we thanked with fervour the merciful Providence who preserved us from destruction, and wondered how long one could hold out with a broken limb, without surgical help, should the worst happen. It is the unexpected that happens. We got to Sindanglaya without any more serious damage than a bottle of Odol distributed amongst our best clothes.

Governor-General Daendels seems to have had a high opinion of this remarkable highway. We read: "The obstinacy with which he carried through his scheme of constructing the main road to the Preanger Regencies across this summit is really amazing. He never shrank from the terrible death-rate among the wretched labourers, nor from the difficulties and enormous cost to keep such a road in good condition, for, especially in the west monsoon, heavy rain-showers are continually washing the earth off the road. Yet it was by no means necessary." Let this be Governor-General Daendels' epitaph!

Had not one's attention been distracted by the eccentric performances of the kreta, one might well have admired the scenery. Close at hand, the road teems with fascinating pictures of native life. Only occasionally does one see a really beautiful face, but there is a pretty shyness such as one seldom sees on the roads of a European country. Although we read of the thirty millions of people in Java, there is still, apparently, room for more, and nearly every woman has a brown baby slung upon the hip and others dragging on her sarong, or seeking to efface themselves behind her none too ample form. At intervals, old women or young children keep shop, either in nipa huts or on mats under the shade of a kanari-tree. In the kampongs or collections of neat little huts which punctuate the way, a pasar (market) is being held, haberdashers with cheap glass and fancy wares being in juxtaposition with dealers in sarongs and the sellers of fruits and vegetables. On the stoeps of some of the houses, groups of women spin or weave cloth for the native sarong; some make deft use of the sewing machine of foreign commerce.

The road is fringed by a variety of trees and plants which only a botanist would attempt to describe. Colour is given to this fringe by the magenta bougainvillea, the red hibiscus, the pale blue convolvulus, the variegated crotons, and the orange and red of the lantana, and at places the poinsettia provides a predominating red head to the hedge-like greenery. Palms and tree ferns and feathery clumps of young bamboo are called to aid by Nature's landscape gardener; but they do not shut out the verdure-clad ravines that mark a waterway or the terraced rice-fields which climb almost to the top of the highest summits.

We thought we had seen the acme of perfection in rice cultivation and irrigation in China and Japan. But here in Java, we have seen more to excite the admiration in this respect than in either of these countries. One can only marvel at the completeness of the system of irrigation. Rice is in all stages of cultivation, from the flooded paddy field to the grain in the ear being reaped by the gaily coloured butterflies of women. Water buffaloes drag a primitive plough through the drenched soil, while the bright-faced young ploughboy, by what appears to be a superhuman effort, balances himself precariously on the implement.

On the left, we pass tea gardens, the tufty bushes low to the ground. What strikes us first is the amazing regularity of the rows and the cleanness of the ground. An aroma of tea in the making escapes from the roadside factory and agreeably assails our sense of smell as we jolt past in our kreta.

We reached Kampong Toegoe at nine o'clock, refreshed both men and beasts, and harnessed two more ponies with long rope traces to help us to the summit of the Pass, which was reached at eleven o'clock. Here we made a deviation on foot to the Telega Warna (Colour-changing Lake) while the ponies rested for the downward journey. The path is a difficult one, and the lake itself is less interesting than the lovely vegetation by which it is surrounded. Ferns and bracken cover the hillside, pollipods predominating, orchids cling to tree stems, and higher up, the curious nest-fern and various forms of plant life attract attention. Tree is woven to tree by a network of mighty lianas.

The lake itself lies in what must have been the crater in the prehistoric period of activity of Megamendoeng. It is 100 metres in width, circular in shape, and about 100 fathoms deep. Fish are found in the lake, and they are regarded with veneration by the natives.