There is very much to interest the tourist in this Javanese city, so unlike the Anglo-Oriental settlements one meets elsewhere in the East, nor does he soon weary of its noble sultan and splendid Oriental court; but time forbade our tarrying longer than the third day, after which we pressed onward to the neighboring principality of Djokjokarta. This is the name most conspicuous in Javanese history, since there, from 1825 to 1830, floated victoriously the colors of the revolt, and victory was purchased at last only by the blood of fifteen thousand soldiers, of whom eight thousand were Europeans, and Djokjokarta remained as it was before, an independent sovereignty. The sultan, who belongs to an ancient family, is fine-looking, with a somewhat martial air, and a native dignity evidently the heritage of high birth. On our first interview he wore above the ordinary silk saráng a tight-fitting jacket of French broadcloth (blue), richly embroidered and trimmed with gold lace.
THE SULTAN OF DJOKJOKARTA.
He displayed also a collection of crosses, stars, and other decorations conferred by various European powers, the French predominating. He had evidently a partiality for la belle France, and exhibited with no little pride an album containing photographs of Louis Philippe and Louis Napoleon. He conversed well in several languages, readily using either Arabic or French in lieu of his vernacular, and was evidently up to time in regard to the current political topics of the day. He introduced the ladies of our party to his young and beautiful sultana, and invited them to accompany her to the inner apartments of the harem. We found the private apartments of the seraglio, like so many others I visited all over the East, superbly magnificent in the display of gold and jewels, in costly carpets and exquisite hangings, in the most lavish exhibition of pictures, mirrors, statuettes and bijouterie generally. There were glowing tints and warm, rich colors, but all was sensuous: wealth and splendor were everywhere visible, but neither modesty nor true womanly refinement.
The sultan afterward entertained us by the exhibition of a curious collection of monkeys and apes. Some were of huge proportions, full four feet in height, and looking as fierce as if just captured from their native jungles, while the tiny marmosets were scarcely eight inches long. The orang-outangs and long-armed apes had been trained to go through a variety of military exercises; and when one of us expressed surprise at their seeming intelligence, the sultan said gravely, "They are as really men as you and I, and have the power of speech if they chose to exercise it. They do not talk, because they are unwilling to work and be made slaves of." This strange theory is generally believed by the Malays, in whose language orang-outang is simply "man of the woods."
Fannie R. Feudge.
LONDON BALLS
BY A LONDONER.
How London balls came to be what, in this latter half of the nineteenth century, they are—by what process of development or natural or artificial selection they acquired their present characteristics, and where and when their congregation of frequenters picked up their current ritual—are matters which I, for one, am content to leave to the Dryasdusts of social history. The existing phase of the subject affords phenomena enough and to spare to gossip about, without delving into the rubbish-heaps of the past.