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Facts and fancies about Java (1898)

Facts and fancies about Java

(1898)–Augusta de Wit–rechtenstatus Auteursrecht onbekend

Vorige Volgende

Of Buitenzorg.

The Javanese sans-souci* lies cradled in a fold of the undulating country at the base of the Salak, whose blue top, twin to that of the Gedeh, is seen, in fine weather, from the Koningsplein, rising aerially, tender, fresh, and pure, above the dusty glare of Batavia. The village is pretty - all brown atap houses and gardens full of roses, with the wooded hill-side for a background. One may wander for hours in the splendid Botanical Garden, reputed to be the finest in the world, and a goal of pilgrimage for scientists from every part of the globe. Whoever visits the place

in September may combine these tranquil pleasures with the gaiety of the annual races, and the great ball at the Buitenzorg Club, where ‘all Java’ dances. I went in the last week of the month, glad to escape from the town, which, at this time of the year, is unbearable, scorched with the heat of the east monsoon and stifled under a layer of dust, which makes tho grass of the gardens crumble away, and turns the ‘assam’ trees along the river and in the squares into grey spectres. The country through which the first part of my road lay, seemed, however, scarcely less desolato. Nothing but flat monotonous fields, some altogether bare and grey, others still covered with yellowish stubble, through which the cracks and fissures of the parched soil showed. Here and there, a patch of green, where some huddled brown roofs and a group of thin palm-trees denoted a native hamlet, forlorn in the wide arid plain.

Then, again, bare brown fields, where no living creature was to be seen, except, now and then, a herd of dun buffaloes wallowing in the oore of some driedup pool.

By and bye, however, the character of the landscape began to change. The rich blue-green of the young rice-crops, seen first in isolated squares and patches, spread all over the gradually-ascending fields. Along the course of a rapid rivulet, a bamboo grove sprang up, little stems bending a little under their cascades of waving dull-green foliage. Then the rice-clad undulations of the ground began to rise into little hills, green to tho very top, and down the sides of which the water, that fed the terraced fields, trickled in many a twisting silvery thread; and, suddenly, on the left, rose the great triangular mass of the Salak, dull-blue in the sober evening light. It was almost dark when the train stopped at the Buitenzorg station. It stands at some dis-

tance from the village: and, as I drove thither, sights and sounds reached me that denoted the hilly country. The wheels of the cab creaked over whitish pebbles clean as gravel from the rocky river-bed. The gardens on each side the road were full of flowers, that gleamed palely through the semi-darkness. The voices of passers-by, the laughter of children at play, the high thin tones of a flute somewhere in the distance, sounded clear and far through the rarefied air. As I entered the village, I noticed that the houses were built of bamboo instead of the brick, which is the usual material in the clayey lowlands.

It is said that these bamboo houses, covered with atap, withstand the shock of earthquakes, frequent in this country, much better than brick buildings with tiled roofs. However that may be, their rural aspect harmonizes with the landscape: and they are delightful to inhabit, cool under the noonday-heat, and proof against the torrential

rains, which, at Buitenzorg, fall every day, between two and four in the afternoon. I lived for some time in a little pavilion - wooden floor, pagar walls, and a roof of atap: a pleasanter abode I never knew. It was almost like living in a hermit's cell out in the woods. I was never sure whether t he soft creaking noises heard all night through came from the bamboo-grove in the garden, or from the bamboo in my wall. The crickets seemed to sing in my very ears: and a faint, sweet smell pervaded the little room, such as breathes from the leafage, dead and living, of a forest. Like a cenobite's cell, too. My pavilion was not meant for a storehouse of worldly treasures. Even if moths and rust did not corrupt, thieves would have unite exceptional facilities for breaking through and stealing them. ‘Breaking through’ is too energetic and vigorous a term; with an ordinary penknife, one might cut away enough of the walls to admit a battalion of

burglars. Reading, one day, a French translation of Don Quixote, I rested the ponderous folio, which tired my arms, against the wall. It instantly gave way, sinking in, as if it had been a canvas awning. I do not doubt that, with my embroidering scissors, I might have cut out an elegant open-work pattern in it.

The morning after my arrival, I went to seek my way to the Botanical Garden. It was early, yet, a little after sunrise, and the air felt as cool and as pure as well-water. A frost-like dew had whitened the grass; shreds of mist hung between the trees, trailed along the hill-side, and floated like low white clouds in the depths of the ravine, where the river foamed past over the boulders of its rocky bed. And, in the branches, the birds were twittering and singing their little hearts out. I met some natives on the way to their morning bath, hugging themselves in the folds of the ‘baju’ the women among them having the ‘slendang’

drawn over their heads. They walked at a brisk pace, very different from the listless movements of pedestrians in the sultry streets of Batavia. The type was of another kind, a slightly-ovalface, with a thin nose somewhat aquiline in design, and very brilliant eyes; the complexion of a clear yellowish brown, with a touch of red in the lips. They had an elastic gait, and the free carriage of the head peculiar to hill-folk. Some young girls were absolutely pretty.

I asked my way of an old woman who sat by the roadside, complacently smoking a cigarette, and soon found myself within the gates of the Botanical Garden, and in the celebrated waringin avenue, one of the glories of the place. The first impression, I confess, is somewhat disappointing. The avenue is not very long, so that it misses the depths of green darkness, the prospect along apparently converging parallels of pillar-like trunks, and the bluish shimmer of light afar off - those characteristic charms of

woodland glades. This seems to be rather a square, planted with trees on two sides of the quadrangle only, a comparatively narrow space of shadow abutting on the broad fields of sunlight beyond. After a while, however, one notices the smallness of the figures moving past the trees: men, horses, and bullock-carts. By comparison, one begins to realize the gigantic proportions of it all - the length and breadth and height of the leafy vaultoverhead, and the hugeness of those stupendous growths that support it. Each of them in itself is a grove, where congregated hundreds of trees, group by group of stately stems crowding round the colossal parent bole. Then, by and bye, the sense of grandeur is succeeded by a curious impression of lifelessness. In their vast size, their stark immobility, and their rigid attitudes, these grey masses resemble granite peaks and cliffs rather than trees. The aged trunks, broad-based, are riven and fissured like weather-beaten rocks, showing gnarled

protuberances and black clefts from which ferns and mosses droop. Some, rotten to the core - nothing left of the trunk but a fragment of grey gnarled rind, with the fungus-overgrown mould lying heaped up against the base - resemble boulders, covered with earth and detritus. One or two, quite decayed, hang in mid-air, dependent from a dome of interlacing branches, sterns, and air-roots, like some gigantic stalactites, from the roof of a pillared cavern. And, aloft, the dense masses of foliage, grey against the sunlit brilliancy of the sky, seem like the broken and crumbling vault of this immense grotto. This strange resemblance of living vegetable matter to inert stone ceases only when, issuing from among the sterns, one looks at the waringins from a distance, and sees the grey multitude of boles, trunks, and stems disappearing under spreading masses of foliage, - hills of emerald green - resplendent in the sun.

The garden is worthy of this magnifi-

cent entrance. Enthusiastic ‘savants’ have sung its praises in all the languages of civilization, and, by common consent, have declared it to be the finest botanical garden in the world, assigning the second place to famous Kew, and mentioning the gardens of Berlin, Paris, and Vienna as third, fourth, and fifth in order of merit. Originally, it was no more than the park belonging to the country-house which Governor-General Van Imhoff built here in 1754: a house since destroyed by an earthquake, and on the site of which the present lodge was erected. And, in this park, Professor Bernwardt, some eighty years ago, arranged a small botanical garden, a ‘hortus’ as the innocent pedantry of the period called it. The idea was to gather in this fertile spot specimens of all the plants and trees growing in Java, so as to afford men of science opportunity for studying the flora of the island. By and bye, however, especially under the direction of Teysmann, many

plants from other countries were introduced, with a view of acclimatizing them in Java, often with signal success. And, recently, a museum and a library have been established, and also several laboratories for chemical, botanical, and pharmaceutical research. For the cultivation of such plants as require a cool climate, gardens have been laid out on the terraced hill-side, in ascending tiers that climb up to the height of Tji-Bodas, where in the early morning, the temperature is 10o Celsius. These ameliorations for the greater part are due to the untiring energy of the eminent scientist now directing the garden.

But, apart from scientific interest, and viewed simply as a bit of landscape the garden is fascinating - the very ideal of a park - with its white pillared lodge set in the midst of lawns and groups of dark-leaved trees and mirroring sheets of water. All that morning, I wandered along its pleasant paths, pass-

ing from sunshine into chequered shade, and from shadow into sunlight again, and still, at every turn, discovering new beauties. A lakelet with a small island in the midst floating above its own reflection, its green brushwood, and dangling masses of lichens set with large lilac flowers, and the coral-red trunks of a slender kind of palm trees, mirrored in the calm water, meet the eye. Then follow long avenues of kenari-trees, massively-tall as cathedral-towers, and of bamboos almost as high, but graceful rather than majestic, pliant sterns, ever swaying and bending under the cloudy masses of wind-stirred foliage fallen. A vast stretch of meadowy ground, where herds of reddish deer were browsing on the short grass, still dewy though the morning was already advanced, comes in sight. Here and there through gaps in the trees, came a sudden glimpse of the distant valley, with the river shining between the light-green rice flelds, and beyond the encircling hills. Everywhere, too, the presence of living

water made itself felt, in the cool damp air, and in the delicious smell of moist earth, wet stones, and water plants. And I would suddenly catch the silvery gleams between the bushes, of a brooklet hurrying past over its pebbly bed, and foaming in small cascades that besprinkled with scintillating spray the ferns and tall nodding grasses upon the bank. Here and there, I heard the murmur and tinkle of a fountain: and I passed by quiet ponds and lakelets, dark green in the shadow of overhanging trees. One of these sheets of water - or rather the streamlet into which it narrows at one end - is completely overgrown with white lotus-flowers; and a sight more exquisitely beautiful cannot be imagined. It burst upon me suddenly, as I came out of a long, dark avenue; and, at first, I could not make out what that white splendour was. It seemed to float like a luminous summer-cloud, like a snowy drift of morning-mist, when dawn

reddens the Eastern skies. A breath of wind arose, and the even splendour trembled and seemed to break up into hundreds of white flames and sparks, that for an instant all blew one way, and then shot up again, and stood steadily shining. And as I came nearer, I discerned the great round white flowers, radiant in the sunshine. The round, purplish-brown leaves spread all over the surface of the water, covering it from bank to bank. And, out of these heaps of bronze shields, there rose the straight tall sterns, like lances, with the white flame of the flower breaking out at top - sparks of St. Elmo's fire, such as, on one memorable night, centuries ago, tipped the spears of the Roman cohorts, on their march to battle and victory.

This field of radiant lotus-blossoms, and the sombre and solemn waringin avenue, contrasting glories, seem to me to be the crowning beauties of the Buitenzorg garden. The name of Buitenzorg, by

the bye, is an innovation. Natives still call the town by its ancient name of Bogor, which it bore in the glorious age when it was the capital of the Hindoo realm of Padjadjaran. A Muslim conqueror, Hassan Udin, son of the Sheik Mulana, destroyed it; and a new town was reared on the ruins, but legends of its bygone glory still haunt the imagination of the country folk. In the tales which they repeat to one another of an evening, the splendour of the ancient empire, and the wisdom and unconquerable valour of its founder are still remembered. Tjioeng Wonara was his name; and his son and successor, the victorious Raba Wanji, was even greater than he. In the craggy hill-tops of the Gedeh-range, popular tradition sees the ruins of the splendid palace he built himself on the heights; his hall where the throne of gold and ivory stood - the temple, where he worshipped the gods - the domes of his harem, and the battle-

mented towers which his unconquerable warriors kept against the world, a thousand years ago; the southern wall of the Gedeh-crater surrounds, as an impregnable bulwark, the palace and temple courts.

The Hindoo period, however, has left in this neighbourhood records more authentic than Praboe Wangi's fancy-built palace on the heights. Near a native kampong, which derives its name from this proximity, the so-called Batu Tulis is found - a quantity of stone slabs, some lying prone, others still upright, adorned with figures in bas-relief and covered with inscriptions. The legend on the largest of these memorial tablets, traced in ancient Javanese characters, has been deciphered: it celebrates the virtues and victories of a Hindoo king. And the worn-away superscriptions and rude effigies discernible on the other stones probably commemorate contemporary princes and warriors. The Bogor coun-

try-folk venerate greatly these relics of a glorious past.

Carriers walking by the side of their lumbering, bullock-drawn ‘pedati,’ which creaks so leisurely along the sun-scorched roads; labourers on their way to the rice-fields, the light wooden ploughshare across their shoulders, driving the patient yoke of oxen before them; women from the hill-villages around, who come to the Bogor market in holiday attire, a chaplet of jessamine-blossoms twisted into their ‘kondeh’ - all turn aside from the road, to murmur a short prayer, and offer a handful of flowers of frank-incense and yellow boreh-unguent, or even Chinese joss-sticks and small paper lanterns on the consecrated spot. Whether this be an act of homage to those ancient kings and heroes, whose rude effigies adorn the stones, and whose spirits are believed still to haunt the spot: or simply a fetishistic adoration of these blocks of granite and the curious signs engraved thereon, it

is difficult to decide: the worshippers themselves hardly seem to know. When asked, they reply that they do as their fathers did before them, and so, therefore, must be right; unless, indeed, they merely smile, and offer the somewhat irrelevant remark that they are true Moslemin. This, indeed, every native of Java (save such few as have been converted to what they consider as the Christian religion) professes himself to be. And, in a measure, the Javanese are Mohammedans, they recite the Mohammedan prayers and Confession of Faith, go to the Messigit - which is Javanese for mosque - when it suits them, keep the Ramadan very strictly; also, if they can afford it, they perform that most sacred duty of the Mohammedan, the Mecca pilgrimage, and, returning thence, live for ever on the purses of their admiring co-religionists. But for the rest, one may apply to them Napoleon's dictum concerning the Russians - mutatie mutandis. Scratch

the Muslim, and you will find the Hindoo; scratch the Hindoo, and you will find the fetish-adoring Pagan. In the same way, too, as they confuse religious beliefs, they distort historical facts and traditions so as to make them tally with the prevalent opinions of the day. This Batu Tulis, for instance, though they venerate as record of the Hindoo empire, they yet, at the same time, honour as a monument of the Mohammedan conquest. According to them, these roughly-fashioned stones, of which, they say, there are over eight hundred dispersed throughout the neighbourhood, are the transformed shapes of Siliwangi, last King of Padjadjaran, and his followers, who, in this spot, their last refuge on flight from the victorious Muslim hosts, were turned into stones by Tuan Allah, as a punishment for their persistent refusal to embrace El-Islam: and the superscription celebrating the Hindoo prince they make out to be the record of this

miracle. A touch of romance clings to the grim legend like a tender-petalled flower to a rock. It concerns the impress of a foot, visible on one of the slabs, and a fair princess who left it there, many centuries ago. She alone of all that multitude that fled with Siliwangi, the consort of variant Poerwakali, his son, escaped the general doom, through the influence of an Arab priest who had converted her to the true religion. She could not, however, save her husband, whom, before her very eyes, she saw turned into a stone. But, in her faithful heart, love could not die, though the loved one was dead. The victor, vanquished in his turn by her incomparable beauty, implored her in vain. She would not be separated from her husband's inanimate shape, and, building herself a little hut under the waringin trees, she still, day by day, repaired to the stone, which bore Poerwakali's semblance, with sacrifices and prayers, and tears. And, often,

in a transport of love and grief, she would throw her arms about the inert mass, closely embracing it, and, into its deaf ear, murmur words, and vows of eternal loyalty, and bitter-sweet memories of days that were no more. Her tears, still flowing, fell on the stone underfoot, day by day, month by month, year by year, until at last it became soft and yielding as clay, and received and retained the impress of those tender feet, which for so long had known no other resting place.

From these memories of an empire overthrown, a religion smitten with the edge of the sword, and a love stronger than death - ‘old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago’ - suggested by Batu Tulis, to the gaiety of the Buitenzorg races is a wide step. But our modern souls have grown accustomed to these sudden transitions. In Java, more than in any other country, one must be prepared at any moment to pass from the fairy lands, forlorn of

history, to contemporary Philistia. Let me hasten to add, in justice, that I found that high festival of Philistinism in Java, the Buitenzorg races, both amusing and full of interest. The crowded Stands gave one an ‘impression d'ensemble’ of society in the colony, such as would be expected in vain on any other occasion - formal-mannered functionaries and business men from the hot towns with their exquisitely dressed pale-faced wives and daughters, mingling with sunburnt planters from the interior, and rosy cheeked girls from the neighbouring hill-stations, in white muslin frocks, brightened up by flowers such as those grown at home. And the spectacle of the races, exciting in itself, is rendered the more interesting by the changes and transformations which an essentially northern sport has suffered under the sun of the tropics by the substitution of Sandalwood and Battak ponies for horses, of native syces, who clutch the stirrup with bare toes, for

jockeys, and of silent multitudes brightly garbed, for the black-coated crowds shouting and huzzaing at Epsom or Longchamps.


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