|
| |
| |
| |
In the Hill Country.
Among other Western ideas and institutions, the Hollanders have imported into Java that of health-resorts. Erstwhile lonely hills now bear hotels and ‘pavilions’ upon their disafforested summits: pincnies are held in glades where, a few years ago, the timid antelopes fed: and Strausz's waltzes have reduced to silence the noisy cicadas. In the country south and east of Batavia, in the Gedeh-hills; and, in the Preanger district, there are several of these hill-stations. There, the air is pure and cool, save in the months when the hot east monsoon scorches the plains.
| |
| |
There are Tji-Panas Tji-Bodas, Soekaboemi, Sindanglaya, Tjandjoer the country round about Bandong, and, somewhat farther east, Garoet, all of which places are easily accessible from Batavia. The hotels are generally airy, roomy, and clean, if not elegant; the food is fairly good, and the charges moderate, about four dollars a day, the average rate throughout Java.
The Preanger district, in which Garoet, Bandong, and Tjandjoer are situated - the ‘Garden of Java’ as it is fitly named - in more than one respect reminds the traveller of the Italian hill-country. There is thesame clearness in the profiles of the mountain-ranges; the same transpareney of the air, which causes distant objects to appear quire near, and reveals their contour rather than their modelling; the same jewel-like sparkle in the colouring of the landscape, in the clear-viewed green of valley and hill-side, in the changeful hues of the water, and in the blue opal and
| |
| |
reseate violet of the distances under an azure sky. The thin pure air is as cool as well-water; in the early morning, one has to walk briskly in order to keep warm: and walks of several hours cause neither heat nor fatigue in this bracing climate, which makes even natives quicken their naturally slow movements, and which tinges their brown complexions with a flush of healthy red. In the fields, corn is seen instead of rice, and, in places, golden wheat waves. The gardens are fragrant with mignonettes heliotropes, and carnations: moss-roses flourish, and, also, velvety pansies, geraniums, fuchsias, phlox in all tis countless varieties of brilliant colours, and the tender forget-me-nots of northern brooksides. Strawberries, along with clusters of the blue and white grape show between the dense foliage of the vines. At certain seasons of the year, the hills are purple with the blossoms of the rasamala tree, - a magnificent growth which throws out its first branches at a height
| |
| |
of a hundred feet, and the summit of which reaches an altitude of a hundred and eighty feet. The most splendid orchids are found in the woods, and, also, mushreooms of extra ordinary dimensions some of three feet in diameter, and of strange and brilliant colours. On all sides, too, there is a sparkle of living water as limpid as the air itself, leaping down the rocky hill-sides in innumerable cataracts and shining in broad tranquil lakes that mirror the encircling hill tops and the clouds sailing overhead. As one reaches higher levels, from about frour thousand and upwards - the changes in the landscape become more and more marked. The Flower of the Forest, the kambodja, the champaka, and all the countless host of large flowered trees, characteristic of the tropics, disappear. The type of the foliage changes: it is less fantastic in shape, less luxuriant, and differently tinted from the leafage of the lowland forests.
| |
| |
To the sombre green of the plains, which, under the glaring sunlight, assumes tones of an almost blackish blue, succeeds a vivid emerald, touched with tender yellow. Then come dense forests of ‘tjemara’ a camphorous tree, the grim greyish foliage of which resembles a drift of autumnal mist: and, bye and bye, trees of the oak and chestnut kind appear, and then the maple that balances its fanlike leaves on bright red stalks. Violets open their purple chalices in mossy hollows: other flowers nod among the grass. On the cloudy mounta in heights of Tosari, one may gather flowers such as grow on the Alps. The scenery here is grand beyond description - a landscape of vast hill-ranges, cataracts, and precipices, and heaving seas of cloud. The temperature is almost too chill: big fires are kept burning all day in the hotel, through the verandahs of which the clouds float past. The one thing that still reminds the traveller of the tro- | |
| |
pies is the wonderful splendour of the orchids that grow here. In the fourth zone, at an altitude of from seven thousand to ten thousand feet, the orchids, too, disappear. A European vegetation covers the summits of the mountains, and also the chill ‘platean’ of the Djeng, where four wonderful lakes of green, and blue, and yellow, and pure white water sparkle in the sunlight, and the nights are frosty.
These wonders of the Javanese hill-country are well known, from the descriptions of many able pens, and from the enthusiastic reports of travellers. But, here and here, in the folds of the lower hills, there are pleasant nooks and corners, all but ignored by the multitude, and hardly inferior in beauty to these famous sites, albeit beauty of a very different character. And, among these places, the idyllic grace of which has not yet been marred by railroads and hotels, few can surpass in comeliness the country round about the Tjerimai,
| |
| |
where it was my good fortune to spend several pleasant days, last June.
The Tjerimai, a spur of the lofty Preanger range, is situated on the confines of the Preanger Regencies and the Cheribon district, the broad green plains and marshy coast of which its finely-shaped summit dominates - a landmark to sailors.
From Batavia, the way thither leads through some of the loveliest scenery in Java - past Buitenzorg and Bandong, straight across the Preanger. Rantjaekkek, a village in the vast plain which begins an hour or so east of Bandong, is the last railroad-station on the route. There, the noise, the hurry, and the bustle of western civilization leave us, as if arrested by some invisible barrier: and the traveller enters the real Java, the Java of the Javanese, the tranquil land of plenty, the inhabitants of which lead their leisurely lives without much more thought of the morrow than do the tall gandasoli lilies of their fields. -
| |
| |
When we, two, the friend whom I accompanied to run home among the hills, and myself reached this stage of our journey, the day was still young. The summits of the hills, which bounded the plain on the west, had already assumed their sober day colours - greyish brown and dark green. But the distant eastern range stood out in violet gleam against a sky of crimson and orange: and the intervening plain was a lake of whitish waving mist. The air had a peculiar, sweetish taste - like an insipid fruit which reminded me of early autumn-mornings at home. It was cold, too. Our natives went with heads and shoulders wrapped up: and the breath of the ponies waiting for us at the station became little clouds about their heads. We were grateful for the plaids which we found in the carriage.
The road lay straight before us - a long white streak through the soft misty dull green of the plain. As we drove along, a pink sheen, which rested on a
| |
| |
hazy hill-side to our left, like a handful of scattered roses, began to spread and glide down into the valley, kindling as it flowed, until the whole vast vapoury plain was suffused with purple. The mist began to dissolve, and float upwards in little crimson drifts. Suddenly, the great golden sun leaped up from behind the eastern summits, and day streamed in upon us. The country-folk had already begun the labours of the day. Children met us on the road, driving powerful grey buffaloes before them: in a hamlet which we passed, the women were pounding rice, breaking the silence of the morning with the rhythmic click-clack of the wooden pestles. And, here and there, groups of labourers moved through the rice fields, weeding. Overhead, larks were soaring and singing; it was the first time I had heard their sweet shrill note in Java. After a while, a partridge flew up with a whirr of hurrying wings, almost from between the hoofs of the horses. They
| |
| |
are plentiful in this neighbourhood, At certain seasons of the year, large parties of sportsmen assemble there to shoot them.
On starting from the railway station, I had thought that, in half an hour or so, we would have reached the hill-range, which bounded the plain in the north. But the clear atmosphere has a perspective of its own, confusing to eyes unaccustomed to it. After about two hours of rapid driving we were still in the valley - on either side of us, were immense tracts of soft bluish green, full of the thousand lights and shades that form the peculiar beauty of these terraced rice-fields; and, all around, the circling summits which seemed no sensibly nearer than at first.
At every turn of the road, I expected to reach the base of the hills. And, again and again, they appeared to recede as we advanced, until the fancy was stirred at the idea of some magic wall still environing the captive, whiterso- | |
| |
ever he may turn: and the wish to find an exit out of this hill-bounded plain grew almost to a fever. At length, we reached it - a narrow defile between two steep green heights: and the road began to climb. Here, in the deep glens and valleys, the air was notably cooler than on the sunlit plain. Where the road broadened, it was shaded by tall njamploeng trees, which strewed the ground with their white transparent blossoms: and their faint fresh odour, which reminded one of the scent of March violets, perfumed the breeze.
Meanwhile, we had changed horses at a ‘gladak’ - a nondescript wooden shed, stable, barn, and hostelry for native wayfarers in one, with a spacious thoroughfare leading right through it. And our shaggy ponies trotted along with a right good will, until they came to a sudden stand at the bottom of a hill. ‘Gladakkers,’ as these ugly little animals are called, are notorious for freakishness and perversity, and often, without any
| |
| |
apparent reason, will stand stockstill in the middle of the road, and refuse to move another step. But this time, as I soon found, they were moved by no such perverse whim; they knew their duty, and that the dragging of carriages up this particular hill was in a way a part of it. And, when the syee had unharnessed them, they turned aside, and began to crop the dewy grass by the way-side, as if work were over for that day. Presently, their substitutes, a pair of powerful grey buffaloes, appeared goaded on by their owner. Slowly, the majestic brutes descended the hill, bending a broad splendidly-horned head and an enormous neck under a sort of triangular bamboo yoke, and sending forth the breath in clouds from their large nostrils. They drew the carriage uphill without any apparent effort, still moving onward with that same slow, strong, steady gait, which neither the impatient shouts of our syce, nor the goad which their owner plied, could
| |
| |
make them accelerate one whit. At the summit, they halted of their own accord; and, as soon as they felt their neck free of the harness, they turned and went. As they passed me, the curved horn of one just grazing my shoulder, they seemed to me the personification of resistless strength, unconscious of its own power, and patiently subservient. their large beautiful eyes had a look of weakness most pathetic in so tremendous a creature.
After this steep hill, the ascent became easy and gradual, and the ponies trotted on at a good round pace. The road still kept zig-zagging between steep hill-sides, densely overgrown with nipah-palm, banana, and dark-leaved brush-wood, which shut out the view of the landscape. And I remember no note-worthy incident, except the passing of a native market, a ‘passar,’ in a spot where the road broadened a little, and where an impetuous brook, that came bounding down the hill-side, spouted
| |
| |
from a sort of primitive aqueduct, made of bamboo. Half a score of naked children were bathing themselves under the icy ‘douche,’ whilst their parents stood bargaining and chaffering at the narrow booths that adhered to the steep hill-side like swallows' nests to a house-wall. As we approached, the whole company, men, women, and children, squatted down with one accord, as if they had been so many puppets pulled by a string. One very fat baby, his fists and his mouth full of sweetmeats, stood staring at us in round-eyed surprise; but his mother managed to catch him and draw him down to his little haunches, just in the nick of time; and the whole company remained in this crouching posture until our carriage rounded the bend of the road.
At Batavia, where the manners of the natives have suffered a change - a change for the worse, as some maintain - by contact with Europeans. I had never witnessed this peculiar mode of
| |
| |
salutation. And I confess I was painfully impressed by it, the more so as my friend warned me that native etiquette forbade my acknowledging the humble greeting by so much as a nod. I do not know whether it was the abjectness of their semi-prostration, or the seemingly gratuitous insolence of our thus ignoring it, that I felt as the more acute humiliation to human dignity. But, after all, the only way to rightly judge the manners and customs of a country is to look at them from the point of view of the natives; and, to a Javanese, there is nothing undignified in a salutation which impresses us as slavish. He squats down, just as a European rises, in the presence of a superior. It is a token of respect: nothing more. And the superior's apparent unconsciousness of this greeting means no more rudeness than the familiar nod with which a European might answer a labourer's or artisan's raising of his cap. ‘The way of the land, the honour of the
| |
| |
land,’ as the Dutch proverb puts it.
On the point of etiquette, the Javanese, however, are infinitely more punctilious than any western people of our period. I believe they might even be said to surpass the Spaniards of the time of Philip II, in the elaborateness of their code of manners and in their strict adherence to its requirements. Every possible circumstance and occurrence in life have been foreseen, and the appropriate conduct noted down in these unwritten laws of the ‘adat’ - the attitude, the gesture, and the set phrase, are all prescribed, down to the smallest detail. Nor is it a question of phraseology only: the very language is subject to the regulations of the adat, which distinguishes three separate and altogether different kinds of Javanese, according as a man speaks to his superior, his equal, or his inferior. For speech to one higher in rank, there is the ‘Kramo;’ commands to a sub-ordinate are given in ‘Ngako;’ friends
| |
| |
familiarly converse in a third idiom into which elements of the other two enter. The theory of these three kinds of Javanese is a science by itself, and one not easily acquired by a westerner. At the same time, it is imperatively necessary to him, if he would gain the esteem of the natives; for the use of a Ngako word when a Kramo term should have been employed, would mark the offender with an indelible brand of vulgarity and ill-breeding. When the Bible was being translated into Javanese, this peculiarity of etiquette proved a considerable difficulty; and the missionaries had to consult countless authorities and compare a thousand precedents, before they could settle the question whether Christ should address Pilate in Kramo or in Ngako, or in the third idiom. A solecism would have fatally injured the ‘prestige’ of the new religion: and its ministers could not have escaped the accusation of being ‘korang adjer,’ which is the native term for ill-breeding.
| |
| |
The expression, which, literally translated, means ‘one that has not eaten enough vegetables,’ requires some explanation. It is the custom, at the birth of a child, for the parents to offer a feast to their friends and relations: and, at this banquet, the dishes of ‘atjar’ should be as numerous as possible. It is believed that every individual dish of vegetable ensures a mystically-corresponding quality or virtue to the babe in whose honour the feast is given. Thus, if a person in later life show a lack of courage, generosity, or, above all, of courtesy, which is regarded as the virtue par excellence, the inference is that his parents and friends must have neglected to give him his due allowance of vegetables at the birth feast: and he is pronounced to be ‘koerang atjar,’ ‘short of vegetables.’ It was in order to avoid strictures upon our manners that my friend and I saw the country folk at the ‘passar’ squat down in the dusty road, and passed on,
| |
| |
without so much as looking at them.
Towards eleven o'clock, we reached the highest point of our journey - a ledge upon the mountain-side called Njadas Pangeran. Here, the hills on the right suddenly fell away, and the broad green plains of Cheribon lay disclosed, dazzling with sunlight and living water. At our feet, away far below, lay a brown hamlet in the midst of sawahs, like a lark's nest in a field of clover: and the hills through which we had threaded our way, since dawn, hung in the western distance like massy clouds, changing from brown to violet, and to an exquisite, pale, half-transparent blue. We paused here for some minutes, to rest the horses, whilst we gathered armfuls of a splendid orchid which grew in profusion on the hill-side - great shiny snow-flakes of blossoms, with a touch of carmine on the curling petals - and resumed the journey along a road which steadily sloped to the bottom of the valley. A muddy river runs
| |
| |
through it, which we crossed on a primitive kind of ferry - the carriage, horses, and all standing on a raft, which a score of natives dragged and pushed across the shallow water. On the other bank, the road began to ascend again: we had reached the base of the Tjerimai: and a drive of some two or three hours more, along a smooth road that passed by prosperous sugar-cane plantations waving in the breeze with thousands of glossy green streamers, brought us at length to our destination - the little bamboo cottage upon the hill-side, whither my fiends repaired for a spell of coolness and a breath of mountain-air, when the heat rendered the sojourn on their estate in the plains unendurable. It was about four in the afternoon when we entered the garden-gates, and the air was as fresh as in the early morning. The breeze rustled through the tall flower-laden njamploeng-trees on the road-side; there was a smell of water and moist stones in the
| |
| |
air: I heard the murmur of a brook over its rocky bed. This was the country of which hot dust-stifled Batavia was the capital. The thing seemed scarcely credible.
|
|
Auteursrecht onbekend