fresh was all the vegetation, and so pleasant were the deep narrow lanes and sparkling brooks. Their halting-place for the day was a large and lofty bamboo-house on a raised terrace of brick, having a broad veranda all round, a large central saloon, and two or three good and well-furnished bed-rooms on each side. This veranda had the advantage also of a noble landscape. At the back, it looked down a steep bank to a beautiful circular lake about a quarter of a mile across, bordered by a thick belt of wood, and right over it at a few miles' distance, the stately cone of the Lamongan, upwards of four thousand feet high, with a wreath of white smoke curling from its summit.
To this feast of natural beauty was added the more substantial one of the table. In the veranda they found a table spread with a snow-white cloth, and all the conveniencies of plate, glass, and cutlery. A troop of willing servitors was in attendance, who covered the table with a smoking-hot breakfast, piles of rice curries, pillaus, and fruits, with tea and coffee. All this seemed to be done by enchantment; there was no host, no master of the house to trouble them with ceremony; the house and all that belonged to it seemed to be theirs as long as they chose to stay. Whose was the furniture, or who provided the entertainment, they knew not. In those comfortable quarters, they determined to halt for the next day, and try to get a little shooting.
The naturalist, however, on this evening, employed himself more rationally than his companions. While they went out shooting, he took his hammer and went to the ravine, to learn something about the masses of lava and basalt which lay every where. The whole ground gave evidences of the existence of an ancient volcano. The circular lake seemed to have been a crater; its depth was said to be three hundred and ninety feet. But the noble proportions of the landscape still attracted the eye, and within the horizon shot up the pile of the Semmi, – the loftiest, most perfect, and most majestic-looking cone that they ever saw in Java, its height being twelve thousand two hundred and ninety-two feet – a greater elevation than that of the Peak of Teneriffe. Every thing was lovely in form and colour, and glittered in the hot sunshine, while a fine fresh breeze from the south tempered the heat, and gave it the feeling of a summer day at home.
Still, though all this seemed a land of magic, to those who probably had never thought of Java but as a place of pestilence, of burning soil, and scorching sunshine, it was not all fairy land. After dinner, at dusk, as Mr Jukes was strolling round the house smoking a cigar, a man with a long spear came up to him, and began to turn him back with an earnest speech, of which the only word he understood was machan; but it was an important one, and the point of the whole oration, for it is the Javanese for tiger.
Having recourse to one of the party as interpreter, he found that the spearman was begging of him not to walk in the dark, as tigers were abundant there; which, he emphatically assured them, eat men, and that they had even sometimes come into the house. In the veranda they found a guard of four spearmen, keeping watch for the same purpose. The Englishman thought that they were jesting, until he saw that none of the people themselves went a few yards beyond the house without a torch. One man going to bathe in the lake just below, another accompanied him with a torch. They also saw four men coming up the road with two large torches, who, they said, were returning from their work from the village hard by. They still thought their fears a little exaggerated; but on that very night a man was killed by a tiger at a village about two miles off, as he was going to his work before daylight with two others. His body was recovered the next day.
In the morning, the party went out to shoot any thing that came in their way. Their success, however, was limited to a pig, and a brace of jungle fowl. Some of the party saw tracks of tigers, but they attack nobody during the day; the night being their time for retaliation. Another division of their party coming home by a straight course across the country, and just before it got dark, found themselves on the borders of a district which had been mentioned to them as the most noted haunt of tigers in the whole country. Cocking their guns, however, they pushed through the grass, that rose often three feet above their heads, for about half a mile, not without a feeling of half hope, half fear, of the rush of a tiger through the jungle. From this nervous predicament, however, they escaped. Half an hour later they might have told a different story, or perhaps would have been left without the power of telling one. Their shot-pouches would have made but an indifferent defence against the charge of a supperless tiger; and the philosopher might have finished his earthly career in the retaliatory jaws of the lord of the jungle.
We recommend Java to all country gentlemen tired of time; they will have plenty of shooting of every kind there – the lion alone excepted; bears are in abundance and great ferocity; wild boars in droves: with the wild buffalo, the most dangerous of all animals to meet with, and far more dreaded by the natives than the tiger himself. The tiger is to be found every day throughout the year, and every where from twilight to sunrise. For the more récherchés in shooting, there is the rhinoceros, the most capital of all sport, as it is called; for in nine instances out of ten he kills his man. Unless the sportsman hits him in the eye, double barrels are unavailing; his hide would turn off every thing but a cannon ball. If the shot is not imbedded in his brain, he dashes after the sportsman at once; escape then can only be by miracle, for unwieldy as he looks, he runs like a race-horse, rips up the fugitive with his horn, and finishes by trampling him into a mass of mortality that leaves not a feature distinguishable. Thus, field-sports are not altogether confined to gentlemen.
But for glories of this order, the amateur must travel to some distance; he must penetrate the deep and trackless forests of the southern Sultan, or ascend to the volcanic regions of the interior.
We now hasten to the close of these interesting volumes. The whole party seem to have been treated with remarkable civility, and to have been shown all kinds of strange things. Among the other curiosities, they were taken to visit the Sultan of Madura, a hospitable old man, who treated them like fellow sultans, paraded his guards for them, gave them a feast which seemed to be all but interminable, played the native fiddle for them, led his own royal orchestra with some skill, played vingt-et-un with them, and finished by a species of ombres Chinoises, or shadowy drama, which lasted through the whole night. As the Englishmen began to droop, he exercised all the English which he possessed, to offer them "a glass of grog," which he evidently considered to be essential to English enjoyment; and after his visitors had retired to rest, he continued to sit out the play – which lasted the mortal measure of ten hours; a feat exceeding the endurance, though probably not the ennui, of a regular amateur of the Italian Opera. The populace, too, exhibited the same dramatic ardour, for they continued gazing, laughing, and shouting, with all the perseverance of their old sovereign.
The revenues of this chief are enormous, though they amount only to £8,000 sterling; but then we are to recollect that the wages of a Javanese workman are but five duits, or five-sixths of an English penny; and that for this he can "live very well." Man gets plantains and fruits for almost nothing. His clothing is made of a simple wrapper, and a day or two's cutting of bamboo gives him a very sufficient house. Let this be compared with the Irish peasant, shivering through three months of winter, and six months of wet, paying five pounds an acre for his swampy potatoes, and out of his holding paying tithe, tax, county rates, and all the other encumbrances of what the political economists call "a highly civilised state of society." We say "vive le systéme féodal, vive la sauvagerie Javannaise."
One half of the Sultan's revenue arises from a singular source – the sale of birds' nests, which are found in the rocks, and which the Chinese purchase as a restorative. The Chinese, a remarkably gross and voluptuous people, are the greatest quacks on earth, and are continually attempting to reinstate by medicine, what they have ruined by excess. But soup is pleasant physic, and they boil these birds' nests into soup, in full reliance on the miracle.
The Englishmen tasted some of this soup, among the luxuries of the Sultan's table, and highly approved of it; but its merits depended on many capital ingredients, the birds' nests merely acting as a sort of connective, an isinglass to the whole. It is probable that their whole virtue is in the fashion.
In looking at the future, through all the mists which beset the vision of man, it seems scarcely possible to doubt
