A Week at Batavia

A Week at Batavia their bare feet decorated with magnificent spurs. There, numbers of itinerant merchants, adorned with "langoutis" of the most vivid colours, traverse the streets at the peculiar trotting pace common to Indians; gesticulating, apostrophising the passer-by, and laughing loudly. It is the most bewildering, the most picturesque, the liveliest crowd I ever saw. It would take me hours to describe its thousand colours, the inconceivable specimens of humanity that compose it, its noisy pantomimic animation. But soon we cross a bridge, and enter the new town. Oh, what a garden of fairyland, what a verdant paradise this is! Batavia; there are no streets in Batavia; there are only splendid avenues, shaded by the most beautiful and luxuriant trees, which form immense long bowers, such as in Europe are only seen in a scene at the opera. The fiery rays of a pitiless sun can only at intervals penetrate this shade, but they deck all that forms it with marvellous hues: the many plumes of the cocoa-nut tree; the slender branches of the tulip tree, which are all flower, and scarlet flower; bananas with their green leaves as large as a man; cotton trees, covered with snow white tufts; the travellers' palm, great fans of the most exquisite grace, from which a stream of a milky fluid springs, if you pierce the trunk; finally, immense banyan trees, from which hundreds of creepers fall straight down, and taking root almost as soon as they touch the ground, climb again to the summit of the tree, twining round it in knotted garlands, only to fall again! One of these trees alone forms a forest surrounded by a curtain, a network of interlaced foliage and flowers, through which children in a state of nature, putting on one side the hundreds of creepers waving in the wind, can look at the boats and the swimmers passing along the canal. The greater part of these bowers of the tropical Babylon are, in fact, only the footpaths to the "arroyos," the greater waterways, which the Dutch would certainly have formed by hundreds, in recollection of their mother-country, if the Malays had not already made them in thousands. Thus the instincts of the white race from the north and the yellow race of the equator coincided. The greatest navigators and the greatest pirates in the world cut up their soil into innumerable islets, and the canals in this town are the veins by which circulates their whole commercial life. Another many-coloured bower therefore, to our left, shades the arroyo on whose opposite shore we are driving. I cannot take my eyes from the innumerable vessels that traverse it; the laughing groups paddling in the water, the tufts of water-lilies blooming there. To the right—through clumps of coffee trees, nutmeg trees, vanilla trees, and tamarinds—we catch glimpses of lawns, fairy-like gardens; and in the distance the white palaces and green verandahs of the European nabobs. I had seen nothing but these avenues and villas, and fancied myself in some delightful suburb of the city, when we found ourselves at the hotel, "der Nederlanden," which, it appears, is in the centre of Batavia; so that this blossoming wood is the town itself! I am in such ecstasies with it, I can hardly believe my eyes. By the beard of all the monkeys with long tails or short that I have yet seen, I swear that it is impossible to describe to you my amazement and admiration. Our new dwelling is situated in the midst of a garden, and sheltered by large trees. The principal building, which is of marble, is supported by an airy colonnade, into which it opens on all sides; on the side of the street and the canal is a circular verandah, where officers, grown thin from the heat, are lounging in cane rocking-chairs. On the opposite side a great oval-shaped kiosk, open to all the winds, but protected by a light roof from the sun, serves as a dining-room. Some sixty Malay servants are swarming like ants to lay the table there. Nothing can be prettier than their long robes, made of red cotton or silk, their blue turbans, and yellow sashes, set off by the whiteness of the balconies and the pavement. Two long wings, of one story only, with verandahs and colonnades, enclose the gardens commanded by the kiosk. Here are our rooms, and on entering them we feel a real sensation of freshness, a delicious temperature compared to that outside; there, in fact, the thermometer is at 114°, and here it is kind enough to go down to 102°. It is five o'clock in the afternoon; good heavens! what will it be tomorrow at noon? We had hardly begun to unpack our boxes when a man presented himself. He was a native, half bailiff, half policeman, with bare feet and a sword at his side, and made us write down, according to police regulations, our names and qualities in a register, which he appeared to hold in great veneration, demanding a legal and minute account for every column. I complied very willingly with the regulations of the colonial "Pietri," but when my august travelling companion was called upon to write down his domicile, he was tempted to put "Batavia itself;" is not every land which is not the beloved country an equally transitory domicile to the exile? If the flowering trees of this terrestrial paradise are the most characteristic beauties of the town, the marble basins for bathing are certainly the greatest charm of a Javanese hotel. In less than ten minutes after alighting at the "Nederlanden," I had gone to the end of the colonnade, descended a few steps, and was enjoying in the whitest of basins the voluptuous delights of an abundant shower manufactured by a Malay who pumped the water by a regular movement up to the ceiling, whence it fell again to inundate me. I should have remained in my bath to all eternity if the patience of these placid Malays had not exhausted mine. Two attendants, in fact, had insisted upon following me, and crouching down some four yards off were waiting till I was pleased to condescend to require their soft towels; and beside the man who pumped, a fourth man in a red robe offered me a basket full of mangoes, red mangosteens, whose inside is like pink snow, and the perfumed little-known bananas. In the evening we dined in the kiosk; round us a many-coloured noisy crowd danced under the big trees, from which hung Venetian lanterns. From time to time, amongst the red vests and green robes, a wealthy Dutchman passes languidly along in loose white garments, preceded by the light of an immensely long cigar. We are waited upon by the whole troop of Orientals of whom I spoke just now. I have a Malay to supply me with iced water, which he pours out at arm's length; there are two to change my plate; three to bring round the dishes; one carves; another is awaiting the moment for coffee. I believe if I wished for a dozen dishes, and particularly if I could call for them in the native dialect, I should give employment to the twelve men in red who stand behind my chair! What a charming effect all this variety of colours has on this beautiful evening, with a bright light shining upon them! And when, lazily stretched under the verandah, enjoying the balmy evening breeze, I call "Sapada, cassi api!" immediately one of these Arabian Nights figures, whom one is tempted to call slaves, advances from the column, at the foot of which he has been silently crouching like a statue of Buddha, and brings me to light my cigar a long match of which he has the constant care. It is made of sandal wood saw-dust glued together, and burns night and day with the most delicious perfume. I feel as if I were turning into a pasha! As regards the dinner itself, as a Northman I must make some reservation: eight and forty different kinds of capsicums, a mountain of rice covering a microscopic atom of chicken (the anti-type of the fragment of the Australian Dinornis), which with a Cayenne pepper sauce, constitutes the celebrated curry; an absence of all meat that can be cut with an ordinary knife; an abundance of bamboo salads and chutney; there is a local flavour about this much appreciated by amateurs, but which in palates and digestions unaccustomed to Javanese cooking raises fiery torments, which are only increased by drinking. 11th November, 1866.—As I lay down last night on a bed already possessing the peculiarity of being made with mats instead of sheets, I was greatly surprised to find, besides the innumerable gnats imprisoned behind the mosquito net, a companion quite as remarkable. This was a long roll made of grass matting, about two yards long, and the thickness of an ordinary bolster, which awaited me laid lengthwise on the bed. It was obligingly explained to me that no inhabitant of Java will sleep without this vegetable production, which must be kept between the legs to cool the body. I was very much amused with this specimen of manners and customs; but if it soothes the creoles with a refreshing slumber, it rouses Europeans incontrollably to a bolstering match. Besides the swarms of buzzing mosquitoes, with their impertinent stings, exasperated us by whistling their Javanese airs in our ears; but as the capsicums, the grass bolsters, and the mosquitoes are necessary features of the locality, I intend in a few days to make friends with them all. Very different from Paris customs, fashionable life begins here at half-past four in the morning. As soon as the first mists of a tropical dawn appear, old and young begin to be heard moving over the tiled floors in slippers, and, wrapped in floating cotton garments, hasten to the pools to enjoy the ice-cold waves. As I left them, I met a real odalisque, with jet black eyes, and of the most foreign appearance; she glided between the columns, throwing back masses of black hair which fell to the ground, and classically draped like Stratonice in rose-coloured cashmere. She seemed to us really an apparition, with her sudden changing glances, the wild swiftness of her movements, her air as of a lioness surprised, and that Indian fire in her veins which always gives so fascinating a charm. We were told that she was the daughter of a Dutch officer and of a native of Borneo. The half-caste beauties bloom wonderfully under the sun of Java, while the unhappy Europeans, enfeebled and worn out by the heat, look pale and ghastly, and inspire one with the most profound pity. Such was my first impression, while taking my walk between four and six in the morning, the especially fashionable hour. But what particularly struck me was a military post: twenty Malays were on guard, armed with pikes and pitchforks more than nine feet long. It was explained to us that in this country there are a good many natives suffering from mental disease: over-excited by opium, they wander over the island armed with a sword, and run through the body the first man they fall in with, in honour of the Koran. This is called running a muck. As soon as one of these men appears, the guard gives chase, encloses him between three pitchforks, and the corporal, whose rank may easily be recognized from the fact of his wearing shoes, has the honour of running through with a javelin the terrible madman. First insight into the internal government. A morning at Batavia consists of a walk, five or six baths running, and an appetizing breakfast. In the afternoon every one sleeps. Towards six o'clock in the evening a little stir begins to be felt: hundreds of open carriages drive about. The European population, lounging bare-headed, wends its way to the Waterloo plain, where a military band is playing. We follow the stream, still delighted by the enchanting avenues and brilliant dresses. This "Longchamps" partakes completely of the character of the colony; the garrison, nine thousand men strong, is its principal ornament; more than three hundred carriages stand in the shade of the great trees;