Page:Life in Java Volume 1.djvu/278

260 scenery was very pretty and varied. Now we were winding up the sides of a hill, then galloping through thickets, and afterwards through a plantation of coffee, white with bloom, and very fragrant, at the end of which we came suddenly in full view of the Indrowaty, which appeared like an unexpected scene in a dissolving view, its sides luxuriantly clad with verdure.

A Dutchman may well be proud of his colony, as he gazes on the interminable fields of cultivation, extending from the hill-tops to the valleys below, where you see the hand of industry upturning the rich earth, or, when the soil is arid, irrigating it by means of their bamboo conduits. Nature has blessed Java with a healthy climate, genial temperature, and fertile soil, and the Dutch — notwithstanding their former arbitrary measures, modified of late years by a more liberal system of government—have made it what it is, a happy, contented land, yielding a splendid revenue.