Page:Life in Java Volume 1.djvu/91

Rh that it was our intention to travel through the Vorsten Landen, this gentleman, in the kindest and most hospitable manner, invited us to pay him a visit.

Such an invitation to a complete stranger struck me at first as curious, but in our subsequent travels in Java, we discovered that this was no exceptional case, as friends and strangers are equally welcome beneath the hospitable roofs of the Dutch in that island.

In our four days' voyage there was little pretty scenery to be seen. We rarely lost sight of the coast, which from a distance seemed indented with bays and inlets, and, after being very flat for miles, gradually grew more and more hilly, till the Cheribon mountains, with their forest of trees, appeared in sight, forming a pleasing background to the glaring white line of shore. The highest of these mountains, Tagal, or Gunong Slamat—Blessed Mountain—as the natives call it, is from ten to twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea.

As we approached Samarang, the land became