Page:Life in Java Volume 1.djvu/95

Rh place—in fact, little more than a wide ditch. When we entered it, it was filled with fishing smacks, trading praus, cargo boats charged with merchandise, rafts formed of bamboo, or huge beams of wood; in fact, with a multitude of indescribable craft, displaying the versatile genius of the natives of Samarang in nautical architecture.

Through this incongruous mass of shipping our boat had to force her way, now coming in contact with a vessel on one side, and now with one on the other, till its sides must have lost some portion of the scanty covering of paint they once possessed. After a tedious pull of three hours, we reached the boom, or jetty, a small tile-roofed shed, situated to the right hand, and about a mile from the sea. There the controleurs of fishing and cargo boats levy a tax, and scrutinise both people and things on their "entrance or exit." Close at hand is the Custom-house, and on the opposite bank are warehouses of brick and attap hovels,