Page:Life in Java Volume 2.djvu/260

 244 LIFE IN JAVA.

retinue and a band of music, many of the villagers in the different hamlets through which they passed joining the cortege, until, by the time they reached the gates of the Sultan's Kraton, their company had swelled into a large crowd.

This flower, which is believed to be now extinct, has been succeeded by one of another kind, called the Patma. Whenever this flower, which is about the size of a goblet, opens, it is said to burst with a loud report like that of a pistol. Its leaves are de- scribed as being large in size and brown in hue the flower is tinted with the varied colours of the rainbow.

The echo in this harbour is very fine. A gentle- man who commanded a vessel at anchor in the bay fired his cannons on pvu'pose for us to hear the grand effect produced by the reverberation of sound. The phenomenon was really remarkably impressiv^e, the waves of sound rolling from one end of the island to the other, with a noise like thunder, and

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