Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/321

 to the reader. I will state at the same time the causes that make it so difficult for those who have not been in India to judge of Indian affairs.

I have repeatedly spoken of the people as Javanese, and however natural this nomenclature may appear to the European reader, it must have sounded wrong to the ears of any one acquainted with Java. The Western Residencies of Bantam, Batavia, Preangan, Krawand, and a part of Cheribon,—all together called Soondah-countries, —are not considered as belonging to Java proper; and not to speak now of the foreigners that came from over the sea into these regions, the aboriginal population is quite different from that of the middle of Java, or that of the so-called east corner. Language, character of the people, manners, dress, change so much as you go eastward, that, indeed, there is more difference between the Soondanese and the Javanese proper, than between the English and the Dutch. Such differences are often the cause of disputes in judging of Indian affairs. If we observe that Java alone is so sharply divided into two distinct parts, without marking the many subdivisions of these, we may calculate how great the difference must be between populations that live further from each other, and are separated by the sea. He whose knowledge of Dutch India is confined to Java, can no more form a just idea of the Malay, the Amboynese, the Battah, the Alfoer, the