Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/70



ten o’clock in the morning there was an unusual bustle on the principal highway which leads from the district Pandaglang to Lebak. “Principal highway” is, perhaps, too good a name for a wide footpath, which people called out of politeness, and from want of a better term, “the way;” but if you started with a carriage and four from Serang, the capital of Bantam, with the intention of going to Rankas-Betong, the new capital of the Lebak district, you would be sure to reach your destination some time or other. So it was a road. It is true you often stuck in the mud, which in the Bantam lowlands is so heavy, clayey, and sticky, that travellers are often obliged to ask the assistance of the inhabitants of the villages in the neighbourhood—even of those who are not in the neighbourhood, for villages are not numerous in these regions;—but if you did succeed at last in getting the assistance of a score of husbandmen, it did not take long