Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/196

 back. We will number these spaces, beginning at the left-top corner, towards the right, so that number 4 comes under number 1, 5 under 2, and so on.

The first three numbers together form the front veranda, which is open on three sides, and the front part of the roof of which rests on columns. Thence through the double doors one enters the inner colonnade, represented by the next three spaces. Numbers 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 18 are rooms, most of which are connected with the adjoining ones by doors. The highest three numbers form the open rear-gallery, and the part I omitted is a kind of enclosed inner gallery, or passage. I am quite proud of this description.

It is difficult to say what expression would in Holland convey the idea attached in India to the word “grounds.” Here there is neither garden, nor park, nor field, nor wood, but either something of each, or all together, or nothing of any. It is the land which belongs to the house, in so far as it is not covered by the house, so that in India the expression “house grounds” would be considered redundant. There are here few or no houses without such grounds. Some contain woods and gardens and meadowland, and suggest a park. Others are flower-gardens. Elsewhere again the whole grounds are one large grass-paddock. And finally there are some which, quite simply, are made entirely into one macadamized square, perhaps less attractive to the eye, but a great auxiliary to cleanliness in the houses, as many kinds of insects are attracted by grass and trees.

Now Havelaar’s grounds were large, and—it may sound strange—on one side one might have called them unlimited, as they bordered on a ravine which extended to the banks of the Tjioodyoong, the river which encloses Rangkas-Betoong in one of its many windings. It was difficult to define where the grounds of the assistant-residency terminated, and where communal lands started, as the great fall of water in the Tjioodyoong, which now retired its banks as far as the eye could see, and then again filled the ravine very close to Havelaar’s house, continually altered the boundaries.

This ravine had always been a thorn in the flesh of Mrs. Sloter-