Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/61

 Often, when coming along that road, I felt as if in one place or another I should find a coach with travellers from the last century, who had sunk into the mud and been forgotten. Yet this never happened. I must suppose, therefore, that all who ever came this way arrived at last at their destination.

One would make a decided mistake if one imagined one could form a conception of the entire main road through Java from the character of this road in Lebak. The real highroad with its many branches, which Marshal Daendels had constructed with considerable sacrifice of life, is indeed a magnificent piece of work, and one is amazed at the energy of the man who, in spite of all the obstacles which his envious opponents in the motherland placed in his way, dared brave the unwillingness of the populations and the discontent of the Chiefs, in order to bring something into existence which to this day excites and deserves the admiration of every visitor.

As a consequence, no post-horse service in Europe—not even in England, Russia or Hungary—could be compared with that in Java. Across high mountain-backs, on the edge of precipices that make one shudder, the heavily packed mail-coach flies onward in an even gallop. The driver sits as though nailed to the box, for hours, nay for whole days at a stretch, and wields the heavy whip with an iron arm. He knows exactly how to calculate where and how much he must hold back the plunging horses, in order that, after a headlong flight down a mountain-slope, at yonder turning

“Great God, the road is gone! We are going down into the precipice,” shrieks the inexperienced traveller, “there is no road there is only the abyss!”

Yes, so it seems. The road bends, and just when one galloping leap more would make the leaders lose their foothold, the horses turn off, and swing the coach round the corner. They fly up the mountain-rise, which a moment before you did not see, and the precipice lies behind you.