Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/328

252 been the ship or the drains that had so offended me. The heat was intense—a moist,clammy heat. From ‘the station to the hotel is along a wide street with a canal down the middle—I thought it must be that canal that was so odoriferous, as the smell was as bad there as anywhere. It was all most beautiful and a feast of colour, as the Chinese, Malays, and Javanese were so picturesque in their varied attire, and the whole town has its own cachet. We passed through the large Chinese town with its quaint buildings and teeming population, all so busy, with their pigtails flying about in every direction. I have always liked Chinese servants, they are so quiet and glide about, and you need never yell at them, you merely pull the pigtail like a bell-rope as they pass, and it rings inside them without undue tinkling, which is so disturbing to the nerves.

Then the more Dutch town begins. Very hand- some white stone houses—white marble too—with tiled roofs and pillared porticoes, most of them one-storeyed on account of earthquakes. The large, handsome porticoes and the rooms beyond are quite open, even the interiors of the bedrooms visible. Quantities of beautiful flowering plants in ornamental pots are placed about, and the inhabitants are lolling in easy-chairs in scanty attire—a great air of freedom and ease pervades it all. Beautiful grounds surround each house, and there are no walls or fences at all sometimes. As a visitor from honest Europe, one feels they are not taking care of themselves and their possessions, and wonders which house is best to burgle first. The Hotel des Indes, with its dependencies, seems a most imposing establishment.

But what extraordinary costumes! Here are great fat Dutchwomen walking about, bare-headed and bare-legged, dressed in white dressing-jackets