Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/331

Rh and the sarong, the checked coloured cloth wrapped round their fat legs. They pace along ponderously and indifferently under their parasolsandumbrellas. The costume is bearable on a young and pretty woman—but on a very fat old one!

The men in the morning, and as a sleeping suit, wear hideous, wide, baggy trousers made out of coloured sarongs.

The Hotel de Nederlanden is a huge building with any amount of dependencies, in front of which run long, wide verandahs. My bedroom was in one of these, and my sitting-room in the verandah in front of it.

Carel van Haeften soon joined me, and what a pleasure it was to see an old friend again and to chat over old days in Germany and in Holland, and about the van Lenneps, the van der Ouder- muelens, and all his people at The Hague—his kind old father, his handsome, charming sisters, and his brother, Pankie, so well known in London. I found him looking thin and white, but well; but it must be a trying climate. He lives in one of the dependencies of the hotel, and his sitting-room is merely a large part of the wide verandah in front of his other rooms, separated from the rest of the verandah by screens. Here he has his writing- table, books, photographs, ornaments, easy-chairs —in fact, a furnished room. It is quite open in front and only separated from the garden and road by a little railing. Any one passing has only to stretch a hand over and take what they please. He has a telephone there and a native servant always in attendance. When I expressed my astonishment at such confidence in the natives and every one else, he told me that nothing was ever touched, that no native or any one else would ever dream of stealing anything. Day and night it is open for them to do it if they wish, but they