Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/333

Rh brave enough to touch it. The smell is everywhere, and you cannot get away from it. And I thought it was a bilgy ship, a marshy swamp, a stagnant canal, or bad drains!

It ought to be introduced to London as a new delicacy—only, the Sanitary Inspector would be sure to come to dinner!

I walked to the station with Carel to meet Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop and their daughter, who was his affianced bride., They are Dutch, in spite of their Scottish name. Their smart carriage, with liveried servants, was waiting for them.

In the evening we went to Vorsteegs Café, opposite our hotel, and sat at a table in front of it, separated only by a low wall from the street. This is the fashionable meeting-place and evening drive. All the smart world turned out in carriages of various descriptions, drove up and down, halted to speak to friends, or got out and entered the café to greet others. Some of the carriages were very smart, with liveried servants. Some people had huge barouches, called “milords,” with native servants behind, four horses and postilions— quite overpoweringly grand. Some ladies, old and young, had bare heads, which looked odd in their carriages—but then this was night, when they all wake up and come out in the “coolth.” It was, for me, an original scene, and so reminded me of pictures of old colonial days.

Miss Dunlop [now Baroness Carel van Haeften and resident at The Hague] drove up in a smart little English cart with a good pony and quite English-looking dapper groom, and joined us for a time. After naked savages all this was a great change to be suddenly launched into the society of smart ladies. Miss Dunlop knew every one, and I admired then, as I have always done, the smartness of the Dutch girls.