Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/334

256 We went back to the hotel to dine. There I had put before me a huge bowl of white rice, with here and there mysterious objects poking through the rice. This is the great dish in Java. I set to exploring at once. In your rice you find fish, chicken, and I don’t know what all; you have everything there in the same bowl, not mingled, but nicely buried apart in the great heaps of rice. I liked this very much, and discovered all sorts of delicacies planted there which were to my taste. This was, however, but one dish served at a very good dinner.

Then we got into long chairs in Carel’s verandah room, with something to “smokee” and cool drinks, and yarned for hours. The worst was that the lights attracted simply myriads of flying ants, beetles of every shape and size, and all sorts of insects—a cloud of them. You may get used to this—you have to—but it is not agreeable at all.

Batavia was founded by the Dutch General Koen, in 1619, on the ruins of a Javanese town, and has a population (1900) of 115,890. It has suffered much from volcanic eruptions and from the continual malaria. It is said a million people died between 1730-52. Probably the durian did for them—or am I prejudiced? I must be, for I read somewhere that in Sumatra at one season are great durian feasts, in which men, monkeys, and elephants join in amiable peace, and that even the tigers come forth and devour this fragrant fruit! Whoam I to disdain what these interesting others so adore? I am at least generous enough to not even desire to deprive a tiger of its durian.

Buitenzorg has the Governor-General’s Palace and the world-famed Botanical Gardens, the beauty of which seems to astonish all travellers; and here is the tomb of the wife of Sir Stamford