Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/147

Rh are those around Buitenzorg and in the Preanger regencies, which lie on the other side of Gedeh and Salak, those two sleeping volcanoes that look down upon their own immediate foot-hills and valleys, to see those great, rolling tracts all cultivated like a Haarlem tulip-bed. Above the cacao limit, tea-gardens, coffee-estates, and kina-plantations cover all the land lying between the altitudes of two thousand and four thousand feet above the level of the sea. The owners of these choicest bits of "the Garden of the East" lead an existence that all other planters of growing crops, and most people who value the creature comforts, the luxuries of life, and nature's opulence, may envy. The climate of the hills is all that Sybarite could wish for,—a perpetual 70º by day, with light covering required at night,—the warm sun of the tropics tempering the fresh mountain air to an eternal mildness, in which the human animal thrives and luxuriates quite as do all the theobromas and caffein plants in the ground. In the near circle of these two great peaks there is no really dry season, despite the southeast monsoon of the conventional summer months. Every day in the year enjoys its shower, swept from one mountain or the other; and the heavy thunder-storms at the change of the monsoons and during the winter rainy season are the joy of the planter's heart, shaking out myriads of young tea-leaves by their jar and rushing winds, and freshening the coffee-trees like a tonic. As every day has its shower, each day has its tea-crop gathered and cured in this favorable region; and that profitable industry is as continuous and unchanging as the seasons on the