Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/276

254 or the bearer managed to keep such a true angle on the sun, were something admirable, and only to be accomplished by generations of the two classes practising their respective feats. The emperor's mounted troops were objects of greater interest, these dragoons wearing huge lacquered vizors or crownless caps over their turbaned heads, the regulation jackets, sarongs, and heavy krises, and bestriding fiery little Timor ponies. The native stirrup is a single upright bar of iron, which a rider holds between the great toe and its neighbor; and these troopers seemed to derive as much support from this firm toe-grip as booted riders do from resting the whole ball of the foot on our stirrups.

There is a labyrinthine passer at Solo, where open sheds and rustic booths have grown upon one another around several open court spaces, which are dotted with the huge mushrooms of palm-leaf umbrellas, and whose picturesqueness one cannot nearly exhaust in a single morning's round. The pepper- and fruit- and flower-markets are, of course, the regions of greatest attraction and richest feasts of color. The horn of plenty overflowed royally there, and the masses of bananas and pineapples, durians, nankos, mangosteens, jamboas, salaks, dukus, and rambutans seemed richer in color than we had ever seen before; and the brass-, the basket-, the bird-, the spice-, and the gum-markets had greater attractions too. The buyers were as interesting as the venders, and a frequent figure in these market groups that tempted the kodaker to many an instantaneous shot, regardless of the light,—better any muddy impression of that than none at all,—was the Dutch housewife on her morning rounds. I braved