Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/279

Rh sunstroke and apoplexy in the hot sunshine, and trailed my saronged subjects down crowded aisles to open spots, to fix on film the image of these sockless matrons in their very informal morning dress. I lurked in booths and sat for endless minutes in opposite shops, with focus set and button at touch, to get a good study of Dutch ankles, when certain typical Solo hausfraus should return to and mount their carriage steps—only to have some loiterer's back obscure the whole range of the lens at the critical second.

We found pawnshops galore in this city full of courtiers and hangers-on of greatness, and such array of krises and curious weapons that there was embarrassment of choice. We left the superior shops of dealers in arms, where new blades, fresh from Sheffield or German works, were pressed upon us, and betook ourselves to the junk-shops and pawnshops, where aggregations of discarded finery and martial trappings were spread out. Books, silver, crystal, cutlery, jeweled decorations, medals, epaulets, swords, and krises in every stage of rust and dilapidation were found for sale.

The kris is distinctively the Malay weapon, and is a key to much of Malay custom and lore; and if the Japanese sword was "the soul of the Samurai," as much may be said for the kris of the Javanese warrior. The cutler or forger of kris-blades ranked first of all artisans. There are more than one hundred varieties of the kris known, the distinctive Javanese types of kris differing from those of the Malay Peninsula and the other islands, and forty varieties of kris being used in Java and its immediate dependencies. The kris used in Bali differs from that of Madura or Lombok,