Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/324

302 in Java. The place proved to be such a cemetery for European troops that the government was finally forced to abandon the extensive barracks, magazines, and fortifications it had once constructed there. A considerable white population remains, however, and the passer is one of great local importance to the natives. The completion of the railway brought new life to the old settlement; and with such easy access, Tjilatjap is well worth visiting, if it were only to see its shade-trees. All the post-roads running into the town, every street and lane, are such continuous isles, arcades, and tunnels of living green that one is repaid for coming, even after all the other teak and tamarind, kanari and waringen avenues he may have seen elsewhere in Java. Not the allées of Versailles, nor the cryptomeria avenues of Japan, can surpass these tree-lined streets of Tjilatjap, the endless vistas of straight trunks and arching branches, the lofty canopies of solid, impenetrable shade, rejoicing one in every part of the town. Tamarind may be the coolest and waringen the densest shade, but kanari-trees give the most splendid and inspiring effect, and Tjilatjap is the place of their greatest perfection.

We drove during the late afternoon and until dusk through kanari avenues, whose great green cathedral aisles, with fretted arches a hundred feet overhead, dwarfed everything that moved or stood beneath them; and then under cool, feathery tamarind bowers, and past arrays of noble teak, everywhere exclaiming with delight. The use of the big-leaved teak for street and post-road shade-trees seemed to me the acme of botanical extravagance,—as ill ordered as putting Pegasus