Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/325

Rh to a cart,—since we of the temperate zone are used to even speaking of that expensive timber with respect. While we drove through the magnificent avenues in the late afternoon light, past parade-grounds and parks, over canals and along their embankments, the rising mists and the solid blue vapors massing in the distances were so much actual, visible evil—malaria almost in tangible form. One felt that he should dine on so many courses of quinine only, taking the saving sulphate first with a soup-spoon, if he expected to survive the mad venture into Tjilatjap's fever-laden air. A crowded, neglected cemetery gave one further creeps and gruesome thoughts; and the evil-smelling sugar and copra warehouses on the harbor front seemed to seal our doom—that old ignorant instinct or idea asserting itself that the bad smell must necessarily be the bad air. There is a beautiful view from the old military encampment out over the land-locked harbor, with a glimpse of the open ocean through a narrow entrance. The dark mass of Noesa Kambangan ("Floating Island") rises beyond the silvery waters—a tropical paradise deliberately depopulated by the Dutch as a strategic measure, that there might be no temptation of sustenance to induce an attack or siege from that quarter. The island is mountainous, and contains much fine scenery, many floral marvels, curious stalactite caverns of holy repute where Siva is secretly worshiped, hot springs, and even gold-mines, and is famous in the old Javanese poems and legends. The great surf of the Indian Ocean beats upon its precipitous south shore, where the clefts and caves in the bold cliffs are inhabited by myriads of sparrows, who