Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/342

320 nance backward, as he picked his reluctant way bare-footed through this prickly underbrush.

"What for go here?" he bleated.

"To get to the top of the mountain and see the two oceans."

"Dis mountain no got top," wailed the unconscionable one; but we remembered the waist-deep water he had conjured up to discourage us from Chandi Sewou; nor had we forgotten the Tjilatjap sandwiches with which he had comforted himself such a few days before, and we said, "Go on!"

Then, remembering our perpetual hunt for and expectation of great snakes, he turned mournful countenance and wailed: "Slanga! slanga! ["Snakes! snakes!"] always live dis kind grass."

"Very well. That's just what we want to find. Be sure you tell us as soon as you step on one or see it moving."

But, after pushing and tearing our way through bamboo-grass and bushes to the first ridge, we saw only other and farther ridges to be surmounted, with great ravines and stony hollows between. We took such view of the cloudy plains and ranges to northward and southward as we could, seeing everywhere the murky, blue, misty horizon of the rainy season, and nowhere the silver sea-levels, nor the lines of perpetual surf that fringe the Indian Ocean. We saw again the mosaic of rice-fields and dry fields covering the Garoet plain; and looking down upon the foot of an opposite mountain spur, we could study, like a relief-map or model tilted before us, a vast plantation cultivated from tea to highest coffee and kina level.