Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/347

Rh be a sense of attachment, almost comradeship, in the constant companion tree, the graceful, restless creature that the natives say will not live beyond the sound of the human voice—dying if the village or habitation it guards is deserted. So nearly human and appealing are these waving cocoas that it is fitting that there should be a census of palms quite as much as of people, and that in the last enumeration it appeared that the people and the palms existed in even numbers—one palm apiece for every one of the millions of inhabitants of the island.

The drives and the scenery about Buitenzorg, the sunset and twilight band-concerts under the great aisles of kanari-trees, had fresh interest, and it was indeed a penance to leave without taking train around to the Preanger side of Mount Gedeh, and driving up to the sanatorium of Sindanglaya, over three thousand feet above sea-level. The cool mountain air at that elevation is cure and tonic for all tropic ills, and with the mercury always 20º lower than at sea-level, Sindanglaya is the one sure refuge for all Malaysia and Cochin China, French officers from Saigon reaching it more quickly than Japan or the highlands of Ceylon. From Sindanglaya one may go to the Gedeh's crater, and to the summit of its twin peak, Pangerango, the highest mountain of the island, where, surrounded by primroses and violets,—the flora of the European temperate zone, islanded there after the period of great cold had retreated northward,—one may look down upon all the Batavia Residency, and out upon the Java Sea, and southward across Preanger hills to the greater Indian Ocean.