Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/355

Rh a bit—or else that I had lent too willing an ear to returned travelers' imaginations. Taking my own experience as proof, there might be written a brief chapter about snakes to match that famous one in Horrebow's "History of Iceland." But the disillusionment of disillusionments awaited us on the borders of Bantam, when the last Batavian day brought information that our so-called tiny bantam cock is not from Bantam at all. It was first seen on board a Japanese junk trading at Bantam in the long ago, and the Malays, who are natural and long-descended cock-fighters, saw in these little fowls combatants more spirited than any of their own breed, and of more manageable size. The true bantam cocks to the province born are nearly as large as turkeys; long ago Dr. Marsden told of their being as large as Norfolk bustards, and of their standing high enough to peck off the dinner-table, and said that when they sat down on the first joint of the leg they were taller than any common fowls. The introduction of the pretty Japanese fowls revolutionized cock-fighting, and the Dutch imported them through their Nagasaki factory, and introduced them to Europe.

The equator was proved not such a terrible thing as it had been made out to be—a thing that might be spoken of very disrespectfully because of that misplaced awe and veneration; and the tropics not at all as astonishing as they used to be, when illustrated books of travel, museum collections and models, and exposition villages had not made their life and scenery so familiar; when hothouses had not brought even orchids to common acquaintance, and Northern markets