Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/357

Rh island's resources and made it all one exquisite, fruitful garden, and the colonists have begun to take an interest in uncovering and protecting the ancient monuments, the interest and attractions of Java are greater each year. It is alike the scientist's greatest storehouse and the traveler's unequaled tropical pleasure-resort and playground in the East. The antiquities have been merely scratched, explorations in that line are only well begun, leaving to archæologists and anthropologists a field of incalculable richness—more especially to those bent upon arriving at some solution of the great puzzle, some proof of Asiatic and American contact in pre-Columbian times. The puzzling resemblance of the older Javanese ruins to those of Central America has yet to be explained, and the alluring theory of migration from the rich "food-ponds" of the waters within the archipelago to other and farther inclosed seas teeming with fishes, until the Malays had followed with the great currents up one shore of the Pacific Ocean and down the other, must be proved. Dutch scientists naturally desire to explore and exploit this treasure-house of Java for themselves; but with a questioning world and many eager inquirers bent on solving all the mysteries and problems of race origin and migrations, the prize must be won by the swiftest.

If Baedeker or Murray would only go to Java and kindly light the tourist's way; if the Dutch government would relax the useless vexations of the toelatings-kaart system, and the colonists welcome the visitor in more kindly spirit, Java would rank, as it deserves to, as a close second to Japan, an oasis in