Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/38

18 of coast-line, it has few harbors, the north shore being swampy and flat, with shallows extending far out, while the southern coast is steep and bold, and the one harbor of Tjilatjap breaks the long line of surf where the Indian Ocean beats against the southern cliffs. Fortunately, hurricanes and typhoons are unknown in the waters around this "summer land of the world," and the seasons have but an even, regular change from wet to dry in Java. From April to October the dry monsoon blows from the southeast, and brings the best weather of the year—dry, hot days and the coolest nights. From October to April the southwest or wet monsoon blows. Then every day has its afternoon shower, the air is heavy and stifling, all the tropic world is asteam and astew and afloat, vegetation is magnificent, insect life triumphant, and the mountains are hidden in nearly perpetual mist. There are heavy thunder-storms at the turn of the monsoon, and the one we had watched from the sea the Hallowe'en night before our arrival had washed earth and air until the foliage glistened, the air fairly sparkled, nature wore her most radiant smiles, and the tropics were ideal.

It was more workaday and prosaic when the ship, steaming in between long breakwaters, made fast to the stone quays of Tandjon Priok, facing a long line of corrugated-iron warehouses, behind which was the railway connecting the port with the city of Batavia. The gradual silting up of Batavia harbor after an eruption of Mount Salak in 1699, which first dammed and then sent torrents of mud and sand down the Tjiliwong River, finally obliged commerce to remove to this deep bay six miles farther east, where the