Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/49

Rh clothes-lines along this open hotel corridor, while others were ironing their employers' garments on this communal porch.

We were sure we had gone to the wrong hotel; but the Nederlanden was vouched for as the best, and when the bell sounded, over one hundred guests came into the vaulted dining-room and were seated at the one long table. The men wore proper coats and clothes at this midday riz tavel (rice table), but the women and children came as they were—sans gêne.

The Batavian day begins with coffee and toast, eggs and fruit, at any time between six and nine o'clock; and the affairs of the day are despatched before noon, when that sacred, solemn, solid feeding function, the riz tavel, assembles all in shady, spacious dining-rooms, free from the creaking and flapping of the punka, so prominent everywhere else in the East. Rice is the staple of the midday meal, and one is expected to fill the soup-plate before him with boiled rice, and on that heap as much as he may select from eight or ten dishes, a tray of curry condiments being also passed with this great first course. Bits of fish, duck, chicken, beef, bird, omelet, and onions rose upon my neighbors' plates, and spoonfuls of a thin curried mixture were poured over the rice, before the conventional chutneys, spices, cocoanut, peppers, and almond went to the conglomerate mountain resting upon the "rice table" below. Beefsteak, a salad, and then fruit and coffee brought the midday meal to a close. Squeamish folk, unseasoned tourists, and well-starched Britons with small sense of humor complain of loss of appetite at these hotel riz tavels; and those Britons further