Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/75

Rh of smooth gray water-buffaloes, posed statuesquely while those leisurely animals browsed afield; and no pastoral pictures of Java remain clearer in memory than those of patient little brown children sitting half days and whole days on buffalo-back, to brush flies and guide the stupid-looking creatures to greener and more luscious bits of herbage. Many stories are told of the affection the water-ox often manifests for his boy keeper, killing tigers and snakes in his defense, and performing prodigies of valor and intelligence; but one doubts the tales the more he sees of this hideous beast of Asia. Men and women were wading knee-deep in paddy-field muck, transplanting the green rice-shoots from the seed-beds, and picturesque harvest groups posed in tableaux, as the train shrieked by. Children rolled at play before the gabled baskets of houses clustered in toy villages beneath the inevitable cocoa-palms and bananas, the combination of those two useful trees being the certain sign of a kampong, or village, when the braided-bamboo houses are invisible.

At Depok there was a halt to pass the down-train, and the natives of this one Christian village and mission-station, the headquarters of evangelical work in Java, flocked to the platform with a prize horticultural display of all the fruits of the season for sale. The record of mission work in Java is a short one, as, after casting out the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, the Dutch forbade any others to enter, and Spanish rule in Holland had perhaps taught them not to try to impose a strange religion on a people. During Sir Stamford Raffles's rule, English evangelists began work among the natives, but were summarily interrupted and obliged to