Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/80

60 tiny water-pitcher and basin of the Java hotels, brought from the continent of Europe unchanged; and rage at the custom of guests in Java hotels emptying their basins out of doors or windows on tropical shrubbery or courtyard pavings at will. There are swimming-pools at some hotels and in many private houses, but the usual bath-room of the land offers the traveler a barrel and a dipper. One is expected to ladle the water out and dash it over him in broken doses, and as the swimming-pool is a rinsing-tub for the many, the individual is besought not to use soap. Naturally the British tourist's invectives are deep and loud and long, and he will not believe that the dipper-bath is more cooling than to soak and soap and scour in a comfortable tub of his own. He will not be silenced or comforted in this tubless tropical land, which, if it had only remained under British rule, might be—would be—etc. All suffering tourists agree with him, however, that the worst laundering in the world befalls one's linen in Java, the cloth-destroying, button-exterminating dhobie man of Ceylon and India being a careful and conscientious artist beside the clothes-pounder of Java. In making the great circle of the earth westward one leaves the last of laundry luxury at Singapore, and continues to suffer until, in the substratum of French civilization in Egypt, he finds the blanchisseuse.

The order of living is the same at the up-country hotels as at Batavia, and the charges are the same everywhere in Java, averaging about three dollars gold each day, everything save wine included; and at Buitenzorg corkage was charged on the bottle of filtered