Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/97

Rh India," or referred to Delhi and Bombay as "cities of India," the Hollanders looked puzzled.

"Ah, when you say 'India,' you mean Hindustan or British India?"

"Certainly; that is India, the continent—the greater India."

"But what, then, do you call this island and all the possessions of the Netherlands out here?"

"Why, we speak of this island as Java. Every one knows of it, and of Sumatra and Borneo, by their own names."

The defender of Netherlands India said nothing; but soon a reference was made to a guest who had been in official residence at Amboyna.

"Where?" we inquired with keen interest in the unknown.

"Amboyna. Do you in America not know of Amboyna?"

Average Americans must confess if, since early geography days, they have not remembered carefully that one tiny island in the group of Moluccas off the east end of Java—an island so tiny that even on the school atlases used in Buitenzorg it is figured the size of a pea, and on the maps for the rest of the world is but a nameless dot in the clustered dots of the group that would better be named the Nutmeg Isles, since the bulk of the world's supply of that spicy fruit comes from their shores.

Then, away down there, out of the world, I was taken to task for that chief sin and offending of my country against other countries—the McKinley Bill of so long ago.