onial costumes, most of
which, the Resident told me, had been copied from pictures which had
caught his fancy in books and magazines. That wardrobe would have
delighted the heart of a motion-picture company's property-man, for it
contained everything from a Dutch court dress, complete with sword and
feathered hat, to a state costume of sky-blue broadcloth edged with
white fur and trimmed with diamond buttons. I expressed a desire to see
the royal crown, for I had noticed that the pictures of former sultans,
which I had seen in the throne-room, showed them wearing crowns of a
peculiar design, strikingly similar to those worn by the Emperors of
Abyssinia. My request resulted in a whispered colloquy between the
Resident, the Controleur, the Regent and the young Sultan. After a
brief discussion the Resident explained that the Controleur kept the
crown locked up in his safe, but that he would get it if I wished to
see it. To the obvious relief of everyone except the young Sultan I
assured them that it did not matter. He seemed distinctly disappointed.
I imagine that he would have liked to have gotten his hands on it.

Outside the palace--just below its windows, in fact--is a long, low,
dirt-floored, wooden-roofed shed, such as American farmers build to
keep their wagons and farm machinery under. This was the royal
cemetery. Beneath it the former rulers of Koetei lie buried, their
resting-places being marked by a most curious assortment of
fantastically carved tombs and headstones. Some of the tombs hold the
ashes of men who sat on the throne of Koetei when it was one of the
great kingdoms of the East, long before the coming of the white man.

Lady luck was kind to me, for shortly after our arrival at Tenggaroeng
a delegation of Dyaks from one of the tribes of the far interior
appeared at the palace to lay some tribal dispute before the Regent for
his adjudication. There were about a score of them, including a rather
comely young woman, whose comeliness was somewhat marred, however,
according to European standards at least, by the lobes of her ears
being stretched until they touched her shoulders by the great weight of
the brass earrings which depended from them. The warriors were the
finest physical specimens of manhood that I saw in all Malaysia--tall,
slim, muscular, magnificently developed fellows, with bright, rather
intelligent faces. They had the broad shoulders and small hips of Roman
athletes and when the sun struck