ion of brown
figures, the women clad in the universal _sarong_, but men and children
often in Nature's garb, with touches of orange or crimson in scarf and
turban. Water-oxen and buffaloes, goats and sheep, vary the throng, but
cattle fare badly in fertile Java, where the all-pervading rice ousts
the pasture-land. Glorious bamboos form arches of feathery green
meeting across the road, and the busy China _campong_, or _desar_ in
Preanger parlance, is full of life and movement with the first streak
of day, for all trade in Java depends upon the indefatigable industry
of the Celestial. The idle gambling Malay, though an expert hunter and
fisher, takes no thought for the morrow, and is protected by the Dutch
Government from ruin by an enforced demand of rice for storage,
according to the numbers of the family. Every village contains the
great Store Barn of plaited palm leaves, so that, in case of need, the
confiscated rice can be doled out to the improvident native, who thus
contributes to the support of his family in times of scarcity. This
regulation relieves want without pauperising, the common garner merely
serving as a compulsory savings bank. Many salutary laws benefit the
Malay, possessing a notable share of tropical slackness, and the lack
of initiative partly due to a servile past under the sway of tyrannical
native princes. The little brown people of Java, eminently gentle and
tractable, are honest enough for vendors of eatables to place a laden
basket at the roadside for the refreshment of the traveller, who drops
a small coin into a bamboo tube fastened to a tree for this purpose.
The customary payment is never omitted, and at evening the owner of the
basket collects the money, and brings a fresh supply of food for future
wayfarers. Country districts demonstrate the fact of Java being a
creedless land. This is Sunday, and the Feast of the Epiphany, but the
only honour paid to the day consists in a gayer garb, and a band
playing for an hour in the palm-shaded garden. Work goes on in
rice-field and plantation, but no church bell rings from the closed
chapel outside the gates, and no sign of religion is evident, whether
from mosque, temple, or church. Lovely lanes form alluring vistas. The
pretty _desas_ of plaited palm and bamboo, hiding in depths of tropical
woodland, with blue thunbergia clambering over every verandah, and the
Preanger girls, with their brilliant _slandangs_ of orange and scarlet,
amber and purpl