A background of blue
peaks and clustering palms rises beyond the long line of quays and
breakwaters flanked by the railway, and a wealth of tropical scenery
covers a marshy plain with riotous luxuriance. No Europeans live either
in Tandjon Priok or Old Batavia, and the locality was known for two
centuries as "the European graveyard." Flourishing Arab and Chinese
_campongs_ or settlements appear immune from the terrible Java fever
which haunts the morasses of the coast, and the industrial Celestial
who absorbs so much of Oriental commerce, possesses an almost
superhuman imperviousness to climatic dangers.

In the re-adjustment of power after the Fall of Napoleon, Java, invaded
by England in 1811, after a five years' interval of British rule under
the enlightened policy of Sir Stamford Raffles, was restored to the
Throne of Holland. The supremacy of the Dutch East India Company, who,
after a prolonged struggle, acquired authority in Java as residuary
legatee of the Mohammedan Emperor, ended at the close of the eighteenth
century. Perpetual warfare and rebellion, which broke out in Central
Java after the return of the island to the Dutch, taxed the resources
of Holland for five years. Immense difficulties arrested and delayed
the development of the fertile territory, until the "culture system" of
forced labour within a certain area relieved the financial pressure.
One-fifth of village acreage was compulsorily planted with sugar-cane,
and one day's work every week was demanded by the Dutch Government from
the native population. The system was extended to tea and coffee; and
indigo was grown on waste land not needed for the rice, which
constitutes Java's staff of life. Spices and cinchona were also
diligently cultivated under official supervision, and the lives of many
explorers were lost in search of the precious Kina-tree, until Java,
after years of strenuous toil, now produces one-half of that quinine
supply which proves the indispensable safeguard of European existence
on tropic soil. The ruddy bark and scarlet branches of the cinchona
groves glow with autumnal brightness amid the evergreen verdure of the
Javanese hills, and the "culture system," as a financial experiment,
proved, in spite of cavillers, a source of incalculable benefit to the
natives as well as to the colonists of Java. As we travel through the
length and breadth of an island cultivated even to the mountain tops
with the perfection of detail common to t