uence of colour by which the _pajongs_
form a complete system of heraldry. In the dusky angle of a mossy wall,
four elephants, used in State processions, feed upon bundles of bamboo
and sugar-cane. Mud huts and bamboo sheds prop themselves against tiled
eaves and windowless houses. Open doors afford glimpses of squalid
interiors, crowded with slatternly women and dirty children, the
hereditary retainers and hangers-on of this effete and moribund
royalty. Private troupes of dancing _bedayas_, _gamelon_ players,
actors, pipe, fan, and betel-box bearers, pertain to the tumbledown
Palace, and the patriarchal system of ancient Java permits the presence
of whole families belonging to these indispensable ministers of the
royal pleasure. The people show the same indifference to Mohammedanism
as to the perished faiths of olden time, and a large funeral party
encountered on leaving the Kraton displays painful irreverence, though
scattering rice and lighting incense sticks before a white coffin borne
shoulder-high, and decked with a tracery of yellow marigolds and
rosettes of pink paper. No priest accompanies the procession, and the
laughter of the white-scarved mourners, preceded by men carrying ropes
and planks, suggests an utter heartlessness and barbarity. Gay
_passers_, a busy _campong Tchina_, a very hive of Celestial industry,
and innumerable drives beneath over-arching trees, with distant views
of purple peaks, comprise the interests of old-world Djokja, with the
one exception of the famous Taman Sarie, or Water Castle, ruined by
earthquake, but remaining as a pathetic memorial of bygone power and
pride. Pavilions and baths, grottoes and fish-ponds, set in the tangled
verdure of a neglected garden, surround the arcaded parapets of a
colossal tower. Green plumes of fern wave from wall and battlement,
velvet moss and orange lichen tapestry the blackened stone, and matted
creepers sway their woven curtains in the evening wind. A Dancing Hall,
which formerly rang with the weird music accompanying the "woven paces
and waving hands" of Court _bedayas_, in their spangled pink robes, now
echoes to the tread of alien feet; the dim arcades teem with ghostly
memories, and the mournful desolation of the Taman Sarie borrows fresh
poignancy in the former scene of mirth and music. A moss-grown and
slippery stairway leads to the green twilight of a subterranean grotto,
containing the richly-carved stone bedstead of the Sultan, who sought
t