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public buildings, and is ornamented with pilasters and pediments. Part of the park is occupied by the famous Botanical Gardens, which form the supreme attraction of the place to the scientific visitor. The Governor-General, as the highest official in the Dutch East Indies, receives a salary of 160,000 florins a year. While this personage is at Buitenzorg he may be frequently observed driving down the great avenue of Kanarie trees in his state coach drawn by four horses. In close connection with the palace (as the Governor-General's residence is called), but at some distance from the town, large and convenient barracks have lately been completed for the better accommodation of the European troops. I had been told not to omit to visit Batoe Toelis, "the place of the written stone," where there is an ancient inscription, and Kotta Batoe with its celebrated bath presided over by a Chinaman. My first expedition was to this latter place. There were three of us bent upon a swim before breakfast, and in order to save time we took a sadoe. The beauty and extent of the view increased as we ascended the slopes of Mount Salak. When we had driven some three miles we left the sadoe, with strict injunctions to the driver to wait till we returned, and proceeded to accomplish our quest on foot. There were three baths in all, natural basins of rock fed by streams of mountain water, and shaded by the dense foliage of lofty trees. One of them is circular in form, and the water is curiously coloured, by some trick of reflection or refraction, to a dull steely blue. A plunge in the clear cool water was well worth the trifling fee we paid to the celestial, and we returned to our hotel with a famous appetite for breakfast. It was on the occasion of this drive that I first made the acquaintance of that useful domestic animal, the buffalo (_Bos Sondaicus_). He is a very "fine and large" animal of a mouse colour, with white legs and a patch of white on his quarters; and has long horns lying back on his neck, where they cannot be the slightest use to him. His Javan masters find him very docile, but he has an awkward way with strangers. He is generally to be found under the care of a small boy, who is seated on his broad back, and who touches him with a rod on this side or that according to the direction which he desires the animal to take. I have already described the simple but effective plough to which he is yoked when working the sawahs,[14]
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