ssageries Maritimes, and the
Netherlands India Companies.

I was agreeably surprised at the size and convenience of the
station at Tanjong Priok. The booking clerk, who was, I think, a
Chinaman, seemed to know the ways of strangers, and I and my
fellow-passengers had no difficulty in taking tickets for Batavia.
The line passed through groves of cocoa-nut palms, intersected with
canals. Everything was quaint and interesting, the canal boats,
the buffalo ploughs, the gaily-feathered birds,--all revealed a new
and delightful phase of life and nature. We were immensely struck
with the appearance of a native cutting grass. He had a hooked
blade of steel fastened to a long handle, forming an instrument not
unlike a cleek or other golf-stick. This he slowly swung round his
head, and each time it touched the ground cleared about three
inches of grass. The thing looked too absurd. We all wanted to get
out and ask him how long he expected to be mowing that strip of
grass by the canal-side.

While I was on board ship I had been fortunate enough to borrow a
Malay phrase-book from a man who had visited the Archipelago
before, and during the voyage to Batavia I had amused myself with
copying out some of the phrases and committing them to memory. On
landing I found these few phrases extremely useful, and I mention
the fact by way of encouragement, and in case any other traveller
should be inclined similarly to beguile the tedium of the voyage.
He will have his reward.

When Mr. Wallace visited Java in 1861, he tells us he found no
conveyances in Batavia except "handsome two-horse carriages,"
costing something under a sovereign a day. He justly complains of
the expensiveness of these vehicles, and also of the cost of the
post-carriages which then formed the sole means of locomotion in
the interior of the island. To-day things are greatly improved. To
say nothing of the railway system which connects the large towns in
the east and west, Batavia is provided with an excellent tramway,
and with a capital supply of small vehicles called _sadoes_.

[Illustration: THE KING'S PLAIN, BATAVIA. _Page_ 67.]

The sadoe is the hansom of Java. It is a small two-wheeled
carriage, in which the seats are placed back to back (hence the
name, which is a corruption of dos-a-dos), and which is furnished
with a square top to keep off the sun. It is drawn by one (or two)
of the sturdy little horses bred in the island. At a pinch these
vehicles will ho