three thousand years ago, and the sickle is
inferior. When Sir Stamford Raffles, who was governor during the short
control of Java by the British, asked why they used the little primitive
bent knife (_ana-ana_) which severs from the stalk but a few heads of rice
at a time, they answered that if they presumed to do otherwise their next
crop would be blasted.

One of the tables, however, furnishes a grave disappointment. It is an
innocent-looking suspension bridge, the middle third of which is
supported by a series of piles and the floor roofed in with canes and
palm-leaves. It is a model of a bridge over the Boitang Toro, and one
expects to find it of the ratan which is of general use and grows two
hundred and fifty feet long; but no: it is of telegraph wire! So much for
the intrusion of modern devices when one is revelling in one of the most
interesting ethnological exhibits ever gathered. We have, however, but to
turn round to be consoled. Here is the roller cotton-gin, which was
doubtless used in India before the conquests of Alexander. Then we have
the spinning-wheel, which differs in no important respect from that of
England in the thirteenth century, and is similar to, but ruder than, that
used by our great-grandmothers, when "spinster" meant something, and a
girl brought to the home of her choice a goodly array of linen. This was
before cotton was king, and before factories were known either for cotton,
flax or wool. Was it a better day than the present, or no? Things work
round, and the roller-gin is now the better machine, having in the most
perfected processes supplanted the saw-gin. This may be news to some, but
will be admitted by those who have examined what the present Exposition
has to show. Here also is the bow for bowing the cotton, the original
cotton-opener and cleaner. We cannot, either, omit the reeling mechanism
for the thread nor the looms of simple construction, which can by no means
cost over a couple of dollars and yet make fine check stuffs, good cotton
ginghams. Perhaps we might allow another dollar for the reed with its six
hundred dents of split ratan.

[Illustration: TROPHY IN THE COURT OF THE DUTCH INDIES.]

Curious and bizarre chintzes are shown in connection with the machinery,
and some doubtless made by the processes described by Pliny eighteen
hundred years ago. Other calicoes are made by at least two processes which
are comparatively modern in England, but certainly two thousand year