white patches of floating cloud. Beneath his massive form, colour
is lost in shadowy but closer at hand are the dark pervading greens of
the trees and vegetation, palms and tree ferns and banana trees helping
by their graceful form to provide the truely tropical features, while
the equally graceful clumps of bamboo sway and creak in the light
breeze, their pointed leaves supplying that perpetual flutter and
movement which one associates with the birches and beeches of one's
native land. The cultivated patches on hillside and valley are rich in
colour. Here, the yellow paddy is ripening for the sickle; there, it is
bright green; alongside, the patient buffaloes are dragging a clumsy
wooden plough through water-covered soil to prepare for the next crop.
The lake-like patches reflect weird outlines, and one almost imagines
that they catch the brilliant colours from the sun-painted clouds.

Down the valley, crossing the picture from left to right is the
river--the Tjidani,--a broad shallow stream when we saw it, in which
men, women and children are constantly bathing. From the compact kampong
nestling among the trees, the native women, clad in bright coloured
sarongs, came with babies, who take to the water as if it were their
natural element. Merry shouts of laughter ascend from the valley as the
youngsters splash about and chase each other. Everything suggests
beauty and peace and contentment, and as one drinks in the scene it is
borne in upon one that the comparison with the Garden of Eden is not
inapt. What could one wish for more than a beautiful, bounteous land and
a happy, contented people!

On the Road to Sindanglaya

Long before sunrise, the sound of merry voices arose from the valley.
Already the natives were bathing in the Tjidani, and, when the light
came, the primeval life on which the sun had gone down was reproduced in
the model-like scene spread out before us. Our kreta for the journey
over the Poentjak Pass had been ordered for six o'clock, but with
un-Oriental punctuality it was a quarter-past live when the sound of
carriage wheels broke in upon our dreams.

While we sipped our morning coffee,--Java hotel coffee has improved
since Miss Scidmore anathematised it in 1899,--the sun's rays began to
peep over the shoulder of the Salak, and dispelled the morning mists on
river and valley. The Salak's fretwork crater stood out entirely
clear--his form a purple background to the picture gradually unfol