r. The local guide book remarks with
truth: "The main road to the Poentjak being very steep, it does not
afford a quick mode of travelling. At Toegoe, an extra team of horses
must be added--or karbouws (water buffaloes) used instead of the horses,
to pull the carriage at a slow pace up the mountain. Good walkers may,
therefore, be advised to do this part of the road on foot, which will
take them about an hour and a half. By doing so they will be more able
to admire this marvellous work of Governor-General Daendels."

We suspect there is a touch of Dutch satire in this last remark. We have
travelled the road, and we are not prepared to parody the old Scot's
saying:--

"If you'd seen this road before it was made,
You'd lift up your hands and bless General Wade"

Daendels may have been an admirable gentleman, a brave soldier, and a
clever administrator, but his engineering skill did not equal his other
qualities. It would have been much better if the road had never been
made. Surely no highway was ever more badly graded, and we are not
astonished that a practical people like the Dutch set themselves to
construct a more sensible road by way of Tjitjoeroeg and Soekaboemie. We
have seen paved mountain paths in China more inaccessible, but not much,
and when we dashed up to the Sindanglaya Hotel at 12.15, we thought more
highly of the team that had pulled us over the Pass than we could have
believed when we formed our first early morning prejudices.

Needless to say, it is not a road for a motor car. It would be
inadvisable to adopt this route to Sindanglaya if the party included
ladies. But, if they have a taste for mountaineering, baggage should be
sent by rail to Tjiandjoer under the care of some of the party, and
carriages dispensed with at Toegoe and the remainder of the journey made
on foot. As it was, a good deal of our journey up had to be made on
foot over unblinded loose road metal.

Going down the other side the driver led the ponies for about a quarter
of a mile, and then joined us in the kreta. That downward trip was the
most perilous we ever made in anything that runs on wheels, except a
train journey from Manila to Malolos during the Filipino insurrection in
1899. Jack London, the Californian novelist, once told us that life
would not be worth living if it were not for the thrills. We had more
thrills than we care to have crowded into one hour on that down-grade
run from Poentjak to Sindanglaya. Sev