264 Voyage of the Novara. 



The Javanese Regent, Radlien Adliipati Aria Kusuma 

 Ningrat, who gave this fete, a tall, robust man, of about fifty 

 years of age, is held in high esteem by the inhabitants of his 

 district, not alone for his political worth, but also for his 

 intellectual qualities. He is an author and a poet, and 

 availed himself of the opportunity to present to the foreign 

 guests his last poem, an epic. 



Early on the morning of the 17th the entire company of 

 travellers set out from Tjiandjur on their return to Batavia 

 by the Java road, by which they had come. The naturalists, 

 too, did not leave the capital of the Preanger Residency 

 without substantial tokens of amity, since a medical gentle- 

 man settled there. Dr. I. Ch. Ploem, presented them with a 

 number of interesting specimens, botanical and zoological, 

 and not alone enriched their collections in natural history 

 with many new objects, but also promised in future to main- 

 tain an active interchange of objects of scientific interest with 

 the museum of the Empire-city on the Danube. 



The journey back to Buitenzorg, despite a tremendous 

 thunder-storm, accompanied by such a shower as is only en- 

 countered in the tropics, was nevertheless pretty quickly got 

 over, and even one trifling adventure which was encountered 

 on the way — in the course of which one of the travelling 

 carriages fell into a ditch on one side of the road, near Mega- 

 mendung, in consequence of which the coachman and attend- 

 ants were somewhat injured by their sudden precipitation 

 from tlie box — liad no more serious ulterior consequences than 



