7.V THE EASTERN ABCHIPELAGO. 169 



pretty effect in eacli of these miniature green-walled ponds, 

 whose surface, save where the fountains played and for the 

 silent circles of each outflow- vortex, was nnWoken by a &mfA.e 

 ripple. As the terraces rose but little above each other, the 

 blue sky was reflected as in a mirror along the whole valley, 

 while the bright green of the young corn peeping up above the 

 surface, by giving a green colour to the mirror without in the 

 least breaking to the eye the placid surface of the water, or 

 interfering \Aith j^erfect reflection of the ever-chaniring face of 

 the sky, produced a beautiful effect impossible to describe in 

 words. Here and there, adding life to the scene, in the midst 

 of these fields were smokincr cottajjos embowered in ii:roves of 

 Eriodendron and Acacia trees. 



r 



Fording the river, the road took us, after a steep ascent, for 

 several miles along almost a knife-ridge under a grand old 

 avenue of virgin forest, at whose termination I half ex2:)ected ■ 

 to find a stately castle or an ancient ruin. As we approached 

 the village the forest became less dense, and we passed between 

 a line of tall red-leaved Hanjuangs (Cahdracon Jacjuinii), 

 a shrub sacred to their graveyards. Under this avenue of 

 mourning, just outside the village gate, was laid out that one 

 institution, at all events, common to the most exalted civilisa- 

 tion and the most debased barbarism — the Homo of the dead. 

 Each little mound, often surmounted by circular ornamented 

 pillars of wood diverging from each other at opposite ends of 

 the grave within a fenced and neatly tended inclosure, was 

 planted with Crotons and beautiful-leaved shrubs. 



The village itself surprised me not a little. It might have 

 been a feudal castle. As its name, Hoodjoong or '• the village 

 on the verge," implies, it was situated at the extremity of 

 the lono- narrow rid^e alon^ which I had come, and was in- 



O"^ '"""O 



accessible, owing to precipitous slopes dipping down into the 

 deep valley on all sides except on the one we had approached 

 it by, and there the road, rising in a short steep incline, passed 

 into the village under a narrow gateway cut out of the soft 

 tufa which hid the village till it was passed. All that was 

 wanted to complete the picture was a battlemented tower or 

 two over it, and the chains of a drawbridge and portcullis. 

 The village looked down into a deep alluvial valley laid out 

 in rice-plots along the banks of a stream whose double sources 



