IN THE EAST INDIES. 117 
I am just the way Robert was last summer; l. e., 
I can tell you about the trip far better than I can 
write it. 
We are all very well. 
Soerabaya, Java, January 23, 1907. 
Dear Mother : 
We have had such a fine trip all through Java 
since I wrote you last. To be sure it was all on the 
railroad, but then you can see a good deal of the life 
and the people and scenery in a two days trip. We 
left Buitenzorg early Monday morning and went 
through to a place called Maos, where we spent the 
night. We passed hundreds of miles of rice in every 
stage of growth. We saw the natives with their big 
straw hats ploughing the fields with enormous buffa- 
loes and funny little wooden ploughs, the kind you 
would presume some pre-historic race to have used. 
Then we saw the women standing up to their knees in 
water transplanting the rice and then harvesting it. 
It was most interesting. The rice fields for the most 
part are terraced, which adds greatly to the pic- 
turesqueness of the scenery. The railroad runs be- 
tween two volcanic ranges, some of the voleanoes being 
active and some not; such a wonderful sight they were: 
The funny little villages we went through were ever 
so quaint. There were small huts with thatched roofs, 
some pointed at the top and others rounded and al- 
ways surrounded by superb flowers of every shape and 
color. Bamboos and palms, as far as your eye could 
see, were grand. Merapi, a voleano ten thousand feet 
high, was very active. We saw quantities of lava 
flowing down its sides and also large volumes of smoke 
