PROSPERITY OF JAVA 5 



the genius of Sir Stamford Raftlcs, who laid the founda- 

 tion of its prosperit}^ less than one hundred years ago. 



Some idea of the progress which has been made may 

 be learnt from the fact that, whereas at the beginning 

 of the last century the population numbered about four 

 miUions, there are to-day nearly ten times that number. 

 Wherever you go you see excellent roads, clean, and 

 well-ordered villages and a swarming peasant population, 

 quiet and industrious and apparently contented with 

 their lot. 



There are between thirty and forty volcanoes in the 

 island, many of them active, and the soil is extra- 

 ordinarily, rich and productive, three crops in the rice 

 districts being harvested in rather less than two years. 

 So fertile is the land that in many places the steepest 

 slopes of the hills have been brought under cultivation 

 by an ingenious system of terracing and irrigation in 

 such a way that the higher valleys present the appear- 

 ance of great amphitheatres rising tier above tier of 

 brilliantly green young rice plants or of drooping yellow 

 heads of ripening grain. The tea plantations and the 

 fields of sugar-cane in Central Java not less than the 

 rice-growing districts impress one with the unceasing 

 industry of the people and the inexhaustible wealth of 

 the island. 



One of the features of life in the Dutch East Indies, 

 which first strikes the attention of an English visitor, is 

 the difference in the relation between Europeans and 

 natives from those which usually obtain in British 

 possessions as shown by the enormous number of half- 

 castes. Whilst we were still at Batavia the feast of the 



