28 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



Before we could land, we were asked several 

 times in Dutcli, French, and English, to take a car- 

 riage, for cal^men seem to liave tke same persistent 

 habits in every corner of the earth. Meanwhile the 

 Malay drivers kept shouting out, " Cretur tuan ! cre- 

 tur tuan ! " So we took a " cretur," that is, a low, 

 covered, four-wheeled carriage, drawn by two minia- 

 ture ]3onies. The driver sits up on a seat in front, 

 in a neat haju or jacket of red or scarlet calico, and 

 an enormous hemispherical hat, so gilded or bronzed 

 as to dazzle youi' eyes when the sun shines. 



Though these ponies are small, they go at a 

 quick canter, and we were rapidly whii-led along 

 between a row of shade-trees to the city gate, almost 

 the only part of the old walls of the city that is now 

 standing. The other parts were torn down by 

 Marshal Daendals, to allow a freer cii'culation of air. 

 Then we passed through another row of shade-trees, 

 and over a bridge, to the office of the American con- 

 sul, a graduate of Harvard; and, as Cambridge had 

 been my home for four years, we at once considered 

 ourselves as old friends. 



Before I left America, Senator Sumner, as chair- 

 man of our Committee on Foreign Belations, Idndly 

 gave me a note of warm commendation to the repre- 

 sentatives of foreign powers; and Mi'. J. G. S. van 

 Breda, the secretary of the Society of Sciences in Hol- 

 land, with whom I had been in correspondence while 

 at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, 

 gave me a kind note to Baron Sloet van de Beele, the 

 governor-general of the Netherlands India. I imme- 

 diately addressed a note to His Excellency, enclosing 



