142 Report of a Journey Around the World. 



where we arrived long after dark owing to a very feeble engine 

 which repeatedly gave out. The unlighted cars' gave us some 

 trouble to find our traps, but the coolies could apparently see in 

 the dark, and we were soon driving to the Bellevue where we had 

 secured rooms. As the first thing we needed was a bath, it was 

 pleasant to find that, in addition to the usual tank for pouring 

 water, there was a powerful douche of clear cold water which we both 

 enjoyed greatly. Dinner was at 8, and the tables were decorated 

 with coreopsis and roses ; for fruit the everlasting dry pineapples 

 (we found none so good as the Hawaiian all round the world) and 

 pisang ; water from a well, and good with ice. House and grounds 

 lighted with self-making gas (mantle) lights, very good when the 

 boy had once lighted them ; marble floors, and good large beds 

 with the comfortable "Dutch wives". The night was cool and a 

 blanket was desirable. 



Sunday, Sept. 15. Up early ; another refreshing bath and a 

 walk about the place before breakfast. The volcano Salak (Fig. 

 113), close behind the hotel, is a typical cone with the apex torn 

 off for the crater, of which the edge is much broken away towards 

 us; clouds about the summit. Tile-roofed bambu houses in the 

 coconut groves below us and a small river where natives were busy 

 on the banks. After breakfast we walked to the garden ; on the 

 way a small museum was open, but the great crowd of natives made 

 it too disagreeable to enter, and we passed by for the time. On 

 the opposite side of the street was the range of new Government 

 buildings for the Agricultural Department. At the garden gate 

 was a most beautiful Amherstia with scarlet blossoms in profusion; 

 then came a long avenue of buttressed Canarium trees clothed with 

 Freycinetia , Pothos , Monstera , Phyllodendron , etc . (Fig. 115.) On the 

 right was the small white temple, sacred to the memory of the wife of 

 Sir Thos. Stamford Raffles who died here in 1814. All the impor- 

 tant trees were labelled, but in a script not easily read. Water was 

 abundant in lakes, pools and streams, but the vegetation was far 

 from luxuriant; it seemed as if it had been studied to death, and 

 left on me the impression of herbarium specimens. Surprised at 

 the number of species of Freycinetia; none so beautiful as ours; 

 the leaves of the Monstera were small, not a quarter of the size of 

 some in my Honolulu garden. After several hours we returned 



1 Trains in Java do not run at night, and so the cars have no provision for 

 lighting. [290] 





