A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



lis, novel in cut and rig, decked with flowers at the prow, 

 rowed out to sea by some ten or twelve dusky fishers, singing 

 an intermittent song, timed to the rattle of their heavy oars 

 in the rowlocks; a little further on, we glided past a fleet of 

 gaily painted craft, Malay, Chinese, and Arab, lying at anchor 

 under the canal wall, their occupants, in bright-coloured cali- 

 coes, lounging in unwonted attitudes about their decks. 



Before we had moored by the side of the Cus^tom-house, it 

 was quite dark, so that our landing was effected under some 

 difficulty,' amid the usual and necessary din and confusion, 

 and amid a very Babel of foreign tongues, of which not a 

 syllable was intelligible to me, save here and there a 

 Portuguese word still recognisable, even after the changes of 

 many centuries — veritable fossils bedded in the language of a 

 race, where now no recollection or knowledge of the peoples 

 who left them exists. 



By dint of the universal language of signs, I got myself and 

 baggage at last transferred to a carriage, drawn by two small 

 splendidly running ponies, of a famous breed from the island 

 of Surab.nwx. After a drive of between two and three miles, 

 through what seemed an endless row of Chinese bazaars 

 and houses, remarkable mostly, as seen in the broken lamp- 

 light, for their squalor and stench, before which their occu- 

 pants at smoking and chatting, I at length emerged into 

 a more genial atmosphere, and into canal and tree-margined 

 streets, full of fine residences and liotels, very conspicuous by 

 the blaze of light that lit up their j)illared and marbled fronts. 



Taking up my quarters at the Hotel der Nederlanden, I had 

 to be content with an uncurtained shake-down on the floor of 

 the room of one of my fellow passengers, as every bed in the 

 hotel was occupied. Next morning, to every one's surprise, 

 I arose without a single mosquito bite, evidently mosquito- 

 proof. To my unspeakable comfort and advantage, I re- 

 mained absolutely so during my whole sojourn in the East, 

 and was thus relieved of the necessity of burdening myself 

 with furniture against these, or any other insect pests whatever. 



When the chaotic confusion of my first impressions of 

 Batavia had become reduced to order, I found that it consisted 

 of an old and a new town. The old town lies near the strand ; 

 is close, dusty, and stifling hot, standing scarcely anything 



