7JV JAVA. 107 



in waiting to haul us up the long steep bank out of the gorge, 

 beyond which the road was easy, and the horses, urged to their 

 utmost speed, dashed along through village after village, 

 rousing tlie dogs and awakening the sleepers. The night 

 growing into day brought us one of the pleasantest portions of 

 our drive. The grey tints of the short dawn passing gradually 

 through many lovely hues into a delicate blue, and the fresh 

 wooded landscape lit up by the morning sun more charmingly 

 than at any other hour of the day, are the beauties, never 

 wearying to the eye, that accompany the opening of a tropical 

 day. At 8 a.m. we drew rein at Bandong post-office, having 

 accomplished somewhat over eighty miles in thirteen hours. 



Bandong is the chief town of the Preanger Regencies, one 

 of the largest and richest residencies in Java. In this province 

 the Government has some of its most extensive coffee gardens, 

 tobacco and cinchona plantations. The town is large and 

 straggling, containing but few European houses; its most 

 interesting building is the residence of the Eegent or native 

 governor of the district. In front of his door is a great square, 

 in the centre of which a giant fig-tree grows, beneath whose 

 shade on high days the natives congregate to sport and to 

 pay respect to the chief. Though some 2000 feet above the 

 sea it is hot and close at all seasons, and is not a very pleasant 

 place to live in. The larger part of the trading population is 

 Chinese and Arab, the natives taking little or no part in it ; 

 but the district is noted for its beautiful ornamental baskets 

 of bamboo wicker-work. 



Bandong stands in the centre of an immense level plain 

 hemmed in on all sides by very high mountains— most of 

 them volcanoes — which discharge their streams into it, whose 

 waters can find only one outlet, the Tjitaroom, which issues 

 from the western angle and flows northward into the Java Sea. 

 In prehistoric times this plain must have been one large lake, 

 till, by the convulsions and eruptions of the volcanic peaks 

 that banked it in, a gap was formed, which drained off the 

 water, and turned its bottom into a fruitful field. On the 

 whole one would have preferred the lake, and Java could then 

 have boasted of one respectable fresh-water sea, a feature of 

 beauty conspicuously and unexpectedly absent from so moun- 

 tainous and volcanic a country. 



