94 BEAUTY OF THE COUNTRY. 



A pandopo stood a little on one side at the edge 

 of the wood, where we found a table as usual spread 

 with tea, cakes, and fruit, after partaking of which 

 we mounted for Kedal. This was a few miles dis- 

 tant towards the south-west, and the ride thither was 

 beyond measure delightful. A broad road, ap- 

 parently little used, as it was a complete carpet of 

 short green turf, led us across a gently undulating 

 champaign country, passing now through patches 

 of beautiful forest, now through open rice-fields, or 

 small plains of alang alang. Here and there was 

 an isolated hill, steep and rocky looking, crowned 

 with clumps of noble trees, while sparkling brooks 

 and rills kept the refreshing sight and sound of 

 falling water continually in our ears. Of these rills 

 many were artificial, and conducted from one expanse 

 of rice-fields to another. In the fields people were 

 busy ploughing, or engaged in other agricultural 

 operations, while here and there a grove of fruit- 

 trees, with cocoa-nuts, areca-palms, and clusters of 

 bamboos, rising among them, shewed the situation 

 of the native villages. Round this lovely country 

 swept a semicircle of mountains of equally beautiful 

 and magnificent forms and dimensions, the Kawi 

 and Arjuno bounding it on the west, the broken 

 ridge of the Teng'ger on the north, and the stately 

 Semiru raising its lofty cone into the blue sky on 

 the east. To the south some much lower undulat- 

 ing ridges shut out the view of the sea, above which 

 we were elevated about 1500 feet, the Widono's 



