164 



WMBOCK. 



[cnAP. XI 



Within tliis royal city uo native of tbe lower ordera is 

 allowed to ride, and our attendant, a Javanese, was obliged 

 to dismoimb and lead his horse while we rode slowly 

 through. The aboiies the rmjah and of the High Priest 

 are distinguished by pillars of red brick constructed witli 

 nmcb taste; but the palace itself seemed to ditler but 

 little from the ordinary houses of the country. Beyond 

 Mataram and close to it is Karaugassam, the ancient 

 residence of the native or Sassak Ilajahs before the con- 

 quest of the islivnd by the Balinese. 



Soon after passing Mataram the country began gradually 

 to rise in gentle undulations, swelling occasionally into 

 low hills towards the two mountainous tracts in the 

 northern and southern parts of the island. It was now 

 that I first obtained an adequate idea of one of the most 

 wonderfid systems of cultivation in the world, equalling all 

 that is related of Cliinese industry, and as far as I know 

 surpassing in the labour that has been bestowed upon it 

 any tract of ec^ual extent in the most civilized countriea 

 of Europe. I roile through i\m strange gar J en utterly 

 amazed, and hardly able to realize the fact, that in th^ 

 remote and little known island, from which all Europeans 

 except a few traders at the port are jealously excluded, 

 many hundreds of square miles of u-regularly undulating 

 country have been so skilfully terraced and levelled, and 

 so permeated by artificial channels, that every portion of it 

 can be irrigated and dried at pleasure. According as the 

 slope of the ground ia moi*e or less rapid, each terraced 

 plot consists in some places of many acres, in others of 

 a few square yards. We saw them in every state of 

 cultivation; some in stubble, some bein^ ploughed, some 

 with rice-crops in various stages of growth. Here were 

 luxuriant patches of tobacco; there, cucumbei's, sweet 

 jxjtatoea, yams, beans or Indian-com, varied the scene. 

 In some places the ditches were dry, in others little 

 streams crossed our road and were distributed over lands 

 about to be sown or planted. The banks which bordered 

 every teiTace rose regularly in horizontal lines above each 

 other ; sometimes rounding an abrupt knoU and looking 

 like a fortification, or sweeping round sonte deep hollow 

 and forming on a gigantic scale the seatf? of an amphi- 



