THE RIJST-TAFEL
One or two curious relics of former times, which the visitor to Java notices, are worth recording because they show the survival of a spirit that has almost completely disappeared from our own dominions. When a European walks, or as is more usual, drives along the country roads, the natives whom he meets remove their hats from their heads and their loads from their shoulders and crouch humbly by the roadside. Again, on the railways the ticket examiner approaches with a suppliant air and begs to see your ticket, while he holds out his right hand for it grasping his right wrist with his left hand. In former times when a man held out his right hand to give or take something from you his left hand was free to stab you with his kris. Nowadays only a very few privileged natives in Java are allowed to carry the kris.
Another very noticeable feature of life in the Dutch East Indies, which immediately attracts the attention of a stranger, is the astonishing number of excessively corpulent Europeans. If you travel in the morning in the steam tramcar which runs from the residential part of Batavia to the business quarter of the town, you will see as many noticeably stout men as you will see in the City of London in a year, or, as I was credibly informed, as you will see in the city of Amsterdam in a month. It is fairly certain that this unhealthy state of body of a large number of Europeans may be attributed to the institution of the Rijst-tafel, the midday meal of a large majority of the Dutchmen in the East.
This custom is so remarkable that it is worth while to give a description of it. The foundation of the meal, as its name implies, is rice. You sit at table with a soup plate in front of you, a smaller flat plate beside it and a spoon, a knife and a fork. The first servant brings a large bowl of rice from which you help yourself liberally. The second brings a kind of vegetable stew which you pour over the heap of rice. Then follows a remarkable procession; I have myself seen at an hotel in Batavia fourteen different boys bringing as many different dishes, and I have seen stalwart Teutons taking samples from every dish. These boys bring fish of various sorts and of various cookeries, bones of chickens cooked in different ways and eggs of various ages, and last of all comes a boy bearing a large tray covered with many different kinds of chutneys and sauces from which the connoisseur chooses three or four. The more solid and bony portions find a space on the small flat plate, the others are piled in the soup plate upon the rice. As an experience once or twice the Rijst-tafel is interesting; but as a daily custom it is an abomination. Even when, as in private houses, the number of dishes is perhaps not more than three or four, the main foundation of the meal is a solid pile of rice, which is not at all a satisfactory diet for Europeans. The Rijst-tafel is not a traditional native custom but a modern innovation, and there is a tendency among the more active members of the community to replace it by a more rational meal.
CUSTOMS OF THE DUTCH
The houses of the Europeans are of the bungalow type with high-pitched roofs of red tiles and surrounded by wide verandahs, which are actually the living rooms of the house. The Dutch are good gardeners and are particularly fond of trees, which they plant close about their houses and so ensure a pleasant shade, though they harbour rather more mosquitoes and other insects than is pleasant. In strange contrast with the scrupulous cleanliness of the houses and the tidiness of the streets, you will see in Batavia a state of things which it is hard to reconcile with the usual commonsense of the Dutch. Through the middle of the town runs a canalised river of red muddy water, partly sewer and partly bathing place and so on of the natives, and in it are washed all the clothes of the population, both native and European. Your clothes return to you white enough, but you put them on with certain qualms when you remember whence they came. The town has an excellent supply of pure water, and it is astonishing that the authorities do not put an end to this most insanitary practice.
Dutch people in the East Indies have modified their habits, especially in the matter of clothing, to suit the requirements of the climate, and while they have to some extent sacrificed elegance to comfort, their costume is at all events more rational than that of many Englishmen in the East, who cling too affectionately to the fashions of Europe and often wear too much clothing. The men, who do the greater part of the day’s work between seven in the morning and one o’clock, wear a plain white suit of cotton or linen. The afternoon is spent in taking a siesta and at about five o’clock they go to their clubs or other amusements in the same sort of attire as in the morning. The ladies, except in the larger towns where European dress is the custom, appear in public during the greater part of the day in a curiously simple costume. The upper part of the body is clothed in a short white cotton jacket, below which the coloured native sarong extends midway down the leg. Low slippers are worn on bare feet, the hair hangs undressed down the back and the costume is usually completed by an umbrella. It must be admitted that the effect is not ornamental, but the costume is doubtless cool and comfortable, and it prevents any risk there might be of injury to the health from wearing an excessive amount of clothing. They appear more conventionally dressed about five o’clock, when the social business of the day begins. The ladies pay calls while the men meet at the club and play cards until an uncomfortably late dinner at about nine o’clock.
BOTANIC GARDEN
About an hour’s journey by railway from Batavia is the hill station of Buitenzorg. Although it is hardly more than eight hundred feet above the sea the climate is noticeably cooler (the mean annual temperature is 75°), and one feels immediately more vigorous than down in the low country. The palace of the Governor General, formerly the house of Sir Stamford Raffles, stands at the edge of the Botanic Garden, which alone, even if you saw nothing else, would justify a visit to Java. Plants from all the Tropics grow there in the best possible conditions, and you see them to advantage as you never can in their natural forest surroundings, where the trunks of the trees are obscured by a tangle of undergrowth. Every part of the garden is worth exploring, but one of the most curious and interesting sections is the collection of Screw-pines (Pandanus) and Cycads, which have a weirdly antediluvian appearance. Another very beautiful sight is the ponds of Water-lilies from different parts of the world. The native gardener in charge of them informed me that the different species have different and definite hours for the opening and closing of their flowers. I tested his statement in two instances and found the flowers almost exactly punctual. There was no cloud in the sky nor appearance of any change in the weather, and the reason for this behaviour is not easy to explain. At Sindanglaya in the mountains a few miles distant is an offshoot from the Buitenzorg garden, where plants of a more temperate climate flourish, and experiments are made on plants of economic value to the country.
A few hours’ journey east from Buitenzorg is Garoet (2,300 feet above the sea), which lies in a beautiful fertile valley surrounded by forest-covered mountains. The climate is an almost ideal one, the nights are cool and the days are not too hot. A very remarkable feature of the country about Garoet is the great flocks, or rather droves, of ducks which you meet being driven along the roads from the villages to their pastures in the rice fields. These ducks differ from the ordinary domestic duck in their extraordinary erect attitude, from which they have been well called Penguin ducks. Whether their upright posture is due to their walking or not I do not know, but they are excellent walkers and are sometimes driven long distances to their feeding grounds. When a duck is tired and lags behind, the boy who herds them picks it up by the neck, and you may sometimes see him walking along with a bunch of two or three ducks in either hand.
Others of our party visited Djokjakarta and the Buddhist Temples of Boro-Boder in Central Java and the mountain resort of Tosari in the volcanic region of Eastern Java. Tosari is more than five thousand feet above the sea, and is of great value to the Dutch as a sanatorium for soldiers