Page:Java, facts and fancies (IA javafactsfancies00witarich).pdf/26

red velvet portières, the same indescribable smell of sherry, stewed-meat, and cigars in the passages, the same funereally-clad waiters round the table d'hôte, and the same dishes upon it. Thus I thought in my old European days. But, since, I have come to Java, and I have seen a Batavia hotel—a rumah makan. Ah! that was a surprise, a shock, a revelation—I would say "un frisson nouveau" if Batavia and shivering were compatible terms. "Un étouffement nouveau" better expressed my sensations, as it flashed upon me in full noon-day glory. Noon is its own time, its hour of hours, the instant when those opposing elements of Batavia street-life—the native population most conspicuous of a morning, and the European contingent preponderant in the evening—attain that exact equipoise which gives the place its particular character; and when the conditions of sky, air, and earth are attuned to truest harmony with it.

The great, strong, full noon-day sun beats on the stuccoed buildings, heating their whiteness to an intolerable incandescence. It has set the garden ablaze, burning up the long grey shadows of early morning to round patches of a charred black, that cling to the foot of the trees; and making the air to quiver visibly above the scorched yellow grass-plots. Among their dark leafage, the hibiscus flowers flare like living flame; and the red-and-orange blossoms, dropping from the branches of the Flame of the Forest, seem to lie on the path like smouldering embers. Through this blaze of light and colour, move groups of gaudily-draped natives—water-carriers, flower-sellers, fruit-vendors, pedlars selling silk and precious stones—their heads protected from the sun by enormous mushroom-shaped hats of plaited straw, and their shining shoulders bending under a bamboo yoke,