CHAPTER VI. ISLANDS T The place is all awave with trees, Of the night-dew, faint-headed; And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem. JAVA. E. B. BROWNING (An Island). HE Island of Java, with its 52,000 square miles, peopled by nearly eighteen millions of inhabitants-the "land of fire," the home of the eruptic volcano and earthquake—has long been the subject of interesting study for the historian and scientist. Here we find, besides innumerable smaller ones, one of the largest volcanic craters in the world, having a circumference around its edge of about twelve miles. In 1772 this crater was in active force, casting its ashes and scoria over a great tract of country. Thousands of inhabitants lost their lives-either caught in their homes by the burning lava, or suffocated by the smoke, ashes and sulphur. The heavens were lit up for hundreds of miles around with a glare only equalled by that of the aurora borealis, the surrounding seas liter 6* ally covered with the finer particles of pumice and ashes, while the dust and smoke hung in and darkened the heavens for days afterwards. Another eruption took place in 1832, with the loss of nearly thirty thousand lives, and again in 1883, when it is supposed one hundred thousand people were destroyed, with a vast waste created over a beautiful and thriving agricultural country. GENERAL FEATURES. The topographical features of the island, its chains of mountains and plateaus, with the valleys lying between, the latter well watered by meandering rivers, are nearly all taken advantage of by a skillful, agricultural people. The waters from abundant rainfalls are treasured in reservoirs on the higher plateaus, and held in reserve for the drier periods. They are thus enabled to reap two crops per annum, and place their plantations in almost continuous bloom. On the cultivated lands, immense quantities of coffee, sugar, rice and cotton are grown, with all the fruits of the tropics, as well as the clove, nutmeg and cinnamon, and other spices. Included in the flora of the native forests are the gutta percha, toa tomano, camphor, sandal, satin-wood and mahogany trees. The agricultural methods adopted by the natives, with the use of irrigation, was imparted to them by the Hindoos and others of the East India countries, who visited this island in great numbers many years previous to the ninth century. The inhabitants at present are hospitable and intelligent-partaking of the higher class of Arabs in character and religion. The Mohammedan belief is general, having been forced on the Javanese by the Arabs in the 15th century. MICHELET ON JAVA. Of Java, Michelet, the great French writer, says: It is dowered with fires. Notwithstanding its limited. area, it possesses as many as the entire continent of America, and all of them more terrible than burning Etna. And to these we must add its liquid volcano, its vein of somber azure which the Japanese call the "Black River." This the great Equatorial Current, which in its northerly course warms the Asiatic seas, is remarkable for its muddiness, and tastes salter than human blood. A hot sea-a torrid sun-volcanic fire-volcanic life! Not a day passes but a tempest breaks out among the Blue Mountains, with lightning so vivid that the eye cannot endure to gaze at it. Torrents of electric rain intoxicate earth and madden vegetation. The very forests smoking with wreathed vapors in the burning sun, seem so many additional volcanoes situated midway on the mountain slopes. In the loftier regions, they are frequently inaccessible, and sometimes so thickly intertangled, so dense, so gloomy, that the traveler who penetrates them must carry torches even at noonday. Nature without an eye to watch her, celebrates there her "orgies of vegetation," and creates, as Blum informs us, her river monsters and colossi. Stemless rhizanthæ seize on the roots of a tree and gorge themselves with its pith and vitality. Travelers speak of a species which measures six feet in circumference. Their splendor, shining in the deep night of the forest, astonishes, nay, almost terrifies the spectator. These children of the darkness owe nothing of their resplendent coloring to the light. Flourishing low down in the warm vapors, and fattened by the breath of earth, they seem to be its luxurious dreams, its strange airy phantasies of desire. Java has two faces. The southern, wears already the aspect of Oceania, enjoys a pure air, and is surrounded by rocks all alive with polypes and madepores. To the north, however, it is still in India-India, with all it inherits of unhealthiness; a black alluvial soil, fermenting with the deadly travail of Nature reacting on herself, with the work of combination and decomposition. Its inhabitants have been compelled to abandon the once opulent town of Bantam, which is now a mass of ruins. Superb Batavia is one triumphant cemetery. In less than thirty years from 1730 to 1752-it swallowed up a million of human lives; sixty thousand in a single twelve-month (1750)! And though it is not so terrible now, its atmosphere has not been purified to any considerable extent. The animals of the primeval world which live forgotten in its bosom are remarkable, it seems, for their funeral aspect. In the evening enormous hairy bats, such as are found nowhere else, flutter to and fro. By day, and even at noon, the strange flying dragon, that memorial of a remote epoch, when the serpent was endowed with wings, does not hesitate to make its appearance. Numerous black animals exist which agree in color with the black basalt of the mountains. And black, too, is the tiger, that terrible destroyer, which as late as 1830, devoured annually 300 lives, TOPOGRAPHY. The double mountain chain, which forms the backbone of Java, is intersected by numerous internal valleys, running in opposite directions, varying the spectacle. This diversity of surface insures a corresponding diversity of vegetation. The soil in the valleys is madreporic, and was once alive. At a higher level it has its foundation of granite, loaded with fertile ruins and hot debris of the volcanoes. The whole is a vast ascending scale, which from sea to mountain presents six different climates, rising from the marine flora and the flora of the marshes to the Alpine flora. A superb amphitheater, rich and abundant at each gradation, bearing the dominant plants and those transitional forms which lead up from one to the other, and lead so ingeniously that without any lacuna or abrupt leap, we are carried onwards, and vainly endeavor to trace between the six climates any rigorous lines of de marcation. In the lowlands facing India and the boiling caldron of the ocean, the mangrove absorbs the vapors. But towards Oceania and the region of the thousand isles, the cocoanut tree rises, with its foot in the emerald wave and its crest lightly rocking in the full fresh breeze. The palm is here of little value. Above its bamboos and resinous trees, Java wears a magnificent girdle, or zone, of forest-a forest wholly composed of teak, the oak of oaks, the finest wood in the world -indestructible teak. * * Here every kind of food, and all the provisions of the five worlds superabound. The rice, maize, figs and bananas of Hindostan; the pears of China; |