the apples of Japan, flourish in company with the peach, pineapple and orange of Europe-aye, and even with the strawberry, which extends its growth along the banks of the streams.

All this is the innocence of nature. But side by side with it prevails another and more formidable world that of the higher vegetable energies, the plants of temptation, seductive, yet fatal, which double the pleasures, while shortening the duration of life.

At present they reign throughout the earth, from pole to pole. They make and unmake nations. The least of these terrible spirits has wrought a greater change in the globe than any war. They have implanted in man the volcanic fires; and a soul, a violent spirit which is indefinable, which seems less a human thing than a creature of the planet. They have effected a revolution, which, above all, has changed our idea of time. Tobacco kills the hours and renders them insensible. Coffee shortens them by the stimulus it affords the brain; it converts them into minutes.

Foremost among the sources of intoxication to which care unhappily resorts, we must name alcohol. Eight species of the sugar-cane which thrive in Java abundantly supply this agent of delirium and forcible feebleness. No less abundantly flourishes tobacco, the herb of dreams, which has enshrouded the world in its misty vapors. Fortunately Java also produces immense supplies of its antidote, coffee. It is this which contends against tobacco, and supplies the place of alcohol. The island of Java alone furnishes a fourth of all the coffee drank by man, and a coffee, too, of fine quality, which has been dried sufficiently, without any fear of reducing its weight.

Formerly Java and its neighboring lands were known as spice islands only, and as producing freely violent drugs and medicinal poisons. Frightful stories were circulated of its deadly plants, the juice of which was a mortal venom-of the-Gueva-Upas, which but to touch was death!

CLIMATE.

He who would see the East in all the fullness of its magical, voluptuous and sinister forces, should explore the great bazaars of Java. There the curious. jewels wrought by the cunning Indian hand are exposed to the desires of woman, temptation and the cost of pleasure. There, too, may be seen another seductive agency-the vegetable fury of the burning and scorching plains which is so eagerly sought after; the perfumes of terrible herbs and flowers, as yet unnamed. Marvelous and profound the night, in its sweet repose, after the violent heats of the day! But be cautious in your enjoyment of it; as it grows old it breathes death!

Take note of this: The peculiarity that gives to these bazaars so curious an effect is, that all the thronging crowds are dusky, with dark complexions, and all the animals are black. The contrast is singular in this land of glowing light. The heat seems to have burned up everything, and tinted each object with shadow. The little horses, as they gallop past you, seem but so many flashes of darkness; the buffaloes, slowly arriving, loaded with fruit and flowers-with the most radiant gifts of life-all wear a livery of bluish black.

Beware, at this time of night, not to wander too far, or ramble in the higher grounds, lest you should

encounter the black panther, whose green eyes illumine the obscurity with a terrific glare! And—who knows?-the splendid tyrant of the forest, the black tiger, may have begun his midnight prowl-that formidable phantom which the Malays of Java believe to be the spirit of Death!

I have quoted thus, at some length, from the writings of Michelet, as the ideas advanced will serve alike for Sumatra and some of the Mollucca Islands.

Borneo, singularly, is altogether free from the eruptic, volcanic and earthquake forces. Situated almost directly in the course of the "fire belt," there are yet no authentic records in the history of Borneo, for ages past, of any of those fearful outbursts so frequent in Java and Sumatra.

LITTLE JAVA.

Much more could be written of Java and the islands surrounding it. As almost a part of the greater island, we might cite Little Java, with nearly four thousand square miles of area, and a population of about eight hundred thousand people. Separated from Great Java by a strait hardly two miles in width, its configuration, climate, inhabitants and products are so similar that a description would but tire the reader.

COFFEE.

Before leaving Java, it might be well to notice coffee, the principal and most valuable product of that island. Coffea Aribica, no doubt, derives its name. from Kaffa, a district of Southern Abyssinia, on the east coast of Africa. The coffee plant is an evergreen,

and was first found growing wild in Arabia, Africa and some portions of South America. It is sometimes cultivated at a height of six thousand feet above the sea-level, but this only in warm countries, as the tree does not thrive in climates where the thermometer falls below 55 deg.

In its wild state the tree grows from ten to thirty feet high, but when cultivated it is pruned down to five or six feet-the yield being greater, while the berry is much easier to harvest. The young plants are usually grown from the seed in nurseries, and when a year old are transplanted to such localities as desired. The tree, in favorable climates, begins to bear fruit at three years, but hardly in paying quantities until the fifth year. From this age the plant bears from two to three crops per annum for twenty years, after which the yield is hardly profitable, when the older trees are replaced with younger plants.

The fruit of the coffee tree greatly resembles the cherry, in size and color, when ripe; the coffee, as we see it in commerce, being the seeds, of which there are two to each berry. The kernels are extracted, after the fruit is thoroughly dried, by being passed through wooden rollers, which crush and separate the hull from the grains.

The best coffee is Mocha, grown in the province of Yemen, in Arabia; that from Java taking second place. Brazil is credited with producing something over half of all the coffee consumed in the world, although the quality is not equal to Mocha or Java. It is a little difficult to judge of the brands of coffee of fered in the markets nowadays, as much that is grown in outside districts, and of an inferior quality, is shipped to Mocha and other leading districts, and re-shipped

under the brands of the best products from those places.

Little is known of the early history of coffee, although we read of its being used as a beverage in Ethiopia as early as A. D. 875. At a more modern period, we note its introduction into Arabia from Africa-in the fifteenth century-and in Venice in 1615, and in England in about 1640. It was first introduced into Java by the Dutch between 1680 and 1690.

BORNEO.

This great island, whose area exceeds 284,000 square miles, lying on either side of the equator, between latitude 7 deg. 10 min. north and 3 deg. 40 min. south, and between longitudes 109 deg. 30 min. and 118 deg. 30 min. east, is the third in size among the islands of the Pacific.

The population is about three millions. There are many beautiful bays and inlets along its two thousand miles of coast line, although navigation is made exceedingly dangerous by the many islets and rocks. that dot the sea along its shores. Beautiful rivers traverse Borneo, winding through its valley and plains, and are in most cases broad, navigable streams. Forty of this character are already known.

Great ranges of mountains rib the island here and there, some of them towering nearly 14,000 feet above the level of the sea.

TOPOGRAPHY.

Physically speaking, Borneo may be described as one immense forest, generally of moderate elevation