DUTCH COLONIAL SYSTEM. 107 the chiefs, and the remainder is divided among the workmen. This surplus in good years is something considerable. On the whole, the people are well fed and decently clothed, and have acquired habits of steady industry and the art of scientific cultivation, which must be of service to them in the future. It must be remembered that the Government expended capital for years before any return was obtained; and if they now derive a large revenue, it is in a way which is far less burdensome, and far more beneficial to the people than any tax that could be levied. But although the system may be a good one, and as well adapted to the development of arts and industry in a halfcivilized people as it is to the material advantage of the governing country, it is not pretended that in practice it is perfectly carried out. The oppressive and servile relations between chiefs and people which have continued for perhaps a thousand years can not be at once abolished, and some evil must result from those relations till the spread of education and the gradual infusion of European blood causes it naturally and insensibly to disappear. It is said that the Residents, desirous of showing a large increase in the products of their districts, have sometimes pressed the people to such continued labor on the plantations that their rice crops have been materially diminished, and famine has been the result. If this has happened, it is certainly not a common thing, and is to be set down to the abuse of the system, by the want of judgment or want of humanity in the Resident. A tale has lately been written in Holland, and translated into English, entitled "Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading-company," and with our usual one-sidedness in all relating to the Dutch Colonial System, this work has been excessively praised, both for its own merits, and for its supposed crushing exposure of the iniquities of the Dutch government of Java. Greatly to my surprise, I found it a very tedious and long-winded story, full of rambling digressions, and whose only point is to show that the Dutch Residents and Assistant Residents wink at the extortions of the native princes; and that in some districts the natives have to do work without payment, and have their goods taken away from them without compensation. Every statement of this kind is thickly interspersed with italics and capital letters; but as the names are all fictitious, and neither dates, figures, nor details are ever given, it is impossible to verify or answer them. Even if not exaggerated, the facts stated are not nearly so bad as those of the oppression by free-trade indigo-planters, and torturing by native tax-gatherers under British rule in India, with which the readers of English newspapers were familiar a few years ago. Such oppression, however, is not fairly to be imputed in either case to the particular form of government, but is rather due to the infirmity of human nature, and to the impossibility of at once destroying all trace of ages of despotism on the one side, and of slavish obedience to their chiefs on the other. It must be remembered that the complete establishment of the Dutch power in Java is much more recent than that of our rule in India, and that there have been several changes of government, and in the mode of raising revenue. The inhabitants have been so recently under the rule of their native princes that it is not easy at once to destroy the excessive reverence they feel for their old masters, or to diminish the oppressive exactions which the latter have always been accustomed to make. There is, however, one grand test of the prosperity, and even of the happiness, of a community, which we can apply here-the rate of increase of the population. It is universally admitted that, when a country increases rapidly in population, the people can not be very greatly oppressed or very badly governed. The present system of raising a revenue by the cultivation of coffee and sugar, sold to Government at a fixed price, began in 1832. Just before this, in 1826, the population by census was 5,500,000, while at the beginning of the century it was estimated at 3,500,000. In 1850, when the cultivation system had been in operation eighteen years, the population by census was over 9,500,000, or an increase of 73 per cent. in twenty-four years. At the last census, in 1865, it amounted to 14,168,416, an increase of very nearly 50 per cent. in fifteen years-a rate which would double the population in about twenty-six years. As Java (with Madura) contains about 38,500 geographical square miles, this will give an average of 368 persons to the SCENERY AND PRODUCTIONS. 109 square mile, just double that of the populous and fertile Bengal Presidency as given in Thornton's Gazetteer of India, and fully one-third more than that of Great Britain and Ireland at the last census. If, as I believe, this vast population is on the whole contented and happy, the Dutch Government should consider well before abruptly changing a system which has led to such great results. Taking it as a whole, and surveying it from every point of view, Java is probably the very finest and most interesting tropical island in the world. It is not first in size, but it is more than 600 miles long, and from 60 to 120 miles wide, and in area is nearly equal to England; and it is undoubtedly the most fertile, the most productive, and the most populous island within the tropics. Its whole surface is magnificently varied with mountain and forest scenery. It possesses thirty-eight volcanic mountains, several of which rise to ten or twelve thousand feet high. Some of these are in constant activity, and one or other of them displays almost every phenomenon produced by the action of subterranean fires, except regular lava streams, which never occur in Java. The abundant moisture and tropical heat of the climate causes these mountains to be clothed with luxuriant vegetation, often to their very summits, while forests and plantations cover their lower slopes. The animal productions, especially the birds and insects, are beautiful and varied, and present many peculiar forms found nowhere else upon the globe. The soil throughout the island is exceedingly fertile, and all the productions of the tropics, together with many of the temperate zones, can be easily cultivated. Java too possesses a civilization, a history and antiquities of its own, of great interest. The Brahminical religion flourished in it from an epoch of unknown antiquity till about the year 1478, when that of Mohammed superseded it. The former religion was accompanied by a civilization which has not been equalled by the conquerors; for, scattered through the country, especially in the eastern part of it, are found buried in lofty forests, temples, tombs, and statues of great beauty and grandeur; and the remains of extensive cities, where the tiger, the rhinoceros, and the wild bull now roam undisturbed. A modern civilization of another type is now spreading over the land; good roads run through the country from end to end; European and native rulers work harmoniously together; and life and property are as well secured as in the best-governed states of Europe. I believe, therefore, that Java may fairly claim to be the finest tropical island in the world, and equally interesting to the tourist seeking after new and beautiful scenes, to the naturalist who desires to examine the variety and beauty of tropical nature, or to the moralist and the politician who want to solve the problem of how man may be best governed under new and varied conditions. The Dutch mail-steamer brought me from Ternate to Sourabaya, the chief town and port in the eastern part of Java, and after a fortnight spent in packing up and sending off my last collections, I started on a short journey into the interior. Travelling in Java is very luxurious, but very expensive, the only way being to hire or borrow a carriage, and then pay half a crown a mile for post-horses, which are changed at regular posts every six miles, and will carry you at the rate of ten miles an hour from one end of the island to the other. Bullock-carts or coolies are required to carry all extra baggage. As this kind of travelling would not suit my means, I determined on making only a short journey to the district at the foot of Mount Arjuna, where I was told there were extensive forests, and where I hoped to be able to make some good collections. The country for many miles behind Sourabaya is perfectly flat, and everywhere cultivated, being a delta or alluvial plain watered by many branching streams. Immediately around the town the evident signs of wealth and of an industrious population were very pleasing; but as we went on, the constant succession of open fields skirted by rows of bamboos, with here and there the white buildings and tall chimney of a sugar-mill, became monotonous. The roads run in straight lines for several miles at a stretch, and are bordered by rows of dusty tamarind-trees. At each mile there are little guard-houses, where a policeman is stationed; and there is a wooden gong, which by means of concerted signals may be made to convey information over the country with great rapidity. About ANCIENT CITY OF MODJO-PAHIT. 111 every six or seven miles is the post-house, where the horses are changed as quickly as were those of the mail in the old coaching-days in England. I stopped at Modjo-kerto, a small town about forty miles south of Sourabaya, and the nearest point on the high-road to the district I wished to visit. I had a letter of introduction to Mr. Ball, an Englishman long resident in Java and married to a Dutch lady, and he kindly invited me to stay with him till I could fix on a place to suit me. A Dutch Assistant Resident as well as a Regent, or native Javanese prince, lived here. The town was neat, and had a nice open grassy space like a village green, on which stood a magnificent figtree (allied to the banyan of India, but more lofty), under whose shade a kind of market is continually held, and where the inhabitants meet together to lounge and chat. The day after my arrival Mr. Ball drove me over to the village of Modjo-agong, where he was building a house and premises for the tobacco trade, which is carried on here by a system of native cultivation and advance purchase, somewhat similar to the indigo trade in British India. On our way we staid to look at a fragment of the ruins of the ancient city of Modjo-pahit, consisting of two lofty brick masses, apparently the sides of a gateway. The extreme perfection and beauty of the brick-work astonished me. The bricks are exceedingly fine and hard, with sharp angles and true surfaces. They are laid with great exactness, without visible mortar or cement, yet somehow fastened together so that the joints are hardly perceptible, and sometimes the two surfaces coalesce in a most incomprehensible manner. Such admirable brick-work I have never seen before or since. There was no sculpture here, but abundance of bold projections and finelyworked mouldings. Traces of buildings exist for many miles in every direction, and almost every road and pathway shows a foundation of brick-work beneath it-the paved roads of the old city. In the house of the waidono, or district chief, at Modjo-agong, I saw a beautiful figure carved in high relief out of a block of lava, and which had been found buried in the ground near the village. On my expressing a wish to obtain some such specimen, Mr. B. asked the chief for it, and, much to my surprise, he immediately gave it me. It repre |