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At first it towered in its pride of greatness, then it grew soft in the blue distance. At last the railway turns abruptly at Karan Tenjak, and it is gone. As the train nears Soekaboemi the character of the country changes. Plantations of sugar in the level country and of tea on the uplands take the place of ricefields.
The kind proprietor of the Soekaboemi Hotel offers every facility to those guests anxious to penetrate below the surface of Soendanese life, placing his carriage and himself at the disposal of the visitor, and affording a mine of information otherwise unattainable, for books on Java are few and far between, and the work of Sir Stamford Raffles continues the best authority on island life and customs, though a century has elapsed since it was written.
On my return I found the carriage clean, but the dust transferred to my baggage. Had there been any one in the carriage, I should have found out that Soekaboemi was not the right station for H 's plantation.
Is it within driving distance?" I inquired. "Yes." "Can I take a sadoe?" "Yes, certainly." There were several sadoes outside the station at Soekaboemi. As my knowledge of Malay, the recognized language for communication between natives and Europeans, was strictly limited, I asked my new friend to find out if the Malay "boy" knew where Tji Wangi was.
It meets at Soekaboemi, and it is hoped that, by means of concerted action, such grievances will be brought more effectively before the Government. After all, the planters are the real producers of the island, and their importance increases every year in proportion as the area of Government plantations is reduced. In many respects the planters are allied with the native princes.
The elastic and gracefully-modelled figures of the Soendanese populace betoken a purer race than that of the steamy Batavian lowlands, where foreign elements deteriorate the native stock. The Hotel Victoria at Soekaboemi consists of detached white buildings round tree-filled courts, erected on the "pavilion system."
At the time of my visit he was the owner of the premier horse in the island Thistle, whose sire was Teviot of West Australia. The planters round Soekaboemi are also among the principal supporters of horse-racing in Java. In Java, as elsewhere, they had a grievance.
The name Soekaboemi means "pleasant place," and the town is the centre of the planting interest in Java. In its immediate neighbourhood are coffee, cinchona, and tea plantations. At a quarter to eleven the train drew up in a large and excellently arranged station. I at once made my way outside. Here I looked in vain for the horses and coolies I expected to meet me.
Soekaboemi was only thirty or forty miles away, but I left Buitenzorg at eight o'clock in order to escape the discomfort of travelling in the middle of the day. It goes without saying that trains in the tropics do not carry you along as quickly as the Flying Dutchman or the Scotch express.
The next stage in the traveller's journey is to Tjandjoer and thence to Garvet. And after a week at Garvet on again to Djoedja, Solo, Semarang, etc., but the traveller had already had sufficient of hotel life in Java, and so determined to at once avail himself of a kind invitation he had received to stay on an estate, not many miles from Soekaboemi.
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