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These subsequent visits, however, lacked that which gave so great a charm to my first walk through the gardens the spontaneous courtesy and graceful learning of the curator. View of Mount Salak Railway travelling in Java Soekaboemi No coolies A long walk Making a pikulan Forest path Tji Wangi at last. It is two in the afternoon, and I have just taken the curious Javan meal called rice-table.
This he readily did, and told me that it was all right; that he would take me to Tji Wangi. So I got into the sadoe, expecting to be driven promptly to my destination. But the thing was not so simple. After an hour and a half of driving over mountain roads, the Malay pulled up suddenly under the shelter of a wayside inn.
The average size of the Javan coffee plantations is from 400 to 500 acres. At Tji Wangi there were 500 acres laid down in coffee, and 300 in cinchona. Part of the plantation was new, and H had done some clearing since he had taken over the estate. He described the process. The first thing to be done was to clear the forest.
When an hour had passed and there were still no signs of the plantation, I began to feel less cheerful. I stopped and interrogated the cooly. He smiled blandly. He at least was suffering from no misgivings. Like the young man in "Excelsior," he pointed upwards. We met some natives; I accosted them with "Mana Tji Wangi?" They too pointed up the mountain.
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.
The various species of this genus are called by the general name of bayam, of which some are edible, as before observed. This the natives shred fine and wear about their persons. The pandan pudak, or keura of Thunberg, which is also fragrant, I have reason to believe the same as the wangi. The common sort is employed for hedging and called caldera by Europeans in many parts of India.
After waiting some moments, I confided my troubles to a bystander, addressing him in French, which is spoken by the Europeans in Java almost as much as Dutch. Fortunately Tji Wangi the unpronounceable name of H 's plantation seemed to be well known, and he grasped the situation at once. "You ought to have gone to Tji Reingass," he said; "the coolies will be there." "How far am I from Tji Wangi?
After sundry jokes, whilst we were all bursting with laughter at the theatrical phenomenon, the Wakungu who were present, some twenty in number, threw themselves in line upon their bellies, and wriggling like fish, n'yanzigged, n'goned, and demaned, and uttered other wonderful words of rejoining as, for instance, "Hai Minange! Hai Mkama wangi!"
At Tji Wangi I was shown a recent importation from Sydney Lonely, who was destined to lower the colours of the Regent of Tjandjoer recently carried to victory by Thistle, also an Australian horse. They were kept in first-rate order. The stalls were occupied chiefly by country-bred ponies, the progeny of the native races of the neighbouring islands of Sandalwood and Timor.
Wallace also speaks of the rare and beautiful butterflies which he captured here. In particular he secured a specimen of the calliper butterfly, "remarkable for having on each hind wing two curved tails like a pair of callipers." It is in this neighbourhood that the large Javan wood-pigeons which I saw at Tji Wangi are to be found.
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