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Updated: June 16, 2025
It is not unlike a German watering-place in aspect, and has been named by some "the Simla of the Dutch Indies," though I should say this comparison was rather far-fetched. The volcanic mountain of Gedéh, and the peak of Pangerango are plainly discernible from Buitenzorg, and a journey to the summit of the former is amply repaid by the splendid view thence obtained of the rich Preanger district.
While this personage is at Buitenzorg he may be frequently observed driving down the great avenue of Kanarie trees in his state coach drawn by four horses. I had been told not to omit to visit Batoe Toelis, "the place of the written stone," where there is an ancient inscription, and Kotta Batoe with its celebrated bath presided over by a Chinaman. My first expedition was to this latter place.
Before closing this chapter I may mention that there is a considerable plantation of gutta-percha trees in the horticultural garden at Buitenzorg. Treub.
In truth a more uninteresting country than this part of the island I have seldom seen, and, as L. remarked, very few weeks of Buitenzorg would fill Hanwell! One incident, however, I should not omit to mention: a grand review of the troops was held during our stay here, in the Palace Park, and having obtained cards, we were admitted to view the proceedings.
An inquiry into the nature of the respective rights in the soil of the cultivator, the native princes, and the Government resulted in establishing the fact that, of the subject territory the Government was sole owner of seven-tenths. Of the remainder, two-tenths belonged to the Preanger Regents, and one-tenth was occupied by private estates, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Buitenzorg and Batavia.
We had been prepared by Miss Scidmore's book for the beauties of Buitenzorg, and for once expectation was more than realised.
When he visited the west of the island, he found still more valuable specimens in the Preanger regencies, twenty miles south of Buitenzorg. Among the mountains of this neighbourhood, and at an elevation of 4000 feet, he collected in a fortnight forty species of birds, "almost all of which were peculiar to the Javanese fauna."
Seen from Buitenzorg the general effect is not unlike that of the tiers of a theatre, while in the distance the individual terraces show smooth surfaces varying in colour from emerald green to saffron yellow, or flashing with the brightness of still and sunlit waters. Indeed, there is much to be seen at Buitenzorg with but little expenditure of time or trouble.
The following morning dawns like an ideal day of June, and we start in chairs, carried by four coolies, for the beautiful Falls of Tjibereum. A mountain road winds through rice-fields and tree-ferns towards fold upon fold of lilac peaks, until we reach the mountain garden of Tjibodas, the beautiful supplement of incomparable Buitenzorg.
It takes three and a half hours by express train from Bandoeng to Buitenzorg, the summer capital of the Indies, and the journey is one of the pleasantest in Java, the railway being bordered for miles by marvellously constructed rice terraces which climb the slopes of the Gedei, tier on tier, transforming the mountainsides into a series of hanging gardens.
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