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The most interesting examples of this system of dual administration are found in the Vorstenlanden, or "Lands of the Princes," of Surakarta and Djokjakarta, in Middle Java.
We did not see the Sultan, but we saw four sons of his out driving, dressed in red and each carrying a red silk umbrella, the emblem of royalty. The life at Djokjakarta is much like that of old Java, and the peasants are said to be of a higher type than those corresponding to the coolie class in India and Ceylon, many of this class in Java being Sudanese.
The streets were less crowded in Djokjakarta than one would expect in a city which ranks the fifth in Java; everywhere there were groups of really happy-faced children, and mothers looking like mere girls, with infants carried usually on the left hip, sometimes in a sling over the shoulders.
The youngest of his children, now five years old, was, I imagine, a good deal of a surprise, being sometimes referred to by disrespectful Europeans as "the Joke of Djokjakarta."
To prove my own absorption in the day's programme I would state that I amused the party on our arrival at the train by saying to our Malay servant, "Buddha, will you take my wrap?" his name being Pandox. The next morning I drove about Djokjakarta in search of photographs and found the place much more attractive than I had supposed.
Djokjakarta, or Djokja, as it is commonly called, is set in the middle of a broad and fertile plain, at the foot of the slumbering volcano of Merapi, whose occasional awakenings are marked by terrific earthquakes, which shake the city to its foundations and usually result in wide-spread destruction and loss of life.
But, though certain peculiarly barbarous customs which were practised under native rule have been abolished by the Dutch, I have no intention of suggesting that life in Djokjakarta has become colorless and tame. Au contraire!
Djokjakarta is a place of importance, the capital of a native State; the Sultan preserves some semblance of power and lives in regal style, keeping up all the ceremonials of his high office. This was one of the last provinces to yield to Dutch rule. There is a Dutch resident to whom the Sultan must pay deference and from whom he accepts advice.
In the days before the white men came, public executions on the aloun-aloun provided pleasurable excitement for the inhabitants of Djokjakarta, who attended them in great numbers.
Lying squarely in the middle of Java are the Vorstenlanden, "the Lands of the Princes" Soerakarta and Djokjakarta the most curious, as they are the most picturesque, states in the entire Insulinde.
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