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Updated: June 25, 2025
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."
It is the unexpected that happens. We got to Sindanglaya without any more serious damage than a bottle of Odol distributed amongst our best clothes. Governor-General Daendels seems to have had a high opinion of this remarkable highway. We read: "The obstinacy with which he carried through his scheme of constructing the main road to the Preanger Regencies across this summit is really amazing.
Glorious bamboos form arches of feathery green meeting across the road, and the busy China campong, or désar in Preanger parlance, is full of life and movement with the first streak of day, for all trade in Java depends upon the indefatigable industry of the Celestial.
A long day's journey lies between Garoet and Djokjacarta, which popular parlance abbreviates into Djokja. From the blue Preanger hills and palm-shadowed upland plains, the railway descends by steep gradients to the dense jungle and fever-laden swamp known as the Terra Ingrata.
The pretty désas of plaited palm and bamboo, hiding in depths of tropical woodland, with blue thunbergia clambering over every verandah, and the Preanger girls, with their brilliant slandangs of orange and scarlet, amber and purple, make vivid points of colour in the foreground of blue mountain and dusky forest.
In those in which there are large towns, especially in the eastern districts, the native workers, both coolies and artisans, are paid at a considerably higher rate than they are in the Preanger Regencies. I have already mentioned the wayang as one of the most popular amusements of the natives, and I shall have something more to say about it in connection with the native literature.
The Preanger Regency was the heart of ancient Mataram, that historic kingdom of old-world Java round which perpetual warfare waged for centuries.
At Batavia an English resident had said, "When you are at Buitenzorg you should go on to Soekaboemi and see a coffee plantation. Subsequently he wrote that his friend H would expect me on Tuesday at his coffee plantation with an unpronounceable name in the Preanger district. The morrow was Tuesday.
The Soendanese of the Preanger hills, less in contact with the external world, retains traces of life's ancient simplicity, and though a keen intelligence forms no part of his mental equipment, his desire to please and satisfy his employer is of pathetic intensity.
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