ain his ends, this time
presenting his Goanese Majesty with a motor-car, gorgeous with scarlet
paint and polished brass. And, in order that the King might be brought
to realize that the roads were not in a condition conducive to
comfortable motoring, a young Dutch officer took him for his first
motor ride. That ride evidently jolted the memory as well as the body
of the dusky monarch, for the next day a royal edict was issued
summoning hundreds of natives to put the road in good repair. And, as
the King quickly acquired a taste for speeding, in good repair it has
remained ever since.

I have related this episode not because it is in itself of any great
importance, but because it serves to illustrate the methods used by the
Dutch officials in handling recalcitrant or stubborn natives. Though
Holland rules her fifty million brown subjects with an iron hand, she
has long since learned the wisdom of wearing over the iron a velvet
glove.

CHAPTER VII

DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN

I went to Bali, which is an island two-thirds the size of Porto Rico,
off the eastern extremity of Java, because I wished to see for myself
if the accounts I had heard of the surpassing beauty of its women were
really true. The Dutch officials whom I had met in Samarinda and
Makassar had depicted the obscure little isle as a flaming, fragrant
garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where
bronze-brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing loveliness
disported themselves on the long white beaches, or loitered the lazy
days away beneath the palms. But I went there skeptical at heart, for,
ever since I journeyed six thousand miles to see the women for whom
Circassia has long been undeservedly famous, I have listened with doubt
and distrust to the tales told by returned travelers of the nymphs whom
they had found, leading an Arcadian existence, on distant tropic isles.

Yet I must admit that, when the anchor of the _Negros_ splashed into
the blue waters off Boeleleng, on the northern coast of the island, and
a boat's crew of white-clad Filipinos rowed me ashore, I half expected
to find a Balinese edition of the Ziegfeld Follies chorus waiting to
greet me with demonstrations of welcome and garlands of flowers. What I
did find on the wharf was a surly Dutch harbor-master, who, judging
from his breath and disposition, had been on a prolonged carouse. Of
the women whose beauty I had heard chanted in so many ports, or,
ind