dancers advertised to appear on Broadway, I strongly
advise you not to miss them.

Instead of going to Palm Beach next winter, or to Havana, or to the
Riviera, why don't you go out to Bali and see its lovely women, its
curious customs, and its superb scenery for yourself? You can get there
in about eight weeks, provided you make good connections at Singapore
and Surabaya. With no railways, no street-cars, no hotels, no
newspapers, no theatres, no movies, it is a very restful place. You can
lounge the lazy days away in the cool depths of flower-smothered
verandahs, with a brown house-boy pulling at the punkah-rope and
another bringing you cool drinks in tall, thin glasses--for the
Volstead Act does not run west of the 160th meridian--or you can stroll
in the moonlight on the long white beaches with lithe brown beauties
who wear passion-flowers in their raven hair. Or, should you weary of
so _dolce far niente_ an existence, you can sail across to Java with
the opium-runners in their fragile _prahaus_, or climb a two-mile-high
volcano, or in the jungles at the western extremity of the island stalk
the clouded tiger. And you can wear pajamas all day long without
apologizing. Everything considered, Bali offers more inducements than
any place I know to the tired business man or the absconding bank
cashier.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA

I entered Java through the back door, as it were. That is to say,
instead of landing at Batavia, which is the capital of Netherlands
India, and presenting my letters of introduction to the
Governor-General, Count van Limburg Stirum, I landed at Pasuruan, at
the eastern extremity of the six-hundred-mile-long island. It was as
though a foreigner visiting the United States were to land at Sag
Harbor, on the far end of Long Island, instead of at New York. I
learned afterward, from the American Consul-General at Batavia, that in
doing this I committed a breach of etiquette. Though the Dutch make no
official objections to foreigners landing where they please in their
Eastern possessions, they much prefer to have them ring the front
doorbell, hand in their cards, and give the authorities an opportunity
to look them over. In these days, with Bolshevik emissaries stealthily
at work throughout the archipelago, the Dutch feel that it behooves
them to inspect strangers with some care before giving them the run of
the islands.

We landed at Pasuruan because it is the port nearest to