in the difficult
agriculture of the mountain region, and the careful cultivation of the
vegetables for which the district is renowned. Day by day, the
Tenggerese women--gaunt, scantily-clad, and almost unsexed by incessant
toil in the teeth of wind and weather--carry down their burdens to the
plain, their backs bent under the weight of the huge crates, while the
brown and wizened children are prematurely aged and deformed by their
share in the family toil. The more prosperous inhabitant carries his
vegetables on a mountain pony, trained to wonderful feats in the art of
sliding up and climbing down walls of rock almost devoid of foothold,
for the riding of Tenggerese youth and maiden rivals that of the Sioux
Indian. Misdirected zeal strips the hills of forest growth; the scanty
pines of the higher zone serving as fuel, and the ruthless destruction
of timber brings the dire result of decreasing rainfall. Only bamboo
remains wherewith to build the communal houses, formerly constructed of
tastefully blended woods, and the flimsy substitute, unfitted to resist
drenching rain and raging wind, is dragged with the utmost difficulty
from cleft and gorge along rude tracks hewn out in the mountain side.
Rice, elsewhere the mainstay of life in Java, has never been cultivated
by the Tenggerese, the sowing and planting of the precious crop being
forbidden to them during the era of gradual retreat before the
Mohammedan army centuries ago, and the innate conservatism of the
secluded tribe, in spite of life's altered environment, clings to the
dead letter of an obsolete law. The tigers, once numerous round Tosari,
have retreated into the jungle clothing the lower hills, and seldom
issue from their forest lairs unless stress of weather drives them
upward for a nightly prowl round byre and pen. The destruction of
covert renders Tosari immune from this past peril, and the tragic tiger
stories related round the hearthstone of the communal house are
becoming oral traditions of a forgotten day, gathering round themselves
the moss and lichen of fable and myth.

The main interest of Tosari centres round the stupendous Bromo,
possessing the largest crater in the world, a fathomless cavity three
miles in diameter, veiled in Stygian darkness, and suggesting the
yawning mouth of hell. This bottomless pit, bubbling like a boiling
cauldron, pouring out black volumes of sulphureous smoke, and
clamouring with unceasing thunder, was for ages a blood-sta