ouble them with ceremony; the
house and all that belonged to it seemed to be theirs as long as they
chose to stay. Whose was the furniture, or who provided the
entertainment, they knew not. In those comfortable quarters, they
determined to halt for the next day, and try to get a little shooting.

The naturalist, however, on this evening, employed himself more
rationally than his companions. While they went out shooting, he took
his hammer and went to the ravine, to learn something about the masses
of lava and basalt which lay every where. The whole ground gave
evidences of the existence of an ancient volcano. The circular lake
seemed to have been a crater; its depth was said to be three hundred
and ninety feet. But the noble proportions of the landscape still
attracted the eye, and within the horizon shot up the pile of the
Semmi,--the loftiest, most perfect, and most majestic-looking cone
that they ever saw in Java, its height being twelve thousand two
hundred and ninety-two feet--a greater elevation than that of the Peak
of Teneriffe. Every thing was lovely in form and colour, and glittered
in the hot sunshine, while a fine fresh breeze from the south tempered
the heat, and gave it the feeling of a summer day at home.

Still, though all this seemed a land of magic, to those who probably
had never thought of Java but as a place of pestilence, of burning
soil, and scorching sunshine, it was not all fairy land. After dinner,
at dusk, as Mr Jukes was strolling round the house smoking a cigar, a
man with a long spear came up to him, and began to turn him back with
an earnest speech, of which the only word he understood was _machan_;
but it was an important one, and the point of the whole oration, for
it is the Javanese for tiger.

Having recourse to one of the party as interpreter, he found that the
spearman was begging of him not to walk in the dark, as tigers were
abundant there; which, he emphatically assured them, eat men, and that
they had even sometimes come into the house. In the veranda they found
a guard of four spearmen, keeping watch for the same purpose. The
Englishman thought that they were jesting, until he saw that none of
the people themselves went a few yards beyond the house without a
torch. One man going to bathe in the lake just below, another
accompanied him with a torch. They also saw four men coming up the
road with two large torches, who, they said, were returning from their
work from the village