ll sleep all night there." So he leaves his heavy
luggage behind in the hotel, and packs a bag, jumps into a sadoe, and in
less than two hours he finds himself in one of the healthiest climates
in the world, and in the midst of surroundings as novel as they are
delightful.

The train by which I had arranged to travel to Buitenzorg left the
Weltevreden station at the convenient hour of half-past four in the
afternoon. It only stopped once, and accomplished the distance in the
fairly good time of one hour and twenty minutes. Here, again, as at
Tanjong Priok, I was agreeably surprised with the size and convenience
of the stations. The railway employes were Chinese and Javanese. The
latter were dressed in peaked caps and blue serge coats and trousers,
but wore rather unnecessarily waist-clothes and head-bands on the top of
their European dress.

In Java, as elsewhere, the Anglo-Saxon abounded. The occupants of the
railway carriage were, with two exceptions, English, like myself. There
was a member of the Upper House of one of our colonial legislatures and
his wife, the sister of a prominent English politician. With them I was
already acquainted. But an English gentleman, who occupied one of the
corner seats of the compartment, engaged in reading the _Field_, was a
stranger.

The train passed by rice-fields, plantations of sugar cane, of bananas,
and of Indian corn. On either side of us was a rich and highly
cultivated country. There were hedgerows as neat as those which separate
our English fields; and here and there a fox-hunter would have observed
with disgust that barbed wire fences had spread as far as Java. At
regular intervals, bamboo cottages with red-tiled roofs had been built
for the signalmen. Among the fields were scattered groups of tropical
trees, palms, and bamboos; and more than once we caught far-off glimpses
of high mountains. The whole landscape was clothed in a supreme verdure.

As we approached the neighbourhood of Buitenzorg, the sky suddenly
became overcast. Tremendous masses of dense black clouds rushed up from
the horizon, throwing into relief the slopes of the mountains on which
the sun was still shining brilliantly, and deepening the verdure of the
rice-fields by their shadows. A few minutes of pelting rain and a flash
or two of vivid lightning low down on the horizon, and once more the
sky was clear and the landscape smiling and peaceful.

The town of Buitenzorg is situated on the slopes of t