of the family.
She was not so shy as her mother; on the contrary, she arranged herself
in a most becoming attitude against the front of the verandah. Every now
and then the mother showed her teeth and spoke crossly to the baby, and
once when it cried she whipped it with a bit of palm-leaf until it came
to a better mind--which it did promptly. After a time, a Chinaman called
and had a talk with the lady of the house. I think he wanted a load of
firewood. An old lady also came. I could not fathom _her_ business, but,
from the interest she manifested in the children, I expect she was a
relative of the family.

About noon the father came back with a load of wood. He was a man of the
world, and knew all about the performance. After he had looked at the
sketch, the children, and finally the mother, all came round my stool
and had a good long look at my work. Even so the mother would not let
the children dab their toes into my paints, or generally become a
nuisance. For this unexpected manifestation of a sense of the fitness
of things, I felt grateful to her, and, before I went away, found a way
of recompensing the children for the sorrow they must have felt at being
compelled to relinquish such a rare opportunity for getting into
mischief.

Every morning I found some quaint figure with which to enrich my
sketch-book--a sarong-weaver, or a beggar crouching by the wayside, or a
Hadji, with his large umbrella and green turban, the latter marking the
fact of his having accomplished a pilgrimage to Mecca. But, interesting
as were these human studies, my pleasantest recollections of Buitenzorg
centre in the visit which I paid to the Botanical Gardens, under the
guidance of the curator, Dr. Treub.

My account of this, however, and of the gardens generally, I reserve for
the next chapter.

[Illustration: NATIVES SQUATTING.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE BOTANICAL GARDENS.

History of the Buitenzorg gardens--Teysmann--
Scheffer--Three separate branches--Horticultural
garden--Mountain garden--Botanical garden--
Dr. Treub--Lady Raffles' monument--Pandanus with
aerial roots--Cyrtostachys renda--Stelecho-karpus--
Urostigma--Brazilian palms--Laboratories and
offices--Number of men employed--Scientific strangers.

Among the twenty or thirty tropical gardens established in the
colonial possessions of the various European Powers, three stand
pre-eminent--those of Calcutta, the Peradenia Gardens in Ceylon, and
the Dutc