[Illustration: "A brownie of that enchanted garden that men call Java."]
[Illustration: Girl from the Preanger Country.]
[Illustration: Javanese of higher class.]
Meanwhile, we had changed horses at a "gladak"--a nondescript wooden shed--stable, barn, and hostelry for native wayfarers in one--with a spacious thoroughfare leading right through it. And our shaggy ponies trotted along with a right good will, until they came to a sudden stand at the bottom of a hill. "Gladakkers," as these ugly little animals are called, are notorious for freakishness and perversity, and often, without any apparent reason, will stand stockstill in the middle of the road, and refuse to move another step. But this time, as I soon found, they were moved by no such perverse whim; they knew their duty, and that the dragging of carriages up this particular hill was in no way a part of it. When the syce had unharnessed them, they turned aside, and began to crop the dewy grass by the way-side, as if work were over for that day. And, presently, their substitutes, a pair of powerful grey buffaloes, appeared goaded on by their owner. Slowly, the majestic brutes descended the hill, bending a broad splendidly-horned head and an enormous neck under a triangular bamboo yoke, and sending forth the breath in clouds from their large nostrils. They drew the carriage up hill without any apparent effort, still moving onward with that same slow, strong, steady gait, which neither the impatient shouts of our syce, nor the goad which their owner plied, could make them accelerate one whit. At the summit they halted of their own accord; and, as soon as they felt their necks free of the harness, turned and departed. As they passed me, the curved horn of the one just grazing my shoulder, they seemed to me the personification of resistless strength, unconscious of its own power, and patiently subservient. Their large beautiful eyes had a look of meekness most pathetic in so tremendous a creature.
After this steep hill, the ascent became easy and gradual, and the ponies trotted on at a good round pace. The road still kept zig-zagging between steep hill-sides, densely overgrown with nipah-palm, banana, and dark-leaved brushwood, which shut out the view of the landscape. And I remember no noteworthy incident, except the passing of a native market, a "passar," in a spot where the road broadened a little, and where an impetuous brook, that came bounding down the hillside, spouted from a sort of primitive aqueduct made of bamboo. Half a score of naked children were bathing themselves under the icy "douche," whilst their parents stood bargaining and chaffering at the narrow booths that adhered to the steep hillside like swallows' nests to a house-wall. As we approached, the whole company, men, women, and children, squatted down with one accord, as if they had been so many puppets pulled by a string. One very fat baby, his fists and his mouth full of sweetmeats, stood staring at us in round-eyed surprise; but his mother managed to catch him and draw him to his little haunches, just in the nick of time; and the whole company remained in this crouching posture until our carriage rounded the bend of the road.