It was a cry de profundis--laughable and half contemptible as it sounded, the echo from unforgotten depths of misery.
He had known what it meant "to have nothing at all." Wherefore, and for those winged words in which he uttered the knowledge, let his onion-beds be forgiven him. Of the outrage he committed, only the memory is left--the effects have long since been obliterated: bountiful tropical nature having again showered her treasures of leaf and flower over the beggared garden, and re-erected in their places the green towers of her trees.
[Illustration: Entrance to a rich Chinaman's House.]
Rijswijk, Noordwijk, and Molenvliet, the commercial quarters of Batavia, are more European in aspect than the Koningsplein; the houses--shops for the most part--are built in straight rows; a pavement borders the streets, and a noisy little steam-car pants and rattles past from morning till night. But, with these European traits, Javanese characteristics mingle, and the resulting effect is a most curious one, somewhat bewildering withal to the new-comer in its mixture of the unknown with the familiar. Absolutely commonplace shops are approached through gardens, the pavement is strewn with flowers of the flame-of-the-forest: and, at the street-corners, instead of cabs, one finds the nondescript sadoo, its driver, gay in a flowered muslin vest and a gaudy headkerchief, squatting cross-legged on the back seat. Noordwijk is unique, an Amsterdam "gracht" in a tropical setting. Imagine a long straight canal, a gleam of green-brown water between walls of reddish masonry--spanned from place to place by a bridge, and shaded by the softly-tinted leafage of tamarinds; on either side a wide, dusty road, arid gardens, sweltering in the sun, and glaring white bungalows; the fiery blue of the tropical sky over it all. Gaudily-painted "praos" glide down the dark canal; native women pass up and down the flight of stone steps that climbs from the water's edge to the street, a flower stuck into their gleaming hair, still wet from the bath; the tribe of fruitvendors and sellers of sweet drinks and cakes have established themselves along the parapet, in the shade of the tamarinds; and the native crowd, coming and going all day long, makes a kaleidoscopic play of colours along the still dark water.