Within This Royal City No
Native Of The Lower Orders Is Allowed To Ride, And Our Attendant,
A Javanese, Was Obliged To Dismount And Lead His Horse While We
Rode Slowly Through.
The abodes of the Rajah and of the High
Priest are distinguished by pillars of red brick constructed with
much taste; but the palace itself seemed to differ but little
from the ordinary houses of the country.
Beyond Mataram and close
to it is Karangassam, the ancient residence of the native or
Sassak Rajahs before the conquest of the island by the Balinese.
Soon after passing Mataram the country began gradually to rise in
gentle undulations, swelling occasionally into low hills towards
the two mountainous tracts in the northern and southern parts of
the island. It was now that I first obtained an adequate idea of
one of the most wonderful systems of cultivation in the world,
equalling all that is related of Chinese industry, and as far as
I know surpassing in the labour that has been bestowed upon it
any tract of equal extent in the most civilized countries of
Europe. I rode through this strange garden utterly amazed and
hardly able to realize the fact that in this remote and little
known island, from which all Europeans except a few traders at
the port are jealously excluded, many hundreds of square miles of
irregularly undulating country have been so skillfully terraced
and levelled, and so permeated by artificial channels, that every
portion of it can be irrigated and dried at pleasure.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 225 of 419
Words from 61390 to 61645
of 114260
