Chapter 11

The healthy and active appearance of the men was the best presumptive evidence of the excellence of their régime. Had we even left Magnesia without positive witness of their barrack economy, we should have felt sure that these men must be ably officered and well looked after. It is, with regiments as with ships, a standing truth, that efficiency of condition is compatible only with efficiency and sympathy on the part of the officers. The grand secret of our naval discipline is the recognition of this truth: and no where does it find a more full exemplification than on board our ships. There every officer (every _good_ officer) feels for, and with, his men. Nothing, save the positive requirement of the service, is allowed to interfere with their comfort. The care of their health is as much the ambition and duty of the captain as is the care of his ship. Few things in the strange world afloat would strike a landsman more, than the minute attention habitually paid to men who are hourly liable to the most perilous risks. At the need of the service, limb and life are freely ventured; but not a wet jacket is inflicted, nor a meal prorogued wantonly. Jack, who is burdened with no care for himself, becomes devoted to his officers who care for him; ready at their bidding to jump overboard, or to turn to and get the mainmast out all standing. A well-ordered man-of-war, where this feeling prevails from the quarter-deck to the forecastle, affords perhaps the finest exhibition of harmony of purpose of which our nature is capable. The inspection of a single regiment is insufficient ground whereon to found general observations; but so far as this one specimen is concerned, we can speak of the Turks as having made some slight approach to this most desirable condition. We were surprised to find an Osmanli in the position of surgeon to the establishment; because the religious principles of such a one are understood to be invincibly opposed to the prosecution of the studies that must qualify for such a post. Without dissection what can they know of anatomy? and unskilled in anatomy, how can they guide the knife healingly among the intricacies of the human frame? Yet all the operative surgery in this hospital is the care of the native surgeon, by whom the most formidable operations are successfully performed. The best proof that these medicos are up to their work, is found in the fact, that the sick-list was very small. It was quite surprising to see how few beds were occupied. Indeed, the men are so well clothed, well fed, and lodged so airily, that their tenure of health must be far more secure when on service than when in their own homes.

Our inspection had occupied some time, and brought the day well on to the hour of dinner. The hospitable colonel having right courteously satisfied all our inquiries, led the way to his domicile. Among the notable experiences of this day, it was not the least that he himself by his presence afforded us, enabling us to mark the tone of feeling subsisting between himself and his men. I will defy any harsh taskmaster to take me among his men, and prevent my reading in their demeanour the fact of his ungentleness. Aversion and constrained fear, are motives too powerful for the possibility of suppression in the presence of their object. The eye is too faithful an index of the soul to give no spark when the fire of hatred rages within. But as we passed through the different buildings, every eye expressed cheerfulness and satisfaction. They seemed pleased at our curiosity, and gratified with his visit. He himself seemed delighted to play the part of exhibitor. He walked through the different compartments, not exactly with the air of an English dragoon, but still with a good deal of the soldier about him. Take him all in all, he was one of the two best specimens of Turkish great men that I have seen. The first place I reserve for my excellent friend the Pasha of Rhodes. With all his slouching, happy-go-lucky air, it was astonishing to see how much grace he managed to preserve; and how the sense of authority was kept up, notwithstanding the simplicity of his good humour.

When a man asks you to dinner, unless, indeed, he be a gipsy living under a hedge, it is usual to suppose that you must enter his house. We had reckoned on being introduced to the particular establishment of the Miralahi, and rejoiced in the prospect of so befitting a conclusion to our morning's researches. But our friend marshalled us onward through stables and gardens, to the prettiest little kiosk you would wish to see, snugly ensconced beneath vines and creepers, at one end of his dwelling. Here-away nature assumes a regularity in her moods of which we Englishmen know little in our own land. Here it really does rain in the rainy season, and really is hot in summer. Thus knowing, almost to a degree, the heat or cold they are at any time to expect, the happy indigenous are in condition to suit their manner of life to the humour of the season. This kiosk was the usual summer sitting-room; contrived to a nicety in all respects so as to woo all cooling influences, and exclude the sun. The sides were open towards that quarter whence the breeze was wont to come; and a beautiful fountain threw up its abundant stream so near to us that we almost received its splashing. We were raised somewhat above the level of the garden, which lent to our enjoyment the blended odours of lemon and citron. No carpet was there, nor woollen substance, nor aught that looked hot. Cool mats covered the tesselated floor within; and without, the eye was refreshed by gushing water, and by the deep green of the orange and lemon trees. Truly, one might be in a worse billet on a hot day!

But nothing edible appeared, nor any table, nor other appliance whose presence we are wont to associate with the idea of dinner. One might almost have supposed the kiosk to be the drawing-room, reserved for the collecting together of the guests before their proceeding to the banquet. Our host had picked up another friend in the course of the morning, so that, with ourselves and the doctor, he had a very respectable party.

We had been but a short time sitting in that state of palpable waiting for dinner, which from St. James' to Otaheité is one and the same recognised misery, when our host propounded to us, through the doctor, the following thesis.

"There are different modes of dining, according to different nations." The proposition was axiomatic: we looked assent, and waited for what was to come next.

"The English have their way, the French theirs, and the Turks theirs. How will you dine to-day?"

"Like true Osmanlis," we cried, emphatically and enthusiastically. "Truly, mine host, we have capital appetites, and, moreover, an old proverb on our side."

Now, it is not to be supposed that this worthy gentleman could really have given us an entertainment in the styles he offered. No doubt it was but a conventional phrase, and meant no more than the speech of the Mexican does, who tells you to consider his house and all he possesses as your own:--still it was civil. A sign was made to one of the domestics, and significant preparations were forthwith commenced. Each of us was furnished with a napkin, which we spread out upon our knees. We further followed lead so far as to tuck up our sleeves: then came a pause. Presently arrived an attendant, bringing an apparatus much like a camp-stool, which was planted in the midst of us; and, on the top of this, was anon deposited a large and bright brass tray. On this, in a twinkling, appeared a basin filled with a savoury composition of kind unknown. Into this all hands began to dig. It was uncommonly good indeed, and disposed one for another taste. But almost before a second taste could be had, the dish had vanished and was succeeded by another. And so it was throughout the repast: the first momentary pause in the attack was the signal for removal of the reigning basin, and the production of another. There could not have been less than eighteen or twenty dishes in all; most of them quite capital, and deserving of more serious attention than the bird-like pecking for which alone space was allowed. On the whole, it was a style of thing which would hardly suit men seriously hungry: but it suits these fellows well enough, who, as they never take more exercise than they can help, may be supposed never to know what downright hunger is. Among their _plats_ was one of pancakes, made right artistically, and as though in regard of Shrovetide. We wound up with a bowl of sherbet, or some variety of that genus, for the consumption of which we were allowed the use of spoons. It would be pleasant enough to dine with them, were it not for the barbarity of eating with one's fingers: an evil which their notions of hospitality tend still further to aggravate. On occasions when they wish to do particular honour to a guest, it is their custom to pick tit-bits out of the dish, perhaps to roll up such morsels in a ball, and pop them into the stranger's mouth. Sometimes the attentive host will dig his fingers into the mass, and pile up the nicest pieces on the side of the dish, ready for your consumption, and this by way of saving you the trouble of selection. Happy were we that our friendly entertainer was content with this milder exhibition of benevolence; for it did not require any great ingenuity to pretend a mistake as to the identity of morceaux. The malicious doctor seemed bent on making us undergo this trial, and did his best, with winks and whispers, to rob us of our ignorance. Very kind was this good Miralahi to us. We sat long, and talked much with him, and he was urgent in invitations to us to prolong our stay in the city. The inducement that he held out was certainly tempting--nothing less than the promise that he would have, on our especial behoof, a grand review of all his troops. Had we been free to follow our will, we should most assuredly have accepted his invitation, as well for the sake of its kindness, as because the chance of such a review is not to be met with every day. He did give us a military spectacle in a small way. In the course of conversation he fell upon some inquiries concerning the cutlass exercise, and requested illustrations. He then called one of his dragoons, and put him through the cavalry sword exercise, after their manner: and a particularly ferocious-looking exercise it was.

But the time was now come when we must bid farewell to the good colonel; and we did so with a cordial sense of his hospitality, and a great increase of respect for him as an officer. He pursued us with his good offices; sending the doctor to the Khan with us, to assist us in a settlement there, and giving us good counsel for our progress. He tried very seriously, at first, to dissuade us from attempting a start so late in the day, as he conceived it would be impossible for us to reach Manimen, whither we were bound, that night. It is a fact, that travelling after dark is not safe in Turkey: indeed, you would hardly be allowed, after nightfall, to pass a guard-house. But we were determined to take our chance of doing the distance within the time, as we knew well that the number of hours allowed by authority were very much beyond the mark of what we should take. Like a truly hospitable man, when he found us bent on departing, he set himself to speed our departure. His friend the doctor was at the trouble of repeating to us several times, till we had pretty well learned them by rote, some of the most necessary inquiries for food and provender, in the vernacular. When we had written these down in the characters, and after the orthography of our mother-tongue, we felt fully prepared for all contingencies.

How different was the spirit of our departure from that of our entry! Not four-and-twenty hours since, we had ridden into the town, unnoticed and unsheltered: we were now almost pained to say farewell. So short a time had sufficed to work the difference between desolation and good-fellowship. And though this instance be but of a feebly marked, an almost ludicrous difference; you have but to multiply the degrees, and you arrive at a picture of what is every day happening in the course of the long journey on which we are all engaged. A man is stricken and mourning to-day, because he is desolate; to-morrow he is radiant with joy, because he has found a soul with which he can hold fellowship. The spirit makes music only as the spheres do, in harmony. When I have thought of these things, and felt that they tend to the cultivation of human sympathies, it has seemed to me that I might draw a moral lesson even from the recollection of my "Ride to Magnesia."

JAVA.[18]

The wealthy owner of a vast estate takes little heed of the peasant gardens fringing its circumference. Absorbed in the consideration of his forest glades and fertile corn-fields, his rich pastures and countless kine, he forgets the existence of the paddocks and cabbage-plots that nestle in the patronising shadow of his park paling. Occasionally he may vouchsafe a friendly glance to the trim borders of the one, or the solitary milch cow grazing in the other: he must be a very Ahab to view them with a covetous eye; for the most part he thinks not of them. In the broad domains that call him master, he finds ample employment for his energies, abundant subject of contemplation. Thus it is with Englishmen and colonies. Holding, in right and virtue of their adventurous spirit and peculiar genius for colonisation, immense territories in every quarter of the globe--territories linked by a chain of smaller possessions and fortified posts encircling the world--they slightly concern themselves about the scanty nooks of Asia, America, and Africa, over which wave the banners of their European rivals and allies. They visit them little--write about them less. In some cases this indifference has been compulsory. When the second title of the Sovereign of Spain and the Indies was something more than an empty sound, and half America crouched beneath the Spanish yoke, every discouragement was shown to travellers in those distant regions; lest some French democrat or English Protestant should disseminate the tenets of Jacobinism and heresy, and awaken the oppressed multitude to a sense of their wrongs. Thus was it with Mexico, of whose condition, until she rebelled against the mother country, scarce any thing was known save what could be gathered from the lying writings of Spanish monks. Again, remote position and pestilential climate have daunted curiosity and repelled research. To the Dutch possessions in the island of Java this especially applies. Seized by the English in 1811--to prevent their falling into the hands of the French--upon their restoration to Holland at the peace, their ex-governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, wrote his voluminous and erudite "History of Java." Three years later, further accounts were given of the island in Crawford's "History of the Indian Archipelago." In 1824, Marchal's book was published at Brussels, but proved a mere compilation from those above named. And since then, several works upon the same subject, some possessing merit, have been produced in Holland and Germany, out of which countries they are little known. At the present day, a periodical, appropriated to the affairs of the Dutch East Indies, appears regularly at Amsterdam. But Englishmen take little interest in Dutch colonies and colonists; and although now and then some Eastern traveller has devoted to them a casual chapter, for a quarter of a century nothing worth the naming has been written in our language with reference to the island of Java.

Most men have a pet country which, above all others, they desire to visit. Some long to roam amidst the classic relics of Italian grandeur, or to explore the immortal sites and renowned battle-fields of Greece; some set their affections upon Spain, and languish after Andalusia and the Alhambra; whilst others, to whose imagination the hardy North appeals more strongly than the soft and enervating South, meditate on Scandinavia, thirst after the Maelstrom, and dream of Thor and Odin, of glaciers and elk-hunts. We have a friend for whom the West Indies had a peculiar and irresistible fascination, to which neither length of voyage nor dread of Yellow Jack prevented his yielding; we have another--who has never yet lost sight of Britain's cliffs--whose first period of absence from his native land is to be devoted to a pleasure trip to Hindostan. Such fancies and predilections may often be traced to early reading and association, but not unfrequently they are capricious and unaccountable, and we shall not investigate why the Eastern Archipelago, of all the regions he had read and heard of, had the greatest attractions for Dr. Edward Selberg, a young German physician of much intelligence but little fortune, strongly imbued with a love of adventure and the picturesque, and with a desire to increase his stores of medical and scientific knowledge. The motives of his preference he himself is puzzled to explain. Many difficulties opposed themselves to the realisation of his darling project--a visit to the Sunda Islands. His means were inadequate to the cost of so expensive an expedition; and although the advantage of science was one of his objects, he had no hope that his expenses would be defrayed by the government of his own or of any other country. At last, through friends in Amsterdam, he obtained the appointment of surgeon to a transport, on board of which, in September 1837, he sailed from the Helder for the island of Java. Besides the ship's company, he had for companions of his voyage a hundred soldiers and two officers. The Dutch East Indies hold out small temptation either to civil or military adventurers. Few visions of speedy fortune, fewer still of rank and glory, dazzle the young and ardent, and lure them from their native land to the fever-breeding swamps of Batavia. Thus the Dutch government cannot afford to be very squeamish as to the character and quality of the men it sends thither. Dr. Selberg's account of his fellow-passengers is evidence of this. "Amongst the soldiers," he says, "were natives of various countries, Dutch, Belgians, French, Swiss; nearly half of them consisted of the refuse of the different German states. Most villanous was the physiognomy of many of these; the traces of every vice, and the ravages of the various climates they had lived in, were visible upon their countenances. They were men who had served in Algiers, Spain, or the West Indies, who had been driven back to Germany by a craving after their native land, and who, after a short residence there, weary of inactivity, or urged by necessity, had enlisted in the Dutch East India service. The Dutchmen consisted of convicts, whose imprisonment had been remitted or abridged, on condition of their entering a colonial regiment. These were the worst of the whole lot; they feared no punishment, being fully persuaded that death awaited them in the terrible climate of Java, and it was scarcely possible to check their insubordination and excesses. Another very small section of the detachment was composed of adventurers, whom wild dreams of fortune, never to be realised, had induced to enlist for the sake of a free passage."

Idleness would render such motley herds of evil-doers doubly difficult to restrain, and the Dutch government provides, as far as is possible on board ship, for their occupation and amusement. On the Betsey and Sara, the name of Dr. Selberg's transport, guards were regularly mounted; pipes, tobacco, dominos, nine-pins, and even musical instruments, were abundantly supplied to the restless and discontented soldiery. But it was the season of the equinox, and, for some time, sea-sickness caused such toys to be neglected. Only when they had passed Madeira, the weather became fine, and Dr. Selberg was able to enjoy his voyage and make his observations. The latter were at first confined to the dolphins, sharks, and shoals of flying-fish which surrounded the vessel; and as to the enjoyment, it was of very short duration. After the first month, the cool trade-wind left them, and they suffered from intolerable heat. The soldiers had a comical appearance, standing on sentry with musket and side-arms, but with a night-cap, shirt, linen shoes, and trousers for their sole garments. To add to the irksomeness of life at sea, there was little cordiality amongst the officers, who lived apart as much as their narrow quarters would allow. One of them, a young lieutenant, who, in hopes of advancement, had abandoned his country, family, and mistress, was unable to bear up against the regrets that assailed him, and shot himself early in the voyage. For fear of quarrels between soldiers and sailors, the Line was passed without the usual burlesque ceremonies. At last, on New-Year's-day, the ship dropped her anchor in Batavia roads, at about a league and a half from shore. The mud banks at the entrance of the two rivers which there enter the sea, prohibit the nearer approach of large vessels; and many ships observe a still greater distance to avoid the malaria blown over to them by the land-wind.

The heat of those latitudes rendering rowing too violent an exertion for European sailors, four Malays were taken on board the Betsey and Sara, to maintain the communication with shore. It was with a joyful heart that Dr. Selberg, weary of his protracted voyage, sprang into a boat, and was landed in the port of Batavia. He found few traces of the grandeur which once gave to that city the title of the Pearl of the East. The gem has lost its sparkle; scarce a vestige of former brilliancy remains. Choked canals, falling houses, lifeless streets, on all sides meet and offend the eye; only here and there a stately edifice tells of better days. The most remarkable is the Stadt-Huis, or town-house, a gigantic building of a simple but appropriate style of architecture, with handsome wings enclosing a large paved court. Formerly, this structure included the tribunals, bank, and foundling-hospital, but the unhealthiness of the city has caused the removal of those institutions to the elevated suburb of Weltevreden. The wings are still used as prisons. None of the other public buildings claim especial notice. Built after the plan of Amsterdam, the close streets, and the canals that intersect them, have contributed no little to the insalubrity of Batavia. Only in the day-time does the city show signs of life; towards evening, all Europeans fly the poisonous atmosphere that has destroyed so many of their countrymen, and seek the purer air of the suburbs and adjacent villages. There they have their dwelling-houses, and pass the night. At nine in the morning, the roads leading to Batavia are covered with carriages,--as necessary in Java as boots and shoes are in Europe, walking being out of the question in that climate,--and life returns to the deserted city. Chinese, Arabs, and Armenians busy themselves in their shops, where the products of three-quarters of the globe are displayed; the European merchant, clad in a loose cotton dress, repairs to his counting-house, the public offices are thrown open, and the bazaar is crowded with the numerous races of men whom commerce has here assembled.