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Show -,Vt"i i 1 if kY 1 -?P -4 1, t-i V 'ii'4h Xy ' Java Youths Selling Bamboo Musical Instruments. (Prepared by the National Geographic Society. Washington, D. C.) INSTALLMENT buying has invaded Java, according to United States trade reports. The Javanese like American-made products. American Ameri-can exports to the island annually amount to more than $30,000,000. Picturesque, horse-drawn carts with wheels from six to seven feet in diameter di-ameter now must compete with speedier speed-ier American-made auto trucks; and native two-wheeled passenger carts, once the only passenger vehicles in Java cities, are being crowded off the streets by shiny, new American-made pleasure cars. The island, which is about the size and shape of Cuba, Is traversed by- a network of good roads and railroads. While traveling on either, the American Ameri-can tourist is seldom out of eyeshot of American products or products of American machinery. A traveler may engage an Italian, British, Spanish or French automobile for a tour, but a portion of the road he traverses is apt to be the product of American road-building road-building machinery. Should a blowout occur on the highway, high-way, it is likely that one of the thousands thou-sands of American-made tires that are shipped to the island annually would be as readily available as one of foreign for-eign make. And the new tire may contain con-tain some of the rubber which a short time before flowed from one of the trees on a vast rubber plantation nearby. near-by. The traveler who prefers to see the Island from a train window is unaware that machinery and tools bearing familiar fa-miliar trade marks help to keep his train running on schedule. Rice farmers whose watery farms rise like a series of silvery lakes up the sides of Java hills, cling to antiquated anti-quated wood implements, but here and there the blades of plows and harrows from American factories and waterworks water-works In agricultural regions reveal American-made machinery. With more than 700 inhabitants to the square mile, the natives must be efficient farmers to feed the population. popula-tion. American fertilizer is the farmers' farm-ers' crop insurance, and when crops contract disease, American chemists furnish the medicine to bring them back to a healthful state. Situated but a few hundred miles below the Equator, Java is hot, but the traveler often finds his hotel room made comfortable by an American electric fan. The power that runs the fan may come from one of the many electric generators imported from America. Hotels Are Comfortable. As a rule the hotels in Java are clean and well designed to meet the needs of a tropical climate. Usually, they consist of a main building openly constructed so that there is no hindrance hin-drance to the slightest breeze. The service, complete in every detail, Is enjoyed by foreigners. One takes his seat in a spacious pavilion and Is brought soup by an army of betur-baned betur-baned Malays. Then large, deep plates are brought, on each of which is a supply of rice, one of the favored foods of the island. On top of the rice, two inches deep, the diner is expected to place a variety of vegetables, curries, dried fish, eggs, fowls and meat flavored fla-vored with peppery condiments. After eight of the dishes are deposited on the rice, the diner's appetite, if he Is a novice, usually calls a halt and the remaining half of the sixteen varieties of rice "coverings" are allowed to pass untouched. No wonder the great majority ma-jority of the resident Hollanders are inclined to corpulence when one takes a glance at the Java festive board. The streets of the larger Java cities that are often filled with American automobiles au-tomobiles and bicycles, have their oriental ori-ental bazaars where a gay array of goods ranging from cheap trinkets to fine metalware and fabrics are on sale, but there are also modern shops in which American cement machinery had a constructional part. There, too, American-made flashlights, batteries, spark plugs, and other automobile accessories, ac-cessories, are displayed under the rays of American-made electric light bulbs. Sometimes the same ships that take American products to Java return with many native products which are popular popu-lar In this country. Many head colds and cases of malaria are treated with quinine extracted from the bark of the Java cinchona trees. The rubber heels on one's shoes or the tires on one's-automobile one's-automobile may contain Java rubber. Perhaps your morning coffee and your afternoon tea originated on a Java coffee cof-fee or tea plantation, while there Is a bare possibility that some of the small quantity of Java sugar imported by the United States may have been used to sweeten these beverages. What Batavia Is Like. Java ranks among the richest regions re-gions of the Dutch East Indies. There are more than 30,000,000 native inhabitants inhab-itants with a sprinkling of Europeans and Chinese and other Asiatics. This population requires systematic cultivation culti-vation of the soil. When the Dutch settled Batavia, the largest city on the island, they brought their love for the lowlands and built their city of European type, closed houses on canals which conrsed a broad swampy area. But as trading men and soldiers died by the thousands thou-sands from malaria and other diseases aggravated by the swamp vapors around them, the settlers eventually learned that tropical Java was not a temperate Netherlands. European Batavia, now on higher ground, is a healthy city, a great emporium em-porium of trade and the metropolis of the island, sprawling over a wide area. The old town is almost entirely given over to the Javanese, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Malays. The new city has spacious parks,, made colorful by myriad flowers and the luxuriant growth of the Tropics. Near one of the parks rises the imposing impos-ing facade of the Museum of the Ba-tavian Ba-tavian Society of Arts and Sciences with a copper elephant, the gift of the king of Siam, in the foreground. The Batavia museum has one of the finest ethnological collections of any institution insti-tution In the Far East and its publications publi-cations rank well among the learned societies of Europe and America. A sail of slightly more than 30 hours from Batavia brings the traveler to Soerabaya, the most important seaport in Java. Although the busy landing stage and bustling crowds in the streets impress the traveler of the city's commercial importance, it Is for the most part hot and presents few attractions. at-tractions. A few hours' ride from the city's back door, however, brings the traveler trav-eler to Pasourouan where he may get the real flavor of Java's interior ; where the dos-a-dos, Java's curious little high-wheeled covered wagons rumble over the roads behind sturdy white bullocks. Tosari a Pleasant Resort. Nearby, but reached only after hours of roughing, climbing on donkeys and afoot, is the delightful resort Tosari. A walk along the village's single street reveals the mode of life of Javanese mountaineers who are quite different from their neighbors in the lower valleys. val-leys. Here are the homes of the Teng-gerese, Teng-gerese, a hardy tribe which at the time of the Moslem Invasion of Java retreated to the mountains and successfully suc-cessfully defended themselves against the Invaders. Tosari is perched on a flank of the Tengger massif 5.4S0 feet above sea level where invigorating air makes mountain climbing much more pleasant than In the torrid regions I the Javanese foothills. Situated in the midst of the great East Indian volcano region, Java has its share of active and extinct craters. In fact the island is volcano-made. It is estimated that there are more than 100 craters on the island. Everywhere Every-where In Java, In the huge crater lakes, In fissures that now are river beds, even In ancient temples, half finished when Interrupted by some fiery convulsion, are evidences of cataclysmic forces. The "treacherous Klot," as the natives call it, all but wiped out the town of Britar in 1919. More recently, Mount Merapl, situated at the extreme eastern tip of the Island Is-land boiled over and took the lives of 90 natives. ' A volcano is not always considered a calamity in Java. In fact most of the larger towns and cities of the island is-land nestle around the base of active craters, although thousands of lnhabi- , tants have been lost in violent eruptions. erup-tions. Much of the prosperity of the island is due to the constant enriching of its soil by material coughed from these great smokestacks, and from the medicinal value of the hot mineral springs and highland resorts along the slopes. |