Batavia [Jakarta]. March 16. Dearest Mother. We have at last got out of England and are now travelling on the Continent. It began on the Dutch boat by which we left Singapore. No one knows what comfort on the sea can be till he travels by a Dutch boat. Clean? it was spotless; there wasn't the suspicion of a speck of dust anywhere, and as for cockroaches they had never heard of them. The sailors were delightful little Malays dressed in white cotton with a brown and yellow handkerchief round their heads; the Captain was a Buddhist, the meals were Dutch - you had cheese and smoked ham for breakfast and you eat your bananas with slices of Dutch cheese (a food for the gods) and your pineapples with salt! The Captain needs a word of explanation. He was a big calm Dutchman and a Buddhist after the manner of Madame Blavatsky in whom he firmly believes as a divinely inspired emissary of the Mahatmas of Thibet [Tibet]. He described to us exactly what his soul was likely to do after death, he lent us sentimental little books about the True Way (I longed to see Uncle Tom reading them!) and he embarked on long discussions with Hugo as to the futility, not to say the immorality of prayer, in which, I must say, Hugo had to yield to the Captain's logic. He spends some portion of every day in meditation on who he is. His mother was able to see the molecules in a diamond. She had the satisfaction of realising quite often that her soul was in Purgatory. She has been dead 3 months, but she appears frequently to the Captain when he meditates upon her. He approved more of my attitude of ignorance than of Hugo's certainty and he thinks I may rise to further knowledge in a future life. For my part, my desire is to become a Dutchman in my next incarnation (the Captain held out hopes that I might be a man and not a woman) and for choice the Commander of a Dutch vessel, spotlessly clean and unknown to cockroaches. And then I'll sail tropic seas and meditate on who I am. We had as travelling companions the German couple (Kromschroeder is their euphonious name) and the Dutchman, Major Wiersma, who were our companions in misfortune on the Pin Seng. They are all nice, but the Major is a perfect love. We played Bridge, we three, "with the blind (ie dummy) ohh yes! it is very good, ohh yes!" said the Major. It was he who invited us to take salt with our pineapples since it was good for the diguestion [sic], ohh yes! but he repudiated with scorn the idea that salt with the bananas and cheese might also be good for the diguestion - ohh noh! The rest were Dutchmen and their wives and families - very naughty spoilt families. The men paced the deck of an afternoon in an elegant negligé consisting of a loose white cotton jacket and loose trousers made of yellow and brown Javanese cotton of a marked stripy pattern. H. made friends with a young man called Donk who was eager to improve his English at our expense. The first day it rained hard for some hours and was comparatively cool, but towards evening it turned hot again and became almost intolerable. The muggy sticky heat weighed on one like lead and there was not a breath of air. We crossed the equator early on Saturday morning. I can't tell you what it looked like for I was asleep. There were no punkahs in the saloon, the Dutch never have them. Lunch on Sunday was rather an ordeal in consequence. We were never out of sight of land, the whole sea being thick strewn with islands. All, down to the smallest rock, were covered with vegetation and sometimes the island was so low and so small that the trees looked as if they were growing out of the sea. One in particular, one solitary tree sat in the middle of the sea; I suppose it had a little rock of its own to grow on, but we couldn't see it. Certainly the earth behaves very oddly in these parts. We saw the Russells before we left Singapore, their boat arrived just before ours left, and conveyed the governor's invitation to them. They decided to go up to dine but not to sleep, so my responsibility is the less. We eagerly compared experiences and found with joy that we shall probably meet in {Shanghai} Pekin [Beijing (Peking)]. We reached Batavia about 3 on Sunday afternoon, or rather we reached the port which is now some miles from Batavia, the coast having risen. And we arrived in Holland. A neat spotless quay, exquisitely tidy, with the station next door and a Dutch refreshment room all complete - except that you were served by Chinamen you might have thought as you nibbled your chocolate with Queen Wilhelmina's head on it that you were nibbling it at the Hook of Holland [Hoek van Holland]. We saw a boat lying in port which goes straight from Batavia to Marseilles [Marseille] touching only at Port Said - it's going to carry this letter by the way. I think that would be a very nice thing to do with Father; and then from Batavia we would make a tour of the islands in one of the East Indian Dutch boats; 6 weeks they take and touch everywhere. So, having registered our luggage, we stepped into the Dutch train and started off through Holland. There were the straight white roads and there were the canals; but there were avenues of palms along the roads and lotus in the canals. 20 minutes brought us to Batavia which is a miniature Amsterdam with canals and houses with pointed red roofs, but exclusively inhabited by Chinese for the Dutch population has retired yet further inland to Weltevreden. Thither we drove in a sadoe (which is Malay for dos à dos) and it began to rain as it can rain only near the equator, so that we could scarcely see the neat white houses standing back in their gardens and the cafés along the edge of the canal. But they don't understand comfort, the Dutch, in spite of all their neatness. Not only are punkahs unknown but the washing arrangements are very scanty. In India everyone has his own bath room off his bed room, at the Hotel Belle Vue there was one bathroom for the whole hotel. Fortunately no one seemed to use it but us! Frau Kromschröder [see also Kromschroeder], for example, told me when she came on board the Pin Seng at Penang [Pinang] that she felt seriously unwell and she attributed her indisposition to the fact that she had taken a cold bath the day before. This in tropical heat where you never get water below 70°. I said I didn't think it would prove really injurious as I always had 2 cold baths a day at least. "Aber gnadiges Fraulein!" said she and could get no further for astonishment. In a Dutch bath room there is no bath. There is a great tank of water, into which, however, you mustn't get. You stand outside and pour the water over yourself out of a tin pot with a handle. It's very nice and spashy and there is generally a shower bath as well. The hotel consists of rooms built round a court. We walked all round to ours and saw the whole population sitting out on the verandah, men and women, in the very sketchiest costumes known. Indeed they were scarcely to be called costumes at all. There were beautiful orchids flowering on the verandah pillars, which the Dutch ladies regard, I suppose, in the matter of toiling and spinning, for they must take very little more trouble than the orchids to secure their afternoon attire. We ordered tea and waited ages for it with such patience as we could muster. Finally when it came it consisted of a mountain of bread, cakes and jams and 10 eggs! H and I then washed and changed and drove out in the black equatorial dark - it was only 6.30 - to leave a letter on one Ramage. We didn't find his house, but we found the house of one who put us onto Mr Ramage by telephone and he arranged to come and see us next day. It's too funny driving round the fashionable quarter of Batavia after dark. The houses are mainly verandah, quite open to the world, brilliantly lighted so that you are admitted to the intimen familien Leben from the road. Still more, in the early morning. It's so intime that you see them all in their dressing gowns. {Tuesday} Monday 16th [16 March 1903] We drove out at 7 (oh the hot night!) in the delicious early morning with heavy dew on the grass. The little Dutch girls were all on their way to school with satchels in their hands. It's an enchanting place. We drove round a big square called the Waterloo Plein, a sort of large village green with cows pasturing on it and the governor's classic palace on one side. There is a column in the middle with a ridiculous lion on it and an inscription saying that it is to {celebrate} commemorate the glorious victory of the Duke of Holland over the French at Waterloo, whereby he restored peace to the world - no mention of Wellington at all! Then we drove round another and still larger green, called the Konings Plein, to the Museum which was just open and most interesting. There is a great collection of the Hindu and Buddhist carvings from the temples I'm going to see. They are of extraordinarily good workmanship, much better than anything in India, and made me feel more than ever that they are the things to make for. Hugo isn't coming; he wants to go into the hills which will be very nice too. I wish we had time enough to do both together. Mr Ramage came to see us at 9 and was very friendly and useful. We left at 11, with an enormous bundle of mangosteens, the very best of fruits, and came up to Buitenzorg [Bogor]. It was a two hours' journey, desperately hot across a steamy plain, alternately jungle and rice fields. We are 700 ft up here; it's perceptibly cooler. When we arrived we had the real Dutch lunch. It's called Reis Tafel and this is the manner of it; you sit down with a large soup plate in front of you which you fill with rice. On the top of this you pile some 10 or 12 different sorts of viands, curries, croquets, fried and grilled and stewed chicken, potato chips, omelet and a selection of condiments from a dish of some 20 of the same - what they are I can't pretend to say, but they are mostly peppery. We have enchanting rooms opening onto a deep verandah. The ground drops below us down to a muddy river edged with palm trees, with the native town in a mass of trees by it. Beyond, the rich tropical forests rise to the slopes of a beautiful volcano, wooded up to the crater. It rains every afternoon here; the clouds were beginning to blow up after lunch, and as it was quite cool (barely 90°) we thought we would make the best of the fine weather and go out at once to see the famous Botanical garden. They say it's the most wonderful garden in the world and I can well believe it. The first thing that thrilled us was to see the huge Victoria Regia flowering in a pond, and near it was one of the loveliest things possible, a great white lotus, masses of exquisite flowers and tall upstanding leaves. Then we went to the palm garden which is indescribably lovely. There is a hollow set with lotus ponds with bouquets of palms of every unimaginable kind growing on the grass slopes round about. The gardenia bushes were covered with flower, the orchids hung from the trees, there were things with their roots in the air and plants with only a crisscross network for leaves, and cannas and crinums and huge flowering trees and palms draped in creepers and ferns with trunks and ever so many more marvels. At last the threatened rain stopped us and we rushed back to the hotel in our sadoe through sheets of water. Since when we have been sleeping and sitting on our verandah, watching the clouds clear from the mountains and a gorgeous stormy sunset fade into black night. This hotel has the smallest swimming bath in the world. You march round all the verandahs in your dressing gown, all the people regarding you amicably as you pass, and you walk down a long flight of cobbled stairs in the garden and at last you come to a little house called Zwiembad. A stream runs through it and it's just big enough to swim round in. I need not say that no one seems to use it but us. We keep delightful companies of tiny lizards on our walls, inside and out. They eat our mosquitoes and our ants, as many of them as they can catch, and every now and then they give a loud chuckling sort of chirp, dear little things, a most cheerful sound it is. I wonder if they do it when they've caught a mosquito. H and I go together the greater part of my journey. Then he gets out and branches off to a little hill station and I go on by myself. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude