[Illustration: In the depth of the ravine.]
The garden is worthy of this magnificent entrance. Enthusiastic "savants" have sung its praises in all the languages of civilization, and, by common consent, have declared it to be the finest botanical garden in the world, assigning the second place to famous Kew, and mentioning the gardens of Berlin, Paris, and Vienna as third, fourth, and fifth in order of merit. Originally, it was no more than the park belonging to the country-house, which Governor-General Van Imhoff built here in 1754: a house since destroyed by an earth-quake, and on the site of which the present lodge was erected.
In this park, Professor Bernwardt, some eighty years ago, arranged a small botanical garden, a "hortus" as the innocent pedantry of the period called it. The idea was to gather in this fertile spot specimens of all the plants and trees growing in Java, so as to afford men of science an opportunity for studying the flora of the island. By and bye, however, especially under the direction of Teysmann, many plants from other countries were introduced, with a view of acclimatizing them in Java, often with signal success. And, recently, a museum and a library have been established, as well as several laboratories for chemical, botanical, and pharmaceutical research. For the cultivation of such plants as require a cool climate, gardens have been laid out on the terraced hill-side, in ascending tiers that climb up to the heights of Tji-Bodas, where in the early morning, the temperature is 10° Celsius. These ameliorations, for the greater part, are due to the untiring energy of the eminent scientist now directing the garden.
[Illustration: Prinsenlaan-corner, Batavia.]
[Illustration: The beautiful tall reeds of the sugar cane, their pennon-like leaves gleaming in the sunshine.]
[Illustration: Avenue of old waringin trees, Botanical Garden, Buitenzorg.]
But, that morning, as I wandered through the tall avenues of the Buitenzorg Park, the thought of its importance as a scientific institution disappeared before the perception of its exquisite loveliness. Not a beauty of line and colour merely: it has these--the park is admirably arranged, in broad effects of light and shadow, dark hued groves and avenues contrasting with sunny expanses of lawn and copse and mirroring lake; but there is something over and above all this, an element of beauty as subtle and elusive as the transient sparkle of a sun-beam, or the fitful comings and goings of the summer wind. Perhaps it was the extraordinary brilliancy of the colours, and the shimmer in the rain-saturated atmosphere; or perhaps it was the profound quietude all around, a stillness so perfect that it seemed it must endure for ever. I do not know what may have been the elements that made up the nameless charm. But I yielded myself up to it; and it seemed to me, as if I were walking in a dream, amidst objects at once unreal and singularly distinct. For a long time I sat by the shore of a little lake, that had an islet in the midst of it, all overgrown with brushwood, and great tangles of liana, that opened hundreds of pale violet flowers to the sunlight; in the centre there rose a group of young palms, of the sort that has a bright red stem; and all these colours, the many-tinted green and the lilac and the scarlet were mirrored so vividly in the clear water as to almost make the reflection seem brighter than the reality.... By and by, following a path that wandered out of sunshine into chequered shadow, and out of shadow into sunlight again, I came to a vast sweep of meadowy ground, where herds of reddish deer were feeding as peacefully as in a forest clearing. Presently I found myself in a great dim avenue of kenari-trees, through whose sombre branches the sky showed but faintly; and anon in a bamboo grove where there was a continual rustling and waving of leaves though not the slightest breath of wind could be felt to stir the air.