There are several flower-markets in Batavia. But I have taken a particular fancy to the one held at Tanah Abang. Its site is a somewhat singularly chosen one for the purpose, near the entrance to the cemetery, and in the shadow of the huge old gateway, the superscription on which dedicates the place to the repose of the dead, and their pious memory. In its deep, dark arch, as in a black frame, is set a vista of dazzling whiteness, plastered tombstones, pillars, and obelisks huddled into irregular groups, with here and there a figure hewn in fair white marble soaring on outstretched wings, and everywhere a scintillation as of molten metal--the colourless, intolerable glare, to which the fierce sunlight fires the corrugated zinc of the roofs protecting the monuments.
But on the other side of the gateway there are restful shadows and coolness. Some ancient gravestones pave the ground, as if it were the floor of an old village church--bluish-grey slabs emblazoned with crests and coats-of-arms in worn away bas-relief. Heraldic shapes are still faintly discernible on some; and long Latin epitaphs, engraved in the curving characters of the seventeenth century, may be spelt out, recording names which echo down the long corridors of time in the history of the colony; and, oddly latinized, the style and title bestowed on the deceased by the Lords Seventeen, rulers of the Honourable East India Company--the Company of Far Lands, as in the olden time it was called.
Hither, before the sun is fairly risen, come a score of native flower-sellers, shivering in the morning air, who spread squares of matting on the soil, and, squatting down, proceed to arrange the contents of their heaped-up baskets. The bluish-grey gravestones, with the coats of arms and long inscriptions, are covered with heaps of flowers: creamy Melati as delicate and sharply-defined in outline as if they had been carved out of ivory; pink and red Roses with transparent leaves, that cling to the touch; Tjempakah-telor, great smooth globes of pearly whiteness; the long calixes of the Cambodja-blossom, in which tints of yellow and pink and purple are mixed as in an evening sky; the tall sceptre of the Tuberose, flower-crowned; and "pachar china," which seems to be made out of grains of pure gold.