Our route for some distance lay along a perfectly level country bearing
ample crops of rice. The road was straight and generally bordered with
lofty trees forming a fine avenue. It was at first sandy, afterwards
grassy, with occasional streams and mudholes. At a distance about four
miles we reached Mataram, the capital of the island and the residence
of the Rajah. It is a large village with wide streets bordered by a
magnificent avenue of trees, and low houses concealed behind mud walls.
Within this royal city no native of the lower orders is allowed to ride,
and our attendant, a Javanese, was obliged to dismount and lead his
horse while we rode slowly through. The abodes of the Rajah and of the
High Priest are distinguished by pillars of red brick constructed with
much taste; but the palace itself seemed to differ but little from
the ordinary houses of the country. Beyond Mataram and close to it is
Karangassam, the ancient residence of the native or Sassak Rajahs before
the conquest of the island by the Balinese.
Soon after passing Mataram the country began gradually to rise in
gentle undulations, swelling occasionally into low hills towards the two
mountainous tracts in the northern and southern parts of the island.
It was now that I first obtained an adequate idea of one of the most
wonderful systems of cultivation in the world, equalling all that is
related of Chinese industry, and as far as I know surpassing in the
labour that has been bestowed upon it any tract of equal extent in the
most civilized countries of Europe. I rode through this strange garden
utterly amazed and hardly able to realize the fact that in this remote
and little known island, from which all Europeans except a few traders
at the port are jealously excluded, many hundreds of square miles of
irregularly undulating country have been so skillfully terraced and
levelled, and so permeated by artificial channels, that every portion of
it can be irrigated and dried at pleasure. According as the slope of the
ground is more or less rapid, each terraced plot consists in some places
of many acres, in others of a few square yards. We saw them in every
state of cultivation; some in stubble, some being ploughed, some with
rice-crops in various stages of growth. Here were luxuriant patches of
tobacco; there, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, yams, beans or Indian-corn
varied the scene. In some places the ditches were dry, in others little
streams crossed our road and were distributed over lands about to be
sown or planted. The banks which bordered every terrace rose regularly
in horizontal lines above each other; sometimes rounding an abrupt knoll
and looking like a fortification, or sweeping around some deep hollow
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