CHAPTER VII.

AMONG THE MALAYS: THE SLAMATAN

BROMOK; THE DYAKS; THE PAPUAN

TRIBES; THE AHETAS.

THE SLAMATAN    BROMOK.

A RELIGIOUS ceremony exists in Java which has an obvious affinity to the

old Nature-Worship, and finds its excuse in the dread with which the uncivilised
races regarded the mysterious forces of Nature, unseen in themselves, but
palpable in their results. About three miles from the town of Tosari, rises the
barren cone of the Bromok, a still active volcano, which is strangely situated in
the bosom of green wooded hills and mountains,—a significant blur upon the
landscape. The traveller who desires to accomplish its ascent climbs up the
rough and almost precipitous slope by a path winding through immense breadths
of a tall yellow grass called the alang-alang. When he has attained to the brink of
the Monegal, an enormous extinct crater, reputed to be the largest in the world,
he will do well to pause, and survey the landscape before him. Of the knot of
mountains on which his eye rests, the foremost is called the Batok, or Butak, that
is, the Bald; in allusion, probably, to its barren summit, for its sides are well
clothed with herbage. It is shaped like a cone, with deep grooves down its
declivities, indicating the course taken by the lava-streams formerly ejected from
its interior. To its right, a little in the rear, stretches the sharp pointed chain of
the Dedari and Widadarea, or “abode of fairies;” while, on the left, shrouded in
smoke clouds, which partially conceal its bulk, is situated the mass of the dreary
Bromok.

Descending into the crater, we cross its sandy floor, the Dasar,—or, as it is
appropriately called, the Sandy Sea,—where grows not tree nor shrub, and the
only signs of vegetation are a few scattered patches of dried and scrubby grass.