Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But the difficulty was how to get this census. He could not go himself into every village
and every house, and count all the people; and if he ordered it to be done by the regular of-
ficers they would quickly understand what it was for, and the census would be sure to agree
exactly with the quantity of rice he got last year. It was evident therefore that to answer his
purpose no one must suspect why the census was taken; and to make sure of this, no one
must know that there was any census taken at all. This was a very hard problem; and the Ra-
jah thought and thought, as hard as a Malay Rajah can be expected to think, but could not
solve it; and so he was very unhappy, and did nothing but smoke and chew betel with his fa-
vourite wife, and eat scarcely anything; and even when he went to the cock-fight did not
seem to care whether his best birds won or lost. For several days he remained in this sad
state, and all the court were afraid some evil eye had bewitched the Rajah; and an unfortu-
nate Irish captain who had come in for a cargo of rice and who squinted dreadfully, was very
nearly being krissed, but being first brought to the royal presence was graciously ordered to
go on board and remain there while his ship stayed in the port.
One morning however, after about a week's continuance of this unaccountable melan-
choly, a welcome change took place, for the Rajah sent to call together all the chiefs and
priests and princes who were then in Mataram, his capital city; and when they were all as-
sembled in anxious expectation, he thus addressed them:
'For many days my heart has been very sick and I knew not why, but now the trouble is
cleared away, for I have had a dream. Last night the spirit of the “Gunong Agong”—the
great fire mountain—appeared to me, and told me that I must go up to the top of the moun-
tain. All of you may come with me to near the top, but then I must go up alone, and the
great spirit will again appear to me and will tell me what is of great importance to me and to
you and to all the people of the island. Now go all of you and make this known through the
island, and let every village furnish men to make clear a road for us to go through the forest
and up the great mountain.'
So the news was spread over the whole island that the Rajah must go to meet the great
spirit on the top of the mountain; and every village sent forth its men, and they cleared away
the jungle and made bridges over the mountain streams and smoothed the rough places for
the Rajah's passage. And when they came to the steep and craggy rocks of the mountain,
they sought out the best paths, sometimes along the bed of a torrent, sometimes along nar-
row ledges of the black rocks; in one place cutting down a tall tree so as to bridge across a
chasm, in another constructing ladders to mount the smooth face of a precipice. The chiefs
who superintended the work fixed upon the length of each day's journey beforehand accord-
ing to the nature of the road, and chose pleasant places by the banks of clear streams and in
