Excerpt from Java: Facts and Fancies

The Southern Cross must rise above the woods where the birds of paradise nestle. Where is it now, the glory and the dream The soil of Java is hot under my feet. I know - to my cost - that if the surrounding seas be different from any other body of water they are chie¿y so in being more subject to tempest turmoil and sudden squalls. I find the benign in¿uences of the Southern Cross not a very brilliant constellation by the way utterly undone by the fiery fury of the noonday sun, and have learnt to appreciate the fine irony of the inherited style and title as com pared with the present habitat of the said Birds of Paradise. And yet - all chagrining experience notwithstanding and maugre the deadly dullness of so many days the fever of so many sultry nights, and the home sickness of all hours - I have still some of the old love for this country left, and I begin to understand something of the fascination by which it holds the Northerner who has breathed its odour-laden air for too long a time. So that forgetting his home, his friends.

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