MARVELLOUS JAVA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 204, 29 August 1910, Page 6

MARVELLOUS JAVA.

A GARDEN AS BIG AS VICTORIA. Java very much impressed Colonel Vernon, who returned recently to Sydney from the East. "It's a beautiful country," he said. "It'is about the size of Victoria, and it contains 32,000,000 people. They have turned it into one huge garden, by intense cultivation and irrigation. The Dutch Government has carried out the irrigation works well, and the small holders, it appeared to mc, attend to the smaller streams that bring the water to their rice patches. It's wonderful! Even up to considerable elevations of land, the whole country is irrigated. It's all done by gravitation. There's a very big rainfall, and the hills are nearly always covered with clouds, and the air ie full of moisture, so that water is easily caught and stored, even on the mountains. "But I don't think the thickness of population is any guide to what we may have. The natives dont live up to white standards. I should think a great many of them don't do much more than exist. "The climate is fine—on the uplands. Where 1 was it was cool and pleasant, and there was no fever."