to the mystery.  We returned through a quinine plantation, which is an experiment, and promises to be a successful one, and then through a coffee plantation, different, and much prettier to look at than those of Ceylon and Jamaica, for here the bushes are allowed to grow to their full height (about twenty feet), and have a graceful pyramid- like shape; whereas there they are all pruned down to about five feet in height.  There are also here some large trees left to give shade to the coffee bushes.  I can conceive nothing more lovely than these plantations must be at the time of flowering.  We got back to our hotel at 2 P.M., since when I have had breakfast, hath, and reading, and am now preparing for dinner.

[Sidenote:  A second soiree.]

Ten P.M.—­Another Javanese soiree.  No ladies this time.  To begin with:  two kinds of marionettes; the first behind a kind of crape screen,—­strange figures cut very beautifully out of buffalo hide, and jumping about to a very noisy vocal and instrumental accompaniment.  The second, something like Italian marionettes, worked by a man’s fingers, but without any attempt to conceal the operator.  Both sets, I believe, represented historical subjects.  When we had had enough of these, we went into another room, where were assembled a priest, and a whole lot of followers from a mosque.  The amusement here consisted in seeing boys from the mosque stick into their cheeks, &c., daggers and pointed weapons, which the priest blessed, and which were therefore innocuous; a milder specimen of the supernatural I certainly never witnessed.  All took place at the Regent’s palace, from which I have just returned.  His son, a boy of about fourteen, was present to-night and last night.  A rather nice-looking boy.  He never came near his father without crouching on his heels or knees, and putting his hands up to his face in an attitude of submission, if spoken to by him.

[Sidenote:  Chipana.]

February 13th.—­Ten P.M.—­Chipana.—­(The place we slept at on the night of the 10th.) On this, as on the former occasion, the population make a sort of festival of my visit, and turn out to perform dances, &c.  The performances are not so refined as at the Regent’s, but they are more picturesque and lively.  The ladies move about in the same dreamy way about lamps, or rather torches, but here they have partners to dance with them.  The noise is tremendous, and has not yet ceased, although I have retired, on the understanding that the entertainment is to come to an end, as we again start to-morrow at 6 A.M.  To-night, all the dancing has been in the open air.  It was a wild, barbarous- looking scene; but I do not know that I should much care to see it again.  We started this morning at six, and travelled, as we have always done, at full gallop on the level or down hill, and with the aid of four buffalos in front of our six ponies when we came to mount steep hills, of which there