Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/51

mountains, and comes to the Batavia palace only on state occasions. This ruler of thirty odd million souls, who rules as a viceroy instructed from The Hague, with the aid of a secretary-general and a Council of the Indies, has, in addition to his salary of a hundred thousand dollars, an allowance of sixty thousand dollars a year for entertaining, and it is expected that he will maintain a considerable state and splendor. He has a standing army of forty thousand, one third Europeans, of various nationalities, raised by volunteer enlistment in Holland, who are well paid, carefully looked after, and recruited by long stays at Buitenzorg after short terms of service at the sea ports. After the Indian mutiny the Dutch were in great fear of an uprising of the natives of Java, and placed less confidence in native troops. Only Europeans can hold officers' commissions; and while the native soldiers are all Mohammedans, and great consideration is paid their religious scruples, care is taken not to let the natives of any one province or district compose a majority in any one regiment, and these regiments frequently change posts. The colonial navy has done great service to the world in suppressing piracy in the Java Sea and around the archipelago, although steam navigation inevitably brought an end to piracy and picturesque adventure. The little navy helps maintain an admirable lighthouse service, and with such convulsions as that of Krakatau always possible, and changes often occurring in the bed of the shallow seas, its surveyors are continually busied with making new charts.