Dutch Assistant Resident as well as a Regent or native
Javanese prince lived here. The town was neat, and had
a nice open grassy space like a village green, on which
stood a magnificent fig-tree (allied to the Banyan of India,
hut more lofty), under whose shade a kind of market is
continually held, and where the inhabitants meet together
to lounge and chat. The day after my arrival, Mr. Ball
drove me over to the village of Modjo-agong, where he was
building a house and premises for the tobacco trade, which
is carried on here by a system of native cultivation and
advance purchase, somewhat similar to the indigo trade in
British India. On our way we stayed to look at a fragment
of the ruins of the ancient city of Modjo-pahit, consisting
of two. lofty brick masses, apparently the sides of a
gateway. The extreme perfection and beauty of the brickwork
astonished me. The bricks are exceedingly fine and
hard, with sharp angles and true surfaces. They are laid
with great exactness, without visible mortar or cement, yet
somehow fastened together so that the joints are hardly
perceptible, and sometimes the two surfaces coalesce in a
most incomprehensible maimer. Such admirable brickwork
I have never seen before or since. There was no
sculpture here, but abundance of bold projections and
finely-worked mouldings. Traces of buildings exist for
many miles in every direction, and almost every road and
pathway shows a foundation of brickwork beneath it—the
a v e d roads of the old city. In the house of the Waidono
o r district chief at Modjo-agong, I saw a beautiful figure
c a rv e d in high relief out of a block of lava, and which had
ANCIENT BAH* R E L IE F .
been found bnried in the ground near the village. On my
expressing a wish to obtain some such specimen, Mr. B.
asked the chief for it, and much to my surprise he immep