Page:Life in Java Volume 2.djvu/137

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121

CHAPTER V.


About two or three miles from the last Kraton we reached another, built by the grandfather of the present Sultan, and known as Pourworajo, or "the commencement of prosperity;" though now, from having been long uninhabited and neglected, it presents an appearance totally at variance with the name originally given to it. It is quite melancholy to see the long avenues, once planted so regularly with fine tall trees, almost choked up with shrubs and saplings; the footpaths, formerly well tended, green with grass, moss, and rank weeds; the terraces, balustrades, and ornamental stone-work, now broken and dilapidated, crumbling under the "brazen hands of time." Beyond the fact of its being a