We dropped anchor at a cluster of wharves and warehouses called Tandjung Priok, the disembarkation point for Batavia, some six miles inland. That golden island where I hoped to live, that enchanted paradise of Bali where life would prove uncomplicated and exquisite, was still some distance off, waiting tranquilly between two oceans, the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea.

The dock laborers of Java were lithe, agile brown men, their bare shoulders and strong legs gleaming like metal in the equatorial sun. Lordly Dutchmen and other Caucasians, cool in starched white duck or seer-sucker, stood aloof from the antlike activities of the Javanese, and satisfied themselves that all was in order before they signaled for the shiny American-built motorcars, the taxis of Java, to take them home or to their clubs.

To reach Batavia, where I must arrange for my final objective, I drove along concrete-paved, canal-bordered roadways. The hotels in Batavia surprised me. There was the swank Hotel Des Indes, the comfortable Des Galleries, and the Netherlander of older fashion. All excellent. Important guests were received in the great houses whose green lawns surrounded the Koenigsplein, or King’s Square, and whose windows looked grandly out on the Governor General’s Palace. Java, like all the other islands of Indonesia, was then part of the Dutch East Indies, and Batavia reflected all that was best in colonial elegance.

I had planned to buy a motorcar and drive through Java to the little harbour of Banjuwangi, at the other end of the island, and then cross Bali Strait by native ferry. Dutchmen speaking good English were most eager to help me exchange dollars for guilders and negotiate the purchase of a motorcar until they learned that I intended making my journey alone. In Java, where every car owner has a chauffeur, it was not considered proper for a white man to be at the wheel himself, and for a woman it was unthinkable! I was implored to abandon my original idea and instead to ship my car and travel in comfort by the Dutch KPM steamship line. I listened politely to this advice, and verified information I had already obtained. There were fishermen at Banjuwangi who could be hired to sail a motorcar across the strait in one of their native praus.

I bought a small drophead car and decided to set out alone that same night. I wished to see the people of Java and the countryside at close quarters, and to me there was nothing frightening in driving alone across Java. I had often driven alone from coast to coast in America. But I am forced to record that this Java drive proved quite a different matter.