Java by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore — Read

As the two native states of Middle Java, the _Vorstenlanden_, or "Lands of the Princes," were last to be brought under Dutch rule, Djokjakarta and Soerakarta are the capitals and head centers of native supremacy, where most of Javanese life remains unchanged. The Sultan of Djokja, and the so-called emperor, or _susunhan_, of Solo, were last to yield to over-sea usurpers, and, as tributary princes enjoying a "protected and controlled independence," accept an "advisory elder brother," in the person of a Dutch resident, to sit at their sovereign elbows and by "suggestions" rule their territories for the greater good of the natives and the Holland exchequer. All the region around Djokja and Solo is classic ground, and the oldest Javanese myths and legends, the earliest traditions of native life, have their locale hereabout. These people are the Javanese, and show plainly their Hindu descent and their higher civilization, which distinguish them from the Sundanese of West Java; yet the Sundanese call themselves the "sons of the soil," and the Javanese "the stranger people. " The glories of the Hindu empire are declared by the magnificent ruins so lately uncovered, but the splendor of the Mohammedan empire barely survives in name in the strangely interesting city of the susunhan set in the midst of the plain of Solo-a plain which M. Désiré de Charnay described as "a paradise which nothing on earth can equal, and neither pen, brush, nor photography can faithfully reproduce."

At this Solo, second city of the island in size, one truly reaches the heart of native Java-the Java of the Javanese-more nearly than elsewhere; but Islam's old empire is there narrowed down to a kraton, or palace inclosure, a mile square, where the present susunhan, or object of adoration, lives as a restrained pensioner of the Dutch government, the mere shadow of those splendid potentates, his ancestors.