Taking a carriage ride across town was a popular pastime in the Dutch East Indies, witness this 1842 print (from the collection Vues de Java). Such a ride is described in the famous novel De stille kracht (The Hidden Force, 1900) by Louis Couperus. One late afternoon, as the sun is setting, Resident Otto van Oudijck, together with his wife Léonie and their children, makes a tour in their carriage, in the ‘tragic mysteriousness of the dusky atmosphere of the East Monsoon days’. First they ride through the Chinese neighbourhood, with its lights, bright colours and over-crowded shops, but then they arrive in the Arab district, where they sense a very different atmosphere, menacing and ominous.
‘Promenade sur la Place de Waterloo a Batavia’, by A.J. Bik, 1842. [KITLV 47B27]