Another place of impressive scenic beauty and, thus, a tourist attraction was the mountainous West Javanese region of the Priangan (spelled Parahyangan nowadays). Numerous tourists have expressed their awe and admiration in writing. The physician Isaäc Groneman, a keen traveller, called the Priangan region ‘the most beautiful and strangest part of this wonderful island’. His travelogue shows the wonder he felt at the panoramas, ‘with forests and lakes, with sáwahs [rice fields] and kámpongs [villages], with hills and valleys; and behind them mountain ranges and clouds’. The word ‘enjoy’ features a great many times in his writing. Groneman left no doubt that he only toured Java to admire the beauty of its nature:
What wild splendour of nature, what striking contrast with the soft glow of the moon and the distant flashes of lightning in the friendly sky! No wind was to be felt there, but now and then light and thin strips of cloud moved around, at seemingly high speed, above, below and past me, and increased the effect of the grand spectacle, which I never tired of enjoying to the full.
1. ‘In the Sumedang district (Preanger Regencies)’. J.C. Greive after A. Salm, 1872. [KITLV 47D24]
2. Title page and title image of J.Z. van Dyck, Garoet en omstreken. Zwerftochten door de Preanger. Batavia: G. Kolff, [1922]. [1869 C 21]