Hunting – preferably big game – was high on the list of tourist activities in Java. Some pleasure travellers took part in deer hunts, which were sometimes organised by the Regents (indigenous rulers). From an elevated spot they surveyed the hunting grounds and followed the hunters’ actions with binoculars. The Austrian world-traveller Ida Pfeiffer expressed her horror after she had attended a hunt in Celebes (present-day Sulawesi). The deer were hunted, caught and torn apart by dogs: ‘It was a horrible pastime, which I would not like to attend a second time.’ Tiger hunts were also popular, witness the photos of tigers, shot dead, collected in this album, bound in tiger skin.
1. ‘A Deer Hunt in the Priangan Regencies’. Ernest Hardouin. From F.C. Wilsen, De Indische Archipel. Tafereelen uit de natuur en het volksleven in Indië, 1865-1876. [KITLV 47A70]
2. Album bound in tiger skin, with photos of tigers, shot dead. Compiled by E.G.A. Lapré. [KITLV A569]