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-4^[[2-]] About midnight Bill went in to see how Williams was feeling, and then took his temperature with our thermometer. To our horror the thermometer went right up to the top, registering 106 and points north. We woke up the ship's doctor, who took his temperature with his own thermometer, and found that ours has gone flooey, either due to tropical hardships or too much bouncing around. Williams [[underlined]] is [[/underlined]] sick, but his fever was one and a half degrees Celsius, whatever that is - less than 106, anyway. April 6 - Soerabaia We arrived at Soerabaia early in the morning, and came ashore after a leisurely breakfast on deck. The Governor-General is in town today, and all the flags are flying in his honor. Even the bullock carts have bright-colored yokes and decorations - the city is very gay. All these Javan cities are neat and clean; well-painted, white and yellow, and tidy as only a Dutch town can be. The buildings look very attractive in their setting of palm trees, hibiscus, casuarina, crotons, and other typical foliage. The Hotel Oranje gave us a room, built on the same spacious plan as the Sumatran hotels, but with mosquito nets over the beds instead of the screened mosquito room that liked so much in Medan and Siantar. About ten-thirty we set out for the Zoo, and were joined by the Sheriffs. We had a very nice morning, and found lots of interesting things in the Zoo. The bird collection was especially fine, including enormous woodpeckers, white starlings from Bali, "leatherheads" a sort of pygmy hornbill from New Guinea,and fairy bluebirds. A pair of anoas had produced a young one, which was brown and white and quite unlike its parents in appearance. The first banteng we had ever seen munched like a great black bull in his paddock. Mynahs crawled over the tapirs, looking for ticks or something. The deer were getting their new horns - sure enough, this is fall, not spring, in this part of the world. We had lunch at the Oranje Hotel, and in the middle of lunch Bill was called to the telephone. The American Consul was on the wire, saying there was a cable from the Consul in Calcutta. The cable was the best news we had had so far, namely, the Assam Government is willing to capture a rhinoceros for us, and deliver it to Calcutta. After being turned down by the Dutch on a permit for rhino, this was thrilling news indeed, and Bill almost had hysterics of joy. We all had several drinks on the strength of it, and suddenly decided to go to Bali instead of staying in Soerabaia for two days. Why we had not thought of it before I don't know, but we hastily repacked, abandoned our laundry, films, and any possible mail, and sailed at five o'clock on the Van der Lijn. The coast of Java, seen from the ship at sunset, was very lovely, with the sky pearly pink behind the purple masses of the mountains. April 7 - Bali We landed at six in the morning, and after some delay in getting ashore, found ourselves in the hot little town of Boeleling on the northern coast of the island. Many American tourists from our boat were going across to Den Paser, on the other side, but we
Transcription Notes:
Used transcription centre notation for handwritten text in typed pages ie ^[[text]] -@siobhanleachman
