A few days before the Sept. 2 earthquake on Java, I passed though some of the affected areas on a train ride between Bandung in the West Java highlands to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogja) on the Central Java plain.

This must be one of the world’s most interesting rail journeys. The slow but comfortable “Argo Wilis” (endearingly, Indonesian trains have names — this one a volcano the train passes on its 13-hour journey) snakes its way along a mostly single track around terraced hillsides and between old volcanoes, through Tasikmalaya and Banjar — the towns that recently made their tragic appearance on world news. The train then descends onto a plain of rice paddies, some still green and glistening, others brown from recent harvests.

Looking back, it is remarkable that the earthquake, with a force of 7.1, killed only 100 or so. This is one of the most densely populated rural regions on the planet, a place where villages and towns form a continuum along the roads and railway, where even the steepest hillsides are terraced to grow rice in the wet season and a vast array of other crops in the dry season, where fruits of almost every sort abound along with tea, coffee and tobacco.

The red-tiled, single story houses standard throughout Java do not look ideal for resisting earthquakes. But the record suggests otherwise, for this is an island that has experienced regular earthquakes and volcanic eruptions since Java man lived near Yogyakarta 100,000 years ago.