Surabaya is the capital of East Java, Indonesia, and Pasuruan is a city about 65 km southeast of it. Harlow picked this song up during his travels, loading and unloading sugar with the islanders, remarking
It was sung in their own language and I will not vouch for the correctness of the words but the music is given as they sang it. As near as I could tell the chantey was a tale about going from Sourabaya to Pasuruan.