OS (a i-j CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DS 619.825"'" ""'™""^ '■"'"'^ * iiiPiii™iM!l'.«},tl,1.,,!ilH'<='i East Indies. 3 1924 023 087 459 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023087459 With the compliments of the "NEDERLAND" ROYAL MAIL LINE Service between Amsterdam and the Dutch East Indies via Southampton. Algiers, Genoa, Port Said, Suez, Colombo, Singapore A trip through the Dutch East Indies BY A. J. BARNOUW QUEEN WILHELMINA PROFESSOR Columbia University IN THE City of New- York 'I Printed by Koch tic Knuttel Gouda, Holland <~o J-5'77^ THERE is a close connection between the genesis of the city of New York and the rise of Holland's colonial power in the Malay Archipelago. Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East In- dies, and the American metropolis on Manhattan owe their origin to the same commercial enterprise. If the Amsterdam merchants, in the early seventeenth century, had not set their minds on dis- covering a new route to Java, beyond the control of the Spanish fleet, the first settlers on Manhattan would probably not have come from Holland, and the early records of New York would give a different story to read. It was the Dutch East India Company that sent Hudson to sea on the Half Moon, the east of Asia, not of America, being his goal, and the two cities that sprang up on the island which he sought and on the island which he reached, are sister cities by their common parentage. Batavia is the older of the two. It was founded in 1619, two years before the Dutch West India Company came into being in whose name Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Indians. Java was less easily obtained, at the price of many lives which were lost in warfare with the natives or succumbed to diseases contracted in the tropical climate when Europeans had not yet learned how to live there with impunity. But the costlier gain has proved a more perma- nent one to the Hollanders. Few traces are left in present-day New York of its Dutch past, whereas Batavia is still a characteristically Dutch city and the centre of Dutch rule in the East Indies. The size of Java is equal to that of the State of New York, which is four times as large as the area covered by the Dutch mother country, and the island is inhabited, according to the latest census, by nearly thirty- five million people, five times as many as Holland has herself. But Java is only the chief pearl in a diadem of many jewels. To the northwest of it, like a bridge thrown across the ocean to the mainland A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES of Asia, lies Sumatra, with its adjacent islands covering an area about as large as the State of California; north of Java lies Borneo, the Dutch and larger part of which is about twice the size of Colorado; east of Borneo lies Celebes with a multitude of lesser islands along- side of it and east again of these Dutch New Guinea. The total land area possessed by the Hollanders in the Malay Archipelago is about one fourth of the continental area of the United States. These distant lands may be reached from New York by various routes. The present writer chose to go there by freightship. A com- bination of four Dutch shipping companies runs a fortnightly service between New York and Batavia with steamers that offer accommo- dation to a limited number of passengers. The ship I traveled on was the "Celebes" of the "iVeiferZaTirf" Royal Mail Line, a Dutch steam- ship company which maintains a regular passenger service between Amsterdam and Batavia and, in addition, owns a merchant fleet whose forty-two ships carry freight to all parts of the globe. The "Celebes" had brought products of the East Indies to Philadelphia and New York and carried on her return voyage a cargo of American manufactures destined for various parts of the Malay Archipelago. Chief among these were nearly a hundred automobiles of various American makes, which render life for the Hollanders in Java and Sumatra a great deal more enjoyable than it was for their parents and ancestors, who found it practically impossible to escape occasionally from their isolation. We also carried, strange to say, a few hundred tons of closely packed waste paper, American dailies discarded by the millions of readers who consume the morning's intelligence who- lesale in cryptic headlines and leave the rest of printed pulp undi- gested on breakfast tables, in waste-paper baskets, on office desks, and in hotel lobbies. But this seemingly wasteful output of daily literature is not wasted after all, it appears. Many a time, when a month's harvest reaped by the janitor from the four dumb-waiters in our apartment house was being loaded on to a truck and driven away, I wondered whither the driver was going to take his load. I know now. These truckloads may have various destinations, but an important one is the Dutch East Indies, where they are valued not for the sake of the literature, but for the paper. The pages of the New York Times, the Boston Transcript, the Philadelphia Ledger, e.a., long after they have done ephemeral service in their native cities. A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST- INDIES are turned to good use as wrapping paper in the native stores of those distant islands. At Macassar, in South Celebes, I bought some cheap fabric from a Chinese store-keeper who handed me my pur- chase neatly wrapped up in a funny sheet of the New York Ame- rican, I was told over there that the native packers of tea, and sago, and mace, and cloves, and what other products the islands yield for export, line their cases with the printed humor and wisdom of the American journalist, who may get them back, a year or so later, in the chest of Java tea which he receives from a grateful reader for a Christmas present. Mr. Jiggs and his Maggie, Mutt and Jeff, Cicero Sapp and the rest of the funny crew are greater globe-trotters than they themselves suspect. Who would say, after meeting these cha- racters in the Far East, that the American press is not sufficiently orientated? The "Celebes", the captain told me, is sometimes turned into a pilgrim ship, when she is used for the transport of hadjis from the Indies to the harbor of Jiddah in the Red Sea. Hadjis are pilgrims to the shrines of Islam, among which the tomb of the Prophet is, of course, the holy of holies. But the hadji who undertakes the journey for the first time is not at once admitted to the innermost sanctuary. It is only reached by steps, after repeated visits to Mecca. Thou- sands of natives from the Dutch East Indies leave their homes every year to perform this religious devotion, and if they do not die of the hardships to which they are exposed on the journey in the scorching sun from Jiddah to the holy places, they return to their villages wearing the white headgear which is the token of their accomplished pilgrimage. These hadjis are often breeders of unrest in the districts to which they belong. Manual labor has become an exertion which they reckon beneath their dignity. They loaf about, spreading sedi- tious talk and discontent among the populace, and thereby causing trouble to the civil authorities. For in Mecca they come under the influence of the anti-European spirit, which is gaining strength throughout the Islamic world. The rule of the infidel over the Mo- hammedan faithful in Africa and Asia is naturally resented most in the religious centre of Islam, and the home-going hadji returns im- bued with that spirit. Prohibition of the pilgrimage to Mecca, apart from its being contrary to the Netherland government's policy of allowing unrestricted freedom of worship, would not stamp out this A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES agitation. For the zealot among the natives would always find means to reach Mecca by some way or other and, if successful in spite of governmental obstacles, would return a hero the more influential for the admiration his perseverance would have gained him from his people. So the government at Batavia has chosen the wiser policy of facilitating the voyage to the holy places of Islam, on the theory that the hadji, as soon as he ceases to be an exception, will lose in prestige and influence; for increasing competition among the retur- ned pilgrims for the respect that is due to their venerability is bound to decrease the measure of respect that each can command. Hence the ships of the "Nederland" Royal Mail Line are at times em- ployed in shipping these pilgrims to the port of Jiddah, from where they travel by caravan to the holy shrines. Some years before the war, plans were on foot to build a railroad for their quicker con- veyance by land, but these were frustrated by the opposition of the Bedouine tribe which has the monopoly of the pilgrims' transpor- tation. The "interests" are blocking the proper development of tran- sit facilities in the Arabian desert as they did in Mayor Hylan's days in the subterranean desert of New York. These trade monopolists are also consummate masters in the gentle art of graft. The pilot who ushers the hadji ships into the harbor of Jiddah is forced to pay an annual tribute to the chieftains of the Bedouins for the pri- vilege of earning his bread by his profession. If he should refuse to comply with their exaction, he would soon find that they possess the means to put him out of business. And the hadjis who may not travel by rail because the Bedouin capitalists have invested their money in camels that must yield the annual dividend, are in this, and in various other ways, laid under tribute by the "interests" in control of the transit situation. It is only by covering ground that one discovers the meaning of distance. And to the traveler by sea, who covers thousands of miles of water, that meaning is brought home even more forcibly. For he has not the advantage of a constantly changing scenery which serves as a distraction and as a pleasant reminder that he is getting on. The sea, whatever the poets may say, looks pretty much the same in all climes. The azure of the Mediterranean is only a reflection of the sky, and when that is overcast she looks as grey as the grey Atlantic, and the Red Sea, like certain radicals in politics, is not so red as fame A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES would have it. Nor is there anything in the Arabian Sea and the In- dian Ocean by which the traveler is made aware of the nearness of the mysterious Orient. The west monsoon, which blows from July till October, chases the ship from Cape Guardafui, the North-East corner of Africa, across a stormy waste of water, but it is not laden with the fragrance of Madagascar spices to make you scent your whereabouts. Even the telling stars do not tell very much to the layman. He will easily recognize the Southern Cross which stands like a flying kite above the horizon, but each successive night it seems to stand in that same place as if the ship had made no progress. The greater, therefore, is the joy of reaching one's goal after all, and the stronger one's first impression of tropical scenery for having approached it without the preparation of intermediate stages between West and East. When after such a voyage, shy of all land, the tra- veler beholds the densely wooded slopes of Poeloe Weh (pronounce Pooloo Way), he marvels at the wealth of that tropical vegetation, and after the ship has cast anchor in the natural harbor of Sabang, he suddenly finds himself in a world so strangely different from his own that he wonders how the sea outside the bay can look exactly like the Atlantic, on a summer day, off Sandy Hook. Sumatra THE harbor of Sabang is the gateway through which one enters the Malay Archipelago. It is a gateway worthy the splendor to which it gives admission. A bay that cuts deep into the is- land of Poeloe Weh offers shelter to the travel-worn ship between a ring of richly wooded mountain slopes, where the waving crown of the coco-nut tree rises above the mass of darker green on the slender column of its stem. Sabang is a free port, so that the tra- veler's first impression of the unknown land is not marred by a custom-house officer's importunities. He will find comfortable quar- ters in the Sabang Hotel on the top of the hill above the bay, from where he can look back upon the restless scene of his late wanderings with a feeling of safety and peace. To right and left of the hotel are the houses of the Dutch residents of Sabang, and down below, at the foot of the hill, lies the village, where the Europeans have their offices and where the Chinese seem to have monopolized all the tra- des. You see them at work in their shops that are wide open to the street, tailors, shoemakers, drapers, caterers, dealers in hardware, money lenders; you see them running along the road with their por- table kitchens dangling from a bamboo cane that they skilfully ba- lance on their shoulders; you pass a Chinese temple and a Chinese school, which bear witness to the prosperity and the numbers of these immigrants from the Celestial Empire. Still, the biggest trades- man of Sabang is not a Chinaman but a Greek, corpulent Mr. Alberti, who runs a primitive department store where you can satisfy all your wants and who enjoys the twofold distinction of being the oldest and the richest resident of Sabang. He settled there when the bay was not yet accessible to large ocean steamers, and only in use as a coaling station for the Dutch navy and as a base of sup- o < o « o A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES plies for the Netherlands forces that were operating in Atjeh, North Sumatra, then at war with the Netherlands government. Mr. Alberti was in those days the sole purveyor of tobacco and liquor and other commodities for which there was a demand among the Dutch sailors and tommies. But after private enterprise, the Sabang Bay Harbor AND Coal Company, had turned Sabang into a coaling station for international shipping, and the island had become a port of call for the passenger ships of all nations that navigate in the Indian Seas, the Greek peddlar saw his fortunes rise with the growing importance of Sabang. His business is now so well established that it is as much a part of the harbor equipment as are the iron wharves and quays, the seventeen double sheds with storage space for 50.000 tons of coal, the go-downs covering 70.000 square feet for the storage of goods, the two floating docks, and the work and repair shops. Alberti's is known all over the Dutch Indies, for the thousands of passengers that paid a visit to his store while their steamer was bunkering have carried the name to the remotest spots of that vast island realm. In the year 1909, the Sabang Bay Harbor and Coal Company sold to the Netherlands Indies Government all the harbor works at cost price and undertook, at the same time, to operate the port under a forty-nine years' lease paying to the Government a dividend on its investment in addition to the rental. The Government pays for all improvements, although the Company retains the right to execute them without the knowledge or approval of the Government. The Governor General at Batavia has the right of veto if he uses it within three months from the date on which he receives the bill from the Company's manager. But his veto cannot prevent the expenditure, it only releases the Government, for the time being, from the necessity to pay the piper. The matter is then submitted to arbitration, the judges to be appointed by the two parties themselves. But there seems to be little fear of it ever coming to this. For the Company has no inducement to carry out an unjustifiable building programme, which would raise the rental that is due to the Government without a commensurate increase in the annual proceeds. The number of ships that bunkered at Sabang in 1900 was 275, from which year on it steadily rose to 1175 in 1912. The world war caused a conside- rable drop, which reached its lowest point in 1918, but from then on the shipping movement in Sabang harbor began to revive with the A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES gradual return to normalcy of navigation and commerce. Shortly after the " Celebes" had dropped anchor in the bay, two big passenger ships came in to bunker, the "Koningin der Nederlanden", on her way to Batavia, and the "Rembrandt" bound for Amsterdam. The village street swarmed with passengers from both steamers, new- comers from Holland visibly spellbound by the novel scene, and tired-looking colonials who were taking a last look at a spectacle too familiar to charm them. Thus week after week the two currents of moving humanity meet and part again at Sabang, in and out through the gateway, these on their way to work, those on their return voyage to retirement and rest or to a year's respite from their labors. The connection between Poeloe Weh and the opposite shore of North Sumatra is kept up by a small steam launch, which leaves Sabang at eight o'clock in the morning. The crossing takes from three to four hours. Oleh Leh is the name of the port on the other side. That was, at any rate, the name by which I had known it from my early schooldays in Holland. But the official spellings of place names in the Indies have since been changed into sound puzzles which, if they do justice to the native pronunciation, will scare any linguist from trying to learn the language. I wonder what the school- masters in Holland will make of Oelee-Lheue, which is the latest improvement on the simple Oleh Leh of my linguistically unen- lightened schooldays. The traveler need not trouble to solve the sound puzzle, for he only passes through Oelee-Lheue on his way to Koeta Radja, the capital of Atjeh, where he finds accommodation in the Atjeh Hotel. A trolley car will take him there in less than a quar- ter of an hour. One's first visit, on arriving, is naturally to the Kamar mandi, which is the Malay term for bathroom. On the door of the Kamar mandi at the Atjeh Hotel I found the following notice for the benefit of would-be bathers: "Guests are warned that pieces of broken glass are lying on the bottom of the tub". Another puzzle for the inquisitive traveler to solve! Some responsive soul had written underneath: "Kindliness, to be sure, is all one needs!" The purport of this strange inscription will appear when it has been explained how people bathe in the Indies. The "tub" is not a bathtub shaped to accommodate the human body. It is a deep tank or cistern which the bather must not step into but scoop from. He finds a dipper on its wide stone edge or hanging on the wall, and from this he throws 8 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES the water over himself, ten times, or twenty times, as often as he likes to shiver and as long as his arm holds out. The floor is built on a slant, so that the splashing water runs to the lower level of the bathroom, where a gutter carries it off through a hole in the wall. The totok, the inexperienced newcomer from Europe, might be ignorant of this manner of ablution and, by stepping into the tank, spoil the water for the next bather. At the Sabang Hotel the novice was taught his lesson in politer terms: there the tank was covered by a wooden lattice work in which an opening was left just large enough for the dipper to pass through, but too small for even the lankiest of bathers. The manager of the Atjeh Hotel had hit upon a device that was apt to mystify rather than instruct his totok guests. I never had -a chance to speak to him, for the man was invisible and let his native servants run the establishment for him. All the Atjehnese I knew was the one name of Oelee Lheue which I did not know how to pronounce. But traveling through the Dutch East Indies would be iinpossible if one had to master the numerous lan- guages that are spoken by the various tribes. There is one native speech that is understood all over the archipelago, at least by those natives who are in regular contact with Europeans. That speech is a greatly simplified form of Malay, a speech so simple that the long sea voyage allows one ample time to master so much of it as one needs to give one's orders intelligibly. It has neither inflections nor conjugations, so that the study of it is only a matter of memorizing words. The principal rule of its syntax is that the qualifying word does not precede but follows the word that it qualifies. Mata means "eye", hari means "day", and mata hari means "the day's eye", which is the native's poetic name for "sun", sapi means "ox", and mata sapi is, therefore, an "ox's eye", figuratively used for "a fried egg". By the time the traveler sets foot on shore at Sabang, he may have started so many breakfasts on board with the order Kasi mata sapi, "bring me a fried egg", that he will hardly be conscious of his using words from a foreign tongue. Malay is a melodious language, and its sounds impress themselves easily upon one's memory. Koeta Radja, which means the Rajah's Fortress, was formerly the residence of the Sultan of Atjeh. This potentate was a war lord over many vassals whose tenures were scattered over an area nearly twice A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST- INDIES as large as the territory of Holland. In 1824 the Netherlands Govern- ment concluded with Great Britain the London Treaty under which Holland waived all its former claims to the Malaccan Peninsula and England withdrew from the island of Sumatra, on condition, how- ever, that the Dutch Government should be responsible for the safety of navigation along the Atjeh coasts and should respect the indepen- dence- of Atjeh. The Netherland Government, however, soon dis- covered that it was impossible to police the sea and maintain a hands- off policy towards the sultanate, whose ruler derived no inconside- rable part of his revenue from the piratical expeditions of his sub- jects. In the year 1831 an American ship was looted by Atjehnese, and the Dutch Government, its hands tied by the London Treaty, left it for the United States to send a punitive expedition to the region where the outrage had occurred. In 1871 Holland was released by Great Britain from the irksome obligation to respect Atjeh's inte- grity. The Sultan, scenting trouble, tried to play a double game, negotiating with the Government at Batavia about a modus vivendi while secretly applying for help and protection to France, Italy, and the United States. An ultimatum was handed to him demanding an explanation of this double-dealing and recognition of Netherlands suzerainty. When both were refused, war was declared on March 26, 1873. It lasted for nearly forty years. In 1910 the last spasms of resistance ceased and a new era began of peaceful penetration. The Atjeh tramway, originally built by the militaries as a strategic arm against the enemy, now aids in promoting the country's economic development, and Koeta Radja, once the headquarters of the mili- tary staff, is now the seat of the civil government. It is a modern town where nothing of importance is left to remind one of the former sultans, except a mysterious structure of white plastered stone which the natives call Goenongan, the Mountain. Its ground plan is octago- nal, and its three storeys are each surmounted along the edges by phantastic pinnacles of various leaflike shapes. The purpose of this monument is still a mystery to the archaeologists. A legend has it that Sultan Iskandar Mooda, early in the seventeenth century, had it built for his consort who was homesick for the mountain region whence she came. Goenongan with its many pinnacles had to create an illusion of that scenery of peaks and summits through longing for which she pined away. ID Page II. COCONUT PALMS. A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES The chief sight of interest at Koeta Radja is a beautiful specimen of an Atjehnese house which has been turned into a museum. It is well worth a visit, for not only does it give one an idea of how these people live, but also of their marvelous skill in various arts and handicrafts, of which the collection on view contains precious exam- ples. The common type of Atjeh house is built on four rows of piles. A wooden staircase leads to the entrance, a trapdoor which is shoved away underneath the floor. This admits to the front porch, where the Atjehnese receives visitors whom he does not know intimately. The rest of the house is not accessible to strangers. One enters it through a door in the inner wall of the front porch, which admits to a passage that leads to the back porch, the proper haunt of the wo- men of the house. Through a door in the inner wall of this compart- ment one reaches the inner sanctuary of the home, the bedroom of husband and wife. It is built in on three sides by the front and back porches and by the passage that connects these two, its fourth wall being an outside one. The sanctity of marriage and of home life is well symbolized by this arrangement. And the Atjehnese sees to it that this symbol is not made an empty token by his helpmate. Her submissiveness is illustra- ted by the Atjeh proverb, "A woman's heaven is under the soles of her husband's feet". Back Porch Inner Room Front Porch One has to rise early to catch the through train from Koeta Radja to Lho Seumawe on the east coast, a distance of 305 miles. The first 35 miles run through a plain of irrigated rice fields and coconut plan- tations. At Seulimeum the line climbs the slopes of a ragged moun- tain region through which it winds its tortuous way for about twenty miles. At Padang Tidji it redescends into the lowlands north of the mountain range that runs through the entire length of the island. This is a fertile plain whose chief products are rice, pepper, coconut and areca. The coconut palm, according to a current saying, serves as many purposes as there are days in the year. Its tough, elastic root makes a good nose leash for the buffalo, and when charred, it is used by the native to rub into an itching skin. The palm trunk yields good timber, the leaves are utilized for various kinds of basket work, their stalks supply fuel for the hearth, the fibre of the hairy nut is turned into twine, and the hard shell provides material for a large variety of II A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES domestic utensils. The whi*e pulp of the fruit is eaten in several ways, its milk is an important ingredient of all kinds of dainties, and both from the pulp and the milk coconut oil is won by primitive processes. And as an export article the dried kernel of the nut has become an important source of income to the native since it began to be used, at the beginning of this century, for the manuf cture of margarine. Where the winning of copra is a native industry, the people visibly prosper. In 1914 the export of copra from Atjeh amounted to 2.656.495 kilogrammes, in 1921 that figure had run up to 4.538.192, representing a market value of $ 344.902,60. The copra is dried in the sun or, where too much rainfall makes this impossible, it is slowly roasted above a smouldering fire. But this latter process turns it black, and depreciates the product. The buyers employ a simple method of appraising the copra that is brought down to the ports along the coast: they walk over the bags. If the copra crunches, they pay the full price, but for the soft copra they offer less. Llo Seumawe has the lion's share of this copra export from Atjeh. Its bay offers a safe anchorage during eleven months of the year, and is so deep that the largest ocean steamers can approach to within three hundred feet from the quay. The train is due here about sun- set, and the passengers who are bound for stations farther east must spend the night at Hotel Nass. I found very good and cheap accom- modation in this hostelry, and after the luxuries of bath and supper, a short stroll took me to the beach, where the sea broke in ripples on the sand. A mountain range of thunder clouds rose from the dark horizon, and every now and then a purple lightning beyond that threatening mass brought their phantastic outlines into relief against a background of fire. From the town behind me came the monotonous drone of some native music, drowned at times in an outburst of laughter and shrieking from the movie theater, when the native audience had to give vent to their enjoyment of the show. The moun- tain scenery across the water, imposing beyond the power of words to describe it, could not compete with the screenery from Hollywood. From Lho Seumawe to Medan is another day's journey by rail. Medan is the home of the famous Sumatra tobacco, which is the best wrapper in the market. It was in 1863 that the first Dutch planter harvested tobacco in this region, then a wilderness of unhealthy swamps. Now Deli is the most flourishing district of entire Sumatra, 12 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES and Medan, its capital, is a thriving and busy city of more than 45.300 inhabitants. Modern hotels, beautiful homes in spacious gar- den grounds, smooth automobile roads, good stores, and tidy, well- policed streets give the place a general aspect of prosperity and wealth. On week ends Medan is at its best and brightest. Then the employees of the various estates up-country motor into town to par- take of its pleasures. For they are often lonesome on their distant plantations, and by escaping, once in a while, from their solitude to the dance floor of Hotel De Boer or the Medan Hotel they keep free from depression and fit for their work. They belong to many na- tionalities. I met Americans and English, Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, and Swiss. This cosmopolitanism has been characteristic of Medan since the first successes with Deli tobacco made that region attractive to European enterprise. The names of some of the estates that I passed on my motor drives through the country testified to the share that international ventures had in the early development of Deli: Maryland, Two Rivers, Gallia, Polonia, Hessa, Helvetia. Not all of them flourished. Of the 125 tobacco companies that were started in Deli during the past sixty years, only fourteen survive, which together hold concessions for 716.300 acres of land. Not all of this is under cultivation all the time, for only once in eight years is a crop harvested from the same soil. Seven eighths of that area, therefore, is fallow land, on which the natives may grow their rice and where, along the borders, teak is planted, which within seven years yields good timber, a much needed article in these disforested parts- One cannot go to Medan and fail to visit a tobacco estate. The manager will be glad to show you round, for he is proud of that little world over which he reigns. He lives there in great style, like an English lord on his manor, his mansion and park the centre of a busy community. He has command over some 1400 coolies, Chinese and immigrants from Java, whose work is supervised by foremen of their own race, these being responsible again to the manager's Euro- pean assistants. Excellent care is taken of their physical well-being: they are housed in sanitary quarters, they are under constant medical observation, and the sick receive gratuitous treatment in modern hospitals equipped with the latest inventions and improvements. There are eleven of such hospitals in the tobacco area, with fifteen physicians in attendance. 13 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES It needs the patience of an Oriental laborer to give to the tobacco plant the individual care that it needs if the crop shall yield a per- fect harvest. The manager told me that each single leaf, from its first unfolding till it is ready for export, is touched by human hands about four hundred times. After the tobacco has been plucked, dried, and fermented, the most delicate work, the sorting of the leaves, begins. Each leaf is carefully handled and first examined as to color. Then they are sorted as to size and bundled, each bundle containing forty leaves, which must all be of equal length. This work used to be done by Chinese, but since China began to raise obstacles to the export of contract labor, the tobacco planters have begun to train Javanese as sorters. But these never achieve the efficiency and skill of the Chinese workers. Deli tobacco is a fancy article for which fabulous prices are paid. In 1924, the crop yielded I 36.000.000. The average price per pound is one dollar, which is about eight times as much as is paid for Java tobacco. The capital invested in Sumatra tobacco amounts to $ 56.000.000, which yielded in 1924 a profit of $ 11.200.000. Rubber is another important product of Sumatra's East Coast. A rubber plantation is an emblem of what human society would look like if it could be regulated and disciplined as are these armies of spick and span hevea trees. They stand in irreproachably straight files and yield their milk at regular intervals with a promptness that puts human taxpayers to shame. A rubber park is a triumph of ex- pert drilling, but how deadly dull and uninspiring is its general as- pect. Each individual tree is an irreproachable specimen of plantkind, but the sum of these model growths is a paradise so entirely devoid of romance and the thrill of the unexpected that no transgression would have to precede man's expulsion, for he would flee the place before he had time to transgress. Each tree, like an army recruit, is numbered and its pedigree recorded. Those which, after repeated tappings, fall short of the average production are uprooted and discarded. Trees with a latex production above the average are marked with a large red band and their seeds are gathered for the selective improvement of the crop. Each tree is tapped for a month and given a month's rest alternately. The tapping is done by coolies from early in the morning until about ten. By that time the little 14 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES cups which they affix to the stems are full. They collect the latex in discarded oil cans and carry these to the receiving stations, where the contents of each can is measured and a sample of it examined as to its purity, in order to prevent fraud and adulteration. The number of trees one coolie must tap in the course of a morning's work is 400, and on some estates this minimum has been lowered to 300, as experience has shown that with fewer trees to care for, the produce per day and per coolie increases, as they devote more care to their task when they are not in a hurry. A careless incision into the bark may cause an incurable lesion, but when the strip of bark is cut off with skill and caution, it will be possible to tap the tree in the same place after a few years' interval. From the receiving stations the latex is taken to the factory, where it is sent through the processes of hardening and flattening, of cut- ting the sheets down to regulation size, and of packing them in wooden boxes. The finished product of this process is white or cream-colored and looks like a superfine quality of wash-leather. The brown sheets, which, held up to the light, have a golden transpa- rency like the color of sherry, are cured by smoking. The rubber industry of East Sumatra is not exclusively controlled by Hollanders. Only 35.2 per cent, of the capital invested in rubber is Dutch, as against 26.3 per cent, owned by the British, 18.3 per cent, by Americans, 14.3 per cent, by Franco-Belgian interests, and 6.2 by other nationalities. The Netherlands Indies' policy of the open door offers equal opportunities to Dutch and foreign enterprise. Why should the United States, which consumes more rubber than the rest of the world together, lag behind the English and Dutch as producers? Rubber has its name from the use that is made of it in rubbing out pencil marks. There was a time when this was considered one of its chief functions. But that was in the days when the art of writing was realized to be, to a large extent, the art of erasion. In our age however, which races about on rubber tyres, writers are too much in a hurry to rub anything out. One cannot help wishing that some of the rubber now rubbing the road had been used for the erasion of all the unconsidered, hasty comment palmed off on an ignorant public as expert opinion upon the recent rubber controversy. 15 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES The high quality of Deli rubber and Deli tobacco is not solely due to the fertile soil and the propitious climate. Science claims part of the credit for their excellence. The combined tobacco companies have an experiment station at Deli, which is equipped with up-to- date laboratories and manned with a staff of scientific experts, and the rubber concerns have followed their example and enlisted the aid of science for the improvement of their crops. If the yield shows a decline, by last year's harvest, in either the quality or the quantity, the experts are set to work to investigate its cause and devise a remedy, plant diseases are studied in the laboratory and experi- ments made to discover a cure, statistics are kept that tell succinctly and graphically the history of Deli rubber and Deli tobacco, and bulletins issued by either station give wider publicity to the results obtained by the research work of the experts. Thus every effort is made to secure a good harvest. Bad luck has to be reckoned with, but good luck, although it be welcome, is never counted upon. Whatever science can do to eliminate chance is never left undone. The planter knows that his best friend is the scientist in the labora- tory. For a white man living in the tropics to keep fit is synonymous with keeping cool. A resident of Medan who begins to feel the effect of the climate knows that his remedy is a week end in the mountains. With every looo feet that he climbs above sea level the temperature falls by a few degrees. And on the windswept plateau of Brastagi he will find coolness and health. Every rubber and tobacco company has its rest-house here where their employees can come and recupe- rate, and in the centre of this pleasant mountain resort is the Brastagi Hotel, which is especially patronized by English visitors from Sin- gapore and Penang. They know of no place like Brastagi on the Malaccan Peninsula, they told me. There are golf links, and rose gardens, and mountain trails for hikers, and smooth roads for mo- torists, and for those who are interested in the primitive the moim- tain haunts of Bataks, the native tribe inhabiting this region. A Batak's home is his castle, for every Batak village is siurrounded by a high mud wall which is often planted with an impenetrable hedge of thorny bamboo. In the days before the Dutch Government assumed control over them, these villages must have waged a con- i6 < n h Z D o H O O [I. w X H H < < < n A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES tinuous warfare among themselves. But all fighting has ceased and the people are peacefully engaged in the tilling of the soil, on which they cultivate rice, and, in some places, corn as a second crop. The potato, introduced in recent years by the Dutch, has in a short time become an important product of the Brastagi region. The Bataks inhabit the southern part of North Sumatra, spreading from west to east coast. The southernmost group has embraced Islam, the central one is predominantly Christian, the tribes in the north still adhere to their inherited heathen beliefs, which are typical of all the peoples of the Malay and Polynesian archipelagoes. They believe that the body is permeated by what might be defined as soul substance, which one must carefully preserve and do one's best to increase. But one cannot increase one's tondi, as the Batak calls it, except at the expense of another living being, whether man, animal, or plant. One can enrich one's soulsubstance by cutting off and stealing another man's hair, by preserving the parings of his nails, by the possession of a garment which has absorbed a man's sweat or, most efficacious of all, by eating his flesh. Cannibalism was actually practised among the Bataks, but is now a thing of the past. Sickness is caused by the tondi leaving the body, and it is the medicine-man's task to bring it back by charms and incantations. If his magic fails, the patient will die. Some parts of the body contain more tondi than others, especially the hair, the teeth, the nails, the liver, the blood, the sweat, and the saliva. There is strength, because there is tondi, in the horse's mane, and the pagan Batak wears his hair long to preserve his strength. The more tondi is contained in a man's liver, the more courageous he will be. Sir John Falstaff had a similar notion, for he thought that a white and pale liver was "the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice". In fact, these beliefs were once the common good of all mankind, and though the white man has advanced to nobler views, fossilized traces of these pre-historic beliefs lie still embedded in his language. A coward is said in Dutch to have eaten hare, and the Malayan will tell you that the tondi of the animal whose flesh you eat will affect your own tondi and impart to your being that animal's nature. The miracle stories of Scripture are no miracles to the converted Bataks. That Samson's strength was in his hair, that people were healed by napkins saturated with sweat from a saint, that a woman touched the hem of Christ's gar- 17 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST- INDIES ment and was healed, that the sick were satisfied if Peter's shadow fell on them, that spittle was used to impart tondi to blind eyes, entirely agrees with their beliefs. They know that things happen that way. But in addition to this animistic belief in soul substance, the na- tive worships the spirits of the dead. The dead are jealous of the living and must be placated lest they should harm them. One must be careful not to let one's shadow fall on a grave, as the dead man's spirit might seize it and steal his soul substance, for the shadow is the visible shape of the tondi. A spirit's importance in the spirit world depends on the offerings and the worship he receives from his living descendants, hence a man dies content when he leaves a large offspring behind. Thus life for the heathen native is a continuous watchfulness against the evil influences injurious to his tondi and which may emanate from either the living or the dead. Fear of the invisible is the motive of his actions, and to allay that fear is his constant concern. The Christian missions and Islam, however, are making headway among the Bataks and these beliefs will gradually dwindle to superstitions of a bygone day. The Bataks are an intelli- gent race and those who have been to school and have developed their minds are usefully employed all over the archipelago in various walks of life, as office clerks, as teachers, as engineers, as doctors. A gauge of their intelligence is the popularity of chess among them, which the men play with the expert skill of professionals. Within easy motoring distance from Brastagi lies Laoe Si Momo, a leper colony of the Protestant mission. There does not seem to be much danger in paying a visit to this place. The Governor General came to see it in September, 1925, attended by his staff and accom- panied by the Governor of the province. If they, in their responsible positions, felt justified in taking the risk, it cannot be reckless for ordinary mortals to follow in their steps. A doctor from Medan was in our party and felt no compunction in bringing his wife along. The traveler who, nevertheless, prefers to be on the safe side can, of course, avoid Laoe Si Momo, but he will miss one of the most touching experiences of his entire journey. Mr. Van Helen had four hundred patients under his care. When he assumed control in 1918, he found the place fenced off with barbed wire. He had it taken away 18 Page ly. A BATAK WOMAN, A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES at once, for he felt that these sufferers should not be made to feel like prisoners. He wanted them to become attached to the colony as if it were their home, so he made them arrange their own life as they used to live it in their native village, had them build their own houses in traditional Batak style, let them choose a village head and have their meetings, their pastimes, and even their quarrels. He made them work, so that they should forget the curse that was upon them and, seeing that all were stricken, learn to regard themselves as normal beings. There was an inscription in Batak over the door of the village head's cottage. "That means", said Mr. Van Helen, "We are all in good health". The cheerfulness with which we were greeted by these people confirmed that optimistic message. This was not a slough of despondency. Mr. Van Eelen allows his patients to marry. There were 120 couples in the colony, but during the seven years of his administration only eight children were born from these. The disease makes man sterile. Those eight children were free from the taint at birth, but they were taken away from the mother and sent into the keeping of relatives, as experience has taught that they cease to be immune when they grow older. Three hundred and seventy of his four hundred patients are Christians, and these have paid from their own savings for the erection of a handsome church. Their Christianity is a crude and childlike belief, but they do under- stand the story of the Man who comforted the sick and healed the lepers. Such a story must appeal to sufferers who are treated as outcasts hy their own people. For the Bataks have an uncanny in- stinct for discovering the first symptoms of leprosy. Their diagnosis is faultless, and as soon as one of theirs is recognized as a leper, he is cast out from the village community. Hence Mr. Van Eelen need not surround his colony with barbed wire. No one tries to escape, on the contrary, the sufferers come to him and beg to be admitted. Laoe si Momo means ,The river that was'; a little stream runs through the grounds of the estate and disappears from view into some subterranean channel. That seems a symbol of the leper's life: it disappears beyond the ken of the outside world, but like the water underground it still sparkles in the doom of its concealment. On the way from Brastagi to Laoe Si Momo one passes the Batak Museum at Raja, which gives the visitor a complete picture of Batak life in all its phases. One sees there how he lives at home, how he 19 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST- INDIES prepares his food, what he wears and how it is made, one sees there the products of his skill in woodcarving, in pottery, in gold and silver work, the contrivances that he uses in hunting and fishing, the weapons that he carries to the war, the musical instruments with which he accompanies the communal games and dances, the magic devices of priest and medicine-man, the symbols of his worship of the ancestral spirits. They are the paraphernalia of a primitive civili- sation which is fast passing away. Christianity, Islam, the Govern- ment school, modern medicine, the contact with Europeans, facili- tated by the building of roads and the invasion of motor cars, are teaching this race, once given to cannibalism, to live and to think in terms that estrange them from their age-old traditions. South of Brastagi a deep crater lake lies embedded between the mountains. It has the shape of Sumatra, its axis running parallel to that of the island, and an island in the lake, like a dark picture in a silver frame, seems a miniature replica of Sumatra. A century ago Lake Toba was to the Dutch a mere name. In 1853 it was visited for the first time by a Dutch explorer, and fifteen years later a Go- vernment official. Baron De Raet, was the first to seek political con- tact with the Bataks. Missionaries followed in their track, and now, half a century later, this former haunt of mystery and romance is a much traveled region, through which motor traffic speeds from coast to coast along the busy highway. The ride from Medan to Sibolga on the west coast is a two days' trip. One can spend the night either at Parapat or at Balige, both on Lake Toba, and reach Sibolga, on the Bay of Tapanooli, towards the evening of the second day. The mountains round Lake Toba are bare of all forest growth, but as one approaches the west coast, the brown monotony of the landscape changes into a symphony of green, through which the road, by a tortuous descent, runs down into Sibolga. From there to Fort de Kock, in the Padang Highlands, is another two days' motor ride. Here the road runs most of the time through cultivated land, but now and then it cuts through the primeval jungle where one guesses, but never sees nor hears, the existence of wild animal life behind the impenetrable undergrowth of giant ferns. Fort de Kock lies on the edge of a steep ravine, cut out in the soft tuff by a rivulet so innocent and harmless that one wonders how it 20 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST- INDIES could be the cause of a gap of that width and depth. But in the rainy season that innocent-looking brook may grow to a thundering tor- rent and run a tortuous course between the walls of its self-made prison, widening its curves and undermining those walls at the base. Then the brittle stone of the overhanging rock begins to crumble, and the crumbling will be followed by a landslide which leaves a widened gap between sheer walls of white-yellow stone. Many a buffalo that grazed on the top near the precipice was hurled into the abyss by such a landslide, and the ravine, for that reason, is called by the Dutch Karbouwengat, Buffaloes* Gap. There must come a day, it would seem, when the houses of Fort de Kock will totter on the brink and the people will flee to safer quarters. But they do not seem to have any fears on that score. On the contrary, the autho- rities there are looking forward to a time in the near future when Fort de Kock will be an ideal mountain resort, where the tired will come to recuperate and where the retired will settle for life. For its climate is exquisite, and the environs of Fort de Kock are the most beautiful region of Sumatra. The Padang Highlands are the home of the Malayan tribe of Minangkabau, a people who excel all other native tribes in the in- genious art of architecture. A Minangkabau house as seen from a distance looks like a delicate masterpiece of filigree, for every panel of its outer wall is decorated with exquisite carving, and colored, with unfailing taste, in blue, and reddish brown, and grey. And this structure is surmounted by a high roof, whose gracefully curved ridge seems modeled after the horns of the buffalo, the karbau, from which the Minangkabau claim to derive their name. And opposite the house one sees a number of miniature imitations, that differ from it only in shape, these being not oblong but square, but which are as artistically adorned with polychrome carving: the garners in which they store their rice. The material with which they used to thatch their roofs, idjook so-called, a fibrous product from the enau palm, is being replaced, of recent years, by horrid, shining sheets of corrugated iron, which has the double advantage of being cheaper and not combustible. But though they are willing to use machine- made material from Europe, they will not let it interfere with their age-old traditions of style. The roof must retain its graceful curve, and the sheets are bent to fit their native sense of beauty. 21 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES This conservatism is characteristic also of their social life. Singer's sewing machine and the flivver have found their way into the Mi- nangkabau village, but these same people who so easily assimilate western inventions to their needs are still living under an ancient matriarchal system, a survival of a social order that belongs to the prehistoric past. This does not mean that the Minangkabau women have it all their way and lay down the law to a race of henpecked fools. The men are the rulers, but they derive their authority from the degree of their relationship to the prominent members of the other sex. The pang-hooloo, or chief of a household, is succeeded at his death by the eldest son of his eldest sister. The children belong to the mother's family, and their father to that of his mother and sisters. Every woman likes to give birth to a daughter, because the daughter will be a support to her, as she never leaves the house, not even when she marries. There the husband visits her occasionally, but he remains a member of his sisters' household or goes away to distant parts to earn a living among strangers. Boys over ten years of age do not spend the nights under their sisters' roof, but assemble in large communal houses, where they are taught, incidentally, to read the Koran. Still, the tie with the family home is never severed. A boy, or a grown-up man, who is taken ill goes back to the house of his sisters to be nursed by them. To this custom the tribal proverb applies, "No matter how far the heron flies, he will always come back to his pools". Communism that is a spontaneous growth is different from the forced hothouse plant that Moscow is trying to cultivate. The Mi- nangkabau people live contentedly without knowing the pride and joy of private ownership. All possessions are the indivisible property of the family. An individual has a right to the money he acquires by his own labor, but at his death it becomes part of the family pos- sessions, the Harto Poesako so-called, chief among which are the sawahs or irrigated rice fields. Thanks to this institution poverty is unknown among the Minangkabau. For since no man can amass and perpetuate a private fortune, all are equally rich or equally poor. The Minangkabau people express their belief in the permanence of this social order by the saying "It never cracks (like clay) through the heat of the sun, it never rots away (like wood) through rain". Ho- wever, it does crack in spite of their proverbial lore. Frequent emi- 22 Page 22. MINANGKABAU TYPES. A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES gration of unmarried men is one of the causes that undermine the system. For they often return with a foreign wife, and such a union, being alien to their matriarchal institutions, detracts from the respect that is due to them, especially when those who, in defiance of custom and tradition, set up a home with an immigrant wife, are men of authority and influence in their little world. "Own your own home" may be a worthy slogan in New York, but to the conserva- tives in Minangkabau it sounds the death knell of morality and right. The system, to be sure, has its drawbacks, which even those con- servatives will not deny. It does not give a spur to individual initia- tive. Since a man's earnings wiU not make his children any richer — for he must leave all to his sisters' not his wife's, family — he has no inducement to save an3rthing. He gets easily into debt, borrows mo- ney at high interest, and never pays cash. When the first railroad was built through the Minangkabau country, the people found it difficult to understand why they could not bargain with the booking clerk about the price of the ticket, and why they had to pay at once. Hence Kaartje, the Dutch word for 'ticket', pronounced Karritji by these Malayans, has in Minangkabau become a term denoting something that cannot be altered, equivalent to English "irrevocable". I met with a striking instance of this indifference to private gain in the case of a craftsman at Fort de Kock. He was the only man left in that neighborhood who understood the ancient art of brassWork, in which the Minangkabau Malayans used to excel. The Controleur, a Dutch official who forms the link between the Government and the native population, gave this man a large order for an exhibition of Oriental art in Paris, but the lure of money could not make him work. He delivered four pieces and that was all. The men prefer to loaf about and write letters to the Controleur full of complaints about one thing and another, airing their communistic theories. They are born democrats and do not show the servility that the Javanese assumes towards his betters. A demang, a native regent appointed by the Government, will enter a lapau, which is a kirid of wayside lunch counter, and sit down to eat or drink, and the lowest-born Minangkabau will not rise for him but remain seated touching el- bows with the aristocrat. 23 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES Give a dog a bad name and hang him. As soon as you admit that the Minangkabau Malayan is lazy, all that he does is proof of his indolence in the eyes of certain people. At Pa>o Koemboeh I saw the natives use trained monkeys to pluck the coconuts for them. "Aren't they lazy!" said some one. But this use of the monkey proves not his sloth but his inventiveness. Why should he do himself what he can have done more quickly, and without risking his life, by a mon- key? Besides, the training of the monkey is not a lazy man's job. Pasar or market day at Fort de Kock is a colorful pageant. It is held on Wednesdays and Saturdays and is sometimes visited by 40.000 people. They leave their villages in the small hours of the night, trudging for miles through the dark while the air is still cool and the loads seem less heavy to carry. It is the women who do the carrying. You see them come into town, balancing large bundles on their heads. They never carry an5rthing in their hands if they can help it. Though they are only encumbered with an umbrella or a bottle, they will place it on their heads and keep their hands free. The only thing that I saw the men carry was a flat bird-cage covered with a piece of cloth, in which they take their pigeons to the pasar, and this they carried in their hands. They amuse themselves on the market square with pigeon fights while the women do the trading. This is a more harmless sport than a cockfight, as these birds only beat one another with their wings, until the one that loses its balance loses the combat. Do not imagine that the women resent this unequal division of labor. The carrying of goods to market is women's work, by all the rules of custom and tradition, and the men will never do what is the women's part. All tasks that are of regular occurrence are done by the women. It is the jobs that have to be done once in a while that fall to the men, such as the building of a house, the ploughing of the rice field. They will never help each other at these tasks. You may see an old woman in the pasar trying to heave a heavy load upon her head and young men standing by and not stretching out a finger to assist her. The women, in their turn, are not expected to help the men at their jobs. I saw a man who sat on the roof of a house to mend the sheeting drop his hammer where several women were sitting in a group on the doorstep. Not one of them moved to pick it up and throw it back to him. Nor did he expect them to, but he patiently climbed down the ladder and re- 24 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES turned with his hammer to his job. In either case it was good eti- quette not to meddle with what the other was doing. We should do the men an injustice by calling them unchivalrous. The code of chivalry belongs to a different social order from the one into which they were born. This does not mean that they do not know courtesy. One day I was invited to attend the investiture of a new pang-hooloo in the kampong of Kapan. Mr. Jacobson, a Dutch resident of Fort de Kock, accompanied me. We were received at the entrance of the vil- lage by the assistant demang and a group oi pang-hooloos, all dressed in black, which is the tribal color. Two rifles were fired in honor of our arrival. I was asked to enter the house first as the chief guest of honor. The pang-hooloos sat down on the floor along the wall facing the entrance, except the five of the sookoo or clan to which the new pang-hooloo belonged. These sat down against the opposite wall between the window and the door. For us chairs had been placed in front of the middle window. The meeting was opened by one of the older dignitaries, who was answered immediately by a much younger man among a group of picked orators. These sat along the short walls to left and right. One after another of these young men stood up and spoke in amazingly fluent oratory, praising the adat, which is the code of traditional customs and laws, the family whose guests they were, the pang-hooloo whom they had come to inaugurate. When they addressed a special person, they raised their folded hands before their faces by way of greeting, and the same gesture was used in expressing agreement with another speaker's remarks. For sometimes the speeches turned into dialo- gues, the orator exchanging compliments with a pang-hooloo at the other end of the room. When one of the speakers referred with great reverence to the Toowan dari Amerika (the gentleman from America) and Toowan Yakoob (Mr. Jacobson), my companion whispered into my ear that this man knew him well, as he was a sado ^) driver and had often driven him home from the station. This native Jehu was a consummate master of rhetoric, versed in the hyperbolic language that is required for these occasions. The new pang-hooloo, i) A sado is a light gig drawn by one horse, an abbreviation of the French dos-a-dos, i.e. back-to-back. 25 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES a fine-looking fellow with a bright-red kain ^) slung over his shoul- der, never said a word, and we should not have known which man was the hero of the feast, if an aged dignitary, who sat next to us on the floor, had not introduced him. He explained, no doubt with secret wonder at our ignorance of such an obvious rule of etiquette, that he and the five other pang-hooloos of his sookoo, since they were hosts, had to keep silent and let their guests enjoy the pleasure of shining in oratory. Towards the end of the ceremonies the Controlear arrived on the scene. He concluded the flow of eloquence with an address in fluent Malay, of which I understood this much, that he praised the adat as a stronghold of peace and order against the insidious preachings of communism. What struck me most in this gathering of men was the decorum. No intoxicants were served at the meal with which the ceremony closed, and the food was eaten in absolute silence. Fort de Kock lies on the plateau of Agam, which is walled off on the southern side by a barrier of three mighty volcanoes, the Singgalang, the Merapi, and the Sago. West of it the crumbling base of another extinguished volcano holds embedded in its depths the lake of Manindjau, which mirrors the sky and the encircling moun- tain walls above the dead heart of the crater. Standing on the edge of that gigantic battlement one realizes the awful beauty of the change by which life's passion is stilled into the peace of death. A morning mist trailed across the lake, and as it slowly lifted, the blue mirror was revealed reflecting its milk-white drift. One saw little things moving on the water, fishermen, no doubt, in their frail craft, but no sound could reach us where we stood, 2400 feet above the level of the lake. It looked a small pool to us from that height, although its length is a little short of fourteen miles and its width varies from 5.5 to 7.5 miles. We descried a large kampong down at the edge of the water. Its roofs of corrugated iron, so ugly when seen from close by, made a bright, silver glitter between the foliage. A zigzag road with 43 abrupt curves took us down to the village, where we were cordially received by the Dutch Controleur, the only European among this native population. He spoke with genuine i) Kain is the general term for „cloth" or „woven fabric". 26 rage 2y. THE KAMANG CAVES. A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES feeling about his subjects and seemed to be thoroughly at home among them. We saw very few men about. They go to Medan, Palembang, Batavia, the controleur informed us, mostly as dealers in tejrtiles. A merry women's party, all dressed up in their gaudiest apparel, passed us on the road. "That's a bridal procession", he explained. "The bridegroom is one of those that have wandered away. When such a fellow prospers, he writes home saying he would like to marry such a one. The girl is given a festive "send-off", all the neighbors coming to the treat to wish her good luck; and chape- roned by her mother or an aunt she goes to her husband. But as soon as she is pregnant she returns to the house of her sisters that she may give birth to her child in the family home". The plateau of Agam was originally the bottom of a lake whose water has filtered away into subterranean channels of the Kamang mountains, a limestone region that is honeycombed with caves. These would make an imposing setting for a picture of Dante's Inferno. The flicker of the smoking torches on the walls of dark recesses, the ghastly reverberation of the torchbearers' shouts, the weird shapes into which the stone had grown or crumbled, and the blood-curdling shrieks of thousands of bats and martins that circled above our heads, formed a realistic vision of Dante's descent into the nether world. The tortures of hell that he painted were reserved for human sinners only. In the village of Soengai Djarnih I saw fish that were doomed to infernal torment. They were swimming con- tinuously round and round in a small circle near the edge of a large pool. There were hundreds of them, and though the pool offered them scope and freedom of movement, these poor creatures conti- nued their aquatic merry-go-round as if possessed by a malignant spirit. The people call these fish holy, and feed them rice and ba- nanas. Were they held sacred and fed because of their mad snake- dance, or did they keep up this whirl from a voracious lust for food? If voracity was the sin for which they suffered, they paid dearly for its indulgence. Mr. Jacobson knew a spot in the rimboo, the unreclaimed forest, where that rarest of flowers, the Rafflesia Arnoldi grew. So one day we started out at dawn accompanied by a couple of natives. They had no notion of north and south, and indicated direction by saying 37 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES "up stream", or "down stream". We tramped a whole long morning across the woods without seeing hardly any sign of animal life. The jungle harbors a mighty fauna, elephant, rhinoceros, tapir, tiger, panther, boa •, orang-outan and various other kinds of apes. But a couple of siamangs was all that we saw, a large black-haired and tail- less gibbon, which lives in such strict monogamy that man, if he is descended from the ape, has in that respect descended far below him. The wild creatures of the forest are more afraid of man than man is of them. One has to search for their trails, track them and spy on them, and, after long watching and waiting, one's perseve- rance may be rewarded by a glimpse of the beasts in their habitat. The Rafflesia Arnoldi is a precious rarity even in Sumatra. When Mr. Jacobson had discovered the spot where it grew he went to the pang-hooloos of the sookoo or clan which claimed that part of the rimboo to be its property. He wanted a promise from them that they would leave the forest intact so as to spare the Rafflesia. But this was not so easy as it would seem. All landed property is owned by the clan in common, and no disposal can be made of it without the unanimous consent of the pang-hooloos. He did persuade them, at last, to declare the precious spot a forest preserve, a decision, ho- wever, which is at any time subject to repeal. The Rafflesia is an epiphyte which is remarkable for the enormous size of its flowers, and among the seven varieties that are known to exist, the one called after Arnold, who discovered it in 1818, has the largest flowers of all. The buds look like huge cabbages and are so heavy that they lie on the ground, the frail stem on which they grow being unable to carry them. The flower in full bloom sometimes measures a yard in diameter. It has a dark wine-red color dotted with yellow spots. The plant is a freak of nature, which usually makes the burden fit the carrying power. The flower of the Rafflesia looks like a diseased growth which is sapping the strength of the body. The environs of Fort de Kock are rich in scenic beauty. The gap of Harau, the ravine of the Anai river, the gap of Ayer Pootih vie with the Buffaloes* Gap and the Lake of Manindjau in impressive grandeur. Through the valley of the Anai runs the highway from Fort de Kock to Padang, the principal harbor of Sumatra on the West Coast. Padang is one of the oldest setlements of the Hollanders 28 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES in Sumatra; it has a general air of dignified repose becoming its age, such as young, busy Medan on the east coast lacks. It is the seat of the government of the province of West Sumatra, and has the less enviable distinction of being one of the rainiest spots of the entire archipelago. In 1924 it rained 196 days of the year upon the people of Padang. In order to keep dry in this wetness they have to build their houses on piles, for they are an amphibious species of landed lake-dwellers. Padang also has a population of high-and-dry dwelling near-humans, a kind of long-tailed monkeys which inhabit the woods on the Go n .ong Padang, a spur of the Padang range projec- ting itself into the ocean. They are so numerous there that the Dutch call the hill Apenberg, that is. Monkey Mount. On the wall of my bedroom at the Oranje Hotel hung a printed list of "don'ts" and warnings and threats for the benefit of the visitors, who are appa- rently under a suspicion of catching the contagion of their apish antics and mischievous pranks. I never before went to sleep with such a depressing sense of my potential naughtiness. The Steamship "Sloet van de Beele", of the Royal Packet Navigation Company (Koninklijke Paketvaart-MaatschappijJ left Padang for Batavia at eight o'clock in the morning. This company has practically the monopoly of coastwise shipping in the Dutch East Indies, and has been one of the chief agents in furthering the economic development of the islands during the thirty-five years of its existence. It ranks fourth in tonnage and first in the number of ships among Dutch steamship companies. The importance of a net of lines connecting the islands was only tardily recognized by the Government, and when it did recognize it, the concession for the enterprise was given to a British applicant, in strict adherence to the principle of free competition. His bid was just one cent less for each sea mile covered than that of his Dutch competitor, which would amount, in the course of one year, to a total saving of I 171.00. It was a case of economy outwitting wisdom, the usual experience of those who are penny-wise and pound-foolish. For it soon appeared that the British concern, which operated under the name Neder- landsch-Indische Stoomvaart-Maatschappij, planned to make Singa- pore the connecting link with the big international lines to Europe. In 1886 it was still impossible for Deli to get direct transport for its tobacco to Batavia, its entire harvest being shipped via Singapore. 39 A TRIP THROUGH THE DUTCH EAST-INDIES Arbitrary rate fixing was also to the advantage of Singapore, the charges for transport to Singapore being very low and those to Java ports excessive. Increasing complaints led the Netherlands Minister of Colonies, at the expiration of the British operator's charter, to grant a new charter to a Dutch concern formed by the "Nederland" Royal Mail Line and the "Rotterdam Lloyd" Royal Mail Line. This was the origin of the K. P. M., the Koninklij'ke Paketvaart- Maatschappij . The new company undertook to operate thirteen lines, and started in 189 1 with a small fleet of no more than 28.637 tons, but by 1914 it owned 88 ships with a total tonnage of 147.000, and in 1923, when the company celebrated its thirty-fifth anniversary, it was operating 106 ships, aggregating 191.822 tons. The "Sloet van de Beele", on her voyage to Batavia, touched the port of Benkoolen, on the west coast of south Sumatra. All the cargo and the deck passengers destined for Benkoolen had to be transferred into pram, which was no easy business on account of the heavy swell. One moment the prau was deep below the deck of the steamer, the next it was heaved up to a level with it. The deck passengers were lifted under the armpits by one of the sailors and had to be caught by one of the prau's crew, who stood watching for the right moment to catch hold of his living load. If the sailor who had to let go did not seize the opportunity that the other thought fit, there were yeUs of anger from the prau and frantic gestures from the disappointed loadcatcher. And all the while the poor victims, hanging above the water in the sailor's arms, gave no sign of fear or emotion, but watched resignedly for the drop into the dancing boat below. There were old women among them, and young mothers suckling their babies. All got safely into the prau and danced off to the shore across the sweU. . Benkoolen must have a sentimental interest to English visitors. It was a British settlement in the eighteenth century, and many graves of servants of the India Company keep alive the memory of British rule in Benkoolen. Its last English Governor was Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who, in accordance with the provisions of the Su- matra Treaty of 1824, and much to his chagrin, surrendered it to the Dutch in the following year. The Fort that the English built in 1714 is still: known by the name of Fort Marlborough and has been kept 30 ^^. :^'\ f.,' ■^•■:- "m- ■■ ■■^•^■^'-^^■^ ■ J^ J '< r» ^tfS^ i" , IF*--; #* ■ . ^ 1'' aw q ,r ■, l#«^^ ... ■■ -t:** "^l^^j?^:'' •■■■ >,~vj y ^>#«: ^'::C^"'''^ ^^.r-i^p- 'T^ZSi 'w .•■"*^^^''! •'V> ^^, , . i;; •_■- ■ .Sf " Ki'* '-!*'■ ^'''"'' if ^,. „ . ^ ^^ mt ^ iv^JS(»»^ ; ■"■'" '■^gy' .