Where the strange trails go down
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Title: Where the strange trails go down
Sulu, Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Cambodia, Annam, Cochin-China
Author: E. Alexander Powell
Release date: December 4, 2008 [eBook #27404]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27404
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS GO DOWN ***
_BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL_
WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS GO DOWN
THE NEW FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
THE LAST FRONTIER
GENTLEMEN ROVERS
THE END OF THE TRAIL
FIGHTING IN FLANDERS
THE ROAD TO GLORY
VIVE LA FRANCE!
ITALY AT WAR
_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_
WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS GO DOWN
[Illustration: A _real_ wild man of Borneo
A Dyak head-hunter using the _sumpitan_, or blow-gun, in the jungle of
Central Borneo]
WHERE
THE STRANGE TRAILS
GO DOWN
SULU, BORNEO, CELEBES, BALI, JAVA,
SUMATRA, STRAITS SETTLEMENTS,
MALAY STATES, SIAM, CAMBODIA,
ANNAM, COCHIN-CHINA
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1921
PRINTED AT
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
NEW YORK, U. S. A.
To
THE WINSOME WIDOW
MARGARET CAMPBELL McCUTCHEN
WHO, DESPITE COUNTLESS DISCOMFORTS,
ALWAYS KEPT SMILING
FOREWORD
It is a curious thing, when you stop to think about it, that, though of
late the public has been deluged with books on the South Seas, though
the shelves of the public libraries sag beneath the volumes devoted to
China, Japan, Korea, next to nothing has been written, save by a
handful of scientifically-minded explorers, about those far-flung,
gorgeous lands, stretching from the southern marches of China to the
edges of Polynesia, which the ethnologists call Malaysia. Siam,
Cambodia, Annam, Cochin-China, the Malay States, the Straits
Settlements, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Celebes, Borneo, Sulu ... their very
names are synonymous with romance; the sound of them makes restless the
feet of all who love adventure. Sultans and rajahs ... pirates and
head-hunters ... sun-bronzed pioneers and white-helmeted _legionnaires_
... blow-guns with poisoned darts and curly-bladed krises ... elephants
with gilded howdahs ... tigers, crocodiles, orang-utans ... pagodas and
palaces ... shaven-headed priests in yellow robes ... flaming
fire-trees ... the fragrance of frangipani ... green jungle and
steaming tropic rivers ... white moonlight on the long white beaches
... the throb of war-drums and the tinkle of wind-blown
temple-bells....
But it is not for all of us to go down the strange trails which lead
to these magic places. The world's work must be done. So, for those who
are condemned by circumstance to the prosaic existence of the office,
the factory, and the home, I have written this book. I would have them
feel the hot breath of the South. I would convey to them something of
the spell of the tropics, the mystery of the jungle, the lure of the
little, palm-fringed islands which rise from peacock-colored seas. I
would introduce to them those picturesque and hardy figures planters,
constabulary officers, consuls, missionaries, colonial administrators
who are carrying civilization into these dark and distant corners of
the earth. I would have them know the fascination of leaning through
those "magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery
lands forlorn."
I had planned, therefore, that this should be a light-hearted,
care-free, casual narrative. And so, in parts, it is. But more serious
things have crept, almost imperceptibly, into its pages. The
achievements of the Dutch empire-builders in the Insulinde, the
conditions which prevail under the rule of the chartered company in
Borneo, the opening-up of Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula, the
regeneration of Siam, the epic struggle between civilization and
savagery which is in progress in all these lands--these are phases of
Malaysian life which, if this book is to have any serious value, I
cannot ignore. That is why it is a mélange of the frivolous and the
serious, the picturesque and the prosaic, the superficial and the
significant. If, when you lay it down, you have gained a better
understanding of the dangers and difficulties which beset the
colonizing white man in the lands of the Malay, if you realize that
life in the eastern tropics consists of something more than sapphire
seas and bamboo huts beneath the slanting palm trees and native maidens
with hibiscus blossoms in their dusky hair, if, in short, you have been
instructed as well as entertained, then I shall feel that I have been
justified in writing this book.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
York Harbor, Maine,
October first, 1921.
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the courtesies they showed me, and the assistance they afforded me
during the long journey which is chronicled in this book, I am deeply
indebted to many persons in many lands. I welcome this opportunity of
expressing my gratitude to the Hon. Francis Burton Harrison, former
Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, and to the Hon. Manuel
Quezon, President of the Philippine Senate, for placing at my disposal
the coastguard cutter _Negros_, on which I cruised upward of six
thousand miles, as well as for countless other courtesies.
Brigadier-General Ralph W. Jones, Warren H. Latimer, Esq., and Major
Edwin C. Bopp shamefully neglected their personal affairs in order to
make my journey comfortable and interesting. Dr. Edward C. Ernst, of
the United States Quarantine Service at Manila, who served as volunteer
surgeon of the expedition; John L. Hawkinson, Esq., the man behind the
camera; James Rockwell, Esq., and Captain A. B. Galvez, commander of
the _Negros_, by their unfailing tactfulness and good nature, did much
to add to the success of the enterprise. I am likewise under the
deepest obligations to Colonel Ole Waloe, commanding the Philippine
Constabulary in Zamboanga; to the Hon. P. W. Rogers, Governor of Jolo;
to Captain R. C. d'Oyley-John, formerly Chief Police Officer of
Sandakan, British North Borneo; to M. de Haan, Resident at Samarinda,
Dutch Borneo; and to his colleagues at Makassar, Singaradja,
Kloeng-Kloeng, Surabaya, Djokjakarta, and Surakarta; to the Hon. John
F. Jewell, American Consul-General at Batavia; to the Hon. Edwin N.
Gunsaulus, American Consul-General at Singapore; to J. D. C. Rodgers,
Esq., American Chargé d'Affaires at Bangkok; to his late Royal Highness
the Crown Prince of Siam; to his Serene Highness Prince Traidos
Prabandh, Siamese Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; to his
Serene Highness Colonel Prince Amoradhat, Chief of Intelligence of the
Siamese Army, who constituted himself my guide and cicerone during our
stay in his country; to the French Resident-Superior at Pnom-Penh; and
to the other French officials who aided me during my travels in
Indo-China. His Excellency J. J. Jusserand, French Ambassador at
Washington and his Excellency Phya Prabha Karavongse, Siamese Minister
at Washington, provided me with letters which obtained for me many
facilities in French Indo-China and in Siam. Nor am I unappreciative of
the many kindnesses shown me by James R. Bray, Esq., of New York City;
by Austin Day Brixey, Esq., of Greenwich, Conn.; and by Dr. Eldon R.
James, General Adviser to the Siamese Government. I also wish to
acknowledge my indebtedness to A. Cabaton, Esq., from whose extremely
valuable study of Netherlands India I have drawn freely in describing
the Dutch system of administration in the Insulinde. I have also
obtained much valuable data from "_Java and Her Neighbors_" by A. C.
Walcott, Esq., and from "_The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe_" by Ernest
Young, Esq.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS 1
II. OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE 25
III. "WHERE THERE AIN'T NO TEN COMMANDMENTS" 50
IV. THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA 74
V. MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS 99
VI. IN BUGI LAND 126
VII. DOWN TO AN ISLAND EDEN 143
VIII. THE GARDEN THAT IS JAVA 163
IX. PROSPECT RULERS AND COMIC OPERA COURTS 189
X. THROUGH THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE TO ELEPHANT LAND 208
XI. To PNOM-PENH BY THE JUNGLE TRAIL 246
XII. EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS 270
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A _real_ wild man of Borneo _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Hawkinson taking motion-pictures while descending the
rapids of the Pagsanjan River in Luzon 10
Members of Major Powell's party landing on the south
coast of Bali 10
The bull-fight at Parang 22
Dusun women 60
Dyak head-hunters of North Borneo 60
The Jalan Tiga, Sandakan 70
A patron of a Sandakan opium farm 70
Catching a man-eating crocodile in a Borneo river 112
Major Powell talking to the Regent of Koetei on the
steps at Tenggaroeng 124
State procession in the Kraton of the
Sultan of Djokjakarta 124
Some strange subjects of Queen Wilhelmina 130
The volcano of Bromo, Eastern Java, in eruption 170
A Dyak girl at Tenggaroeng, Dutch Borneo 200
A Dyak head-hunter, Dutch Borneo 200
The captain of the body-guard of "The Spike of the
Universe" 200
A clown in the royal wedding procession at Djokjakarta 200
An elephant hunt in Siam 228
King Sisowath of Cambodia 234
Rama VI, King of Siam 234
Colorful ceremonies of Old Siam 238
Transportation in the Siamese jungle 248
The head of the pageant approaching the camera in
the palace at Pnom-Penh 266
Dancing girls belonging to the royal ballet of the
King of Cambodia 268
MAP
Malaysia 28
WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS GO DOWN
CHAPTER I
MAGIC ISLES AND FAIRY SEAS
When I was a small boy I spent my summers at the quaint old
fishing-village of Mattapoisett, on Buzzard's Bay. Next door to the
house we occupied stood a low-roofed, unpretentious dwelling, white as
an old-time clipper ship, with bright green blinds. I can still catch
the fragrance of the lilacs by the gate. The fine old doorway,
brass-knockered, arched by a spray of crimson rambler, was flanked on
one hand by a great conch-shell, on the other by an enormous specimen
of branch-coral, thus subtly intimating to passers-by that the owner of
the house had been in "foreign parts." A distinctly nautical atmosphere
was lent to the broad, deck-like verandah by a ship's barometer, a
chart of Cape Cod, and a highly polished brass telescope mounted on a
tripod so as to command the entire expanse of the bay. Here Cap'n
Bryant, a retired New Bedford whaling captain, was wont to spend the
sunny days in his big cane-seated rocking-chair, puffing meditatively
at his pipe and for my boyish edification spinning yarns of adventure
in far-distant seas and on islands with magic names--Tawi Tawi,
Makassar Straits, the Dingdings, the Little Paternosters, the Gulf of
Boni, Thursday Island, Java Head. Of cannibal feasts in New Guinea, of
head-hunters in Borneo, of strange dances by dusky temple-girls in
Bali, of up-country expeditions with the White Rajah of Sarawak, of
desperate encounters with Dyak pirates in the Sulu Sea, he discoursed
at length and in fascinating detail, while I, sprawled on the verandah
steps, my knees clasped in my hands, listened raptly and, when the
veteran's flow of reminiscence showed signs of slackening, clamored
insistently for more.
Then and there I determined that some day I would myself sail those
adventurous seas in a vessel of my own, that I would poke the nose of
my craft up steaming tropic rivers, that I would drop anchor off towns
whose names could not be found on ordinary maps, and that I would go
ashore in white linen and pipe-clayed shoes and a sun-hat to take
tiffin with sultans and rajahs, and to barter beads and brass wire for
curios--a curly-bladed Malay kris, carved cocoanuts, a shark's-tooth
necklace, a blow-gun with its poisoned darts, a stuffed bird of
paradise, and, of course, a huge conch-shell and an enormous piece of
branch-coral--which I would bring home and display to admiring
relatives and friends as convincing proofs of where I had been.
But school and college had to be gotten through with, and after them
came wars in various parts of the world and adventurings in many
lands, so that thirty years slipped by before an opportunity presented
itself to realize the dream of my boyhood. But when at last I set sail
for those far-distant seas it was on an enterprise which would have
gladdened the old sailor's soul--an expedition whose object it was to
seek out the unusual, the curious, and the picturesque, and to capture
them on the ten miles of celluloid film which we took with us, so that
those who are condemned by circumstance to the humdrum life of the
farm, the office, or the mill might themselves go adventuring o'nights,
from the safety and comfort of red-plush seats, through the magic of
the motion-picture screen. When I set out on my long journey the old
whaling captain whose tales had kindled my youthful imagination had
been sleeping for a quarter of a century in the Mattapoisett graveyard,
but when our anchor rumbled down off Tawi Tawi, when, steaming across
Makassar Straits, we picked up the Little Paternosters, when our tiny
vessel poked her bowsprit up the steaming Koetei into the heart of the
Borneo jungle, I knew that, though invisible to human eyes, he was
standing beside me on the bridge.
* * * * *
Until I met the young-old man to whom those magazines which devote
themselves to the gossip of the film world admiringly refer as "the
Napoleon of the movies," it had never occurred to me that adventure has
a definite market value. At least I had never realized that there are
people who stand ready to buy it by the foot, as one buys real estate
or rope. I had always supposed that the only way adventure could be
capitalized was as material for magazine articles and books and for
dinner-table stories.
"What we are after" the film magnate began abruptly, motioning me to a
capacious leather chair and pushing a box of cigars within my reach,
"is something new in travel pictures. Like most of the big producers,
we furnish our exhibitors with complete programmes--a feature, a
comedy, a topical review, and a travel or educational picture. We make
the features and the comedies in our own studios; the weeklies we buy
from companies which specialize in that sort of thing. But heretofore
we have had to pick up our travel stuff--where we could get it from
free lances mostly--and there is never enough really good travel
material to meet the demand. For quite ordinary travel or educational
films we have to pay a minimum of two dollars a foot, while really
unusual pictures will bring almost any price that is asked for them.
The supply is so uncertain, however, and the price is so high that we
have decided to try the experiment of taking our own. That is what I
wanted to talk to you about."
"Before the war," he continued, "there was almost no demand in the
United States for travel pictures. In fact, when a manager wanted to
clear his house for the next show, he would put a travel picture on the
screen. But since the boys have been coming back from France and
Germany and Siberia and Russia the public has begun to call for travel
films again. They've heard their sons and brothers and sweethearts tell
about the strange places they've been, and the strange things they've
seen, and I suppose it makes them want to learn more about those parts
of the world that lie east of Battery Place and west of the Golden
Gate. But we don't want the old bromide stuff, mind
you--mountain-climbing in Switzerland, cutting sugar-cane in Cuba,
picking cocoanuts in Ceylon. That sort of thing goes well enough on the
Chautauqua circuits, but it's as dead as the corner saloon so far as
the big cities are concerned. What we are looking for are unusual
pictures--tigers, elephants, pirates, brigands, cannibals, Oriental
temples and palaces, war-dances, weird ceremonies, curious customs,
natives with rings in their noses and feathers in their hair, scenes
that are spectacular and exciting--in short, what the magazine editors
call 'adventure stuff.' We want pictures that will make 'em sit up in
their seats and exclaim, 'Well, what d'ye know about that?' and that
will send them away to tell their friends about them."
"Like the publisher," I suggested, "who remarked that his idea of a
good newspaper was one that would cause its readers to exclaim when
they opened it, 'My God!'?"
"That's the idea," he agreed. "And if the pictures are from places that
most people have never heard of before, so much the better. I'm told
that you've spent your life looking for queer places to write about. So
why can't you suggest some to take pictures of?"
"But I've had no practical experience in taking motion-pictures," I
protested. "The only time I ever touched a motion-picture camera was
when I turned the crank of Donald Thompson's for a few minutes during
the entry of the Germans into Antwerp in 1914."
"Were the pictures a success?" the Napoleon of the Movies queried
interestedly. "I don't recall having seen them."
"No, you wouldn't," I hastened to explain. "You see, it wasn't until
the show was all over that Thompson discovered that he had forgotten to
take the cap off the lens."
"Don't let that worry you," he assured me. "We'll take care of the
technical end. We'll provide you with the best camera man to be had and
the best equipment. All you will have to do is to show him what to
photograph, arrange the action, decide on the settings, obtain the
permission of the authorities, the good-will of the officials, the
co-operation of the military, engage interpreters and guides, reserve
hotel accommodations, arrange for motor-cars and boats and horses and
special trains, and keep everyone jollied up and feeling good
generally. Aside from that, there won't be anything for you to do
except to enjoy yourself."
"It certainly sounds alluring," I admitted. "The trouble is that you
are looking for something that can't always be found. You don't find
adventure the way you find four-leaf clovers; it just happens to you,
like the measles or a blow-out. Still, if one has the time and money
to go after them, there are a lot of curious things that might pass for
adventure when they are shown on the screen."
"Where are they?" the film magnate asked eagerly, spreading upon his
mahogany desk a map of the world.
It was a little disconcerting, this request to point out those regions
where adventure could be found, very much as a visitor from the
provinces might ask a New York hotel clerk to tell him where he could
see the Bohemian life of which he had read in the Sunday supplements.
"There's Russian Central Asia, of course," I suggested tentatively.
"Samarkand and Bokhara and Tashkent, you know. But I'm afraid they're
out of the question on account of the Bolsheviki. Besides, I'm not
looking for the sort of adventure that ends between a stone wall and a
firing-party. Then there are some queer emirates along the southern
edge of the Sahara: Sokoto and Kanem and Bornu and Wadai. But it would
take at least six months to obtain the necessary permission from the
French and British colonial offices and to arrange the other details of
the expedition."
"But that doesn't exhaust the possibilities by any means," I continued
hastily, for nothing was farther from my wish than to discourage so
fascinating a plan. "There ought to be some splendid picture material
among the Dyaks of Borneo--they're head-hunters, you know. From there
we could jump across to the Celebes and possibly to New Guinea. And I
understand that they have some queer customs on the island of Bali,
over beyond Java; in fact, I've been told that, in spite of all the
efforts of the Dutch to stop it, the Balinese still practise _suttee_.
A picture of a widow being burned on her husband's funeral pyre would
be a bit out of the ordinary, wouldn't it? That reminds me that I read
somewhere the other day that next spring there is to be a big royal
wedding in Djokjakarta, in middle Java, with all sorts of gorgeous
festivities. At Batavia we would have no difficulty in getting a
steamer for Singapore, and from there we could go overland by the new
Federated Malay States Railway, through Johore and Malacca and Kuala
Lumpur, to Siam, where the cats and the twins and the white elephants
come from. From Bangkok we might take a short-cut through the Cambodian
jungle, by elephant, to Pnom-Penh and----"
"Hold on!" the Movie King protested. "That's plenty. Let me come up for
air. Those names you've been reeling off mean as much to me as the
dishes on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. But that's what we're
after. We want the people who see the pictures to say: 'Where the
dickens _is_ that place? I never heard of it before.' They get to
arguing about it, and when they get home they look it up in the family
atlas, and when they find how far away it is, they feel that they've
had their money's worth. How soon can you be ready to start?"
"How soon," I countered, "can you have a letter of credit ready?"
Owing to the urgent requirements of the European governments, vessels
of every description were, as I discovered upon our arrival at Manila,
few and far between in Eastern seas; so, in spite of the assurance that
I was not to permit the question of expense to curtail my itinerary, it
is perfectly certain that we could not have visited the remote and
inaccessible places which we did had it not been for the lively
interest taken in our enterprise by the Honorable Francis Burton
Harrison, Governor-General of the Philippines, and by the Honorable
Manuel Quezon, President of the Philippine Senate. When
Governor-General Harrison learned that I wished to take pictures in the
Sulu Archipelago, he kindly offered, in order to facilitate our
movements from island to island, to place at my disposal a coast-guard
cutter, just as a friend might offer one the use of his motor-car.
There was at first some question as to whether the Governor-General had
the authority to send a government vessel outside of territorial
waters, but Mr. Quezon, who, so far as influence goes, is a Henry Cabot
Lodge and a Boies Penrose combined, unearthed a law which permitted him
to utilize the vessels of the coast-guard service for the purpose of
entertaining visitors to the islands in such ways as the Government of
the Philippines saw fit. And, in a manner of speaking, Mr. Quezon is
the Government of the Philippines. Thus it came about that on the last
day of February, 1920, the coast-guard cutter _Negros_, 150 tons and
150 feet over all--with a crew of sixty men, Captain A. B. Galvez
commanding, and having on board the Lovely Lady, who accompanies me on
all my travels; the Winsome Widow, who joined us in Seattle; the
Doctor, who is an officer of the United States Health Service stationed
at Manila; John L. Hawkinson, the efficient and imperturbable man
behind the camera; three friends of the Governor-General, who went
along for the ride; and myself--steamed out of Manila Bay into the
crimson glory of a tropic sunset, and, when past Cavite and Corregidor,
laid her course due south toward those magic isles and fairy seas which
are so full of mystery and romance, so packed with possibilities of
high adventure.
[Illustration: Hawkinson taking motion-pictures while descending the
rapids of the Pagsanjan River in Luzon
His camera is set up astride of two native dugouts lashed together]
[Illustration: Members of Major Powell's party landing on the south
coast of Bali
Mrs. Powell being carried ashore by sailors. The _Negros_ in the
distance]
* * * * *
Governor-General Harrison believed, by methods that are legitimate, in
adding to the American public's knowledge of the Philippines, and it
was owing to his broad-minded point of view and to the many cablegrams
which he sent ahead of us, that at each port in the islands at which we
touched we found the local officials waiting on the pier-head to bid us
welcome and to assist us. At Jolo, which is the capital of the Moro
country, two lean, sun-tanned, youthful-looking men came aboard to
greet us: one was the Honorable P. W. Rogers, Governor of the
Department of Sulu; the other was Captain Link, a former officer of
constabulary who is now the Provincial Treasurer. In the first five
minutes of our conversation I discovered that they knew exactly the
sort of picture material that I wanted and that they would help me to
the limit of their ability to get it. For that matter, they themselves
personify adventure in its most exciting form.
Rogers, who was originally a soldier, went to the Philippines as
orderly for General Pershing long before the days when "Black Jack" was
to win undying fame on battlefields half the world away. The young
soldier showed such marked ability that, thanks to Pershing's
assistance, he obtained a post as stenographer under the civil
government, thence rising by rapid steps to the difficult post of
Governor of Sulu. A better selection could hardly have been made, for
there is no white man in the islands whom the Moros more heartily
respect and fear than their boyish-looking governor. Mrs. Rogers is the
daughter of a German trader who lived in Jolo and died there with his
boots on. A year or so prior to her marriage she was sitting with her
parents at tiffin when a Moro, with whom her father had had a trifling
business disagreement, knocked at the door and asked for a moment's
conversation. Telling the native that he would talk with him after he
had finished his meal, the trader returned to the table. Scarcely had
he seated himself when the Moro, who had slipped unobserved into the
dining room, sprang like a panther, his broad-bladed _barong_
describing a glistening arc, and the trader's head rolled among the
dishes. Another sweep of the terrible weapon and the mother's hand was
severed at the wrist, while the future Mrs. Rogers owes her life to the
fact that she fainted and slipped under the table. I relate this
incident in order to give you some idea of the local atmosphere.
A few weeks before our arrival at Jolo, Governor Rogers, in compliance
with instructions from Manila, had ordered a census of the inhabitants.
But the Moros are a highly suspicious folk, so, when some one started
the rumor that the government was planning to brand them, as it brands
its mules and horses, it promptly gained wide credence. By tactful
explanations the suspicions of most of the natives were allayed, but
one Moro, notorious as a bad man, barricaded himself, together with
five of his friends, three women and a boy, in his house--a nipa hut
raised above the ground on stilts--and defied the Governor to enumerate
_them_. Now, if the Governor had permitted such open defiance to pass
unnoticed, the entire population of Jolo, always ready for trouble,
promptly would have gotten out of hand. So, accompanied by five
troopers of the constabulary, he rode out to the outlaw's house and
attempted to reason with him. The man obstinately refused to show
himself, however, even turning a deaf ear to the appeals of the village
_imam_. Thereupon Rogers ordered the constabulary to open fire, their
shots being answered by a fusillade from the Moros barricaded in the
house. In twenty minutes the flimsy structure looked more like a sieve
than a dwelling. When the firing ceased a six-year-old boy descended
the ladder and, approaching the Governor, remarked unconcernedly: "You
can go in now. They're all dead." Then Rogers called up the
census-taker and told him to go ahead with his enumeration.
The provincial treasurer, Captain Link, is a lean, lithe South
Carolinian who has spent fifteen years in Moroland. He is what is known
in the cattle country as a "go-gitter." It is told of him that he once
nearly lost his commission, while in the constabulary, by sending to
the Governor, as a Christmas present, a package which, upon being
opened, was found to contain the head of a much-wanted outlaw.
"I knew he wanted that fellow's head more than anything else in the
world," Captain Link said naïvely, in telling me the story, "so it
struck me it would be just the thing to send him for a Christmas
present. I spent a lot of time and trouble getting it too, for the
fellow sure was a bad hombre. It would have gotten by all right, but
the Governor's wife, thinking it was a present for herself, had to go
and open the package. She went into hysterics when she saw what was
inside and the Governor was so mad he nearly fired me. Some people have
no sense of humor."
Atop of the bookcase in Captain Link's study--the bookcase, by the way,
contains Burton's _Thousand and One Nights_, the _Discourses_ of
Epictetus, and President Eliot's tabloid classics--is the skull in
question, surmounted by a Moro fez. Across the front of the fez is
printed this significant legend:
THIS IS JOHN HENRY
JOHN HENRY DISOBEYED CAPTAIN LINK
_Sic Transit Gloria Mundi_
While we are on the subject, let me tell you about another of these
advance-guards of civilization who, single-handed, transformed a
worthless island in the Sulu Sea into a veritable Garden of the Lord
and its inhabitants from warlike savages into peaceful and prosperous
farmers. In 1914 a short, bespectacled Michigander named Warner was
sent by the Philippine Bureau of Education to Siassi, one of the
islands of the Sulu group, to teach its Moro inhabitants the rudiments
of American civilization. Warner's sole equipment for the job
consisted, as he candidly admitted, of a medical education. He took
with him a number of Filipino assistants, but as they did not get along
with the Moros, he shipped them back to Manila and sent for an Airedale
dog. He also sent for all the works on agriculture and gardening that
were to be had in the bookshops of the capital. For five years he
remained on Siassi, the only white man. As even the little inter-island
steamers rarely find their way there, months sometimes passed without
his hearing from the outside world. But he was too busy to be lonely.
His jurisdiction extended over two islands, separated by a narrow
channel, but this he never crossed at night and in the daytime only
when he was compelled to, as the narrow channel was the home of giant
crocodiles which not infrequently attacked and capsized the frail
native _vintas_, killing their occupants as they struggled in the
water.
Warner, who had spent four years among the Visayans before going to
Siassi, and who was, therefore, eminently qualified to compare the
northern islanders with the Moros, told me that the latter possess a
much higher type of intelligence than the Filipinos and assimilate new
ideas far more quickly. He added that they have a highly developed
sense of humor; that they are quick to appreciate subtle stories, which
the Tagalogs and Visayans are not; and that they are much more ready to
accept advice on agricultural and economic matters than the Christian
Filipinos, who have a life-sized opinion of their own ability. When the
day's work was over, he said, he would seat himself in the doorway of
his hut, surrounded by a group of Moros, and discuss crops and weather
prospects, swap jokes and tell stories, just as he might have done with
lighter skinned sons of toil around the cracker-barrel of a cross-roads
store in New England. He added that he was sadly in need of some new
stories to tell his Moro protegés, as, after six years on the island,
his own fund was about exhausted. But he was growing weary of life on
Siassi, he told me; he wanted action and excitement; so he was
preparing to move, with his Airedale, to Bohol, in the Visayas, where,
he had heard it rumored, there was another white man.
Still another of the picturesque characters with whom I foregathered
nightly on the after-deck of the _Negros_ during our stay at Jolo was a
former soldier, John Jennings by name. He was an operative of the
Philippine Secret Service, being engaged at the time in breaking up the
running of opium from Borneo across the Sulu Sea to the Moro islands.
Jennings is a short, thickset, powerfully-built man, all nerve and no
nerves. Adventure is his middle name. He has lived more stories than I
could invent. Shortly before our arrival at Jolo Jennings had learned
from a native in his pay that a son of the Flowery Kingdom, the
proprietor of a notorious gambling resort situated on the
quarter-mile-long ramshackle wharf known as the Chinese pier, was
driving a roaring trade in the forbidden drug. So one afternoon
Jennings, his hands in his pockets and in each pocket a service
automatic, sauntered carelessly along the pier and upon reaching the
reputed opium den, knocked briskly on the door. The Chinese proprietor
evidently suspected the purpose of his visit, however, for he was
unable to gain admittance. So that night, wearing the huge straw
sun-hat and flapping garments of blue cotton of a coolie, he tried
again. This time in response to his knock the heavy door swung open.
Within all was black and silent as the tomb. The lintel was low and
Jennings was compelled to stoop in order to enter. As he cautiously set
foot across the threshold there was a sudden swish of steel in the
darkness and the blade of a _barong_ whistled past his face, slicing
off the front of his hat and missing his head by the width of an
eyelash. As he sprang back the door slammed in his face and he heard
the bolts shot home, followed by the sound of a weapon clattering on
the floor and the patter of naked feet. Realizing that the men he was
after were making their escape by another exit, Jennings hurled
himself against the door, an automatic in either hand. It gave way
before his assault and he was precipitated headlong into the inky
blackness of the room. Taking no chances this time, he raked it with a
stream of lead from end to end. Then, there being no further sound, he
swept the place with a beam from his electric torch. Stretched on the
floor were three dead Chinamen and beside them was enough opium to have
drugged everyone on the island. That little episode, as Jennings
remarked dryly, put quite a crimp in the opium traffic in Jolo.
* * * * *
Cockfighting, which is as popular throughout the Philippines as
baseball is in the United States, finds its most enthusiastic devotees
among the Moros, every community in the Sulu islands having its cockpit
and its fighting birds, on whose prowess the natives gamble with
reckless abandon. Gambling is, indeed, the _raison d'être_ of
cockfighting in Moroland, for, as the birds are armed with four-inch
spurs of razor sharpness, and as one or both birds are usually killed
within a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very little
sport attaches to the contest. The villagers are inordinately proud of
their local fighting-cocks, boasting of their prowess as a Bostonian
boasts of the Braves or a New Yorker of the Giants, and are always
ready to back them to the limit of their means.
Some years ago, according to a story that was told me in the
islands--for the truth of which I do not vouch--an American destroyer
dropped anchor off Cebu, the second largest city in the Philippines.
That night a shore party of bluejackets, wandering about the town in
quest of amusement, dropped in at a cockpit where a main was in
progress. Noting the large wagers laid by the excited natives on their
favorite birds, the sailors offered to back a "chicken" which they had
aboard the destroyer against all the cocks in Cebu. The natives,
smiling in their sleeves at the prospect of taking money so easily from
the Americanos, promptly accepted the challenge and some hundreds of
pesos were laid against the unknown bird. At the hour set for the fight
the grinning sailors appeared at the cockpit with their "chicken," the
mascot of the destroyer--a large American eagle! Ensued, of course, a
torrent of protest and remonstrance, but the money was already up and
the bluejackets demanded action. So the eagle was anchored by a chain
in the center of the pit, where it sat motionless and apathetic, head
on one side, eyelids drooping, apparently half asleep--until a cock was
tossed into the pit. Then there was a lightning-like flash of the
mighty talons and all that was left of the Cebuan champion was a heap
of bloodied feathers. The "match" was quickly over and the triumphant
sailors, collecting their bets, departed for their ship. Ever since
then there has been a proverb in Cebu--"Never match your cock against
an American chicken."
Governor Rogers informed me that, in compliance with a cablegram from
the Governor-General, he had arranged a "show" for us at a village
called Parang, on the other side of the island. The "show," I gathered,
was to consist of a stag-hunt, shark-fishing, war-dances, and pony
races, and was to conclude with a native bull-fight. One of the
favorite sports of the Moros is hunting the small native stag on
horseback, tiring it out, and killing it with spears. As it developed,
however, that there was no certainty of being able so to stage-manage
the affair that either the hunters or the hunted would come within the
range of the camera, we regretfully decided to dispense with that
number of the programme.
When we arrived at Parang it looked as though the entire population of
the island had assembled for the occasion. The native police were
keeping clear a circle in which the dances were to take place, while
the slanting trunks of the cocoanut-palms provided reserved seats for
scores of tan and chocolate and coffee-colored youngsters. We were
greeted by the Panglima of Parang, the overlord of the district, who
explained, through Governor Rogers, that he had had prepared a little
repast of which he hoped that we would deign to partake. Now, after you
know some of the secrets of Moro cooking and have had a glimpse into a
Moro kitchen, even the most robust appetite is usually dampened. But
the Governor whispered "The old man has gone to a lot of trouble to
arrange this show and if you refuse to eat his food he'll be mortally
offended," so, purely in the interests of amity, we seated ourselves at
the table, which had been set under the palms in the open. I don't know
what we ate and I don't care to know--though I admit that I had some
uneasy suspicions--but, with the uncompromising eye of the old Panglima
fixed sternly upon us, we did our best to convince him that we
appreciated his cuisine.
But the dancing which followed made us forget what we had eaten. During
the ensuing months we were to see dances in many lands--in Borneo and
Bali and Java and Siam and Cambodia--but they were all characterized by
a certain monotony and sameness. These Moro dancers, however, were in a
class by themselves. If they could be brought across the ocean and
would dance before an audience on Broadway with the same savage abandon
with which they danced before the camera under the palm-trees of
Parang, there would be a line a block long in front of the box-office.
One of the dances was symbolical of a cock-fight, the cocks being
personified by a young woman and a boy. It was sheer barbarism, of
course, but it was fascinating. And the curious thing about it was that
the hundreds of Moros who stood and squatted in a great circle, and who
had doubtless seen the same thing scores of times before, were so
engrossed in the movements of the dance, each of which had its subtle
shade of meaning, that they became utterly oblivious to our presence or
to Hawkinson's steady grinding of the camera. In the war-dance the
participants, who were Moro fighting men, and were armed with spears,
shields, and the vicious, broad-bladed knives known as _barongs_, gave
a highly realistic representation of pinning an enemy to the earth with
a spear, and with the _barong_ decapitating him. The first part of the
dance, before the passions of the savages became aroused, was, however,
monotonous and uninteresting.
"Can't you stir 'em up a little?" called Hawkinson, who, like all
camera men, demands constant action. "Tell 'em that this film costs
money and that we didn't come here to take pictures of Loie Fuller
stuff."
"I think it might be as well to let them take their time about it,"
remarked Captain Link. "These Moros always get very much worked up in
their war-dances, and occasionally they forget that it is all
make-believe and send a spear into a spectator. It's safer to leave
them alone. They're very temperamental."
"That would make a corking picture," said Hawkinson enthusiastically,
"if I only knew which fellow was going to be speared so that I could
get the camera focussed on him."
"The only trouble is," I remarked dryly, "that they might possibly pick
out _you_."
* * * * *
In Spanish bull-fights, after the banderillos and picadores have
tormented the bull until it is exhausted, the matador flaunts a scarlet
cloak in front of the beast until it is bewildered and then despatches
it with a sword. In Moroland, however, the bulls, which are bred and
trained for the purpose, do their best to kill each other, thus making
the fight a much more sporting proposition. The bull-fight which was
arranged for our benefit at Parang was staged in a field of about two
acres just outside the town, the spectators being kept at a safe
distance by a troop of Moro horsemen under the direction of the old
Panglima. After Hawkinson had set up his camera on the edge of this
extemporized arena the bulls were brought in: medium-sized but
exceptionally powerful beasts, the muscles rippling under their sleek
brown coats, their short horns filed to the sharpness of lance-tips.
Each animal was led by its owner, who was able to control it to a
limited degree during the fight by means of a cord attached to the ring
in its nose. When the signal was given for the fight to begin, the
bulls approached each other cautiously, snorting and pawing the ground.
They reminded me of two strange dogs who cannot decide whether they
wish to fight or be friends. For ten minutes, regardless of the jeers
of the spectators and the proddings of their handlers, the great brown
beasts rubbed heads as amicably as a yoke of oxen. Then, just as we had
made up our minds that it was a fiasco and that there would be no
bull-fight pictures, there was a sudden angry bellow, the two great
heads came together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was
on. The next twenty minutes Hawkinson and I spent in alternately
setting up his camera within range of the panting, straining animals
and in picking it up and running for our lives, in order to avoid being
trampled by the maddened beasts in their furious and unexpected
onslaughts. The men at the ends of the nose-ropes were as helpless to
control their infuriated charges as a trout fisherman who has hooked a
shark. With horns interlocked and with blood and sweat dripping from
their massive necks and shoulders, they fought each other, step by
step, across the width of the arena, across a cultivated field which
lay beyond, burst through a thorn hedge surrounding a native's patch of
garden, trampled the garden into mire, and narrowly escaped bringing
down on top of them the owner's dwelling, which, like most Moro houses,
was raised above the ground on stilts. It looked for a time as though
the fight would continue over a considerable portion of the island, but
it was brought to an abrupt conclusion when one of the bulls,
withdrawing a few yards, to gain momentum, charged like a tank
attacking the Hindenburg Line, driving one of its horns deep into its
adversary's eye-socket, whereupon the wounded animal, half-blinded and
mad with pain, turned precipitately, jerked the nose-rope from its
owner's grasp, and stampeding the spectators in its mad flight,
disappeared in the depths of the jungle.
[Illustration: The bull-fight at Parang
There was a sudden bellow, the two great heads came
together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was on
The spectators were kept at a distance by Móró horsemen
under the Panglima]
"That," announced the Governor, "concludes the morning performance.
This afternoon we will present for your approval a programme consisting
of pony races, a carabao fight, a shark-fishing expedition, and, if
time permits, a visit to the pearl-fisheries to see the divers at work.
This evening we will call on the Princess Fatimah, the daughter of the
Sultan, and tomorrow I have arranged to take you to Tapul Island to
shoot wild carabao. After that----"
"After that," I interrupted, "we go away from here. If we stayed on in
this quiet little island of yours much longer, we shouldn't have any
film left for the other places."
CHAPTER II
OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
We sailed at sunset out of Jolo and all through the breathless tropic
night the _Negros_ forged ahead at half-speed, her sharp prow cleaving
the still bosom of the Sulu Sea as silently as a gondola stealing down
the Canale Grande. So oppressive was the night that sleep was out of
the question, and I leaned upon the rail of the bridge, the hot land
breeze, laden with the mysterious odors of the tropics, beating softly
in my face, and listlessly watched the phosphorescent ostrich feathers
curling from our bows. Behind me, in the darkened chart-room, the
Filipino quartermaster gently swung the wheel from time to time in
response to the direction of the needle on the illuminated
compass-dial. So lifeless was the sea that our foremast barely swayed
against the stars. The smoke from our funnel trailed across the purple
canopy of the sky as though smeared with an inky brush.
How long I stood there, lost in reverie, I have no idea: hours no
doubt. I must have fallen into a doze, for I was awakened by the brisk,
incisive strokes of the ship's bell, echoed, a moment later, by eight
fainter strokes coming from the deck below. Then the soft patter of
bare feet which meant the changing of the watch. Though the velvety
darkness into which we were steadily ploughing had not perceptibly
decreased, it was now cut sharply across, from right to left, by what
looked like a tightly stretched wire of glowing silver. Even as I
looked this slender fissure of illumination widened, almost
imperceptibly at first, then faster, faster, until at one burst came
the dawn. The sombre hangings of the night were swept aside by an
invisible hand as are drawn back the curtains at a window. As you have
seen from a hill the winking lights of a city disappear at daybreak,
so, one by one, the stars went out. Masses of angry clouds reared
themselves in ominous, fantastic forms against a sullen sky. The hot
land breeze changed to a cold wind which made me shiver. Suddenly the
mounting rampart of clouds, which seemed about to burst in a tempest,
was pierced by a hundred flaming lances coming from beyond the
horizon's rim. Before their onslaught the threatening cloud-wall
crumbled, faded, and abruptly dropped away to reveal the sun advancing
in all that brazen effrontery which it assumes in those lawless
latitudes along the Line. Now the sky was become a huge inverted bowl
of flawless azure porcelain, the surface of the Sulu Sea sparkled as
though strewn with a million diamonds, and, not a league off our bows,
rose the jungle-clothed shores of Borneo.
Scattered along the fringes of the world are certain places whose names
ring in the ears of youth like trumpet-calls. They are passwords to
romance and high adventure. Their very mention makes the feet of the
young men restless. They mark the places where the strange trails go
down. Of them all, the one that most completely captivated my boyish
imagination was Borneo. To me, as to millions of other youngsters, its
name had been made familiar by that purveyor of entertainment to
American boyhood, Phineas T. Barnum, as the reputed home of the wild
man. In its jungles, through the magic of Marryat's breathless pages, I
fought the head-hunter and pursued the boa-constrictor and the
orang-utan. It was then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at
daybreak on the bridge of the _Negros_ and through my glasses watched
the mysterious island, which I had so often pictured in my imagination,
rise with tantalizing slowness from the sapphire sea.
We forged ahead cautiously, for our charts were none too recent or
reliable and we lacked the "Malay Archipelago" volume of _The Sailing
Directions_--the "Sailor's Bible," as the big, orange-covered book,
full of comforting detail, is known. As the morning mists dissolved
before the sun I could make out a pale ivory beach, and back of the
beach a band of green which I knew for jungle, and back of that, in
turn, a range of purple mountains which culminated in a majestic,
cloud-wreathed peak. An off-shore breeze brought to my nostrils the
strange, sweet odors of the hot lands. A Malay _vinta_ with widespread
bamboo outriggers and twin sails of orange flitted by an enormous
butterfly skimming the surface of the water. I was actually within
sight of that grim island whose name has ever been a synonym for
savagery. For never think that piracy, head-hunting, poisoned darts
shot from blow-guns are horrors extinct in Borneo today, for they are
not. Ask the mariners who sail these waters; ask the keepers of the
lonely lighthouses, the officers who command the constabulary outposts
in the bush. They know Borneo, and not favorably.
You will picture Borneo, if you please, as a vast, squat island the
third largest in the world, in fact--half again as large as France,
bordered by a sandy littoral, moated by swamps reeking with putrid
miasmata and pernicious vapors, covered with dense forests and
impenetrable jungles, ridged by mile-high mountain ranges, seamed by
mighty rivers, inhabited by the most savage beasts and the most bestial
savages known to man. Lying squarely athwart the Line, the sun beats
down upon it like the blast from an open furnace-door. The story is
told in Borneo of a dissolute planter who died from sunstroke. The day
after the funeral a spirit message reached the widow of the dear
departed. "Please send down my blankets" it said. But it is the
terrible humidity which makes the climate dangerous; a humidity due to
the innumerable swamps, the source of pestilence and fever, and to the
incredible rainfall, which _averages over six and a half feet a year_.
No wonder that in the Indies Borneo is known as "The White Man's
Graveyard."
[Map: Malaysia]
Imbedded in the northern coast of the island, like a row of
semi-precious stones set in a barbaric brooch, are the states of
British North Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak. Their back-doors open on the
wilderness of mountain, forest and jungle which marks the northern
boundary of Dutch Borneo; their front windows look out upon the Sulu
and the China Seas. Of these three territories, the first is under the
jurisdiction of the British North Borneo Company, a private
corporation, which administers it under the terms of a royal charter.
The second is ruled by the Sultan of Brunei, whose once vast dominions
have steadily dwindled through cession and conquest until they are now
no larger than Connecticut. On the throne of the last sits one of the
most romantic and picturesque figures in the world, His Highness James
Vyner Brooke, a descendant of that Sir James Brooke who, in the middle
years of the last century, made himself the "White Rajah" of Sarawak,
and who might well have been the original of _The Man Who Would Be
King_. Though all three governments are permitted virtually a free hand
so far as their domestic affairs are concerned, they are under the
protection of Great Britain and their foreign affairs are controlled
from Westminster. The remaining three-quarters of Borneo, which
contains the richest mines, the finest forests, the largest rivers,
and, most important of all, the great oil-fields of Balik-Papan, forms
one of the Outer Possessions, or Outposts, of Holland's East Indian
Empire.
Long before the yellow ribbon of the coast, with its fringe of palms,
became visible we could make out the towering outline of Kina Balu, the
sacred mountain, fourteen thousand feet high, which, seen from the
north, bears a rather striking resemblance in its general contour to
Gibraltar. The natives regard Kina Balu with awe and veneration as the
home of departed spirits, believing that it exercises a powerful
influence on their lives. When a man is dying they speak of him as
ascending Kina Balu and in times of drought they formerly practised a
curious and horrible custom, known as _sumunguping_, which the
authorities have now suppressed. When the crops showed signs of failing
the natives decided to despatch a messenger direct to the spirits of
their relatives and friends in the other world entreating them to
implore relief from the gods who control the rains. The person chosen
to convey the message was usually a slave or an enemy captured in
battle. Binding their victim to a post, the warriors of the tribe
advanced, one by one, and drove their spears into his body, shouting
with each thrust the messages which they wished conveyed to the spirits
on the mountain.
With the coming of day we pushed ahead at full speed. Soon we could
make out the precipitous sandstone cliffs of Balhalla, the island which
screens the entrance to Sandakan harbor. But long before we came
abreast of the town signs of human habitation became increasingly
apparent: little clusters of nipa-thatched huts built on stilts over
the water; others hidden away in the jungle and betraying themselves
only by spirals of smoke rising lazily above the feathery tops of the
palms. Sandakan itself straggles up a steep wooded hill, the Chinese
and native quarters at its base wallowing amid a network of
foul-smelling and incredibly filthy sewers and canals or built on
rickety wooden platforms which extend for half a mile or more along the
harbor's edge. A little higher up, fronting on a parade ground which
looks from the distance like a huge green rug spread in the sun to air,
are the government offices, low structures of frame and plaster,
designed so as to admit a maximum of air and a minimum of heat; the
long, low building of the Planters Club, encircled by deep, cool
verandahs; a Chinese joss-house, its facade enlivened by grotesque and
brilliantly colored carvings; and a down-at-heels hotel. Close by are
the churches erected and maintained by the Protestant and Roman
Catholic missions--the former the only stone building in the
protectorate. At the summit of the hill, reached by a steeply winding
carriage road, are the bungalows of the Europeans, their white walls,
smothered in crimson masses of bougainvillæa and shaded by stately
palms and blazing fire-trees, peeping out from a wilderness of tropic
vegetation. Viewed from the harbor, Sandakan is one of the most
enchanting places that I have ever seen. It looks like a setting on a
stage and you have the feeling that at any moment the curtain may
descend and destroy the illusion. It is not until you go ashore and
wander in the native quarter, where vice in every form stalks naked
and unashamed, that you realize that the town is like a beautiful
harlot, whose loveliness of face and figure belie the evil in her
heart. Even after I came to understand that the place is a sink of
iniquity, I never ceased to marvel at its beauty. It reminded me of the
exclamation of a young English girl, the wife of a German merchant, as
their steamer approached Hong Kong and the superb panorama which
culminates in The Peak slowly unrolled.
"Look, Otto! Look!" she cried. "You must say that it is beautiful even
if it _is_ English."
* * * * *
Of those lands which have not yet submitted to the bit and bridle of
civilization--and they can be numbered on the fingers of one's two
hands--Borneo is the most intractable. Of all the regions which the
predatory European has claimed for his own, it is the least submissive,
the least civilized, the least exploited and the least known. Its
interior remains as untamed as before the first white man set foot on
its shores four hundred years ago. The exploits of those bold and hardy
spirits--explorers, soldiers, missionaries, administrators--who have
attempted to carry to the natives of Borneo the Gospel of the Clean
Shirt and the Square Deal form one of the epics of colonization. They
have died with their boots on from fever, plague and snake-bite, from
poisoned dart and Dyak spear. Though their lives would yield material
for a hundred books of adventure, their story, which is the story of
the white man's war for civilization throughout Malaysia, is epitomized
in the few lines graven on the modest marble monument which stands at
the edge of Sandakan's sun-scorched parade ground:
In
Memory
of
Francis Xavier Witti
Killed near the Sibuco River
May, 1882
of
Frank Hatton
Accidentally shot at Segamah
March, 1883
of
Dr. D. Manson Fraser
and
Jemadhar Asa Singh
the two latter mortally wounded at Kopang
May, 1883
and of
Alfred Jones, Adjutant
Shere Singh, Regimental Sergeant-Major
of the British North Borneo Constabulary
Killed at Ranau 1897-98
and of
George Graham Warder
District Officer, Tindang Batu
Murdered at Marak Parak
28th July 1903
This Monument Is Erected as a Mark of Respect
by their Brother Officers
Though Sandakan is the chief port of British North Borneo, with a
population of perhaps fifteen thousand, it has barely a hundred
European inhabitants, of whom only a dozen are women. Girls marry
almost as fast as they arrive, and the incoming boats are eagerly
scanned by the bachelor population, much in the same spirit as that in
which a ticket-holder scans the lists of winning numbers in a lottery,
wondering when his turn will come to draw something. If the bulk of the
men are confirmed misogynists and confine themselves to the club bar
and card-room it is only because there are not enough women to go
round. The sacrifice of the women who, in order to be near their
husbands, consent to sicken and fade and grow old before their time in
such a spot, is very great. With their children at school in England,
they pass their lonely lives in palm-thatched bungalows, raised high
above the ground on piles as a protection against insects, snakes and
floods, without amusements save such as they can provide themselves,
and in a climate so humid that mushrooms will grow on one's boots in a
single night during the rains. They are as truly empire-builders as the
men and, though the parts they play are less conspicuous, perhaps, they
are as truly deserving of honors and rewards.
There is no servant problem in Borneo. Cooks jostle one another to cook
for you. They will even go to the length of poisoning each other in
order to step into a lucrative position, with a really big master and a
memsahib who does not give too much trouble. But there are other
features of domestic life for which the plenitude of servants does not
compensate. Because existence is made almost unendurable by mosquitoes
and other insects, within each sleeping room is constructed a
rectangular framework, covered with mosquito-netting and just large
enough to contain a bed, a dressing-table and an arm-chair. In these
insect-proof cells the Europeans spend all of their sleeping and many
of their waking hours. So aggressive are the mosquitoes, particularly
during the rains, that, when one invites people in for dinner or
bridge, the servants hand the guests long sacks of netting which are
drawn over the feet and legs, the top being tied about the waist with a
draw-string. Were it not for these mosquito-bags there would be neither
bridge nor table conversation. Everyone would be too busy scratching.
The houses, as I have already mentioned, are raised above the ground on
brick piles or wooden stilts. Though this arrangement serves the
purpose of keeping things which creep and crawl out of the house
itself, the custom of utilizing the open space beneath the house as a
hen-roost offers a standing invitation to the reptiles with which
Borneo abounds. While we were in Sandakan a python invaded the
chicken-house beneath the dwelling of the local magistrate one night
and devoured half a dozen of the judge's imported Leghorns. Gorged to
repletion, the great reptile fell asleep, being discovered by the
servants the next morning. The magistrate put an end to its predatory
career with a shot-gun. It measured slightly over twenty feet from nose
to tail and in circumference was considerably larger than an inflated
fire-hose. Imagine finding such a thing coiled up at the foot of your
cellar-stairs after you had been indulging in home-brew!
One evening a party of us were seated on the verandah of the Planters
Club in Sandakan. The conversation, which had pretty much covered the
world, eventually turned to snakes.
"That reminds me," remarked a constabulary officer who had spent many
years in Malaysia, "of a queer thing that happened in a place where I
was stationed once in the Straits Settlements. It was one of those
deadly dull places--only a handful of white women, no cinema, no race
course, nothing. But the Devil, you know, always finds mischief for
idle hands to do. One day a youngster--a subaltern in the battalion
that was stationed there--returned from a leave spent in England. He
brought back with him a young English girl whom he had married while he
was at home. A slender, willowy thing she was, with great masses of
coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink-and-white complexion. She
quickly adapted herself to the disagreeable features of life in the
tropics--with one exception. The exception was that she could never
overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. The mere sight of
one would send her into hysterics.
"One afternoon, while she was out at tea with some friends, the Malay
gardener brought to the house the carcass of a hamadryad which he had
killed in the garden. The hamadryad, as you probably know, is perhaps
the deadliest of all Eastern reptiles. Its bite usually causes death in
a few minutes. Moreover, it is one of the few snakes that will attack
human beings without provocation. The husband, with two other chaps,
both officers in his battalion, was sitting on the verandah when the
snake was brought in.
"'I say,' suggested one of the officers, 'here's a chance to break
Madge of her fear of snakes. Why not curl this fellow up on her bed?
She'll get a jolly good fright, of course, but when she discovers that
he's dead and that she's been panicky about nothing, she'll get over
her silly fear of the beggars. What say, old chap?'
"To this insane suggestion, in spite of the protests of the other
officer, the husband assented. Probably he had been having too many
brandies and sodas. I don't know. But in any event, they put the
witless idea into execution. Toward nightfall the young wife returned.
She had on a frock of some thin, slinky stuff and a droopy garden hat
with flowers on it and carried a sunshade. She was awfully pretty. She
hadn't been out there long enough to lose her English coloring, you
see.
"'Oh, I say, Madge,' called her husband, 'There's a surprise for you in
your bedroom.'
"With a little cry of delighted anticipation she hurried into the
house. She thought her husband had bought her a gift, I suppose. A
moment later the trio waiting on the verandah heard a piercing shriek.
The first shriek was followed by another and then another. Pretty soon,
though, the screams died down to a whimper--a sort of sobbing moan.
Then silence. After a few minutes, as there was no further sound from
the bedroom and his wife did not reappear, the husband became uneasy.
He rose to enter the house, but the chap who had suggested the scheme
pulled him back.
"'She's all right,' he assured him. 'She sees it's a joke and she's
keeping quiet so as to frighten you. If you go in there now the laugh
will be on you. She'll be out directly.'
"But as the minutes passed and she did not reappear all three of the
men became increasingly uneasy.
"'We'd better have a look,' the one who had demurred suggested after a
quarter of an hour had passed, during which no further sound had come
from the bedroom. 'Madge is very high-strung. She may have fainted from
the shock. I told you fellows that it was an idiotic thing to do.'
"When they opened the door they thought that she had fainted, for she
lay in an inert heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. But a hasty
examination showed them, to their horror, that the girl was dead--heart
failure, presumably. But when they raised her from the floor they
discovered the real cause of her death, for a _second hamadryad_, which
had been concealed by her skirts, darted noiselessly under the bed. It
was the mate of the one that had been killed--for hamadryads always
travel in pairs, you know--and had evidently entered the room in quest
of its companion."
"What happened to the husband and to the man who suggested the plan?"
I asked. "Were they punished?"
"They were punished right enough," the constabulary officer said dryly.
"The chap who suggested the scheme tried to forget it in drink, was
cashiered from the army and died of delirium tremens. As for the
husband, he is still living--in a madhouse."
* * * * *
Even in so far-distant a corner of the Empire as Borneo, ten thousand
miles from the lights of the restaurants in Piccadilly, the men
religiously observe the English ritual of dressing for dinner, for when
the mercury climbs to 110, though the temptation is to go about in
pajamas, one's drenched body and drooping spirits need to be bolstered
up with a stiff shirt and a white mess jacket. That the stiffest
shirt-front is wilted in an hour makes no difference: it reminds them
that they are still Englishmen. Nor, in view of the appalling
loneliness of the life, is it to be wondered at that the Chinese
bartenders at the club are kept busy until far into the night, and that
every month or so the entire male white population goes on a terrific
spree. The government doctor in Sandakan assured me very earnestly
that, in order to stand the climate, it is necessary to keep one's
liver afloat--in alcohol. He had contributed to thus preserving the
livers and lives of his fellow exiles by the invention of two drinks,
of which he was inordinately proud. One he had dubbed "Tarantula
Juice;" the other he called "Whisper of Death." He told me that the
amateur who took three drinks of the latter would have no further need
for his services; the only person whose services he would require would
be the undertaker.
There is something of the pathetic in the eagerness with which the
white men who dwell in exile along these forgotten seaboards long for
news from Home. After dinner they would cluster about me on the club
verandah and clamor for those odds-and-ends of English gossip which are
not important enough for inclusion in the laconic cable despatches
posted daily on the club bulletin-board and which the two-months-old
newspapers seldom mention. They insisted that I repeat the jokes which
were being cracked by the comedians at the Criterion and the
Shaftesbury. They wanted to know if toppers and tailcoats were again
being worn in The Row. They pleaded for the gossip of the clubs in Pall
Mall and Piccadilly. They begged me to tell them about the latest books
and plays and songs. But after a time I persuaded them to do the
talking, while I lounged in a deep cane chair, a tall, thin glass, with
ice tinkling in it, at my elbow, and listened spellbound to strange
dramas of "the Islands" recited by men who had themselves played the
leading roles. At first they were shy, as well-bred English often are,
but after much urging an officer of constabulary, the glow from his
cigar lighting up his sun-bronzed face and the rows of campaign ribbons
on his white jacket, was persuaded into telling how he had trailed a
marauding band of head-hunters right across Borneo, from coast to
coast, his only companions a handful of Dyak police, themselves but a
degree removed in savagery from those they were pursuing. A
bespectacled, studious-looking man, whom I had taken for a scientist or
a college professor, but who, I learned, had made a fortune buying
bird-of-paradise plumes for the European market, described the strange
and revolting customs practised by the cannibals of New Guinea. Then a
broad-shouldered, bearded Dutchman, a very Hercules of a man, with a
voice like a bass drum, told, between meditative puffs at his pipe, of
hair-raising adventures in capturing wild animals, so that those smug
and sheltered folk at home who visit the zoological gardens of a Sunday
afternoon might see for themselves the crocodile and the
boa-constrictor, the orang-utan and the clouded tiger. When, after the
last tale had been told and the last glass had been drained, we
strolled out into the fragrant tropic night, with the Cross swinging
low to the morn, I felt as though, in the space of a single evening, I
had lived through a whole library of adventure.
* * * * *
I once wrote--in _The Last Frontier_, if I remember rightly--that when
the English occupy a country the first thing they build is a
custom-house; the first thing the Germans build is a barracks; the
first thing the French build is a railway. As a result of my
observations in Malaysia, however, I am inclined to amend this by
saying that the first thing the English build is a race course. Lord
Cromer was fond of telling how, when he visited Perim, a miserable
little island at the foot of the Red Sea, inhabited by a few Arabs and
many snakes, his guide took him to the top of a hill and pointed out
the race course.
"But what do you want with a race course?" demanded the great
proconsul. "I didn't suppose that there was a four-footed animal on the
island."
The guide reluctantly admitted that, though they had no horses on the
island at the moment, if some were to come, why, there was the race
course ready for them. Though I don't recall having seen more than a
dozen horses in Borneo, the British have been true to their traditions
by building two race courses: one at Sandakan and one at Jesselton. On
the latter is run annually the North Borneo Derby. It is the most
brilliant sporting and social event of the year, the Europeans flocking
into Jesselton from the little trading stations along the coast and
from the lonely plantations in the interior just as their friends back
in England flock to Goodwood and Newmarket and Epsom. The Derby is
always followed by the Hunt Ball. In spite of the fact that there are
at least twenty men to every woman this is always a tremendous success.
It usually ends in everyone getting gloriously drunk.
Almost the only other form of entertainment is provided by a company of
Malay players which makes periodical visits to Sandakan and Jesselton.
Though the actors speak only Malay, this does not deter them from
including a number of Shakesperian plays in their repertoire (imagine
Macbeth being played by a company of piratical-looking Malays in a nipa
hut on the shores of the Sulu Sea!) but they attain their greatest
heights in _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_. There are no programmes,
but, in order that the audience may not be left in doubt as to the
identity of the players, the manager introduces the members of his
company one by one. "This is Ali Baba," he announces, leading a fat and
greasy Oriental to the footlights. "This is Fatimah." "These are the
Forty Thieves." When the latter announcement is made four actors stalk
ten times across the stage in naïve simulation of the specified number.
After the thieves have concealed themselves behind pasteboard
silhouettes of jars, Ali Baba's wife waddles on the stage bearing a
Standard Oil tin on her shoulder and with a dipper proceeds to ladle a
few drops of cocoanut oil on the head of each of the robbers. While she
is being introduced one of the thieves seizes the opportunity to take a
few whiffs from a cigarette, the smoke being plainly visible to the
audience. Another, wearying of his cramped position, incautiously shows
his head, whereupon Mrs. Ali Baba raps it sharply with her dipper,
eliciting from the actor an exclamation not in his lines. During the
intermissions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses the
audience with side-splitting imitations of the pompous and frigid
Governor, who, as someone unkindly remarked, "must have been born in an
ice-chest," and of the bemoustached and bemonocled officer who commands
the constabulary, locally referred to as the Galloping Major. Compared
with the antics of these Malay comedians, the efforts of our own
professional laugh-makers seem dull and forced. Until you have seen
them you have never really laughed.
* * * * *
His Highness Haji Mohamed Jamalulhiram, Sultan of Sulu, was temporarily
sojourning in Sandakan when we were there, having come across from his
capital of Jolo for the purpose of collecting the monthly subsidy of
five hundred pesos paid him by the British North Borneo Company for
certain territorial concessions. The company would have sent the money
to Jolo, of course, but the Sultan preferred to come to Sandakan to
collect it; there are better facilities for gambling there.
Because I was curious to see the picturesque personage around whom
George Ade wrote his famous opera, _The Sultan of Sulu_, and because
the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow had read in a Sunday supplement
that he made it a practise to present those American women whom he met
with pearls of great price, upon our arrival at Sandakan I invited the
Sultan to dinner aboard the _Negros_. When I called on him at his hotel
to extend the invitation, I found him clad in a very soiled pink
kimono, a pair of red velvet slippers, and a smile made somewhat gory
by the betel-nut he had been chewing, but when he came aboard the
_Negros_ that evening he wore a red fez and irreproachable dinner
clothes of white linen. As the crew of the cutter was entirely composed
of Tagalogs and Visayans, from the northern Philippines, who, being
Christians, regard the Mohammedan Moro with contempt, not unmixed with
fear, when I called for side-boys to line the starboard rail when his
Highness came aboard, there were distinctly mutinous mutterings.
Captain Galvez tactfully settled the matter, however, by explaining to
the crew that the Sultan was, after all, an American subject, which
seemed to mollify, even if it did not entirely satisfy them. The
armament of the _Negros_ had been removed after the armistice, so that
we were without anything in the nature of a saluting cannon, but, as we
wished to observe all the formalities of naval etiquette, the Doctor
and Hawkinson volunteered to fire a royal salute with their automatic
pistols as the Sultan came over the side. That, in their enthusiasm,
they lost count and gave him about double the number of "guns"
prescribed for the President of the United States caused Haji Mohamed
no embarrassment; on the contrary, it seemed to please him immensely.
(Donald Thompson, who was my photographer in Belgium during the early
days of the war, always made it a point to address every officer he met
as "General." He explained that it never did any harm and that it
always put the officer in good humor.)
When the cocktails were served the Sultan gravely explained through the
interpreter that, being a devout Mohammedan and a Haji, he never
permitted alcohol to pass his lips, an assertion which he promptly
proceeded to prove by taking four Martinis in rapid succession. Now
the chef of the _Negros_ possessed the faculty of camouflaging his
dishes so successfully that neither by taste, looks nor smell could one
tell with certainty what one was eating. So, when the meat, smothered
in thick brown gravy, was passed to the Sultan, his Highness, who, like
all True Believers, abhors pork, regarded it dubiously. "Pig?" he
demanded of the steward. "No, sare," was the frightened answer. "Cow."
Over the coffee and cigarettes the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow
tactfully led the conversation around to the subject of pearls,
whereupon the Sultan thrust his hand into his pocket and produced a
round pink box, evidently originally intended for pills. Removing the
lid, he displayed, imbedded in cotton, half a dozen pearls of a size
and quality such as one seldom sees outside the window of a Fifth
Avenue jeweler. I could see that the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow
were mentally debating as to whether they would have them set in
brooches or rings. But when they had been passed from hand to hand,
accompanied by the customary exclamations of envy and admiration, back
they went into the royal pocket again. "And to think," one of the party
remarked afterward, "that we wasted two bottles of perfectly good gin
and a bottle of vermouth on him!"
It was after midnight when our guest took his departure, the ship's
orchestra playing him over the side with a selection from _The Sultan
of Sulu_, which, in view of my ignorance as to whether Sulu possessed
a national anthem, seemed highly appropriate to the occasion. As the
launch bearing the Sultan shot shoreward Hawkinson set off a couple of
magnesium flares, which he had brought along for the purpose of taking
pictures at night, making the whole harbor of Sandakan as bright as
day. I heard afterward that the Sultan remarked that we were the only
visitors since the Taft party who really appreciated his importance.
* * * * *
Two hours steam off the towering promontory which guards the entrance
to Sandakan harbor lies Baguian, a sandy islet covered with
cocoanut-palms, which is so small that it is not shown on ordinary
maps. Though the island is, for some unexplained reason, under the
jurisdiction of the British North Borneo Company, it is a part of the
Sulu Archipelago and belongs to the United States. Baguian is famed
throughout those seas as a rookery for the giant tortoise--_testudo
elephantopus_. Toward nightfall the mammoth chelonians--some of them
weigh upward of half a ton--come ashore in great numbers to lay their
eggs in nests made in the edge of the jungle which fringes the beach,
the old Chinaman and his two assistants, who are the only inhabitants
of the island, frequently collecting as many as four thousand eggs in a
single morning. The eggs, which in size and color exactly resemble
ping-pong balls and are almost as unbreakable, are collected once a
fortnight by a junk which takes them to China, where they are
considered great delicacies and command high prices. As we had brought
with us a supply of magnesium flares for night photography, we decided
to take the camera ashore and attempt to obtain pictures of the turtles
on their nests.
As we were going ashore in the gig we caught sight of a huge bull, as
large as a hogshead, which was floating on the surface. Ordering the
sailors to row quietly, we succeeded in getting within a hundred yards
before I let go with my .405, the soft-nosed bullet tearing a great
hole in the turtle's neck and dyeing the water scarlet. Almost before
the sound of the shot had died away one of the Filipino boat's crew
went overboard with a rope, which he attempted to attach to the monster
before it could sink to the bottom, but the turtle, though desperately
wounded, was still very much alive, giving the sailor a blow on his
head with its flapper which all but knocked him senseless. By the time
we had hauled the man into the boat the turtle had disappeared into the
depths.
Waiting until darkness had fallen, we sent parties of sailors, armed
with electric torches, along the beach in both directions with orders
to follow the tracks made by the turtles in crossing the sand, and to
notify us by firing a revolver when they located one. We did not have
long to wait before we heard the signal agreed upon, and, picking up
the heavy camera, we plunged across the sands to where the sailors were
awaiting us in the edge of the bush. While the bluejackets cut off the
retreat of the hissing, snapping monster, Hawkinson set up his camera
and, when all was ready, some one touched off a flare, illuminating
the beach and jungle as though the search-light of a warship had been
turned upon them. In this manner we obtained a series of
motion-pictures which are, I believe, from the zoological standpoint,
unique. Before leaving the island we killed two tortoises for food for
the crew--enough to keep them in turtle soup for a month. The larger,
which I shot with a revolver, weighed slightly over five hundred pounds
and lived for several days with three .45 caliber bullets in its
brain-pan. Everything considered, it was a very interesting expedition.
The only person who did not enjoy it was the old Chinese who held the
concession for collecting the turtle-eggs. Instead of recognizing the
great value of the service we were rendering to science, he acted as
though we were robbing his hen-roost. He had a sordid mind.
CHAPTER III
"WHERE THERE AIN'T NO TEN COMMANDMENTS"
Until I went to British North Borneo I had considered the British the
best colonial administrators in the world. And, generally speaking, I
hold to that opinion. But what I saw and heard in that remote and
neglected corner of the Empire disclosed a state of affairs which I had
not dreamed could exist in any land over which flies the British flag.
It was not the iniquitous character of the administration which
surprised me, for I had seen the effects of bad colonial administration
in other distant lands--in Mozambique, for example, and in Germany's
former African possessions--but rather that such an administration
should be carried on by Englishmen, by Anglo-Saxons. Were you to read
in your morning paper that an ignorant alien had been arrested for
brutally mistreating one of his children you would not be particularly
surprised, because that is the sort of thing that might be expected
from such a man. But were you to read that a neighbor, a man who went
to the same church and belonged to the same clubs, whom you had known
and respected all your life, had been arrested for mistreating one of
_his_ children, you would be shocked and horrified.
Save on the charge of indifference and neglect, neither the British
people nor the British government can be held responsible for the
conditions existing in North Borneo, for strictly speaking, the country
is not a British colony, but merely a British protectorate, being owned
and administered by a private trading corporation, the British North
Borneo Company, which operates under a royal charter. But the idea of
turning over a great block of territory, with its inhabitants, to a
corporation whose sole aim is to earn dividends for its absentee
stockholders, is in itself abhorrent to most Americans. What would we
say, I ask you, if Porto Rico, which is only one-tenth the size of
North Borneo, were to be handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the
Standard Oil Company, with full authorization for that company to make
its own laws, establish its own courts, appoint its own officials,
maintain its own army, and to wield the power of life and death over
the natives? And, conceiving such a condition, what would we say if the
Standard Oil Company, in order to swell its revenues, not only
permitted but officially encouraged opium smoking and gambling; if, in
order to obtain labor for its plantations, it imported large numbers of
ignorant blacks from Haiti and permitted the planters to hold those
laborers, through indenture and indebtedness, in a form of servitude
not far removed from slavery; if it authorized the punishment of
recalcitrant laborers by flogging with the cat-o'nine-tails; if it
denied to the natives as well as to the imported laborers a system of
public education or a public health service or trial by jury; and
finally, if, in the event of insurrection, it permitted its soldiery,
largely recruited from savage tribes, to decapitate their prisoners and
to bring their ghastly trophies into the capital and pile them in a
pyramid in the principal plaza? Yet that would be a fairly close
parallel to what the chartered company is doing in British North
Borneo. As I have already remarked, North Borneo is a British
protectorate. And it is in more urgent need of protection from those
who are exploiting it than any country I know. But the voices of the
natives are very weak and Westminster is far away.
With the exception of Rhodesia, and of certain territories in
Portuguese Africa, North Borneo is the sole remaining region in the
world which is owned and administered by that political anachronism, a
chartered company. It was in the age of Elizabeth that the chartered
company, in the modern sense of the term, had its rise. The discovery
of the New World and the opening out of fresh trading routes to the
Indies gave a tremendous impetus to shipping, commercial and industrial
enterprises throughout western Europe and it was in order to encourage
these enterprises that the British, Dutch and French governments
granted charters to various trading associations. It was the Russia
Company, for example, which received its first charter in 1554, which
first brought England into intercourse with an empire then unknown. The
Turkey Company--later known as the Levant Company--long maintained
British prestige in the Ottoman Empire and even paid the expenses of
the embassies sent out by the British Government to the Sublime Porte.
The Hudson's Bay Company, which still exists as a purely commercial
concern, was for nearly two centuries the undisputed ruler of western
Canada. The extraordinary and picturesque career of the East India
Company is too well known to require comment here. In fact, most of the
thirteen British colonies in North America were in their inception
chartered companies very much in the modern acceptation of the term.
But, though these companies contributed in no small degree to the
commercial progress of the states from which they held their charters,
though they gave colonies to the mother countries and an impetus to the
development of their fleets, they were all too often characterized by
misgovernment, incompetence, injustice and cruelty in their dealings
with the natives. Moreover, they were monopolies, and therefore,
obnoxious, and almost without exception the colonies they founded
became prosperous and well-governed only when they had escaped from
their yoke. The existence of such companies today is justified--if at
all--only by certain political and economic reasons. It may be
desirable for a government to occupy a certain territory, but political
exigencies at home may not permit it to incur the expense, or
international relations may make such an adventure inexpedient at the
time. In such circumstances, the formation of a chartered company to
take over the desired territory may be the easiest way out of the
difficulty. But it has been demonstrated again and again that a
chartered company can never be anything but a transition stage of
colonization and that sooner or later the home government must take
over its powers and privileges.
The story of the rise of the British North Borneo Company provides an
illuminating insight into the methods by which that Empire On Which the
Sun Never Sets has acquired many of its far-flung possessions. Though
the British had established trading posts in northern Borneo as early
as 1759, and had obtained the cession of the whole northeastern
promontory from the Sultan of Sulu, who was its suzerain, the hostility
of the natives, who resented their transfer to alien rule, was so
pronounced that the treaty soon became virtually a dead letter and by
the end of the century British influence in Borneo was to all intents
and purposes at an end. Nor was it resumed until 1838, when an
adventurous Englishman, James Brooke, landed at Kuching and eventually
made himself the "White Rajah" of Sarawak. In 1848 the island of
Labuan, off the northwestern coast of Borneo, was occupied by the
British as a crown colony and some years later the Labuan Trading
Company established a trading post at Sandakan. In an attempt to open
up the country and to start plantations the company imported a
considerable number of Chinese laborers, but it did not prosper and its
financial affairs steadily went from bad to worse. As long as the
company kept its representative in Sandakan supplied with funds he
managed to maintain a certain authority among the natives. But one day
he received a letter bearing the London postmark from the company's
chairman. It read:
"Sir: We are sorry to inform you that we cannot send you further
funds, but you should not let this prevent you from keeping up
your dignity."
To which the agent replied:
"Sir: I have on a pair of trousers and a flannel shirt--all I
possess in the world. I think my dignity is about played out."
Another syndicate for the exploitation of North Borneo was formed in
England in 1878, however, to which the Sultan of Sulu was induced to
transfer all his rights in that region, of which he had been from time
immemorial the overlord. Four years later this syndicate, now known as
the British North Borneo Company, took over all the sovereign and
diplomatic rights ceded by the original grants and proceeded to
organize and administer the territory. In 1886 North Borneo was made a
British protectorate, but its administration remained entirely in the
hands of the company, the Crown reserving only control of its foreign
relations, though it was also agreed that governors appointed by the
company should receive the formal sanction of the British Colonial
Secretary. To quote the chairman of the board of directors: "We are not
a trading company. We are a government, an administration. The
Colonial Office leaves us alone as long as we behave ourselves."
The government is vested primarily in a board of directors who sit in
London and few of whom have ever set foot in the country which they
rule. The supreme authority in Borneo is the governor, under whom are
the residents of the three chief districts, who occupy positions
analogous to that of collector or magistrate. The six less important
districts are administered by district magistrates, who also collect
the taxes. Though there is a council, upon which the principal heads of
departments and one unofficial member have seats, it meets irregularly
and its functions are largely ornamental, the governor exercising
virtually autocratic power. Unfortunately, there is no imperial
official, as in Rhodesia, to supervise the company's activities. As was
the case with the East India Company, the minor posts in the North
Borneo service are filled by cadets nominated by the board of
directors, a system which provides a considerable number of positions
for younger sons, poor relations and titled ne'er-do-wells. Most of the
officials go out to Borneo as cadets, serve a long and arduous
apprenticeship in one of the most trying climates in the world, are
miserably paid (I knew one official who held five posts at the same
time, including those of assistant magistrate and assistant protector
of labor and who received for his services the equivalent of $100. a
month), and eventually retire, broken in health, on a pension which
permits them to live in a Bloomsbury lodging-house, to ride on a
tuppenny bus, and to occasionally visit the cinema.
There is no trial by jury in North Borneo, all cases being decided by
the magistrates, who are appointed by the company and who must be
qualified barristers. Nor are there mixed courts, as in Egypt and other
Oriental countries, though in the more important cases five or six
assessors, either native or Chinese, according to the nationality of
those involved, are permitted to listen to the evidence and to submit
recommendations, which the magistrate may follow or not, as he sees
fit. Neither is there a court of appeal, the only recourse from the
decision of a magistrate being an appeal to the governor, whose
decision is final.
The country is policed by a force of constabulary numbering some six
hundred men, comprising Sikhs, Pathans, Punjabi Mohammedans, Malays,
and Dyaks, officered by a handful of Europeans. Curiously enough, the
tall, dignified, deeply religious Sikhs and the little, nervous,
high-strung Dyak pagans get on very well together, eating, sleeping and
drilling in perfect harmony. Though the Dyak members of the
constabulary are recruited from the wild tribes of the interior, most
of them having indulged in the national pastime of head-hunting until
they donned the company's uniform, they make excellent soldiers,
courageous, untiring, and remarkably loyal. Upon King Edward's
accession to the throne a small contingent of Dyak police was sent to
England to march in the coronation procession. When, owing to the
serious illness of the king, the coronation was indefinitely postponed
and it was proposed to send the Dyaks home, the little brown fighters
stubbornly refused to go, asserting that they would not dare to show
their faces in Borneo without having seen the king. They did not wish
to put the company to any expense, they explained, so they would give
up their uniforms and live in the woods on what they could pick up if
they were permitted to remain until they could see their ruler.
Though the Dyaks make excellent soldiers, as I have said, they are
always savages at heart. In fact, when they are used in operations
against rebellious natives, their officers permit and sometimes
actively encourage their relapse into the barbarous custom of taking
heads. An official who was stationed in Sandakan during the
insurrection of 1908 told me that for days the police came swaggering
into town with dripping heads hanging from their belts and that they
piled these grisly trophies in a pyramid eight feet high on the parade
ground in front of the government buildings. Imagine, if you please,
the storm of indignation and disgust which would have swept the United
States had American officers permitted the Maccabebe Scouts, who served
with our troops against the insurgents in the Aguinaldo insurrection,
to decapitate their Filipino prisoners and to bring the heads into
Manila and pile them in a pyramid on the Luneta!
Though the term Dyak is often carelessly applied to all the natives of
North Borneo, as a matter of fact the Dyaks form only a small minority
of the population, the bulk of the inhabitants being Bajows, Dusuns and
Muruts. The Bajows, who are Mohammedans and first cousins of the Moros
of the southern Philippines, are found mainly along the east coast of
Borneo. They are a dark-skinned, wild, sea-gipsy race, rovers,
smugglers and river thieves. Though, thanks to the stern measures
adopted by the British and the Americans, they no longer indulge in
piracy, which was long their favorite occupation, they still find
profit and excitement in running arms and opium across the Sulu Sea to
the Moro Islands, in attacking lonely light-houses, or in looting
stranded merchantmen. It is the last coast in the world that I would
choose to be shipwrecked on.
The Dusuns and the Muruts, who are generally found in widely scattered
villages in the jungles of the interior, represent a very low stage of
civilization, being unspeakably filthy in their habits and frequently
becoming disgustingly intoxicated on a liquor of their own
manufacture--the Bornean equivalent of home brew. A Murut or Dusun
village usually consists of a single long hut divided into a great
number of small rooms, one for each family--a jungle apartment house,
as it were. These rooms open out into a common gallery or verandah
along which the heads taken by the warriors of the tribe are festooned.
It is as though the tenants of a New York apartment house had the heads
of the landlord and the rent-collector and the janitor swinging over
the front entrance. I should add, perhaps, that the practise of
head-hunting of which I shall speak at greater length when we reach
Dutch Borneo is fostered and encouraged by the unmarried women, for
every self-respecting Bornean girl demands that her suitor shall
establish his social position in the tribe by acquiring a respectable
number of heads, just as an American girl insists that the man she
marries must provide her with a solitaire, a flat and a flivver.
Though the chartered company has ruled in North Borneo for more than
forty years, it has only nibbled at the edges of the country. The
interior is still uncivilized and largely unexplored, the home of
savage animals and still more savage men. Though a railway has been
pushed up-country from Jesselton for something over a hundred miles,
both road and rolling-stock leave much to be desired, the little
tin-pot locomotives not infrequently leaving the rails altogether and
landing in the river. Some years ago an attempt was made to build a
highway across the protectorate, from coast to coast, but after sixty
miles had been completed the project was abandoned. It was known as the
Sketchley Road and ran through a rank and miasmatic jungle, it being
said that every hundred yards of construction cost the life of a
Chinese laborer and that those who were left died at the end. Today it
is only a memory, having long since been swallowed up by the
fast-growing vegetation.
[Illustration: Dusun women
The Dusuns, who are found in the jungles of the interior. represent a
very low state of civilization]
[Illustration: Dyak head-hunters of North Borneo
Every Bornean girl demands that her suitor shall establish his social
position by acquiring a few heads]
The company has taken no steps toward establishing a system of public
schools, as we have done in the Philippines, for it holds to the
outworn theory that, so far as the natives are concerned, a little
learning is a dangerous thing. Perhaps the company is right. Were the
natives to acquire a little learning it might prove dangerous--for the
company. There are a few schools in North Borneo, but they are
maintained by the Protestant and Roman Catholic missions and are
attended mainly by Chinese. Whether they have proved as potent an
influence in the propagation of the Christian faith as their founders
anticipated is open to doubt. When I was in Sandakan I made some
purchases in the bazaars from a Chinese lad who addressed me quite
fluently in my own tongue.
"How does it happen that you speak such good English?" I asked him.
"Go to school," he grunted, none too amiably.
"Where? To a public school?"
"No public school. Church school."
"So you're a good Christian now, I suppose?" I remarked.
"To hell with Clistianity," he retorted. "Me go to school to learn
English."
* * * * *
The chartered company maintains no public health service, nor, so far
as I was able to discover, has it adopted the most rudimentary sanitary
or quarantine precautions. It is, indeed, so notoriously lax in this
respect that when we touched at ports in Dutch Borneo, the Celebes, and
Java, the mere fact that we had come from British North Borneo caused
the health officers to view us with grave suspicion. When we were in
Sandakan the town was undergoing a periodic visitation of that
deadliest and most terrifying of all Oriental diseases, bubonic plague.
As it is transmitted by the fleas on plague-infested rats, we took the
precaution, when we went ashore, of wearing boots and breeches or of
tying the bottoms of our trousers about our ankles with string, so as
to prevent the fleas from biting us. It being necessary to go alongside
the coal-wharves in order to replenish the bunkers of the _Negros_,
orders were given that rat-guards--circular pieces of tin about the
size of a barrel-top--should be fixed to our hawsers, thus making it
difficult, if not impossible, for rats to invade the ship by that
route, while sailors armed with clubs were posted along the landward
rail to despatch any rodents that might succeed in gaining the deck. As
the native and Chinese laborers had fled in terror from the wharves,
where the dreaded disease had first manifested itself through the
deaths of several stevedores, the authorities offered their freedom to
those prisoners in the local jail who would volunteer for the hazardous
work of cleaning up the wharves and warehouses and sprinkling them with
petroleum. Six prisoners volunteered, but they might better have served
out their terms, for the next day four of them were dead. Though the
stout Cockney, harbormaster, known as "Pinkie" because of his rosy
complexion, was pallid with fear, the other European residents of
Sandakan seemed utterly indifferent to the danger to which they were
exposed. But life in a land like Borneo breeds fatalism. As an
official remarked, with a shrug of his shoulders, "After you have spent
a few years out here you don't much care how you die, or how soon.
Plague is as convenient a way of going out as any other."
* * * * *
The greatest obstacle to the successful development of Borneo's
enormous natural resources is the labor problem. The truth of the
matter is that life in these tropical islands is too easy for the
natives' own good. In a land where a man has no need for clothing,
being, indeed, more comfortable without it; where he can pick his food
from the trees or catch it with small effort in the sea; and where
bamboos and nipa are all the materials required for a perfectly
satisfactory dwelling, there is no incentive for work. It being
impossible, therefore, to depend on native labor, the company has been
forced to import large numbers of coolies from China. These coolies,
whom the labor agents attract with promises of high wages, a delightful
climate, unlimited opium, and other things dear to the Chinese heart,
are employed under an indenture system, the duration of their contracts
being limited by law to three hundred days. That sounds, on the face of
it, like a safeguard against peonage. The trouble is, however, that it
is easily circumvented. Here is the way it works in practise. Shortly
after the laborer reaches the plantation where he is to be employed he
is given an advance on his pay, frequently amounting to thirty
Singapore dollars, which he is encouraged to dissipate in the opium
dens and gambling houses maintained on the plantation. Any one who has
any knowledge of the Chinese coolie will realize how temperamentally
incapable he is of resistance where opium and gambling are concerned.
This pernicious system of advances has the effect, as it is intended to
have, of chaining the laborer to the plantation by debt. For the first
advance is usually followed by a second, and sometimes by a third, and
to this debit column are added the charges made for food, for medical
attendance, for opium, and for purchases made at the plantation store,
so that, upon the expiration of his three-hundred-day contract, the
laborer almost invariably owes his employer a debt which he is quite
unable to pay. As he cannot obtain employment elsewhere in the colony
under these conditions, he is faced with the alternative of being
shipped back to China a pauper or of signing another contract. There is
no breaking of the law by the planter, you see: the laborer is
perfectly free to leave when his contract has expired--as free as any
man can be who is absolutely penniless.
Let me quote from a letter from the former Assistant Protector of Labor
of British North Borneo. From the very nature of his duties he knows
whereof he speaks:
"One sees a large number of healthy, able-bodied Chinese coming into
the country as laborers and, at the end of a year or two, instead of
going back to their homes with money in their pockets and healthy with
outdoor work, they go back as broken beggars, pitifully saturated with
disease or confirmed drug fiends. It is really sad to see some of them
return home after a struggle of four or five years to save money--a
struggle not only against themselves and their acquired opium habit,
but against the numerous parasites which always fatten on laborers."
During the term of his indenture the laborer is to all intents and
purposes a prisoner, his only appeal against any injustices practised
on the plantation being to the Protector of Labor, who is supposed to
visit each estate once a month. In theory this system is admirable, but
in practise it does not afford the laborer the protection which the law
intends, for it frequently happens that laborers who have been brutally
mistreated have been coerced into silence by the plantation managers by
threats of what will happen to them if they dare to lay a complaint
before the inspecting official. Moreover, many of the plantations are
so remotely situated, so far removed from civilization, that a manager
can treat his laborers as he pleases with little fear of detection or
punishment. If negroes are held in peonage, flogged, and even murdered
on plantations in our own South, within rifle-shot of courthouses and
sheriffs' offices and churches, is it to be wondered at that similar
conditions can and do exist in the world-distant jungles of Borneo.
Mind you, I do not say that such conditions exist on all or most of the
estates in British North Borneo, but I have the best of reasons for
believing that they exist on some of them.
One of the most serious defects in the labor laws of North Borneo is
that trivial actions or omissions on the part of ignorant coolies, such
as misconduct, neglect of work, or absence from the estate without
leave, are punishable by imprisonment. As a result, the illiterate and
incoherent coolie does not know where he stands. He can never be sure
that some trivial action on his part, no matter how innocent his
intent, will not bring him within reach of the criminal law. He is,
moreover, denied the right of trial by jury, his case usually being
decided off-hand by a bored and unsympathetic magistrate who has no
knowledge of the defendant's tongue. Moreover, the company's laws
permit the punishment of unruly laborers by flogging, with a maximum of
twelve lashes. In view of the remoteness of most of the estates, it is
scarcely necessary for me to point out that this is a form of
punishment open to the gravest abuse.
Although, as I have shown, the British North Borneo Company permits the
existence of a system not far removed from slavery, a far more serious
indictment of the company's administration lies in its systematic
debauchery of its laborers by encouraging them to indulge in opium
smoking and gambling for the purpose of swelling its revenues. Nor does
its heartless exploitation of the laborer end there, for when a coolie
has dissipated all his earnings in the opium dens and gaming houses,
which are run under government concessions, he can usually realize a
little more money for the same purpose by pawning his few poor
belongings at one of the pawnshops controlled by the company. In other
words, from the day a laborer sets foot in Borneo until the day he
departs, he is systematically separated from his earnings, which are
diverted, through the channels provided by the opium dens, the gambling
houses and the pawn shops, into a stream which eventually empties into
the company's coffers. For, mark you, the chartered company did not go
to North Borneo from any altruistic motives. It is animated by no
desire to ameliorate the condition of the natives or to increase the
well-being and happiness of its imported laborers. It is there with one
object in view, and one alone--to pay dividends to its stockholders. As
the chairman of the company said at a recent North Borneo dinner in
London: "They have acted the parts of Empire makers and yet they are
filling their own pockets, for the golden rain is beginning to fall."
Let me show you where this "golden rain" comes from. The two principal
sources of revenue of the British North Borneo Company are opium and
gambling. Suppose that you come with me for a stroll down the Jalan
Tiga in Sandakan and see the gaming houses and the opium dens for
yourself. Jalan Tiga (literally "Number Two Street") is a moderately
broad thoroughfare, perhaps a quarter of a mile in length, which is
solidly lined on both sides with gambling houses, or, as they are
called in Borneo, gambling farms, the term being due to the fact that
the gambling privileges are farmed out by the government. There may be
wickeder streets somewhere in the East than the Jalan Tiga, but I do
not recall having seen them. It, and the thoroughfares immediately
adjoining, in which are situated the opium dens and the houses of
prostitution, form a district which represents the very quintessence of
Oriental vice. Over virtually every door are signs in Chinese, Malay
and English announcing that games of chance are played within. Such
resorts are not camouflaged in Borneo. They are as open as a railway
station or a public library in the United States. From afternoon until
sunrise these resorts are crowded to the doors with half-naked,
perspiring humanity, brown skins and yellow being in about equal
proportions, for the Malay is as inveterate a gambler as the Chinese.
The downstairs rooms, which are frequented by the lower classes, are
thickly sprinkled with low tables covered with mats divided into four
sections, each of which bears a number. A dice under a square brass cup
is shaken on the table and the cup slowly raised. Those players who
have been lucky enough to place their bets on the square whose number
corresponds to the number uppermost on the dice have their money
doubled, the others see their earnings swept into the lap of the
croupier, a fat and greasy Chinaman, usually stripped to the waist. In
this system the chances against the player are enormous. The play is
very rapid, the dice being shaken, the cup raised, the winners paid
and the wagers of the losers raked in too quickly for the untrained eye
to follow. The players seldom quit as long as they have any money left
to wager, but as soon as one drops out there is another ready to take
his place. The upstairs rooms, which are usually handsomely decorated
and luxuriously furnished, are reserved for the wealthier patrons, it
being by no means uncommon for a player to lose several thousand
dollars in a single night. Here cards are generally used instead of
dice to separate the players from their money, fan-tan being the
favorite game. I was told that the monthly subsidy paid by the British
North Borneo Company to the Sultan of Sulu, who comes over from Jolo
with great regularity to collect it, never leaves the country, as he
invariably loses it over a Sandakan gaming-table. Gambling is a
government monopoly in Borneo, the company farming out the privilege
each year to the highest bidder. In 1919 the gambling rights for the
entire protectorate were sold for approximately $144,000.
Crossing the Jalan Tiga at right angles and running from the heart of
the town down to the edge of the harbor is the street of the
prostitutes. It is easy to recognize the houses of ill-fame by their
scarlet blinds and by the scarlet numbers over their doors. Should you
stroll down the street during the day you will find the sullen-eyed
inmates seated in the doorways, brushing their long and lustrous
blue-black hair or painting their faces in white and vermillion
preparatory to the evening's entertainment. Probably four-fifths of
the _filles de joie_ in Sandakan are Chinese, the others are products
of Nippon--quaint, dainty, doll-like little women with faces so heavily
enameled that they would be cracked by a smile. When a Chinese merchant
wants a wife he usually visits a house of prostitution, selects one of
the inmates, drives a hard bargain with the hard-eyed mistress of the
establishment, and, the transaction concluded, brusquely tells the girl
to pack her belongings and accompany him to his home. I might add that
the girls thus chosen invariably make good wives and remain faithful to
their husbands.
[Illustration: The Jalan Tiga, Sandakan
A moderately broad thoroughfare, lined on both sides with
gambling-houses]
[Illustration: A patron of a Sandakan opium farm
Each smoker is provided with a lamp for heating his "pill" and a wooden
head-rest]
Running parallel to the Jalan Tiga is another street--I do not recall
its name--in which are the opium farms. Far from being veiled in
secrecy, they are operated as openly as American soda fountains. A
typical opium farm consists of a two-story wooden house, one of a long
row of similar buildings, containing a number of small, ill-lighted
rooms which reek with the sickly sweet fumes of the drug. The furniture
consists of a number of so-called beds, which in reality are wooden
platforms or tables, their tops, which are raised about three feet
above the floor, providing space on which two smokers can recline. Each
smoker is provided with a block of wood which serves as a pillow and a
small lamp for heating his "pill." The number of patrons who may be
accommodated at one time is prescribed by law and rigidly enforced,
signs denoting the authorized capacity of the house being posted at the
door, like the signs in elevators and on ferry-boats in America. For
example, the door of one farm that I visited bore the notice "Only
fifteen beds. Room for thirty persons." Over-crowding is forbidden by
the authorities, not, as in the case of elevators and ferry-boats, for
reasons of safety, but for financial reasons. The more opium farms
there are, you see, the greater the company's profits.
The opium is purchased by the chartered company from the Government of
the Straits Settlements for $1.20 a tael (about one-tenth of a pound
troy) and, after being adulterated with various substances, is sold to
the opium farmers, nearly all of whom are Chinese, for $8.50 a tael,
the company thus making a very comfortable margin of profit on the
transaction. The opium farmers either keep opium dens themselves or
sell the drug to anyone wishing to buy it, just as a tobacconist sells
cigars and cigarettes. The sale of the opium privilege in Sandakan
alone nets the government, so I was informed, something over $500,000
annually.
Now, iniquitous and deplorable as such a traffic is, the British North
Borneo administration is not the only government engaged in the sale of
opium. But it is the only government, so far as I am aware, which
virtually forces the drug on its people by insisting that it shall be
purchasable in localities which might otherwise escape its malign
influence. A planter who, actuated either by moral scruples or by a
desire to maintain the efficiency of his laborers, opposes the opening
of an opium farm on his estate, might as well sell out and leave
Borneo, for the company will promptly retaliate for such interference
with its revenues by cutting off his supply of labor. It will defend
its action by naïvely asserting that, as the coolies would contrive to
obtain the drug any way, the planter, in refusing to permit the opening
of an opium farm on his property, is guilty of conniving at the illegal
use of the drug!
The British North Borneo Company professes to find justification for
engaging in the opium traffic by insisting that, as the Chinese will
certainly obtain opium clandestinely if they cannot obtain it openly,
it is better for everyone concerned that its sale and use should be
kept under government control. The fact remains, however, that China,
decadent though she may be and desperately in need of increased
revenues, has succeeded, in spite of the powerful opposition of the
British-owned Opium Ring, in putting an end to the traffic within her
borders, while Siam, likewise under Oriental rule, is about to do the
same. It is a curious commentary on European civilization that this
vice, which the so-called "backward" races are vigorously attempting to
stamp out, should be not only permitted but encouraged in a country
over which flies the flag of England. Its effects on the population are
summed up in this sentence from a letter written me by a former high
official of the chartered company: "Fifty per cent of the thefts and
robberies committed during the period that I was magistrate in that
territory can be directly traced to opium and gambling."
There is held each year, at one of the great London hotels, the North
Borneo Dinner. It is one of the most brilliant affairs of the season.
At the head of the long table, banked with flowers and gleaming with
glass and silver, sits the chairman of the chartered company, flanked
by cabinet ministers, archbishops, ambassadors, admirals, field
marshals. The speakers work the audience into a fervor of patriotic
pride by their sonorous word-pictures of England's services to humanity
in bearing the white man's burden, and of the spread of enlightenment
and progress under the Union Jack. But the heartiest applause
invariably greets the announcement that the North Borneo Company has
declared a dividend. Whence the money to pay the dividend was derived
is tactfully left unsaid. The dinner always concludes with the singing
of the anthem _Land of Hope and Glory_. Yet they say that the English
have no sense of humor!
CHAPTER IV
THE EMERALDS OF WILHELMINA
In Singapore stands one of the most significant statues in the world.
From the centre of its sun-scorched Esplanade rises the bronze figure
of a youthful, slender, clean-cut, keen-eyed man, clad in the
high-collared coat and knee-breeches of a century ago, who, from his
lofty pedestal, peers southward, beyond the shipping in the busy
harbor, beyond the palm-fringed straits, toward those mysterious,
alluring islands which ring the Java Sea. Though his name, Thomas
Stamford Raffles, doubtless holds for you but scanty meaning, and
though he died when only forty-five, his last years shadowed by the
ingratitude of the country whose commercial supremacy in the East he
had secured and to which he had offered a vast, new field for colonial
expansion, he was one of the greatest architects of empire that ever
lived. He combined the vision and administrative genius of Clive and
Hastings with the audacity and energy of Hawkins and Drake. It was his
dream, to use his own words, "to make Java the center of an Eastern
insular empire" ruled "not only without fear but without reproach"; an
empire to consist of that great archipelago--Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the
Celebes, New Guinea, and the lesser islands--which sweeps southward
and eastward from the Asian mainland to the edges of Australasia.
Though this splendid colonial structure was erected according to the
plans that Raffles drew, by curious circumstance the flag that flies
over it today is not his flag, not the flag of England, for, instead of
being governed from Westminster, as he had dreamed, it is governed from
The Hague, the ruler of its fifty million brown inhabitants being the
stout, rosy-cheeked young woman who dwells in the Palace of Het Loo.
Though in area Queen Wilhelmina's colonial possessions are exceeded by
those of Britain and France, she is the sovereign of the second largest
colonial empire, in point of population, in the world. But, because it
lies beyond the beaten paths of tourist travel, because it has been so
little advertised by plagues and famines and rebellions, and because it
has been so admirably and unobtrusively governed, it has largely
escaped public attention--a fact, I imagine, with which the Dutch are
not ill-pleased. Did _you_ realize, I wonder, that the Insulinde, as
Netherlands India is sometimes called, is as large, or very nearly as
large, as all that portion of the United States lying east of the
Mississippi? Did you know that in the third largest island of the
archipelago, Sumatra, the State of California could be set down and
still leave a comfortable margin all around? Or that the fugitive from
justice who turns the prow of his canoe westward from New Guinea must
sail as far as from Vancouver to Yokohama before he finds himself
beyond the shadow of the Dutch flag and the arm of Dutch law?
Until the closing years of the sixteenth century, European trade with
the Far East was an absolute monopoly in the hands of Spain and
Portugal. Incredible as it may seem, the two Iberian nations alone
possessed the secret of the routes to the East, which they guarded with
jealous care. In 1492, Columbus, bearing a letter from the King of
Spain to the Khan of Tartary, whose power and wealth had become
legendary in Europe through the tales of Marco Polo and other overland
travelers, sailed westward from Cadiz in search of Asia, discovering
the islands which came to be known as the West Indies. Five years later
a Portuguese sea-adventurer, Vasco da Gama, turned the prow of his
caravel south from the mouth of the Tagus, skirted the coast of Africa,
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and dropped
his anchor in the harbor of Calicut--the first European to reach the
beckoning East by sea. For a quarter of a century the Portuguese were
the only people in Europe who knew the way to the East, and their
secret gave them a monopoly of the Eastern trade. Lisbon became the
richest port of Europe. Portugal was mistress of the seas. But in 1519
another Portuguese seafarer, Hernando de Maghallanes--we call him
Ferdinand Magellan--who, resenting his treatment by the King of
Portugal, had shifted his allegiance to Spain, sailed southwestward
across the Atlantic, rounded the southern extremity of America by the
straits which bear his name, crossed the unknown Pacific, and raised
the flag of Spain over the islands which came in time to be called the
Philippines. Spain had reached the Indies by sailing west, as Portugal
had reached them by sailing east.
Though the fabulous wealth of the lands thus discovered was discussed
around every council table and camp-fire in Europe, the routes by which
that wealth might be attained were guarded by Portugal and Spain as
secrets of state. The charts showing the routes were not intrusted to
the captains of vessels in the Eastern trade until the moment of
departure, and they were taken up immediately upon their return; the
silence of officers and crews was insured by every oath that the church
could frame and every penalty that the state could devise. For more
than three-quarters of a century, indeed, the two Iberian nations
succeeded in keeping the secret of the sea roads to the East, its
betrayal being punishable by death. In 1580, however, the English
freebooter, Francis Drake, nicknamed "The Master Thief of the Unknown
World," duplicated the voyage of Magellan's expedition of threescore
years before, thus discovering the route to the Indies used by Spain.
At this period the Dutch, "the waggoners of the sea," possessed, as
middlemen, a large interest in the spice trade, for the Portuguese,
having no direct access to the markets of northern Europe, had made a
practise of sending their Eastern merchandise to the Netherlands in
Dutch bottoms for distribution by way of the Rhine and the Scheldt. As
a result, the enormous carrying trade of Holland was wholly dependent
upon Lisbon. But when Spain unceremoniously annexed Portugal in 1580,
the first act of Philip, upon becoming master of Lisbon, was to close
the Tagus to the Dutch, his one-time subjects, who had revolted eight
years before. As a result of the revenge thus taken by the Spanish
tyrant, the Dutch were faced by the necessity of themselves going in
quest of the Indies if their flag was not to disappear from the seas.
Their opportunity came a dozen years later when a venturesome
Hollander, Cornelius Houtman, who was risking imprisonment and even
death by trading surreptitiously in the forbidden city on the Tagus,
succeeded in obtaining through bribery a copy of one of the secret
charts. The Spanish authorities scarcely could have been aware that he
had learned a secret of such immense importance, or his silence would
have been insured by the headsman. As it was, he was thrown into prison
for illegal trading, where he was held for heavy ransom. But he managed
to get word to Amsterdam of the priceless information which had come
into his possession, whereupon the merchants of that city promptly
formed a syndicate, subscribed the money for his ransom, and obtained
his release. Thus it came about that shortly after his return to
Holland there was organized the Company of Distant Lands, a title as
vague, grandiose and alluring as the plans of those who founded it. In
1595, then, nearly a century after da Gama had shown the way, four
caravels under the command of Houtman, the banner of the Netherlands
flaunting from their towering sterns, sailed grandly out of the Texel,
slipped past the white chalk cliffs of Dover, sped southward before the
trades, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and laid their course across the
Indian Ocean for the Spice Islands. When the adventurers returned, two
years later, they brought back tales of islands richer than anything of
which the Dutch burghers had ever dreamed, and produced cargoes of
Eastern merchandise to back their stories up.
The return of Houtman's expedition was the signal for a great outburst
of commercial enterprise in the Low Countries, seekers after fortune or
adventure flocking to the Indies as, centuries later, other
fortune-seekers, other adventurers, flocked to the gold-diggings of the
Sierras, the Yukon, and the Rand. On those distant seas, however, the
adventurers were beyond the reach of any law, the same lawless
conditions prevailing in the Indies at the beginning of the seventeenth
century which characterized Californian life in the days of '49. The
Dutch warred on the natives and on the Portuguese, and, when there was
no one else to offer them resistance, they fought among themselves. By
1602 conditions had become so intolerable that the government of
Holland, in order to tranquillize the Indies, and to stabilize the
spice market at home, decided to amalgamate the various trading
enterprises into one great corporation, the Dutch East India Company,
which was authorized to exercise the functions of government in those
remote seas and to prosecute the war against Spain. When Philip shut
the Dutch out of Lisbon, he made a formidable enemy for himself, for,
though the burghers went to the East primarily in order to save their
commerce from extinction, they were animated in a scarcely less degree
by a determination to even their score with Spain.
The history of the Dutch East India Company is not a savory one. It was
a powerful instrument for extracting the wealth of the Indies, and, so
long as the wealth was forthcoming, the stockholders at home in Holland
did not inquire too closely as to how the instrument was used. The
story of the company from its formation in 1602 until its dissolution
nearly two centuries later is a record of intrigue, cruelty and
oppression. It exercised virtually sovereign powers. It made and
enforced its own laws, it maintained its own fleet and army, it
negotiated treaties with Japan and China, it dethroned sultans and
rajahs, it established trading-posts and factories at the Cape of Good
Hope, in the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, and
in Bengal; it waged war against the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the
English in turn. When at the summit of its power, in 1669, the company
possessed forty warships and one hundred and fifty merchantmen,
maintained an army of ten thousand men, and paid a forty per cent
dividend.
Meanwhile a formidable rival to the Dutch company, the English East
India Company, had arisen, but the accession of a Dutchman, William,
Prince of Orange, to the throne of England in 1688 turned the rivals
into allies, the trade of the eastern seas being divided between them.
But toward the close of the eighteenth century there came another
change in the _status quo_, for the Dutch, by allying themselves with
the French, became the enemies of England. By this time Great Britain
had become the greatest sea power in the world, so that within a few
months after the outbreak of hostilities in 1795 the British flag had
replaced that of the Netherlands over Ceylon, Malacca, and other
stations on the highway to the Insulinde. When the Netherlands were
annexed to the French Empire by Napoleon in 1810 the British seized the
excuse thus provided to occupy Java, Thomas Stamford Raffles, the
brilliant young Englishman who was then the agent of the British East
India Company at Malacca, in the Malay States, being sent to Java as
lieutenant-governor. Urgent as were his appeals that Java should be
retained by Britain as a jewel in her crown of empire, the readjustment
of the territories of the great European powers which was effected at
the Congress of Vienna, in 1816, after the fall of Napoleon, resulted
in the restoration to the Dutch of those islands of the Insulinde,
including Java, which the British had seized. But, though Raffles ruled
in Java for barely four and a half years, his spirit goes marching on,
the system of colonial government which he instituted having been
continued by the Dutch, in its main outlines, to this day. He won the
confidence and friendship of the powerful native princes,
revolutionized the entire legal system, revived the system of village
or communal government, reformed the land-tenure, abolished the
abominable system of forcing the natives to deliver all their crops,
and gave to the Javanese a rule of honesty, justice and wisdom with
which, up to that time, they had not had even a bowing acquaintance. As
a result of the lessons learned from Stamford Raffles, the Dutch
possessions in the East are today more wisely and justly administered
than those of any other European nation.
The Dutch had not seen the last of Raffles, however, for in 1817 he
returned from England, where he had been knighted by the Prince Regent,
to take the post of lieutenant-governor of Sumatra, to which the
British did not finally relinquish their claims until half a century
later. His administration of that great island was characterized by the
same breadth of vision, tact, and energy which had marked his rule in
Java. It was during this period that Raffles rendered his greatest
service to the empire. The Dutch, upon regaining Java, attempted to
obtain complete control of all the islands of the archipelago, which
would have resulted in seriously hampering, if not actually ending,
British trade east of Malacca. But Raffles, recognizing the menace to
British interests, defeated the Dutch scheme in January, 1819, by a
sudden _coup d'etat_, when he seized the little island at the tip of
the Malay Peninsula which commands the Malacca Straits and the entrance
to the China seas, and founded Singapore, thereby giving Britain
control of the gateway to the Farther East and ending forever the
Dutch dream of making of those waters a _mare clausum_--a Dutch lake.
The thousands of islands, islets, and atolls which comprise Netherlands
India--the proper etymological name of the archipelago is
Austronesia--are scattered over forty-six degrees of longitude, on both
sides of the equator. Although in point of area Java holds only fifth
place, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea and the Celebes being much larger,
it nevertheless contains three-fourths of the population and yields
four-fifths of the produce of the entire archipelago. Though scarcely
larger than Cuba, it has more inhabitants than all the Atlantic Coast
States, from Maine to Florida, combined. This, added to the strategic
importance of its situation, the richness of its soil, the variety of
its products, the intelligence, activity and civilization of its
inhabitants, and the fact that it is the seat of the colonial
government, makes Java by far the most important unit of the Insulinde.
Because of its overwhelming importance in the matters of position,
products and population, it is administered as a distinct political
entity, the other portions of the Dutch Indies being officially
designated as the Outposts or the Outer Possessions.
Westernmost and by far the most important of the Outposts is Sumatra,
an island four-fifths the size of France, as potentially rich in
mineral and agricultural wealth as Java, but with a sparse and
intractable population, certain of the tribes, notably the Achinese,
who inhabit the northern districts, still defying Dutch rule in spite
of the long and costly series of wars which have resulted from
Holland's attempt to subjugate them. The unmapped interior of Sumatra
affords an almost virgin field for the explorer, the sportsman and the
scientist. It has ninety volcanoes, twelve of which are active (the
world has not forgotten the eruption, in 1883, of Krakatu, an island
volcano off the Sumatran coast, which resulted in the loss of forty
thousand human lives); the jungles of the interior are roamed by
elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers and occasional orang-utans,
while in the scattered villages, with their straw-thatched, highly
decorated houses, dwell barbarous brown men practising customs so
incredibly eerie and fantastic that a sober narration of them is more
likely than not to be greeted with a shrug of amused disbelief. One who
has no first-hand knowledge of the Sumatran tribes finds it difficult
to accept at their face value the accounts of the customs practised by
the Bataks of Tapanuli, for example, who, when their relatives become
too old and infirm to be of further use, give them a pious interment by
eating them. When the local Doctor Oslers have decided that a man has
reached the age when his place at the family table is preferable to his
company, the aged victim climbs a lemon-tree, beneath which his
relatives stand in a circle, wailing the deathsong, the weird,
monotonous chant being continued until the condemned one summons the
courage to throw himself to the ground, whereupon the members of his
family promptly despatch him with clubs, cut up his body, roast the
meat, and eat it. Thus every stomach in the tribe becomes, in effect, a
sort of family burial-plot. I was unable to ascertain why the victim is
compelled to throw himself from a lemon-tree. It struck me that some
taller tree, like a palm, would better accomplish the desired result. A
matter of custom, doubtless. Perhaps that explains why we dub persons
who are passé "lemons." Then there are the Achinese, whose women
frequently marry when eight years old, and are considered as well along
in life when they reach their teens; and the Niassais, who are in
deadly fear of albino children and who kill all twins as soon as they
are born. Or the Menangkabaus, whose tribal government is a matriarchy:
lands, houses, crops and children belonging solely to the wife, who
may, and sometimes does, sell her husband as a slave in order to pay
her debts.
Trailing from the eastern end of Java in a twelve-hundred-mile-long
chain, like the wisps of paper which form the tail of a kite, and
separated by straits so narrow that artillery can fire across them, are
the Lesser Sundas--Bali, noted for its superb scenery and its alluring
women; Lombok, the northernmost island whose flora and fauna are
Australian; Sumbawa, where the sandalwood comes from; Flores, whose
inhabitants consider the earth so holy that they will not desecrate it
by digging wells or cultivation; Timor, the northeastern half of which,
together with Goa in India and Macao in China, forms the last remnant
of Portugal's once enormous Eastern empire; Rotti, Kei, and Aroo, the
great chain thus formed linking New Guinea, the largest island in the
world, barring Australia, with the mainland of Asia. Of the last-named
island, the entire western half belongs to Holland, the remaining half
being about equally divided between British Papua, in the southeast,
and in the northeast the former German colony of Kaiser Wilhelm Land,
now administered by Australia under a mandate from the League of
Nations.
The population of Dutch New Guinea is estimated at a quarter of a
million, but the predilection of its puff-ball-headed inhabitants for
human flesh has discouraged the Dutch census-takers from making an
accurate enumeration, as the Papuan cannibal does not hesitate to
sacrifice the needs of science to those of the cooking-pot. Though New
Guinea is believed to be enormously rich in natural resources, and has
many excellent harbors, the secrets of its mysterious interior can only
be conjectured. The natives are as degraded as any in the world; their
principal vocation is hunting birds of paradise, whose plumes command
high prices in the European markets; their chief avocation in recent
years has been staging imitation cannibal feasts for the benefit of
motion-picture expeditions. But, unknown and unproductive as it is at
present, I would stake my life that New Guinea will be a great colony
some day.
To the west of New Guinea and to the south of the Philippines lie the
Moluccas--Ceram, Amboin, Ternate, Halmahera, and the rest--the Spice
Islands of the old-time voyagers, the scented tropic isles of which
Camoens sang. Amboin, owing to the fact that Europeans have been
established there for centuries on account of its trade in spices, is
characterized by a much higher degree of civilization than the rest of
the Moluccas, a considerable proportion of its inhabitants professing
to be Christians. The flower of the colonial army is recruited from the
Amboinese, who regard themselves not as vassals of the Dutch but as
their allies and equals, a distinction which they emphasize by wearing
shoes, all other native troops going barefoot. Beyond the Moluccas,
across the Banda Sea, sprawls the Celebes,[1] familiar from our
school-days because of its fantastic outline, the plural form of its
name being due to the supposition of the early explorers that it was a
group of islands instead of one. And finally, crossing Makassar
Straits, we come to Borneo, the habitat of the head-hunter and the
orang-utan. Though Borneo is a treasure-house for the naturalist, the
botanist, and the ethnologist, the Dutch, as in New Guinea, have merely
scratched its surface, almost no attempt having thus far been made to
exploit its enormous natural resources. Thus I have arrayed for your
cursory inspection the congeries of curious and colorful islands which
constitute Netherlands India in order that you may comprehend the
problems of civilization and administration which Holland has had to
solve in those distant seas, and that you may be better qualified to
judge the results she has achieved.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced as though it were spelled Cel-lay-bees,
with the accent on the second syllable.]
* * * * *
The Insulinde has eight times the population and sixty times the area
of the mother country, from which it is separated by ten thousand miles
of sea, yet the sovereignty of Queen Wilhelmina is upheld among the
cannibals of New Guinea, the head-hunters of Borneo, and the savages of
Achin, no less than among the docile millions of Java, by less than ten
thousand European soldiers. That a territory so vast and with so
enormous a population, should be so admirably administered, everything
considered, by so small a number of white men, is in itself proof of
the Dutch genius for ruling subject races.
From the day when Holland determined to organize her colonial empire
for the benefit of the natives themselves, instead of exploiting it for
the benefit of a handful of Dutch traders and settlers, as she had
previously done, she has employed in her colonial service only
thoroughly trained officials of proved ability and irreproachable
character. The Dutch officials whom I met in Java and the Outposts
impressed me, indeed, as being men of altogether exceptional capacity
and attainments, better educated and qualified, as a whole, than those
whom I have encountered in the British and French colonial possessions.
Since the war, owing to the difficulty of obtaining men of sufficient
caliber and experience to fill the minor posts, which are not
particularly well paid, Holland has given employment in her colonial
service to a considerable number of Germans, most of whom had been
trained in colonial administration in Germany's African and Pacific
possessions, but they are appointed, of course, only to posts of
relative unimportance.
Every year the Minister of the Colonies ascertains the number of
vacancies in the East Indian service, and every year the Grand
Examination of Officials is held simultaneously in The Hague and
Batavia, the results of this examination determining the eligibility of
candidates for admission to the colonial service and the fitness of
officials already in the service for promotion. With the exception of
the Governor-General and two or three other high officials, who are
appointed by the crown, no official can evade this examination, to pass
which requires not only an intimate knowledge of East Indian languages,
politics and customs, but real scholarship as well. The names of those
candidates who pass this examination are certified to the Minister of
the Colonies, who thereupon directs them to report to the
Governor-General at Batavia and provides them with funds for the
voyage. Upon their arrival in the Indies the Governor-General appoints
them to the grade of _controleur_ and tests their capacity by sending
them to difficult and trying posts in Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, or
New Guinea, where they must conclusively prove their ability before
they can hope for promotion to the grades of assistant resident and
resident, and the relative comfort of official life in Java. In the
Outposts they at once come face to face with innumerable difficulties
and responsibilities, for the _controleur_ is responsible, though
within narrower limits than the resident, for everything: justice,
police, agriculture, education, public works, the protection of the
natives, and the requirements of the settlers in such matters as labor
and irrigation. He is, in short, an administrator, a police official, a
judge, a diplomatist, and an adviser on almost every subject connected
with the government of tropical dependencies. The officials in the
Outposts are given more authority and greater latitude of action than
their colleagues in Java, for they have greater difficulties to cope
with, while the intractability, if not the open hostility of the
natives whom they are called upon to rule demands greater tact and
diplomacy than are required in Java, where the officials are inclined
to become spoiled by their easy-going life and the semi-royal state
which they maintain.
Though Holland demands much of those who uphold her authority in the
Indies, she is generous in her rewards. The Governor-General draws a
salary of seventy thousand dollars together with liberal allowances for
entertaining, and is provided with palaces at Batavia and Buitenzorg,
while at Tjipanas, on one of the spurs of the Gedei, nearly six
thousand feet above the sea, he has a country house set in a great
English park. Wherever he is in residence he maintains a degree of
state scarcely inferior to that of the sovereign herself. The residents
are paid from five thousand dollars to nine thousand dollars according
to their grades, the assistant residents from three thousand five
hundred dollars to five thousand dollars, and the _controleurs_ from
one thousand eight hundred dollars to two thousand four hundred
dollars. Though officials are permitted leaves of absence only once in
ten years, those who complete twenty-five years' service in the
Insulinde may retire on half-pay. Even at such salaries, however, and
in a land where living is cheap as compared with Europe, it is almost
impossible for the officials to save money, for they are expected to
entertain lavishly and to live in a fashion which will impress the
natives, who would be quick to seize on any evidence of economy as a
sign of weakness.
Netherlands India is ruled by a dual system of administration--European
and native. By miracles of patience, tact, and diplomacy, the Dutch
have succeeded in building up in the Indies a gigantic colonial empire,
which, however, they could not hope to hold by force were there to be a
concerted rising of the natives. Realizing this, Holland--instead of
attempting to overawe the natives by a display of military strength, as
England has done in Egypt and India, and France in Algeria and
Morocco--has succeeded, by keeping the native princes on their thrones
and according them a shadowy suzerainty, in hoodwinking the ignorant
brown mass of the people into the belief that they are still governed
by their own rulers. Though at first the princes, as was to be
expected, bitterly resented the curtailment of their prerogatives and
powers, they decided that they might better remain on their thrones,
even though the powers remaining to them were merely nominal, and
accept the titles, honors and generous pensions which the Dutch offered
them, than to resist and be ruthlessly crushed. In pursuance of this
shrewd policy, every province in the Indies has as its nominal head a
native puppet ruler, known as a regent, usually a member of the house
which reigned in that particular territory before the white man came.
Though the regents are appointed, paid, and at need dismissed by the
government, and though they are obliged to accept the advice and obey
the orders of the Dutch residents, they remain the highest personages
in the native world and the intermediaries through whom Holland
transmits her wishes and orders to the native population.
In order to lend color to the fiction that the natives are still ruled
by their own princes, the regents are provided with the means to keep
up a considerable degree of ceremony and pomp; they have their
opera-bouffe courts, their gorgeously uniformed body-guards, their
gilded carriages and golden parasols, and some of the more important
ones maintain enormous households. But, though they preside at
assemblies, sign decrees, and possess all the other external attributes
of power, in reality they only go through the motions of governing, for
always behind their gorgeous thrones sits a shrewd and silent Dutchman
who pulls the strings. Though this system of dual government has the
obvious disadvantage of being both cumbersome and expensive, it is,
everything considered, perhaps the best that could have been devised to
meet the existing conditions, for nothing is more certain than that,
should the Dutch attempt to do away with the native princes, there
would be a revolt which would shake the Insulinde to its foundations
and would gravely imperil Dutch domination in the islands.
The most interesting examples of this system of dual administration are
found in the _Vorstenlanden_, or "Lands of the Princes," of Surakarta
and Djokjakarta, in Middle Java. These two principalities, which once
comprised the great empire of Mataram, are nominally independent, being
ostensibly ruled by their own princes: the Susuhunan of Surakarta and
the Sultan of Djokjakarta, who are, however, despite their
high-sounding titles and their dazzling courts, but mouthpieces for the
Dutch residents. The series of episodes which culminated in the Dutch
acquiring complete political ascendency in the _Vorstenlanden_ form one
of the most picturesque and significant chapters in the history of
Dutch rule in the East. Until the last century these territories were
undivided, forming the kingdom of the Susuhunan of Surakarta, who,
being threatened by a revolt of the Chinese who had settled in his
dominions, called in the Dutch to aid him in suppressing it. They came
promptly, helped to crush the rebellion, and so completely won the
confidence of the Susuhunan that he begged their arbitration in a
dispute with one of his brothers, who had launched an insurrection in
an attempt to place himself on the throne. Certain historians assert,
and probably with truth, that this insurrection was instigated and
encouraged by the Dutch themselves, who foresaw that it would be easier
to subjugate two weak states than a single strong one. In pursuance of
this policy, they suggested that, in order to avoid a fratricidal and
bloody war, the kingdom be divided, two-thirds of it, with Surakarta as
the capital, to remain under the rule of the Susuhunan; the remaining
third to be handed over to the pretender, who would assume the title of
Sultan and establish his court at Djokjakarta. This settlement was
reluctantly accepted by the Susuhunan because he realized that he could
hope for nothing better and by his brother because he recognized that
he might do much worse.
In principle, at least, the Sultan remained the vassal of the
Susuhunan, in token of which he paid him public homage once each year
at Ngawen, near Djokjakarta, where, in the presence of an immense
concourse of natives, he was obliged to prostrate himself before the
Susuhunan's throne as a public acknowledgment of his vassalage. But as
the years passed the breach thus created between the Susuhunan and the
Sultan showed signs of healing, which was the last thing desired by the
Dutch, who believed in the maxim _Divide ut imperes_. So, before the
next ceremony of homage came around, they sent for the Sultan, pointed
out to him the humiliation which he incurred in kneeling before the
Susuhunan, and offered to provide him with a means of escaping this
abasement. Their offer was as simple as it was ingenious--permission
to wear the uniform of a Dutch official. This was by no means as empty
an honor as it seemed, as the Sultan was quick to recognize, for one of
the tenets of Holland's rule in the Indies is that no one who wears the
Dutch uniform, whether European or native, shall impair the prestige of
that uniform by kneeling in homage. The Sultan, needless to say,
eagerly seized the opportunity thus offered, and, when the date for the
next ceremony fell due he arrived at Ngawen arrayed in the blue and
gold panoply of a Dutch official, but, instead of prostrating himself
before the Susuhunan in the grovelling _dodok_, he coolly remained
seated, as befitted a Dutch official and an independent prince.
The animosity thus ingeniously revived between the princely houses
lasted for many years, which was exactly what the Dutch had foreseen.
But, though the Susuhunan and the Sultan had been goaded into hating
each other with true Oriental fervor, they hated the Dutch even more.
In order to divert this hostility toward themselves into safer
channels, the Dutch evolved still another scheme, which consisted in
installing at the court of the Susuhunan, as at that of the Sultan, a
counter-irritant in the person of a rival prince, who, though
theoretically a vassal, was in reality as independent as the titular
ruler. And, as a final touch, the Dutch decreed that the cost of
maintaining the elaborate establishments of these hated rivals must be
defrayed from the privy purses of the Susuhunan and the Sultan. The
"independent" prince at Surakarta is known as the Pangeran Adipati
Mangku Negoro; the one at Djokjakarta as the Pangeran Adipati Paku
Alam. Both of these princes have received military educations in
Holland, hold honorary commissions in the Dutch army, and wear the
Dutch uniform; their handsome palaces stand in close proximity to those
of the Susuhunan and the Sultan, and both are permitted to maintain
small but well-drilled private armies, armed with modern weapons and
organized on European lines. The "army" of Mangku Negoro consists of
about a thousand men, and is a far more efficient fighting force than
the fantastically uniformed rabble maintained by his suzerain, the
Susuhunan. In certain respects this arrangement resembles the plan
which is followed at West Point and Annapolis, where, if the appointee
fails to meet the entrance requirements, the appointment goes to an
alternate, who has been designated with just such a contingency in
view. Both the Susuhunan and the Sultan are perfectly aware that the
first sign of disloyalty to the Dutch on their part would result in
their being promptly dethroned and the "independent" princes being
appointed in their stead. So, as they like their jobs, which are well
paid and by no means onerous--the Susuhunan receives an annual pension
from the Dutch Government of some three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars and has in addition one million dollars worth of revenues to
squander each year--their conduct is marked by exemplary obedience and
circumspection.
Ever since the Dipo Negoro rebellion of 1825, which was caused by the
insulting behavior of an incompetent and tactless resident toward a
native prince, to suppress which cost Holland five years of warfare and
the lives of fifteen thousand soldiers, the Dutch Government has come
more and more to realize that most of the disaffection and revolts in
their Eastern possessions have been directly traceable to tactlessness
on the part of Dutch officials, who either ignored or were indifferent
to the customs, traditions, and susceptibilities of the natives. It is
the recognition and application of this principle that has been
primarily responsible for the peace, progress, and prosperity which, in
recent years, have characterized the rule of Holland in the Indies.
When a nation with a quarter the area of New York State, and less than
two-thirds its population, with a small army and no navy worthy of the
name, can successfully rule fifty million people of alien race and
religion, half the world away, and keep them loyal and contented, that
nation has, it seems to me, a positive genius for colonial
administration.
* * * * *
Some one has described the Dutch East Indies as a necklace of emeralds
strung on the equator. To those who are familiar only with colder, less
gorgeous lands, that simile may sound unduly fanciful, but to those who
have seen these great, rich islands, festooned across four thousand
miles of sea, green and scintillating under the tropic sun, the
description will not appear as far-fetched as it seems. A necklace of
emeralds! The more I ponder over that description the better I like it.
Indeed, I think that that is what I will call this chapter--The
Emeralds of Wilhelmina.
CHAPTER V
MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS
There is no name between the covers of the atlas which so smacks of
romance and adventure as Borneo. Show me the red-blooded boy who, when
he sees that magic name over the wild man's cage in the circus sideshow
or over the orang-utan's cage in the zoo, does not secretly long to go
adventuring in the jungles of its mysterious interior. So, because
there is still in me a good deal of the boy, thank Heaven, I ordered
the course of the _Negros_ laid for Samarinda, which, if the charts
were to be believed, was the principal gateway to the hinterland of
Eastern Borneo. There are no roads in Borneo, you understand, only
narrow foot-trails through the steaming jungle, so that the only
practicable means of penetrating the interior is by ascending one of
the great rivers. The Koetei, which has its nativity somewhere in the
mysterious Kapuas Mountains, winds its way across four hundred miles of
unmapped wilderness, and, a score of miles below Samarinda, empties
into Makassar Straits, answered my requirements admirably, providing a
highroad to the country of my boyish dreams. Though I told the others
that I was going up the Koetei in order to see the strange tribes who
dwell along its upper reaches, I admitted to myself that I had one
object in view and one alone--to see the Wild Man.
Viewed from the deck of the _Negros_, Samarinda, which is the capital
of the Residency of Koetei, was entirely satisfying. It corresponded in
every respect to the mental picture which I had drawn of a Bornean
town. It straggles for two miles or more along a dusty road shaded by a
double row of flaming fire-trees. Facing on the road are a few-score
miserable shops kept by Chinese and Arabs and the somewhat more
pretentious buildings which house the offices of the European trading
companies. Further out, at the edge of the town, are the dwellings of
the Dutch officials and traders--comfortable-looking, one-story,
whitewashed houses with deep verandahs, peering coyly out from the
midst of fragrant, blazing gardens. The Residency, the Custom House,
the Police Barracks and the Koetei Club can readily be distinguished by
the Dutch flags that droop above them. The river-bank itself is one
interminable street. Here dwells the brown-skinned population--Malays,
Bugis, Makassars, and a sprinkling of Sea Dyaks. Sometimes the flimsy,
cane-walled, leaf-thatched huts, perched aloft on bamboo stilts, stand,
like flocks of storks, in clusters. Again they stray a little apart,
seeking protection from the pitiless sun beneath clumps of palms.
Malays in short, tight jackets and long, tight breeches of
kaleidoscopic colors were sauntering along the yellow road, oblivious
of the sun. On the shelving beach naked brown men were mending their
nets or pottering about their dwellings. Now and then I caught a
glimpse of a European, cool and comfortable in topee and white linen.
It was all exactly as I had expected. It was, indeed, almost too
story-booky to be true. Here, at last, was a green and lovely land,
unspoiled by noisy, prying tourists, where one could lounge the lazy
days away beneath the palm-trees or stroll with dusky beauties on a
beach silvered by the tropic moon. I was impatient to go ashore.
Changing from pajamas to whites, I ordered the launch to the gangway
and went ashore to pay my respects to the Resident. To leave your card
on the local representative of Queen Wilhelmina is the first rule of
etiquette to be observed by the foreigner traveling in the Outer
Possessions. In Java, which is more highly civilized, it is not so
necessary. Unlike the Latin races, the Dutch are not by nature a
suspicious people, but political unrest is prevalent throughout the
East, and with Bolshevists, Chinese agitators and other fomenters of
disaffection surreptitiously at work among the natives, it is the part
of prudence to establish your respectability at the start. To gain a
friendly footing with the authorities is to save yourself from possible
annoyance later on.
As I approached the shore the glamor lent by distance disappeared. The
river-bank, which had looked so alluring from the cutter's deck, proved
on closer inspection to be as squalid as the back-yard of a Neapolitan
tenement. It was littered with dead cats and fowls and fish and
castaway vegetables and rotten fruit and tin cans and greasy ashes and
refuse from fishing nets and decaying cocoanuts by the million and
sodden rags. This stewing garbage was strewn ankle-deep upon the sand
or was floating on the surface of the river, not drifting seaward, as
one would expect, but languidly following the tide up and down, forever
lolling along the bank. Above this putrefying feast swarmed myriads of
flies, their buzzing combining in a drone like that of an electric fan.
The sun struck viciously down upon the yellow foreshore, its glare
reflected by the hard-packed sands as by a sheet of brass; the
heat-waves danced and flickered. Sending the launch back to the cutter,
I picked my way across this noisome place to the shelter of the trees
along the road. But the shade that had appeared so inviting from the
river proved as illusory as everything else. Grass? There was none. The
earth was baked to the hardness of asphalt.
To make matters worse, I found that I had landed too far down the
beach. The building that I had assumed was the Residency proved to be
the Custom House. The Harbor Master, whom I encountered there, seized
the opportunity to present me with a bill for a hundred
guilders--something over forty dollars--for port dues. It seemed a high
price to pay for the privilege of lying in the stream, a quarter-mile
off-shore. In all the Dutch ports at which we touched I noted this same
disposition on the part of the authorities to charge all that the
traffic would bear--and then some. Foreign vessels are rarely seen at
Samarinda, and one would suppose that they would be welcomed
accordingly, but the Dutch are a business people and do not permit
sentiment to interfere with a chance to make a few honest guilders.
The Residency, I found upon inquiry, was two miles away, in the
outskirts of the town. And, as there are neither rickshaws nor
carriages for hire in Samarinda, I was compelled to walk. It was really
too hot to move. In five minutes my clothes were as wet as though I had
fallen in the river. The green silk lining of my sun-hat crocked and
ran down my face in emerald rivulets. When I had covered half the
distance I paused beneath a waringin tree to rest. A breath of breeze
from the river, sighing through the palms, brought to my streaming
cheeks a hint of coolness and to my nostrils more than a hint of the
garbage broiling on the beach. Anyone who could be romantic in Borneo
_must_ be in love.
The Assistant Resident, Monsieur de Haan, was as glad to see me as a
banker away from home is to see a copy of _The Wall Street Journal_. I
brought him a whiff of that great outside world from which he was an
exile, with whose doings he kept in touch only through the meager
despatches in the papers brought by the fortnightly mail-boat from
Java, or through occasional travelers like myself. Dutch officials in
the Indies can obtain leave only once in ten years and Monsieur de Haan
had not visited the mother country for nearly a decade, so that when he
learned I had recently been in Holland he was pathetically eager to
hear the gossip of the homeland. For an hour I lounged in a Cantonese
chair beneath the leisurely swinging punkah--the motive power for the
punkah being provided by a native on the verandah outside, who
mechanically pulled the cord even while he slept--and chatted of homely
things: of a restaurant which we both knew on the Dam in Amsterdam, of
bathing on the sands of Scheviningen, of band concerts on summer
evenings in the Haagsche Bosch. Only when his long-pent curiosity as to
happenings in Europe had been appeased did I find an opportunity to
mention the reasons which had brought me to Samarinda. I wished to go
up country, I explained. I wanted to see the real jungle and the
strange tribes which dwell in it; particularly I wished to see the
head-hunters. Now in this I was fully prepared for discouragement and
dissuasion, for head-hunters are not assets to a country; to a visitor
they are not displayed with pride. When, in the Philippines, I wished
to see the head-hunting Igorots; when I asked the Japanese for
permission to visit the head-hunters of Formosa, I met only with
excuses and evasions. At my taste the officials pretended to be
surprised and grieved. But Monsieur de Haan, doubtless because he had
lived so long in the wilds that head-hunters were to him a commonplace,
not only made no objection, he even offered to accompany me.
"We can go up the Koetei on your cutter," he suggested. "It is
navigable as far as Long Iram, two hundred miles up-country, which is
the farthest point inland that one of our garrisons is stationed. Thus
you will be able to see the Dyak country as comfortably as you could
see Holland from the deck of a canal boat. On our way we might pay a
visit to the Sultan of Koetei, who has a palace at Tenggaroeng. Though
he has no real power to speak of, he exercises considerable influence
among the wild tribes, of which he is the hereditary ruler. He's the
very man to put you in touch with the head-hunters."
The suggestion sounded fine. Moreover, in visiting savages as
temperamental as the Dyaks, there would be a certain comfort in having
the head of the government along. So, as Monsieur de Haan did not
appear to be pressed with business, we arranged to start up-river the
following morning.
It was late afternoon when I returned to the _Negros_. I was completely
wilted by the terrible humidity, and, as the river looked cool and
inviting in the twilight, I decided to refresh my body and my spirits
by a swim. But when I suggested to the Doctor that he join me he shook
his head gloomily.
"Nothing doing," he said. "I've been wanting to go in all day but the
port surgeon tells me that I'd be committing suicide."
"But why?" I demanded irritably, for I was ill-tempered from the heat.
"It's perfectly clean out here in mid-stream and there is no danger
from sharks here, as there was at Zamboanga and Jolo."
By way of replying he pointed to a black object, which I took to be a
log, that was floating on the surface of the river, perhaps fifty yards
off the cutter's gangway.
"That's why," he said dryly.
As he spoke a dugout, driven by half-a-dozen paddles in the hands of
lusty natives, came racing down stream. As the canoe drew abreast of
us, the paddlers chanting a barbaric chorus, there was a sudden swirl
in the water and the object which I had taken for a log abruptly
dropped out of sight.
"A crocodile!" I ejaculated, a little shiver chasing itself up and down
my spine.
The Doctor nodded.
"The river is alive with them," he said. "Man-eaters, too. The port
surgeon told me that they get a native or so every day."
"I've changed my mind about wanting a swim," I remarked, heading for
the ship's shower-bath.
* * * * *
(Dusk is settling on the great river and the palm fronds are gently
stirring before the breeze that comes with nightfall on the Line. If
you have nothing better to do, suppose you sit down beside me in a
deck-chair and let me tell you something about these cruel and cunning
monsters and the curious methods by which they are captured. _Boy! Pass
the cheroots and bring us something cold to drink._)
Though crocodiles are found everywhere in Malaysia, they attain their
greatest size and ferocity in the rivers of Borneo, it being no
uncommon thing for them to attack and capsize the frail native canoes,
killing their occupants as they flounder in the water. I suppose that
the crocodile of Borneo more nearly approaches the giant saurians of
prehistoric times than anything alive to-day. Imagine, if you please, a
creature as large as a ship's launch, with the swiftness and ferocity
of a man-eating shark, the cunning of a snake, a body so heavily
armored with scales that it is impervious to everything save the most
high-powered bullets, a tail that is capable of knocking down an ox,
and a pair of jaws that can cut a man in two at a single snap. How
would you like to encounter that sort of thing when you were having a
pleasant swim, I ask you? Compared to the crocodile of Malaysia, the
Florida alligator is about as formidable as a lizard. One was captured
while we were at Sandakan which measured slightly over twenty-eight
feet from the end of his ugly snout to the tip of his vicious tail.
Before you raise your eyebrows incredulously you might take a look at
the accompanying photograph of this monster. Nor was this a record
crocodile, for, shortly before our arrival at Samarinda, one was caught
in the Koetei which measured ten metres, or within a few inches of
thirty-three feet.
The crocodile obtains its meals by the simple expedient of lying
motionless just beneath the surface of a pool where the natives are
accustomed to bathe or where they go for water. The unsuspecting brown
girl trips jauntily down to the river-bank to fill her
amphora--usually a battered Standard Oil tin. As she bends over the
stream there comes without the slightest warning the lightning swish of
a scaly tail, a scream, the crunch of monster jaws, a widening eddy, a
scarlet stain overspreading the surface of the water--and there is one
less inhabitant of Borneo. But instead of proceeding to devour its
victim then and there, the crocodile carries the body up a convenient
creek, where it has the self-control to leave it until it is
sufficiently gamey to satisfy its palate. For the crocodile, like the
hunter, does not like freshly killed meat. Hence, a crocodile swimming
up-stream with a native in its mouth is by no means an uncommon sight
on Borne an rivers.
"But it is a quick death," as an Englishman whom I met in Borneo
philosophically observed. "They don't play with you as a cat plays with
a mouse--they just hold you under the water until you are drowned."
Yet, in spite of the hundreds who fall victim to the terrible jaws each
year, the natives seem incapable of observing the slightest
precautions. For superstitious reasons they will not disturb the
crocodile until it has shown itself to be a man-eater. If the crocodile
will live at peace with him the native has no wish to start a quarrel.
But the day usually comes when a native who has gone down to the river
fails to return. In America, under such circumstances, the relatives of
the missing man would send for grappling irons and an undertaker. But
in Borneo they summon a professional crocodile hunter. The idea of this
is not so much to obtain revenge as to recover the brass ornaments
which the dear departed was wearing at the moment of his taking off,
for, though human life is the cheapest thing there is in Borneo, brass
is extremely dear.
The professional crocodile hunters are usually Malays. One of the best
known and most successful in Borneo is an old man who runs a ferry
across the Barito at Bandjermasin. He has capitalized his skill and
cunning by organizing himself into a sort of crocodile liability
company, as it were. Anyone may secure a policy in this company by
paying him a weekly premium of 2-1/2 Dutch cents. When one of his
policy holders is overtaken by death in the form of a pair of four-foot
jaws the old man turns the ferry over to one of his children and sets
out to fulfill the terms of his contract by capturing the offending
saurian, recovering from its stomach the weighty bracelets, anklets and
earrings worn by the deceased, and restoring them to the next of kin.
In order to make good he sometimes has to kill a number of crocodiles,
but he keeps on until he gets the right one. This is not as difficult
as it sounds, for the big man-eaters usually have their recognized
haunts in certain deep pools in the rivers, many of them, indeed, being
known to the natives by name. The old ferryman at Bandjermasin has been
so successful in the conduct of his curious avocation that, so the
Dutch Resident assured me, he has several hundred policy holders who
pay him their premiums with punctilious regularity, thereby giving him
a very comfortable income.
The method pursued by the crocodile hunters of Borneo is as effective
as it is ingenious. Their fishing tackle consists of a hook, which is a
straight piece of hard wood, about the size of a twelve-inch ruler,
sharpened at both ends; a ten-foot leader, woven from the tough,
stringy bark of the baru tree; and a single length of rattan or cane,
fifty feet or so in length, which serves as a line. One end of the
leader is attached to a shallow notch cut in the piece of wood, the
other end is fastened to the rattan. With a few turns of cotton one end
of the stick is then lightly bound to the leader, thus bringing the two
into a straight line. Then comes the bait, which must be chosen with
discrimination. Though the body of a dog or pig will usually answer,
the morsel that most infallibly tempts a crocodile is the carcass of a
monkey. But it must not be a freshly killed monkey, mind you. A
crocodile will only swallow meat that is in an advanced stage of
decomposition, the more overpowering its stench the greater the
likelihood of the bait being taken. The bait is securely lashed to the
pointed stick, though anyone but a Malay would require a gas-mask to
perform this part of the operation.
Everything now being ready, the bait is suspended from the bough of a
tree overhanging the pool which the crocodile is known to frequent,
being so arranged that the carcass swings a foot or so above the
surface of the stream at high water level, the end of the rattan being
planted in the bank. Lured by the smell of the bait, which in that
torrid climate quickly acquires a bouquet which can be detected a mile
to leeward, the crocodile is certain sooner or later to thrust its long
snout out of the water and snap at the odoriferous bundle dangling so
temptingly overhead, the slack line offering no resistance until the
bait has been swallowed and the brute starts to make off. Then the
man-eater gets the surprise of its long and checkered life, for the
planted end of the rattan holds sufficiently to snap the threads which
bind the pointed stick to the leader. The stick, thus caused to resume
its original position at right angles to the line, becomes jammed
across the crocodile's belly, the pointed ends burying themselves in
the tender abdominal lining.
The next morning the hunter finds bait and tackle missing, but a brief
search usually reveals the coils of rattan floating on the surface of
some deep pool at no great distance from the spot where the bait was
taken. At the bottom of the pool Mr. Crocodile is writhing in the
throes of acute indigestion. Taking the end of the line ashore, the
hunter summons assistance. A score of jubilant natives lay hold on the
rattan. Then ensues a struggle that makes tarpon fishing as tame in
comparison as catching shiners. At first the monster tries to resist
the straining line, its tail flailing the water into foam. The great
jaws close on the leader like a bear-trap, but the loosely braided
strands of baru fiber slip between the pointed teeth. The leader holds.
The natives haul at the line as sailors haul at a halliard. Soon there
emerges from the churning waters a long and incredibly ugly snout,
followed by a low, reptilian head, with venomous, heavy-lidded, scarlet
eyes, a body as broad as a row-boat and armored with horny scales, and
finally a tremendous tail, twice as long as an elephant's trunk and
twice as powerful, that spells death for any human being that comes
within its reach. Sometimes it happens that the hunters momentarily
become the hunted, for the infuriated beast, catching sight of its
enemies, may come at them with a rush and a bellow, but more often it
has to be dragged to land, fighting every inch of the way.
Now comes the most hazardous part of the whole proceeding--the securing
of the monster. By means of a noose, deftly thrown, the great jaws are
rendered harmless. Another noose encircles the lashing tail and binds
it securely to a tree. The front legs are next lashed behind the back
and the hind legs treated in the same fashion. Thus deprived of the
support of its legs, the crocodile is helpless and it is safe to
release its tail. A stout bamboo is then passed between the bound legs
and a score of sweating natives bear the captive in triumph to the
nearest government station, where the bounty is claimed. The crocodile
is then killed, the stomach cut open and its contents examined, any
brassware or other ornaments worn by its victim at the time of his
demise being handed over to the heirs.
[Illustration: Catching a man-eating crocodile in a Borneo river]
The method of fishing pursued by the Dyaks of Borneo is quite as
curious, in its way, as their manner of catching crocodiles. Instead of
netting the fish, or catching them with hook and line, they asphyxiate
them, using for the purpose a poison obtained from the tuba root, known
to scientists as _Cocculus indicus_. When a Dyak village is in need of
food the entire community, men, women and children, repairs to a stream
in which fish are known to be plentiful. Across the stream a sort of
picket fence is erected by planting bamboos close together. In the
center of this fence is a narrow opening leading into an enclosure like
a corral, the walls of which are made in the same fashion. When this
part of the preparations has been completed a party of natives proceeds
up-stream by canoe for a dozen, or more miles, taking with them a
plentiful supply of tuba root. Early the next morning the canoes are
filled with water, in which the tuba root is beaten until the water is
as white and frothy as soapsuds. When a sufficient quantity of this
highly toxic liquid has thus been obtained, it is emptied into the
stream and, after a brief wait, the canoes are again launched and the
fishermen drift slowly down the current in the wake of the poison. Many
of the fish are stupefied by the tuba and, as they rise struggling to
the surface, are speared by the Dyaks. Other, seeking to escape the
poisonous wave, dart down-stream and, when halted by the barrier, pour
through the opening into the corral, where they are captured by the
thousands. I might add that the tuba does not affect the flesh of the
fish, which can be eaten with safety. As a means of obtaining food in
wholesale quantities fishing with tuba is perhaps justified. As a sport
it is in the same class with shooting duck from airplanes with
machine-guns.
* * * * *
Monsieur de Haan, wearing the brass-buttoned white uniform and
gold-laced conductor's cap which is the garb prescribed for Dutch
colonial officials, came abroad the _Negros_ shortly after breakfast.
The gangway was hoisted, Captain Galvez gave brisk orders from the
bridge, there was a jangle of bells in the engine-room, and we were off
up the Koetei, into the mysterious heart of Borneo. Above Samarinda the
great river flows between solid walls of vegetation. The density of the
Bornean jungle is indeed almost unbelievable. It is a savage tangle of
bamboos, palms, banyans, mangroves, and countless varieties of shrubs
and giant ferns, the whole laced together by trailers and creepers.
Contrary to popular belief, there is little color to relieve the somber
monotony of dark brown trunks and dark green foliage. It is as gloomy
as the nave of a cathedral at twilight. Here and there may be seen some
vine with scarlet berries and many orchids swing from the higher
branches like incandescent globes of colored glass. But it is usually
impossible for one on the ground to see the finest blooms, which turn
their faces to the sunlight above the canopy of green. Gray apes
chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit
from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the
undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps;
occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy
animal--a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I
might mention, parenthetically, that _orang-utan_ means, in the Malay
language, "man of the forest," while _orang-outang_, the name which we
incorrectly apply to the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in
debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescribable dismalness and
dread, its gloom seldom dissipated by the sun, its awesome silence
broken only by the stirrings of the unseen creatures which lurk
underfoot and overhead and all around.
The palace of the Sultan of Koetei stands in the edge of the jungle at
a horseshoe bend in the river. You come on it with startling
abruptness--miles and miles of primeval wilderness and then, quite
unexpectedly, a bit of civilization. In no respect does its exterior
come up to what you would expect the palace of an Oriental ruler to be.
It is a great barn of a place, two stories in height, painted a bright
pink, with the arms of Koetei emblazoned above the entrance. It
reminded me of a Coney Island dance hall or one of the tabernacles
built for Billy Sunday.
A broad flight of white marble steps leads to a wide, covered terrace
of the same incongruous material. This terrace opens directly into the
great throne-hall, a lofty apartment of impressive proportions, though
its furnishings are a bizarre mixture of Oriental taste and Occidental
tawdriness. Its marble floor is strewn with splendid rugs and
tiger-skins; hanging from the ceiling are enormous cut-glass
chandeliers; set in the walls, on either side of the scarlet-and-gold
throne, are life-size portraits of the present Sultan's father and
grandfather done in glazed Delft tiles, which seem more appropriate for
a bathroom than a throne-hall. From each end of the apartment
scarlet-carpeted staircases, with gilt balustrades, lead to the second
floor. Under one of these staircases is a sort of closet, with glass
doors, which looks for all the world like a large edition of a
telephone booth in an American hotel. The doors were sealed with strips
of paper affixed by means of wax wafers, but, peering through the
glass, I could made out a large table piled high with trays of precious
stones, ingots of virgin gold and silver, vessels, utensils and images
of the same precious metals. It was the state treasure of Koetei and
was worth, so the Resident told me, upward of a million dollars.
When I was at Tenggaroeng the young Sultan, an anaemic-looking youth in
the early twenties, had not yet been permitted by the Dutch authorities
to ascend the throne, the country being ruled by his uncle, the Regent,
an elderly, affable gentleman who, in his white drill suit and round
white cap, was the image of a Chinese cook employed by a Californian
friend of mine. Upon the formal accession of the young Sultan the seals
of the treasury would be broken, I was told, and the treasure would be
his to spend as he saw fit. I rather imagine, however, that the Dutch
_controleur_ attached to his court in the capacity of adviser will
have something to say should the youthful monarch show a disposition to
squander his inheritance.
Up-stairs we were shown through a series of apartments filled to
overflowing with the loot of European shops--ornate brass beds, inlaid
bureaus and chiffoniers, toilet-sets of tortoise-shell and ivory,
washbowls and pitchers of Sèvres, Dresden and Limoges, garnish vases,
statuettes, music-boxes, mechanical toys, models of all ships and
engines, and a thousand other useless and inappropriate articles, for,
when the late Sultan paid his periodic visits to Europe, the
shopkeepers of Paris, Amsterdam and The Hague seized the opportunity to
unload on him, at exorbitant prices, their costliest and most unsalable
wares. Opening a marquetry wardrobe, the Regent displayed with great
pride his collection of uniforms and ceremonial costumes, most of
which, the Resident told me, had been copied from pictures which had
caught his fancy in books and magazines. That wardrobe would have
delighted the heart of a motion-picture company's property-man, for it
contained everything from a Dutch court dress, complete with sword and
feathered hat, to a state costume of sky-blue broadcloth edged with
white fur and trimmed with diamond buttons. I expressed a desire to see
the royal crown, for I had noticed that the pictures of former sultans,
which I had seen in the throne-room, showed them wearing crowns of a
peculiar design, strikingly similar to those worn by the Emperors of
Abyssinia. My request resulted in a whispered colloquy between the
Resident, the Controleur, the Regent and the young Sultan. After a
brief discussion the Resident explained that the Controleur kept the
crown locked up in his safe, but that he would get it if I wished to
see it. To the obvious relief of everyone except the young Sultan I
assured them that it did not matter. He seemed distinctly disappointed.
I imagine that he would have liked to have gotten his hands on it.
Outside the palace--just below its windows, in fact--is a long, low,
dirt-floored, wooden-roofed shed, such as American farmers build to
keep their wagons and farm machinery under. This was the royal
cemetery. Beneath it the former rulers of Koetei lie buried, their
resting-places being marked by a most curious assortment of
fantastically carved tombs and headstones. Some of the tombs hold the
ashes of men who sat on the throne of Koetei when it was one of the
great kingdoms of the East, long before the coming of the white man.
Lady luck was kind to me, for shortly after our arrival at Tenggaroeng
a delegation of Dyaks from one of the tribes of the far interior
appeared at the palace to lay some tribal dispute before the Regent for
his adjudication. There were about a score of them, including a rather
comely young woman, whose comeliness was somewhat marred, however,
according to European standards at least, by the lobes of her ears
being stretched until they touched her shoulders by the great weight of
the brass earrings which depended from them. The warriors were the
finest physical specimens of manhood that I saw in all Malaysia--tall,
slim, muscular, magnificently developed fellows, with bright, rather
intelligent faces. They had the broad shoulders and small hips of Roman
athletes and when the sun struck on their oiled brown skins they looked
like the bronzes in a museum. Unlike the natives we had seen along the
coast, whose garments made a slight concession to the prejudices of
civilization, these children of the wild "wore nothing much before and
rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind." Several of them were armed with
the sumpitan, or blow-gun, which is the national weapon of the Dyaks,
and each of them carried at his waist a _parang-ilang_, the terrible
long-bladed knife which the head-hunter uses to kill and decapitate his
victims.
Monsieur de Haan, as well as the other Dutch officials whom I
questioned on the subject, attributed the prevalence of head-hunting in
Borneo to the vanity of the Dyak women. He explained that, just as
American girls expect candy and flowers from the young men who are
attentive to them, so Dyak maidens expect freshly severed human heads.
The warrior who refused to present his lady-love with such grisly
evidences of his devotion would be rejected by her and ostracized by
his tribe. Nor does head-hunting end with marriage, for the standing of
both the man and his wife in the community depends upon the number of
grinning skulls which swing from the ridgepole of their hut. Heads are
to a Dyak what money is to a man in civilized countries--the more he
has, the greater his importance. The Controleur at Tenggaroeng assured
me very earnestly that his Dyak charges were by no means ferocious or
bloodthirsty by nature and that they practised head-hunting less from
pleasure than from force of custom. But I am compelled to accept such
an estimate of the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I
could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in England. Nor
does it, as a rule, involve any great risk to the hunters, for the
head-hunting raids are usually mere butcheries of defenceless people,
the Dyaks either stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from
behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are absent and
slaughtering everyone whom they find in it--old, men, women, and
children. The head of an orang-utan, by the way, is as highly prized in
many of the Dyak tribes as that of a human being. Nor is this
surprising, for the warrior who single-handed can kill one of the
mighty anthropoids is deserving of the trophy.
During my stay in Borneo I heard many theories advanced in explanation
of head-hunting. Some authorities claimed that it is the Dyak's way of
establishing a reputation for prowess. Others asserted that he takes
heads merely to gratify the vanity of his women. There are still others
who hold the opinion that the Dyak believes that he inherits the
courage and cunning of those he kills. In certain of the Dyak tribes
the heads are treated with profound reverence, being wreathed with
flowers, offered the choicest morsels of food, and sometimes being
given a place at the table, while in other tribes they are hung from
the ridgepole and displayed as trophies of the chase. My own opinion is
that, though prestige and vanity and superstition all contribute to the
prevalence of head-hunting, in the inherent savagery of the Dyak is
found the true explanation of the custom.
I have already made passing mention of that characteristic weapon of
the Dyaks, the sumpitan, or, as it is called by foreigners, the
blow-gun. The sumpitan is a piece of hard wood, from six to eight feet
in length and in circumference slightly larger than the handle of a
broom. Running through it lengthwise is a hole about the size of a
lead-pencil. A broad spear-blade is usually lashed to one end of the
sumpitan, like a bayonet, thus providing a weapon for use at close
quarters. The dart is made from a sliver of bamboo, or from a
palm-frond, scraped to the size of a steel knitting-needle. One end of
the dart is imbedded in a cork-shaped piece of pith which fits the hole
in the sumpitan as a cartridge fits the bore of a rifle; the other end,
which is of needle-sharpness, is smeared with a paste made from the
milky sap of the upas tree dissolved in a juice extracted from the root
of the tuba. With the possible exception of curare, this is the
deadliest poison known, the slightest scratch from a dart thus poisoned
paralyzing the respiratory center and causing almost instant death. The
dart is expelled from the sumpitan by a quick, sharp exhalation of the
breath. In fact, M. de Haan told me that among certain of the Dyak
tribes virtually all of the men suffer from rupture as a result of the
constant use of the blow-gun. Though I have heard those who have never
seen the sumpitan in use sneer at it as a toy, it is, at short
distances, one of the most accurate weapons in existence and, when its
darts are poisoned, one of the deadliest. In order to show me what
could be done with the sumpitan, the Regent stuck in the earth a bamboo
no larger than a woman's little finger, and a Dyak, taking up his
position at a distance of thirty paces which I stepped off myself, hit
the almost indistinguishable mark with his darts twelve times running.
That, as the late Colonel Cody would have put it, "is some shooting."
In Borneo the use of the blow-gun is not confined to the Dyaks. They
are also used by fish! That is to say, by a certain species of fish.
This fish, which is remarkable neither in size nor color, seldom being
larger than our domestic goldfish, is known to the natives as _ikan
sumpit_ (literally "fish with a sumpitan") and to science as _Toxodes
jaculator_. But it is unique among the finny tribe in possessing the
curious power, on corning to the surface, of being able to squirt from
its mouth a tiny jet of water. This it uses with unerring aim against
insects, such as flies, grasshoppers and spiders, resting on plants
along the edge of the streams, causing them to fall into the water,
where they become an easy prey to these Dyaks of the deep. It was lucky
for us that the crocodiles were not armed with blow-guns!
When Latins engage in a serious quarrel they are prone to decide it
with the stiletto, or, if they belong to the class which subscribes to
the code, they meet on the field of honor with rapiers or pistols;
Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to settle their disputes in a court of law
or with their fists; but when Dyaks become involved in a controversy
which cannot be adjusted by the tribal council, they have recourse to
the _s'lam ayer_, or trial by water. This curious method of deciding
disputes is conducted with great formality, according to the rules of
an established code. For example, should two husky young head-hunters
become involved in a lovers' quarrel over a village belle--the lobes of
whose ears are probably pulled down to her shoulders by the weight of
her brass earrings--they adjourn, with their seconds and their friends,
to what might appropriately be called the pool of honor. Almost any
place where there are four or five feet of water will do. Into the
bottom of the pool the seconds drive two stout bamboo poles, a few
yards apart. The rivals then wade out into the water and take up their
positions, each grasping a pole. At a signal from the chief who is
acting as umpire they plunge beneath the water, each duelist keeping
his nostrils closed with one hand while with the other he clings to the
pole so as to keep his head below the surface. As both of them would
drown themselves rather than acknowledge defeat by coming to the
surface voluntarily, at the first sign either of the two gives of being
asphyxiated, the seconds, who are watching their principals closely,
drag the rivals from the water. They are then held up by the heels,
head downward, in order to drain off the water they have swallowed, the
one who first recovers consciousness being declared the victor and
awarded the hand of the lady fair. It is a quaint custom.
As I have no desire to strain your credulity to the breaking-point, I
will touch on only one more Dyak custom--the disposal of the dead. It
seems a fitting subject with which to bring this account of the wild
men to a close. Certain of the Dyak tribes expose their dead in trees,
some burn them, while still others bury them until the flesh has
disappeared, when they exhume the skeletons, disarticulate them, and
seal the bones in the huge jars of Chinese porcelain which are a Dyak's
most prized possession. Sometimes these burial-jars are kept in the
family dwelling--a rather gruesome article of furniture to the European
mind--but more often they are deposited in a grave-house, a small,
fantastically decorated hut or shed which serves as a family vault. But
I doubt if any people on the face of the globe have so weird a custom
of disposing of their dead as the Kapuas of Central Borneo, who hollow
out the trunk of a growing tree and in the space thus prepared insert
the corpse of the departed. The bark is carefully replaced over the
opening and the tree continues to grow and flourish--literally a living
tomb.
[Illustration: Major Powell talking to the Regent of Koetei on the
steps of the palace at Tenggaroeng
From left to right: the regent, Major Powell, the prime minister, the
Sultan of Koetei (who has since ascended the throne), and the Dutch
resident, M. de Haan]
[Illustration: State procession in the Kraton of the Sultan of
Djokjakarta]
Noticing that I was interested in the equipment of the Dyaks, the
Regent of Koetei called up their chief and, without so much as a
by-your-leave, presented me with his sumpitan and the quiver of
poisoned darts, his wooden shield--a long, narrow buckler of some
light wood, tastily trimmed with seventy-two tufts of human hair,
mementoes of that number of enemies slain on head-hunting
expeditions--a peculiar coat of mail, composed of overlapping pieces of
bark, capable of turning an arrow, and his imposing head-dress, which
consisted of a cap formed from a leopard's head, with a sort of visor
made from the beak of a hornbill, the whole surmounted by a bunch of
yard-long tail-feathers from some bright-plumaged bird. When the
presentation was concluded all the chieftain had left was his
breech-clout. He did not share in my enthusiasm. From the murderous
glance which he shot at me when the Regent was not looking, I judged
that if he ever met me alone in the jungle he would get his shield
back, with another scalp to add to his collection. And I could guess
whose head that scalp would come from.
CHAPTER VI
IN BUGI LAND
The _Negros_ was not fast--thirteen knots was about the best she could
do--so that it took us two days to cross from Samarinda, in Borneo, to
Makassar, the capital of the Celebes. Our course took us within sight
of "the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank," where, as
you may remember, Sir Anthony Gloster, of Kipling's ballad of _The Mary
Gloster_, was buried beside his wife. Before our hawsers had fairly
been made fast to the wharf at Makassar it became evident that among
the natives our arrival had created a distinct sensation. The wharf was
crowded with Bugis, as the natives of the southern Celebes are known,
who tried in vain to make themselves understood by our Filipino crew.
Instead of the boisterous curiosity which had marked the attitude of
the natives at the other ports, the Bugis appeared to be laboring under
a suppressed but none the less evident excitement. When I went ashore
to call on the American Consul they made way for me with a respect
which verged on reverence. This curious attitude was explained by the
Consul.
"Your coming has revived among the natives a very curious and ancient
legend," he told me. "When the Dutch established their rule in the
Celebes, something over three centuries ago, the King of the Bugis
mysteriously disappeared. Whether he fled or was killed in battle, no
one knows. In any event, from his disappearance arose a tradition that
he had founded another kingdom in some islands far to the north, but
that, when the time was propitious, he would return to free his people
from foreign domination. Thus he came in time to be regarded as a
divinity, a sort of Messiah. Curiously enough, the natives refer to him
by a name which, translated into English, means 'the King of Manila.'
Some months ago it was reported in the Makassar papers that the
Governor-General of the Philippines expected to visit the Celebes upon
his way to Australia, whereupon the rumor spread among the Bugis like
wild-fire that 'the King of Manila' was about to return to his ancient
kingdom, but the excitement gradually subsided when the
Governor-General failed to appear. But when the _Negros_ entered the
harbor this morning, and it was reported that she was from Manila and
had on board a white man who had some mysterious mission in the
interior of the island, the excitement flamed up again. The natives,
you see, who are as simple and credulous as children, believe that you
are the Messiah of their legend and that you have come to liberate them
from Dutch rule."[2]
[Footnote 2: Owing to my ignorance of Dutch and Buginese, I wa
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