Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

The market-place was nothing but a shed, and here a few Chinese and Arabs were displaying cotton cloth, knives, and ornaments, and the natives had brought dried and smoked fish, which they catch in these mountain-streams, also bananas, jambus or rose-apples, and a kind of fruit like that from which the guava jelly is made.

Rice is the chief article of food of the natives here, with dried fish and bananas, and a few eggs and chickens. From this village we rode to Kotanopan, our way again descending along a large foaming brook, in which the opziener of that district assured me the natives were accustomed to wash for gold, which they still obtain, though only in small quantities.

Here we passed the grave of a Batta. It consisted of a rectangular mound, with a wooden image of a horse’s head on one end, and a part of a horse’s tail fastened to the other—the mound forming his body. At each of the four corners was an image of a nude man or woman. Over the whole was a rude roof supported on four posts, and around the whole was placed a row of sticks four feet high, and a foot or two apart, bearing on their tops small flags of white cloth. This tendency to ornament graves we have already noticed among the aborigines of the Minahassa. It is also seen, but in a more revolting form, in the Papuan temple at Dorey.

March 2d.—From Kotanopan we have come to Fort Elout, after a journey of more than ordinary danger. For the first five miles our road was very good, but then we found it completely overgrown with tall grass. So long as it was over the level lands there was little danger, but soon it changed to the flanks of a spur, thrown out by the chain that formed the northeastern boundary of the valley. There it became very narrow, and the tall grass completely hid its outer edge. Besides, our horse was wholly unaccustomed to a carriage, and only half-trained, and every few moments took it into his head to stop so short that we had to hold on to the carriage all the time, or at an unexpected moment find ourselves going over the fender. The road was now taking us out toward the end of the spur, the ravine was growing deeper and deeper with an alarming rapidity, and I began to wish myself out of the carriage, but the inspector was unwilling to stop the horse for fear we could not get him started again. A Malay was guiding our wild steed by the bit, and away we were dashing at full gallop, when suddenly, as we rounded the spur, the road, which was cut in the rock, was so narrow that the outside wheels of the carriage were just on its outer edge, and from that verge the rock descended in such a perpendicular precipice that I could look from my seat in the carriage down fully two hundred feet, with a boiling torrent beneath me. It was evidently too late to jump then, so I seized hold of the carriage, determined not to go off before my companion, the inspector, who, realizing at once our great danger, and perceiving that the only thing that we could do was to keep the horse going at the top of his speed, shouted to the horse, and, in the same breath, threatened to take off the Malay’s head if he should let go of the bridle. Some fragments of rock had fallen down into the road, and our fore-wheel, on the inner side, struck these with such violence that I thought certainly we should be thrown off the narrow shelf down the precipice. For two minutes we seemed to hang in the air, and then the road widened. I drew a long breath of relief, and then bounded out over the wheel on to the solid ground, before I could fully satisfy myself that, thanks to a kind Providence and the force of gravitation, I was really safe.

RIDING ALONG A PRECIPICE.

The inspector said that he had travelled many thousand miles in Java, in all manners of ways, and through all manners of dangers, but was never so frightened before, and that he would not go back that way in a carriage for ten thousand guilders. If we had only known what we were coming to, we could have got out and walked, but it was already too late when we saw the danger. I determined to ride no farther in the carriage that day, and made our guide exchange places with me, and give me his horse. This dangerous place the natives call Kabawjatu, “where-the-buffaloes-fall.” Only a short time before, a Malay was driving a single buffalo to market along this way, when he shied a little, went off headlong, and was dashed in pieces on the rocks beneath.

A short distance beyond this place we changed horses, at a little settlement of the Lubus. Their houses are scattered over the mountain-side, and not gathered into one place. They are ten or fifteen feet long, and eight or ten wide, and perched on high poles. The walls are made of bamboo, and the roofs are thatched with straw, like all that we have seen since leaving Lubu Siképing, instead of atap, which is used by all the natives farther south. The officials here informed me that these people eat bananas, and probably most fruits, maize, dogs, monkeys, and even snakes, but never rice; and this is the more strange because it is the staple article of food among their neighbors. They are yet slaves to their rajah, just as the people of all the tribes in this vicinity were before they were conquered by the Dutch, for the Lubus, so far as we know, remain as they were in the most ancient times. Here I enjoyed a magnificent view of the active volcano Seret Mérapi, the summit of which is five thousand nine hundred feet above the sea. It is not a separate mountain like the Mérapi of the Menangkabau country, but merely a peak in the Barizan chain. From its top a jet of opaque gas rose into the clear, blue sky, while small cumuli came up behind the coast-chain from the ocean, and seemed to settle on its highest summits, as if weary, and wishing to rest, before they continued their endless flight through the sky.

When we again came to the bottom of the valley, we found what seemed to us a wonder—a smooth, well-graded road, bordered on either side with a row of beautiful shade-trees. All the low land in this vicinity is used for sawas, and the rice, which was mostly two-thirds grown, waved most charmingly in the light wind, that reminded me of our summer-breezes. The inspector, who was an old gentleman, felt somewhat worn out with such incessant jolting, and, as I had been travelling without stopping for eight days, I was only too glad to have one day of rest also.

At sunset, as is always the custom in these tropical lands, we took an evening walk. The many fires now raging in the tall grass that covers the lower flanks of the mountains have so filled the air with smoke, that when the sun had sunk behind the serrated crest of the Barizan, the whole horizon for twenty degrees and to a considerable height was lighted up with one unvarying golden glow. Here the Barizan is composed of four or five parallel ranges, which rise successively one above the other until the last forms the highest elevation in that chain. These different ranges were of various shades of color; that the nearest to us, or the lowest, being the darkest, and those above it of a lighter and lighter hue up to the highest range, which had a bright border of gold along its crest; and from that line to where we stood the air seemed filled with a purple dust. As the daylight faded, the fires in the tall grass on the hill-sides became more distinct; sometimes advancing in a broad, continuous band, and sometimes breaking up into an irregular, beaded line. Soon afterward the moon rose as charmingly in the east as the sun just gloriously set in the west. First a diffuse light appeared along the mountain-tops and whitened the fleecy cumuli hovering over their summits. Then that part of the sky grew brighter and brighter until the light of the full moon fell like a silver cascade over the serrated edge of the high mountains and rested on the tops of the hills below. An assistant resident is stationed here at Fort Elout, who has charge of this fruitful valley of Mandéling, which is wholly inhabited by the Battas. The territory between this valley and the west coast is also inhabited by this rude people. The Resident explained to us the trouble taken by the government and the expense it was incurring, in order to teach them to read and write, and cultivate the land. One time the older children burned all the books given them by the government, supposing that, of course if they had no books, they would not be required to go to school. Earthquakes are frequent here, and, but a short time since, seven shocks occurred in one day. All came from the south, exactly from the direction where the Seret Mérapi is seen burning. Most of them were accompanied by a noise, which preceded the shock long enough for the Resident to remark to a friend, “there comes another,” before the shock itself was perceived. Here we saw many hanging birds’-nests, most ingeniously constructed. They were made of fine grass, woven into a mass having the form of a pear or gourd, from eight inches to a foot long. The smaller part is attached to the end of a drooping twig, and on the bottom at one side is the opening of a tube about an inch and a half in diameter. This rises vertically for four or five inches and then curves over and descends like a syphon. At the end of the short part of this syphon the tube is enlarged to a spherical cavity, and here the ingenious bird lays her eggs. In order to appreciate the remarkable skill required to make the nest, it would be necessary for one to see a series of them, from those which have been just begun to those that are nearly finished, for the tube which is to lead to the nest is not formed by blades of grass wound into rings or a helix, but is built up from a single direction until the two curving sides meet. Among the sawas are small artificial pools, where fish are raised as in China; a custom probably introduced by the Chinese themselves. After these shallow pools have been used for this purpose a year or two, the fish are taken out, the larger ones sent to market, and the smaller ones transferred to another pond. The water in the first pool is then drained off, and its bottom becomes a fruitful rice-field. In this manner the natives allow their land to lie fallow, and at the same time make it yield a good crop.