Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

Mid-day was passed when I reached the kampong of Samawang, near the bridge, and I was so worn out with my long walk over the mountains and fording the swollen streams, that I was glad to crawl into a little dirty hut and beg an old Malay woman to cook me a little rice, for I had yet ten miles farther to go, and pouring showers frequently came over the lake. My repast consisted of rice, a smoked fish, a few grains of coarse salt and some red pepper ground up together between two flat stones. As I satisfied my hunger, I could but contrast my simple meal with the royal feasts I had been taking with the governor at his residence at Padang less than a week before, but, as Shakespeare says, “Hunger is the best sauce,” and I enjoyed my hard fare more than many pampered princes do the choicest viands. From this place there is a well-built road along the eastern side of the lake to the kampong of Sinkara on the southern shore. The lake is ten miles long and about three miles wide. It is parallel to the Barizan chain in this place, and extends in a northwest and southeast direction. Its surface is about seventeen hundred feet above the sea. Its most remarkable character is its great depth at one place, near the cleft of Paningahan, where the plummet runs down eleven hundred and eighty-two feet, nearly a quarter of a mile, so that its bottom, at that spot, is only about five hundred feet above the level of the sea. West of the Sinkara is the great Barizan chain, with its acclivities rising immediately from the margin of the lake, and its peaks generally attaining an elevation of fifteen hundred feet above the lake, or three thousand two hundred feet above the sea. On the eastern side, and on the northern end of the lake, are hills of less than half that height, mostly composed of syenite. The Barizan chain, as shown in the cleft of Paningahan, is composed of chloritic schists interstratified with marble, and overlaid in most places with lava, pumice-stone, and volcanic sand or ashes. These strata of schists and limestone undoubtedly rest on gigantic rocks, for such are found outcropping on the opposite or coast side of the range. The basin of Lake Sinkara, therefore, occurs where a great fault has taken place. Five miles east of the lake, and a short distance south of the kampong Pasilian, is Mount Sibumbun, which, as well as the cleft of Paningahan, has been carefully examined by Mr. Van Dijk, of the Government Mining Corps, on account of the copper-mines they contain. Sibumbun is a peak of greenstone rising out of syenite. Westward, one passes from the granite into marble, and then on to a sandstone of a late formation, which contains layers of coal that is probably of the same age as that I saw at Siboga.

The whole geological history of this part of Sumatra may be summed up as follows: On the syenite and granite, layers of mud and coral were deposited; then the whole was raised and plicated; and after this period was deposited the sandstone, the strata of which we have already noted as being unconformable to the rocks on which they rest, and more nearly horizontal. If, as Mr. Van Dijk thinks, and is very probable, the marble in the cleft of Padang Pangjang is formed from corals, at least not older than the eocene age, it follows that the mountain-ranges of Sumatra have been formed within a comparatively recent period. The process of covering these strata by lava, pumice-stone, and volcanic sand and ashes, has been going on since historic time.

The most remarkable thing in this kampong of Sinkara, is the bali, or town-hall. Either end, on the inside, is built up into a series of successive platforms, one rising over the other. On the outside these elevated ends resemble the stern of the old three and four decked frigates which the Dutch generally used when they first became masters of these seas, and such as can yet be seen used as hulks in the ports of the British colonies. The exterior of the bali, as well as the better private houses, are painted red, and ornamented with flowers and scroll-work in white and black.

While at this village I noticed a native leading a large dog-like monkey from place to place. On inquiring, the servants told me that he was trained to pick off cocoa-nuts from the bunches in the trees, but I doubted whether he could know what ones to select, and therefore watched him myself. His master brought him to the foot of the tree, gave a peculiar jerk to the rope, and at once he began to climb up. Reaching the top, he seated himself on the base of a leaf and immediately began wrenching off those nuts that were fully grown, by partially twisting them. After he had taken off all the ripe nuts on one side of the tree, he went round to the opposite side and broke off the ripe ones there also, without once attempting to pull off those that were partly grown. This selecting the ripe nuts from the large clusters seemed to be the result of his own instinct, and not of any signal from his master, so far as I could detect.

The shore at the southern end of the lake is very low and marshy, and wholly devoted to rice-fields. Here were enormous flocks of herons, that made the sawas perfectly white wherever they alighted. Over these low lands is built the road that leads to Solok, six miles distant in a southeasterly direction.

April 8th.—Rode to Solok. On the way passed twenty-seven women going to the burial of a native prince. Their costume was peculiar, even in this land. It consisted simply of the common sarong open at the right hip, and fastened at the waist to a narrow scarf about the neck, and a turban around the head. About three miles from Sinkara, the way passed over a slight elevation, and again I came down into a low land which was one great fertile sawa. Rice here is abundant and very cheap, and the Resident states that many of the natives prefer to use that which is at least a year old, and that a few have small quantities which they have kept for several years. The kernels of this rice are smaller than those of the kind grown in our Carolinas; but that has been tried here, and found to yield less by a considerable number of pounds per acre than the native variety.

This region was known, before it was conquered by the Dutch, as the Tiga Blas country, or the country of the “Thirteen Confederate Towns,” because the thirteen villages in this vicinity had entered into a compact to afford mutual aid and protection. In a similar manner all the territory that previously belonged to the single kingdom of Menangkabau was divided up into petty confederacies when the Dutch conquered the country, and the several areas thus ruled are now marked on the Dutch maps as the district of the “Five, Ten, or Twenty Kottas.” At present, though most of the natives live in villages, many houses are scattered over the cultivated lands. Before the conquest they all lived in villages that were generally surrounded by a stockade and a thick hedge of bamboos. The Dutch generals who subdued them destroyed these rude fortifications, that the villagers might have no defences and less facilities to revolt.

Many of the kampongs in this region were then situated on the hills, but have since been removed to the plains for the same reason. Near Solok, the inner range that forms the western buttress of the plateau rises up above the surrounding plain like a great wall, that curves round to the west and unites with the Barizan chain in the great Talang, which attains an elevation of about eight thousand five hundred feet. A short distance north of it is a cleft, through which the Resident is now building a road to Padang. About twelve miles to the north are two other clefts, near Paningahan, formed by the throes of a volcano near that kampong; and farther north is the cleft at Padang Panjang, all four occurring within less than thirty miles in a straight line.

On the southeastern declivity of Talang, at the height of six thousand feet, is a small tarn, whence issues the Solok River, that empties into Lake Sinkara, the source of the Ombiling, which curves to the east and southeast, and unites with the Sinamu, that we have already traced from Paya Kombo down the Bua Valley. From their juncture begins the Indragiri, which, pursuing an easterly course over the low lands that form the eastern side of Sumatra, empties into the Java Sea nearly opposite the Linga Islands. This tarn, therefore, may be regarded as the source of the Indragiri; and within a circle of half a mile radius rise three streams that flow in wholly different directions—two, the Indragiri and Jambi, emptying into the Java Sea, and the third mingling its waters with those of the Indian Ocean.