A short distance below Lahat, on the right bank, is a remarkably needle-like peak called Bukit Sirilo. Near this hill the Limatang makes a long bend to the north, and after we had left it two or three miles behind us I was quite surprised to find we had turned sharply round, and that it was now two or three miles before us. A short distance above the Sirilo we passed a fine outcropping of coal in the left bank. The government engineers have examined it, and found it to be soft and bituminous, but containing too large a proportion of incombustible matter to be of any great value. The strata dip toward the coast. The Resident of Tebing Tingi informed me that a similar coal is found on the Musi below that place. I believe that strata of recent limestone, containing corals, which I observed above Tebing Tingi, underlie this coal, and that it is, therefore, of very recent geological age. At 4 P. M. we came to Muara Inem, a large kampong of two thousand souls, on the Inem, at its juncture with the Limatang. Here I had the pleasure of meeting the controleur, whom I had met in the Minahassa, and who had been my fellow-traveller from Celebes to Java. During the latter third of my way down the Limatang to this point, the country is well peopled, and forms a marked contrast with the sparsely-populated regions through which I have been travelling since leaving Bencoolen.
At one kampong we saw three women in a small, flat-bottomed canoe, each sitting erect and paddling with both hands. In this way they crossed the river with a surprising rapidity, considering the simple apparatus they used. The readiness with which they paddled indicated that this is no very uncommon mode of crossing rivers in this land.
As the villages became larger and more frequent, more and more cocoa-nut trees appeared, and soon we passed several large bamboo rafts, bearing sheds that were filled with this fruit, and in one place two natives were seen quietly floating down the river on a great pile of these nuts in the most complacent manner. At first I expected to see the nuts fly off in all directions and the men disappear beneath the surface of the river, but as we came nearer I saw the nuts were fastened together in small bunches by strips of their own husks, and these bunches were bound into a hemispherical mass large enough to float the two men. The nuts on the raft were to be taken down to Palembang, where the cocoa-palms do not flourish. During the day we saw two or three large troops of monkeys. This is a very pleasant time to pass down these rivers, because they are now high, and instead of seeing only walls and bluffs of naked mud on either hand, the banks are covered with grass down to the water’s edge, and the bamboos and trees, that grow here in tropical luxuriance, lean over gracefully toward the rapid river, and lave the tips of their lowest branches in the passing current.
May 5th.—The controleur kindly took me in his large barge, with twenty men to paddle and two men to steer, some five miles up the Inem River to Lingga, where there is an outcropping of coal in the river bank. The coal found there is very light, almost as soft as charcoal, and evidently of a very recent geological age. A similar but somewhat better coal is found five or six miles farther up this river. At Karang Tingi, three miles up the river from Muara Inem, the rajah of that district gave me a bottle of petroleum, which is about as thick as tar, and, according to the examinations of the Dutch chemists, does not contain much paraffine, naphtha, nor material suitable for burning in lamps. It is found about six miles back from the river. At Karang Tingi we noticed a number of boys enjoying an odd kind of sport. They were sliding down the high slippery bank on their naked backs.
At Muara Inem the controleur showed me a large garden filled with trees, from which the “palm-oil” is manufactured. It is a low palm, and the fruit is not much larger than the betel-nut. I understood him to say that it was the Elais Guineensis, and had been introduced from the Dutch possessions on the west coast of Africa. The oil is contained in the husk, and is used in manufacturing soap and candles.
A VIEW ON THE RIVER LIMATANG, SUMATRA.
May 6th.—Very early this morning started with the controleur down the Limatang in his barge, with twenty men. During last night the river rose here four or five feet, and the current is now unusually strong. From Muara Inem, to where it empties into the Musi, it is very crooked, constantly bending to the right in nearly equal curves, the current, of course, being strongest in the middle of each bend. This constant curving gives an endless variety to its scenery. The water, being high, enabled us to see the cleared places that occurred from time to time on the bank; though generally only a thick wood or dense jungle appeared on either hand, yet I never for a moment was weary of watching the graceful bending of the reeds and tall bamboos, and of the varied grouping of these with large trees. In two places the river makes such long bends, that artificial canals have been made across the tongues of land thus formed. One of these cuts, which was less than a hundred yards long, saved us going round half a mile by the river. Every four or five miles we came to a large kampong, and exchanged our boatmen for new ones, so that all day long we swiftly glided down the smooth stream, one relay of men not getting weary before they were relieved by another, and the strong current also helping us onward. The kampongs here are free from the filth seen in those farther up in the interior. The houses are all placed on posts five or six feet high, for sometimes the whole country is completely flooded. Many of them are built of well-planed boards, and have a roofing of tiles. When the sun had become low, we came to the large kampong of Baruaiyu. At all these villages there is a raft with a house upon it, where the boatmen waited for us. Fastening our boat to one of these, we took up our quarters in the rajah’s house. Like those built by our Puritan forefathers, it had one long roof and one short one, but it was so low that a tall man could scarcely stand up in it anywhere. The floor, instead of being level, rose in four broad steps, and the whole building formed but one large apartment with two small rooms at the rear end.
May 7th.—A severe toothache and the bites and buzzing of thousands of mosquitoes made me glad to see the dawn once more, and again be floating down the river. Before we came to the chief village of each district, where we were to exchange boatmen, we always met the boat of the rajah of that place, and were greeted with shouts and a great din from tifas and gongs.
The rajahs in this region are divided into three grades, and their ranks are shown by the small hemispherical caps they wear. Those of the highest rank have theirs completely covered with figures wrought with gold thread; those of the second rank have theirs mostly covered with such ornaments; and those of the third rank wear only a gold band. They all carry krises of the common serpentine form. Those that have the wavy lines alike on each side of the blade are regarded as the most valuable. The handles are usually made of whale’s-teeth, and very nicely carved; and the scabbards are frequently overlaid with gold. Those that have been used by famous chiefs are valued at all sorts of enormous prices, but are never sold. They also frequently wear a belt covered with large diamond-shaped plates of silver, on which are inscribed verses of the Koran, for the natives of this region are probably the most zealous and most rigid Mohammedans in the archipelago.