Читать книгу The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Third - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 7

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The conference over the route to be followed from Batavia was long and animated. Frank and Fred each proposed at least a dozen plans, but as fast as a scheme was suggested it was overthrown in consequence of unforeseen difficulties.

While they were in the midst of their discussion, Doctor Bronson left the room, and soon returned with a newspaper in his hand. The boys looked up, and by the smile on his face they at once understood that he held the solution of the puzzle. So they pushed aside the maps, and waited for him to speak.

"We start to-morrow morning," said the Doctor, "and must send our heavy baggage away in an hour."

"All right," responded the boys, cheerily; "we can be ready in half that time if necessary," Fred added, as he rose from the table, and was followed by Frank.

True to their promise, they were back again in less than half an hour, and declared that all was ready. The Doctor had been occupied with his trunks while the boys were preparing their effects, and as he had more to attend to than they, he was not quite as prompt. But before the end of the hour he joined them, and then the porter of the hotel was summoned to take away the baggage and see it safely on board the steamer.

"Now we shall know where we're going," said Frank,"and I suppose the Doctor's newspaper has something to do with our movements."

"Quite correct," the Doctor responded; "it has very much to do with them."

Then he opened the sheet, which was nothing more nor less than a paper printed at Batavia, in the Dutch language. He directed their attention to an advertisement, and they were not long in spelling it out and divining its meaning. It was to the effect that a steamer was to sail early the next day for Borneo and the Philippine Islands. The Doctor explained that he was fortunate enough to find the captain of this vessel in the office of the hotel, and had arranged for them to take passage on her to Sarawak and Manilla.

"I understand," said Frank, "Sarawak is in Borneo, and Manilla is the capital of the Philippine Islands. We shall visit both those places."

"Yes," replied Doctor Bronson, "the steamer goes first to Sarawak, where she has a lot of cargo to leave, and perhaps some to take, and then she proceeds to Manilla. If you study the map you will see that Sarawak is almost on a direct line from Batavia to Manilla."

They looked at the map, and found it as the Doctor had stated. Fred wished to learn something about Borneo, but the Doctor suggested they would have plenty of time for that on the voyage, and they had better devote the evening to a farewell drive through Batavia. The boys at once assented to the proposal, and as soon as a carriage could be called they were off.

CHINESE HORSE SHOEING.

Their drive led them along the broad avenues of Batavia, and close to the banks of one of the canals where a number of boys were enjoying an afternoon bath. Then they passed through a part of the Chinese quarter where Frank and Fred were greatly amused at the operation of shoeing a horse. The unhappy beast was tied between a couple of upright posts, and partially suspended from a horizontal beam, so that he had very little chance to kick or struggle. Evidently he had given up all idea of resistance, as he stood with his eyes half closed, and presented a general appearance of resignation.

Our friends returned to the hotel in good season for dinner, which contained the inevitable curry to which the boys had become accustomed during their sojourn in the tropics. Frank asked if they would bid good-bye to curry in leaving Java; he was assured that the article was destined to figure on their bill of fare for an indefinite period, as the countries they were to visit were inhabited by eaters of curry no less than were Siam and Java.

They went early to bed, and by daylight on the following morning were up and ready for departure.

OUTWARD BOUND.

They rode in a carriage to the "boom," or pier, where a small boat was waiting to take them to the steamer. They went out by the same canal that they entered on their arrival, and by seven o'clock they were on board the Osprey, that was to be their home for several days. The captain was there ahead of them, and before eight o'clock they were outward bound, and leaving behind them the Island of Java, with its dense population and its wealth of natural products.

They watched the receding coast as long as it was in sight. Gradually it faded to a mere line on the horizon, and then disappeared altogether; but hardly had it vanished before they were in sight of Sumatra. All day they were within a few miles of its shores, and the boys longed greatly to make an exploration of this little-known region. They were obliged to be content with what they had learned of Sumatra on their journey to the southward, and recalled with pleasure the stories told them by their fellow-passenger on the steamer between Singapore and Batavia.

The adventures of our young friends, Frank Bassett and Fred Bronson, up to the time of their departure from Java, have been told in previous volumes.[1]

At the end of the first day the Osprey bore away to the eastward, near the island of Banca, famous for its mines of tin; and on the following morning the coast of Borneo was in sight. The boys declared their inability to discover any difference between Borneo and Sumatra when seen from the deck of a ship, as the general appearance of the land was the same.

"Very naturally that is the case," said the Doctor. "Both islands are tropical, and have the same characteristics in the way of mountains and valleys, and nearly all the trees of one are to be found on the other. The animal products are nearly alike, though the naturalists have found certain things in Borneo that do not exist in Sumatra, and vice versa. Now, tell me, please, which is the larger island of the two?"

"Borneo is the larger," Fred answered; "it is about 850 miles long by 650 broad in its widest part, and is estimated to contain nearly 300,000 square miles. Sumatra is 200 miles longer than Borneo, but only 250 wide, and its area is thought to be not far from 160,000 square miles."

"Quite right," responded the Doctor; "and now it's Frank's turn. What are the populations of the islands?"

"The book we have just been reading," was the reply, "says that Sumatra has between three and four millions of inhabitants, while Borneo has less than 3,000,000; therefore, Borneo must be very thinly peopled."

"To give you an idea of the density of the population, we will make a comparison. The Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," Doctor Bronson continued, "has more than 30,000,000 of inhabitants, with an area no larger than that of Sumatra, and far less than that of Borneo. Mr. Wallace, in his 'Malay Archipelago,' says the whole of the British Islands might be set down in Borneo, and would be surrounded by a sea of forests. Here is a map in which Borneo and the British Isles have been drawn to the same scale, and you see that Mr. Wallace's statement is entirely correct."

THE BRITISH ISLES AND BORNEO COMPARED.

Several minutes were passed in the examination of the map, and the youths confessed their surprise at the information it gave them. They had no idea Borneo was so large, or, as Fred expressed it, that Great Britain was so small. The Doctor set them laughing with the story of the American who visited England and said he liked the country very much, but was afraid to go out in the evening through fear that he would walk off into the sea.

It was a voyage of little more than two days from Batavia to Sarawak, the port in Borneo to which the Osprey was bound. The time was passed by our friends in conversation concerning the curious land they were about to visit, and certain features of its history. About noon of the third day from Singapore they were off the entrance of the Sarawak River, and, as the steamer was small, and of light draught, they were not delayed in passing the bar. Several native craft were on the stream, but they did not see a single foreign-rigged vessel until they entered the river and were well on their way to the town.

ASCENDING THE RIVER.

Here is what Frank wrote in his note-book:

"The town of Sarawak is about eighteen miles from the sea, and the voyage up from the bar reminded us of the voyage from the mouth of the Menam to Bangkok. The banks are lined with tropical trees of all kinds, and sometimes the foliage is so dense that it would be next to impossible to go through it without a hatchet. The houses are built over the water in many instances, and they have platforms in front where you can land from small boats just as you land at a wharf from a ship. By this arrangement the people are under no expense for drainage, as the water carries everything away as soon as it is thrown overboard. But the Doctor says the river abounds in snakes, just as the Menam does; and they come into the houses without waiting to be invited.

"The town contains about 25,000 inhabitants. They are mostly Malays and Chinese; the former have come from other parts of the archipelago, and the latter from the southern provinces of China, like their countrymen in Siam. The original inhabitants of the country do not get along very well with the Chinese and Malays, and the most of them prefer to live farther in the interior. There is nothing very remarkable about the place, and you can see the most of it without going on shore, as it stands on the bank of the river, and none of the houses are very far from the water. We went ashore in a small boat rowed by Malays, and they made it go very fast with their strong arms at the oars: these Malays are excellent sailors and boatmen, and are preferred to any other nationality of the East, with the exception of the Chinese. Some of the ship captains say they would rather have a Malay crew than a Chinese one, as the Malays are less likely to become scared in a storm, and forget how to do their work.

A FRUIT-STORE IN SARAWAK.

"We took a walk through the principal street of Sarawak, and saw lots of men who were doing nothing, and evidently didn't wish to be employed. The most of the hard work is performed by the Chinese, and our observation is that they are the most industrious people of the Far East, and the best at a trade. The commerce here, apart from that which the English control, is mostly in Chinese hands, so the Doctor tells us, and some of their merchants have made large fortunes. They trade in anything they can buy and sell, and are satisfied with small profits when they cannot get large ones, and some of their shops manage to get along with very few goods. We passed a fruit-store, where there were two or three boxes of oranges visible near the door, and a large bunch of bananas was hung outside for a sign, or perhaps to allow them to get ripe in the open air. One old fellow was smoking on the front step with his cat behind him, and three others were inside talking something we could not understand. They all appeared to belong to the establishment, but the whole stock of fruit, as far as we could see, wasn't worth ten dollars.

"The houses are not very substantial, and the Doctor said that an ordinary building in Sarawak ought not to cost over fifty dollars, while a cheap one, sufficient for protection against the weather, could be built for five or ten. There are a few substantial buildings; one is called the Government House, and is where the governor and his officials live; and there is an English Protestant church and mission. There is a considerable population of Mohammedans here, and they have a mosque where they go to worship every Friday. Friday, you know, is the Moslem Sunday, and on that day the faithful followers of Mohammed are unwilling to do any hard work; Fred says it must be Sunday all the time for a good many of them, if we are to judge by their perpetual idleness. But there isn't much inducement for a man to work here, when a very little will support him. He does not need any thick clothes where there is no winter, and if it were not for the rules of politeness some of them wouldn't wear any clothes at all.

"We should have been surprised to see the English flag flying over the place if we had not already learned something about the history of Sarawak. The town was formerly known as Kuching, and to this day some of the natives call it by that name. The river was the resort of the Malay pirates, who used to plunder all the coast and make it impossible for the natives to live there. The natives are called Dyaks; they seem to belong to both the Mongolian and Malay races, as they have the oblique eyes of the former, with the complexion and hair of the latter. They are said to be an honest and inoffensive people, and for this reason they were robbed by the Malays in former times, and are now cheated by both Malays and Chinese. They have a good deal of ingenuity about them, and some of their work would do credit to civilized people.

"We saw a party of them climbing a tree just back of the town to get some cocoa-nuts; it was straight as an arrow, and about two feet in diameter, and hadn't a branch for at least forty feet. How do you suppose they did it?

"They made some pegs of pieces from a bamboo pole; then they drove one of them into the tree about three feet from the ground, and another the same distance higher up. Next they took a long pole, also of bamboo, rested one end of it on the ground, and lashed it firmly to the two pegs. Then a man stood on the lowest peg and drove another in at about the level of his face, and as soon as it was driven he lashed the pole to it. So he went on and on, and when the pole gave out another was passed up and lashed in the same way as the first. It took them about fifteen minutes to make a very nice ladder—one side being the tree, and the other the bamboo pole; and as soon as they had got to the lower branches of the tree, the nuts came tumbling to the ground, and the man scrambled down after them. The whole thing appeared very easy and simple, but it would take an American some time to accomplish it.

A DYAK YOUTH.

"The Dyaks are very fond of ornaments, and where they can afford it they cover their necks with beads and brass wire, and decorate their arms with large rings of brass or silver. Most of them wear gay-colored handkerchiefs on their heads, and it is easy to distinguish them from the foreign Malays by this mark alone. We saw one Dyak youth of ten or twelve years, who had an intelligent face and bright, flashing eyes; he belonged to one of the hill tribes, and had come down from his home in the mountains with his father to see the strangers on the coast. His hair floated over his shoulders in great masses, and his ears had rings in them that looked as though they weighed a pound. His only clothing, apart from the rings and beads and handkerchief, was a strip of cotton cloth around his waist; and he carried a spear to indicate that he belonged to one of the best families of the country."