HOLLAND'S VAST EMPIRE SOUTH OF MANILA

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 165, 15 July 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

HOLLAND'S VAST EMPIRE SOUTH OF MANILA

DUE south of the Philippines, almost to the northern coast of Australia, and ranging across more than I 5 degrees of latitude and longitude, you find a huge collection of tropical archipelagoes, mountainous volcanic isles and coral atolls that still offer to the tourist and wanderer the utmost in scenic beauty and a native life that thus far has known little of modernity.

It its a part of Holland's vast empire of the Kast. Anion-.' its islands the Dutch s<-t up their trading stations and established their ollieial posts even before Java itself was colonised. Here, from the lslee of Spice, the first wealth of the Indies went back to Holland by the slow and laborious mute around the Cap- of Storms. Here, even before the commencement of the seventeenth century, the far-wandering mariners of the Low Countries found native sultan.' t\m\ rajahs ruling in all the state and richness of India.

They found, too. in some eases, that the Portuguese, following da (lama'a valiant trail, had been before them in dealing with the dark-hued pote.itatca and had even set up crude forte here and there to protect the traders. But the empire of Portugal was even then disintegrating and presently all this wealth and all these commercial opportunities came into Dutch hand-,. The crumbling forts were strengthened ind enlarged, heavily-built and stronglybuttressed white houses put Up to shelter merchants and officials, and treaties —sometimes kept and sometimes not — made with the sultans and rajahs.

Von can see wliat i* left nf these forts to-day and, strangely encountered on inlands now remote and seldom-visited, you often come upon one, of the white houses, perhaps tlie nlwide of a native trader now, lint still looking as if it had been transferred as a unit from Annstcrdatn, its Walls so tliick and strong that neither earthquake, typhoon nor the passage of three centuries haft left any mark upon it. So the far-seeing Dutch entrenched themselves in their vast- archipelago of the Orient both commercially and politically. But the course of colonial development concerned itself mainly with Java and with Sumatra because there lay the rich treasures of sugar mitmejrs and the cloves and the pepper and rubber, tea, coffee and tobacco. The which had first attracted the attention of Holland's mercantile adventurers became secondary products, leaving the atmosphere and the life of the fairy isles that grew them little changed and quite unconcerned with modernity. Like The South Seas From the northernmost of the Dutch islands, which is a copra-producing atoll called Palmas, in almost the same latitude as the southern tip of Mindanao in the Philippines, to Koepang, in Dutch Timor, is a thousand miles, and from Netherlands Xew Guinea westward to

By---Marc T. Greene

the coast of Borneo is even more. Within this vast area, excluding entirely New liuinea and Borneo but including the big island called Celebes, there are as many and probably more isles and atolls than in all the South Seas and they are very similar in appearance.

In the Halmaheira (Iroup of the Moluccas, part of the famed Isles of Spice, von find the scenic beauty of Tahiti and Samoa, the rich enieraldgreer vegetation, the long white beaches shaded by dipping coconut palms, the banana groves, the succulent papain, oranges and pineapples and mangoes. In the dark-hued people, blends of many tribes, you come upon, too, a Polynesian suggestion now and then, and you reflect that this way beyond much doubt came the great trek from somewhere westward that filled the islands of the South Pacific not long after the dawn of history.

Here, on a little island off the west coast of Halmaheira. is the romantic port of Ternate, where the nutmeg "gardens" come so near to the 'beach that at certain seasons the air is odorous with their pungent scent as you enter the harbour. Here, more than three and a quarter centuries ago, Dutch merchant-adventurers first discovered this article of high commercial value growing so freely as to astonish and delight, yet held by the natives in no regard "whatever. So this became one of the very earliest Holland outposts and you can see the remains of the old fort and of some of the first stone houses. The Bay of Amboina

Southward h few hundred miles brings you to another of the Islee of Spice, C'eram. from whose palm-lined shoves volcanic hills rise seven or eight thousand feet with an occasional peak whence steam still issues. Clinging to the western end is the isle and town of Amboina, metropolis and trading centre of all thie region of islands and coral atolls.

The Bay of Amboina is held by many to be the mwt beautiful in the world, but comparatively few tourists have seen it. Once or twice a world cruise has touched at Amboina, as at two or thrt e others of the ports of this vast islandempire of the Dutch. But, generally speaking, Amboina, like the rest, is "off the beaten track." Yet it is a ran; jewel in the treasure chest of travel memories for anyone who hae been there. It is sheltered on three sides by volcanic ranges along which etand out jagged peaks thousands of feet high. Between them deep and sombre valleys slope to the eea, valleye clothed with a dozen shades of green as in Samoa or the Solomons. Where they open upon the wfiite bearh there i* iKually a native village with broad outrigger

canoe* drawn up in front of it. Other canoes, their white oblong sails, like the wiiias of a pigantic albatross, skim along in the shadow of the palms. Xowhere is there a break in the richness of the verdure, for this is a land of moisture and plentioiM rain. Even now down thir. valley or that you note a ewit't-de.-eending tropical shower that Hoats like m wreath of gauze across the mountainsides and at last drifts away over the sea.

For a score of miles you steam slowly ii|> this magnificent sweep of deep blue tropical sea. The little coasting craft is Init a .speck here where the mighty extinct volcanoes look down upon the fathomless bay that was once a gigantic crater. On the clouds that hang in motionless heaps over the castellated summits the sun, gleaming through a swiftly-passing wreath of mist, throws shaft after shaft of glowing and changing colour until at the close oi day a

gorgeous blend of a hundred shades forme a fitting frame for the splendid Bay of Amboina. At the h*«d of the bay the town lies cozily on the shores of a little inlet. Behind it the green-clad mountains rise many thousands of feet and from one of them a white plume of vapour drifts lazily away, like a steamer's lengthening out over a. tranquil sea. This a volcano not yet quiescent, but not violent for many years. Here and there across the great eweop of hillside you note a little wreath of smoke rising out of the thick verdure, marking the jungle hut of a native who lives as hie forbears lived long hi-fore Europe ever heard of the Isles of Spice.

Making all the ports, even native villages where there are no Europeans, in this great Dutch sea empire south of the Philippines, are the steamers of the Dutch company with the long and unpronounceable name — Konninklikje

Paketvaart Mattsehapij — generally known as the "K.P.M." It is rather a remarkable concern, operating 150 steamers, large and small, on more than 40 different routes, starting from, Batavia, Singapore, Sourabaya and Macassar, and taking you to all manner of placets very much off the beaten track.

If we have come as far as Amboina on one of them, having left Macassar, lively metropolis of the big Celebes, a fortnight ago and touched a number of ports of the Outer Isles since, we nowhead south-eastward a couple of hundred miles to the little isle of Banda Xeira, a place few tourists have ever sseen, and not many people outside this immediate district even heard about. The Banda Sea The stretch southward from the Mes of Spice and Celebes to Timor and the long archipelago known as the Lesser Sunda Islands, which includes the famed Bali, and eastward to the coast of New Guinea, is known as the Banda Sea. It is full of fairy isles, coral atolls fringed by lines of feathery palm trees and green-tipped dots that are the summits of submerged mountains, and Banda JCeira is the loveliest of all. Through a narrow cut you enter a deep harbour that was once the interior of a crater. The hills rise sharply on every side, and at the base of one of them nestles the town.

It was one of the places most favoured by the early settlers, and in those days a much more important port than to-day. You go ashore and are amazed to come into a narrow street of substantial white houses, each with columned portico and heavy buttresses to fortify against earthquakes. It is like a street in Kotterdam, and quite as unsuitable to the tropics. But the early Dutch thought to reproduce Europe out here, and for a couple of centuries gave little thought to the markedly, different conditions. Thus you find, not only in these ports of the archipelagoes, but likewise in the old quarters of Batavia, Sourabaya and Samarang, exact reproductions of the canal-lined thoroughfares of Dutch cities and of the homes of the Low Countries.

Only a few Europeans live in the towns of the Outer Isles, like Banda Neira, to-day, the Assistant Residente often of mixed blood even then, perhape a trader or two, the agent of the transportation company—the far-rangin" K.P.M. — ln rare cases a European of other than Dutch nationality who for one reason or another has elected to settle there. Otherwise there are only the natives, and of course the übiquitous Chinese storekeeper. And so, in theee heavily-columned and impregnably-built white homes of the first Dutch, there 'hvell to-day the more prosperous of the natives or perhaps a Chinese who lias profited well by selling Japaneseiiiarte textiles and American tinned foods to the islanders.

Crowning the hill immediately behind the port of Banda Xeira is an ancient fortress which reminds you of the Castle of Wurzburg. Its towers, bastione and minarets are medieval

European, out here in the middle of the tropical Banda Sea. For in the early days the natives of these isles did not take kindly to white intrusion, and it often happened that the foreigners had to leave their homes, However fortress-like themselves, and gather hastily behind the walk of the hilltop stronghold, like early Xew Kiiglanders in their blockhouses before an Indian attack.

15ut to-day the tranquillity of those fair islands of the East i* in striking contrast to the state of considerable "f the rest of the world. Peace lies contentedly upon them and life is as placid a.* the surrounding sea. whose deep blue contiasts so sharply with the rich green of the tropical foliage. It is the South Seas here in the East, and Banda Xeira especially is comparable to the fairest of the Society Islands or the Fijis. It is one of the gems of all the oceans and j-o far practically undiscovered of the ■world. Pearling Industry Continuing on 300 miles more in the same south-easterly direction brings you, first to the Kei Islands and then, another 100 miles, to the Aroe Group. These are coral archipelagoes but of great age, geologically speaking, and there is sufficient soil to make them productive and pleasant abodes for the European. Around them through the Banda Sea, and among the isles of the Arafura Sea that lies between them and New Guinea, was once a famed pearling ground. The industry does not thrive to-day but traces of it linger and you come across the curious spectacle of pearling schooners owned by Chinese who employ Japanese divers. In the harbour of Dobo, main port of the Aroe Islands, there is a fleet of a dozen schooners, and here you find the one white man who is still concerned with the industry in this part of. the world, the widely-known Victor Berger, for many years a famous diver himself and author of that well-known classic of pearl diving and of adventure generally, "The Pearl Diver." Mrs. Berger is of part-Tahitian blood and that part is of the .Tahitian Royal family. And so this far-wandering couple have built themselves, far away in the Aroe Islands, a "Tahitian home." It is upon a tiny rocky islet, a few rods off the beach several miles from the port of D«bo. Here, with several houses in the precise Tahitian style, with a true menagerie of pets, including a wallaby and a cassowary, a man who has wandered over most of the world and seen many things in many places, as well as participated in much stirring adventure, has reproduced a bit of Tahiti, which, as he tells all his visitors with compelling emphasis, "is, after all, the fairest spot in the world."

That may be a matter of opinion, but when, continuing your cruise south of the Philippines, back toward Java, touching at many another isle and atoll and then coming to the Lesf-er Sunda group, and finally to far-famed Bali, you delight in one gem of tropic seas beauty after another and a life quite "unspoiled," you must acknowledge that even the South Seas may have their rival.