This District
Had A Very Bad Reputation A Few Years Ago, And Travellers Were
Frequently Robbed And Murdered.
Fights between village and
village were also of frequent occurrence, and many lives were
lost, owing to disputes about
Boundaries or intrigues with women.
Now, however, since the country has been divided into districts
under "Controlleurs," who visit every village in turn to hear
complaints and settle disputes, such things are heard of no more.
This is one of the numerous examples I have met with of the good
effects of the Dutch Government. It exercises a strict
surveillance over its most distant possessions, establishes a
form of government well adapted to the character of the people,
reforms abuses, punishes crimes, and makes itself everywhere
respected by the native population.
Lobo Raman is a central point of the east end of Sumatra, being
about a hundred and twenty miles from the sea to the east, north,
and west. The surface is undulating, with no mountains or even
hills, and there is no rock, the soil being generally a red
pliable clay. Numbers of small streams and rivers intersect the
country, and it is pretty equally divided between open clearings
and patches of forest, both virgin and second growth, with
abundance of fruit trees; and there is no lack of paths to get
about in any direction. Altogether it is the very country that
would promise most for a naturalist, and I feel sure that at a
more favourable time of year it would prove exceedingly rich; but
it was now the rainy season, when, in the very best of
localities, insects are always scarce, and there being no fruit
on the trees, there was also a scarcity of birds.
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