CHAPTER I
The British Ornithologists’ Union—Members of the Expedition—Voyage to Java—Choice of Rivers—Prosperity of Java—Half-castes—Obsequious Javanese—The Rijst-tafel—Customs of the Dutch—Buitenzorg Garden—Garoet.
In the autumn of 1858 a small party of naturalists, most of them members of the University of Cambridge and their friends and all of them interested in the study of ornithology, met in the rooms of the late Professor Alfred Newton at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and agreed to found a society with the principal object of producing a quarterly Journal of general ornithology. The Journal was called “The Ibis,” and the Society adopted the name of British Ornithologists’ Union, the number of members being originally limited to twenty.
In the autumn of 1908 the Society, which by that time counted four hundred and seventy members, adopted the suggestion, made by Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant, of celebrating its jubilee by sending an expedition to explore, chiefly from an ornithological point of view, the unknown range of Snow Mountains in Dutch New Guinea. A Committee, whose Chairman was Mr. F. D. Godman, F.R.S., President and one of the surviving original members of the Society, was appointed to organise the expedition, and subscriptions were obtained from members and their friends. The remote destination of the expedition aroused a good deal of public interest. The Royal Geographical Society expressed a desire to share in the enterprise, and it soon became evident that it would be a mistake to limit the object of the expedition to the pursuit of birds only. Mr. Walter Goodfellow, a naturalist who had several times travelled in New Guinea as well as in other parts of the world, was appointed leader of the expedition. Mr. W. Stalker and Mr. G. C. Shortridge, both of whom had had wide experience of collecting in the East, were appointed naturalists. Capt. C. G. Rawling, C.I.E., 13th Somersetshire Light Infantry, who had travelled widely in Tibet and mapped a large area of unknown territory in that region, was appointed surveyor, with Mr. E. S. Marshall, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., who had just returned from the “Furthest South” with Sir E. H. Shackleton, as assistant surveyor and surgeon; and the present writer, who had been medical officer, botanist, and entomologist on the Ruwenzori Expedition of 1906-7, undertook the same duties as before.
Prolonged correspondence between the Foreign Office and the Dutch Government resulted, thanks largely to the personal interest of Sir Edward Grey and Lord Acton, British Chargé d’Affaires at the Hague, in permission being granted to the expedition to land in Dutch New Guinea on or after January 1, 1910. The date of landing was postponed by the Government until January in order that there might be no interference with the expedition of Mr. H. A. Lorentz, who it was hoped would be the first to reach the snow in New Guinea by way of the Noord River, a project which he successfully accomplished in the month of November, 1909.
VOYAGE TO JAVA
On October 29th four of us sailed from Marseilles in the P. & O. S.S. Marmora. Mr. Stalker and Mr. Shortridge, who had already proceeded to the East, joined us later at Batavia and Amboina respectively. At Singapore we found the ten Gurkhas, ex-military police, who had been engaged for the expedition by the recruiting officer at Darjiling; though some of these men were useless for the work they had to do, the others did invaluable service as will be seen later. We left Singapore on November 26th, and as we passed through the narrow Riou Straits we saw the remains of the French mail steamer La Seyne, which had been wrecked there with appalling loss of life a few days earlier. It was believed that scores of persons were devoured by sharks within a few minutes of the accident happening. Two days’ steaming in the Dutch packet brought us to Batavia in Java, the city of the Government of the Netherlands East Indies.
We had hoped that our ten Gurkhas would be sufficient escort for the expedition and that we could do without the escort of native soldiers offered to us by the Dutch Government, but the local authorities decided that the escort was necessary and they appointed to command it Lieutenant H. A. Cramer of the Infantry, a probationer on the Staff of the Dutch East Indian Army. The Government also undertook to transport the whole expedition, men, stores, and equipment, from Java to New Guinea. The undertaking was a most generous one as the voyage from Batavia by mail steamer to Dobo in the Aru Islands would have been most costly, and from there we should have been obliged to charter a special steamer to convey the expedition to the shores of New Guinea.
When we left England we had the intention of approaching the Snow Mountains by way of the Utakwa River, which was the only river shown by the maps obtainable at that time approaching the mountains. After a consultation with the Military and Geographical Departments at Batavia it was decided that, owing to the bad accounts which had been received of the Utakwa River and the comparatively favourable reports of the Mimika River, the latter should be chosen as the point of our entry into the country. This decision, though we little suspected it at the time, effectually put an end to our chance of reaching the Snow Mountains.
During the month of December, while stores were being accumulated, and the steamer was being prepared for our use, we had leisure to visit, and in the case of some of us to revisit, some of the most interesting places in Java. A large German ship filled with fourteen hundred American tourists arrived at Batavia whilst we were there, and the passengers “did” Java, apparently to their satisfaction, in forty-eight hours. But a tourist with more time could find occupation for as many days and still leave much to be seen. Germans and Americans outnumber English visitors by nearly fifty to one, and it is to be deplored that Englishmen do not go there in larger numbers, for they would see in Java, not to mention the beauty of its scenery, perhaps the most successful tropical dependency in the world, a vast monument to the genius of Sir Stamford Raffles, who laid the foundation of its prosperity less than one hundred years ago.
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE MIMIKA RIVER.
PROSPERITY OF JAVA
Some idea of the progress which has been made may be learnt from the fact that, whereas at the beginning of the last century the population numbered about four millions, there are to-day nearly ten times that number. Wherever you go you see excellent roads, clean, and well-ordered villages and a swarming peasant population, quiet and industrious and apparently contented with their lot.
There are between thirty and forty volcanoes in the island, many of them active, and the soil is extraordinarily rich and productive, three crops in the rice districts being harvested in rather less than two years. So fertile is the land that in many places the steepest slopes of the hills have been brought under cultivation by an ingenious system of terracing and irrigation in such a way that the higher valleys present the appearance of great amphitheatres rising tier above tier of brilliantly green young rice plants or of drooping yellow heads of ripening grain. The tea plantations and the fields of sugar-cane in Central Java not less than the rice-growing districts impress one with the unceasing industry of the people and the inexhaustible wealth of the island.
One of the features of life in the Dutch East Indies, which first strikes the attention of an English visitor, is the difference in the relation between Europeans and natives from those which usually obtain in British possessions as shown by the enormous number of half-castes. Whilst we were still at Batavia the feast of the Eve of St. Nicholas, which takes the place of our Christmas, occurred. In the evening the entire “white” population indulged in a sort of carnival; the main streets and restaurants were crowded, bands played and carriages laden with parents and their children drove slowly through the throng. The spectacle, a sort of “trooping of the colours,” was a most interesting one to the onlooker, for one saw often in the same family children showing every degree of colour from the fairest Dutch hair and complexion to the darkest Javanese. It is easy to understand how this strong mixture of races has come about, when one learns that Dutchmen who come out to the East Indies, whether as civilian or military officials or as business men, almost invariably stay for ten years without returning to Europe. They become in that