Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/319

 case of extortion and plunder; and lest my history should be thought fictitious, I give the assurance that I can furnish the names of the thirty-two persons in the district of Parang-Koodjang, from whom in the course of one month thirty-six buffaloes had been stolen for the use of the Regent; or, still better, I can give the names of thirty-two persons in that district, who in one month dared to complain, and whose complaints, having been examined by Havelaar, were found to be true.

There are five such districts in the Residency of Lebak. Now if one chooses to believe that the number of stolen buffaloes was less in those parts that had not the honour of being governed by the son-in-law of the Regent, I will grant that; though the question still remains, whether the rapacity of other chiefs was not founded on as sure ground as that of near relationship? For instance, the district chief of Tjilangkahan on the south coast could in default of a father-in law, of whom one was much afraid, rely upon the difficulty with which the poor in their complaints had to contend, that, namely, of walking forty or sixty miles before hiding themselves during the evening in the ravine near Havelaar’s house. And if we observe the fact that many started never to reach that house, that many did not even leave their village, frightened as they were by their own experience or by the sight of the