Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/76

 the force of law in the Indies more than anywhere else, will have it that the officer who is intrusted with the rule of a district must be festively received on his arrival. The Controller, too, was present. He was a man of middle age, and after the death of the last Assistant Resident, being the next in rank, had carried on the government for some months.

As soon as the arrival of the new Assistant Resident was known, a pendoppo was erected in great haste; a table and some chairs brought there with some refreshments, and in that ‘pendoppo’ the Regent, with the Controller, awaited the arrival of the new chief. After a broad-brimmed hat, an umbrella, or a hollow tree, a ‘pendoppo’ is certainly the most simple representation of the idea “roof.”

Picture to yourself four or six bamboo canes, driven into the ground, tied together at the top with other bamboos, on which is placed a cover of the large leaves of the water-palm, called in these regions atap, and you will have an idea of such a ‘pendoppo.” It is, as you see, as simple as possible, and here it had only to serve as a pied-à-terre, for the European and native officials who were there to welcome their new chief.

It was not very correct of me to call the Assistant Resident the “chief” of the Regent. I must explain the machinery of government in these regions. The so-called “Dutch India”—[I think the expression inaccurate, but it is the official term]—as far as regards the relation of its