Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/200

 “When a Government Commissary arrived in Sumatra who considered this extension objectless and therefore condemned it, especially as it militated against the desperate economy that had been so urgently insisted on from the motherland, General Vandamme maintained that the extension need become no burden on the Estimates, for the new garrisons were drawn from troops for which the expenditure had in any case already been passed, so that he had brought a very considerable territory under Dutch rule without expense resulting from the action. And furthermore, as regards the partial denudation of other places, especially Mandhéling, he thought he could sufficiently depend on the fidelity and attachment of Yang di Pertooan, the principal Chief in the Battahlands, to prevent any danger in this.

“The Government Commissary gave in reluctantly, and this only on the repeated protestations of the General that he personally went bail for Yang di Pertooan’s fidelity.

“Now the Controller who administered the division of Natal before me was the son-in-law of the Assistant-Resident of the Battahlands, who was on unfriendly terms with Yang di Pertooan. Afterwards I heard a good deal of talk about complaints that had been made against this Assistant-Resident, but one had to be cautious in accepting these charges as true, as they largely originated with Yang di Pertooan, and that at a time when the latter had been accused of far more serious offences, which may have induced him to seek his defence in the faults of his accuser, a thing that of course often happens. However this may be, the officer in authority at Natal sided with his father-in-law against Yang di Pertooan, and this perhaps all the more ardently as the Controller was very friendly with a certain Sootan Salim, a Natal Chief who also was very bitter against the Batak head. For a long time already there had been a feud between the families of these two chiefs. Offers of marriage had been declined, there was jealousy about influence, pride on the side of Yang di Pertooan, who was of better birth, and several other causes concurred to keep Natal and Mandhéling set against each other.