Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/320

248 coal, and there is always a minimum stock of 10,000 tons. Ships are coaled at the rate of 80 tons an hour. There is a dry dock and repairing slips, and coaling goes on during the night, an enormous benefit to many vessels now using it, and as well there is a large oil storage for their benefit. Land is being reclaimed, and additional wharfage and other facilities are in hand, and the island of Weh with its harbour, Sabang, is considered one of the most beautiful, desirable, and valuable places in the beautiful East—yet we gave it back to the Dutch! Unless Singapore looks out for herself, she will have more than a formidable rival here. Its rise to importance shows what may result from the development of the other islands. I believe it was at Sabang that the Russian fleet took refuge and coaled during the war.]

The narrowest part of the Straits of Sunda separating Sumatra and Java is 14 miles wide, but we will leave Java for the present, make for its east end, and cross a strait not 2 miles wide to Bali. It and the adjoining Lombok form one Residency, have seven native princes, and the two a total population of 1,042,000. Both are Hindu. The women—said to be beautiful—sometimes sacrifice themselves by thedead bodies of their husbands, being with much ceremony cut to pieces with a Malay kris. Between Bali and Lombok is deep sea, and Lombok presents quite other aspects to the more Malayan islands, approaching more to Australian features. It has no rhinoceroses, elephants, tigers, or tapirs. It was in Lombok in 1893-94 that the Sultan massacred a whole regiment of Dutch. It is said that when they went to capture him and raze his palace to the ground, he threw two million English sovereigns into a lake—I wonder if they are there now, and if one could drain it and get them? It would be a beautiful find. Perhaps