Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/350

266 After this glimpse at Batavia and sniff at the Durian—a very long sniff, though—I rejoined the Stettin and we sailed at eleven in the morning. Amongst new passengers was a young English- man, Mr. Louis Wright, a Ceylon tea-planter, connected also with tea-plantations in Java. He had been in South Africa with the Ceylon contingent, but was invalided home on account of enteric fever.

The second day we had a fine, fresh, and most welcome breeze. We passed through the Banca Channel—which is narrow and full of shoals and sandbanks—between the island of Banca and Sumatra. All the shipping between Borneo and Sumatra goes through the straits. Banca belonged to the Sultan of Palembang. In 1811, when the British got their Sumatra settlements, the Sultan killed all the Dutch to please them, and they, in the most ungrateful manner, dethroned him for his trouble. In 1816 it was restored to the Dutch. There are 375,000 Malays, 30,000 Chinese, and 200 Europeans on it. Muntok, with a population of 6000, is the chief town and is fortified and garrisoned.

We were in crowded seas with many craft around us, and we passed the French sailing ship Sylvia from Havre, in full sail—a most beautiful sight. We discussed Sumatra and the endless war the Dutch wage with the Acheenese, which has gone on for somewhere about forty years. The Acheenese say—or once said—they would be content if the British got Sumatra, an improbable thing now—the Germans are simply dying to possess it, and one of their much-discussed aims is to have a settlement on its shores directly opposite Singapore, so as to render that key to the East useless whilst we hold it. Such a thing is out of the question. Singapore is