VOYAGE TO JAVA 3 



successfully accomplished in the month of November, 

 1909. 



On October 29th four of us sailed from Marseilles in 

 the P. & O. s.s. Marmora. Mr. Stalker and Mr. Short- 

 ridge, who had already proceeded to the East, joined us 

 later at Batavia and Amboina respectively. At Singa- 

 pore we found the ten Gurkhas, ex-military police, who 

 had been engaged for the expedition by the recruiting 

 officer at Darjiling ; though some of these men were 

 useless for the work they had to do, the others did in- 

 valuable service as will be seen later. We left Singapore 

 on November 26th, and as we passed through the narrow 

 Riou Straits we saw the remains of the French mail 

 steamer La Seyne, which had been wrecked there with 

 appalling loss of life a few days earlier. It was believed 

 that scores of persons were devoured by sharks within 

 a few minutes of the accident happening. Two days' 

 steaming in the Dutch packet brought us to Batavia 

 in Java, the city of the Government of the Netherlands 

 East Indies. 



We had hoped that our ten Gurkhas would be suffi- 

 cient escort for the expedition and that we could do 

 without the escort of native soldiers offered to us by the 

 Dutch Government, but the local authorities decided 

 that the escort was necessary and they appointed to 

 command it Lieutenant H. A. Cramer of the Infantry, 

 a probationer on the Staff of the Dutch East Indian 

 Army. The Government also undertook to transport 

 the whole expedition, men, stores, and equipment, from 

 Java to New Guinea. The undertaking was a most 

 generous one as the voyage from Batavia by mail steamer 



