93 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



their food, the sago palm supphes them with excel- 

 lent building poles in the mid-ribs of the leaves, which 

 are straight and very strong, and are sometimes fifteen 

 to twenty feet long, and the leaflets themselves are used 

 for making " atap " in the districts where the Nipa 

 palm is not found. 



It was mentioned above that the crews of our canoes 

 on the excursion up the Kapare River were made up 

 of Javanese soldiers and convicts. Our first batch of 

 Ambonese coolies had by that time failed us, so Lieut. 

 Cramer very kindly lent us some of his men for the 

 occasion, and we had an opportunity of testing their 

 worth. Speaking generally, it is not unfair to them 

 to say that the Javanese are wholly unsuited to rough 

 work in a savage country ; they are a peaceful race 

 of peasants and their proper place is in the rice fields. 

 As soldiers they appear to the civilian eye to be clod- 

 hoppers masquerading in (usually misfitting) uniform. 

 They have no military bearing and no alertness, and 

 one ceases to wonder that when the Netherlands East 

 Indian native army is almost exclusively composed 

 of Javanese, the war-like people of Atjeh have kept 

 the field for so many years. It is a matter for surprise 

 that the Dutch do not enlist more of the warlike Bugis 

 of Celebes, and natives of the Moluccas, and even the 

 Achinese prisoners themselves ; ten thousand of such 

 men would surely be of more worth than the 30,000 

 Javanese who fill the ranks of their native army. Of 

 course there are exceptions ; there are men among 

 them who have performed splendidly valorous deeds 

 in time of war ; but the majority are of a stuff of 



