MERAUKE 223 



into British territoiy, whence they brought slaves and 

 the heads of their fallen enemies. This became such a 

 nuisance that the Australian Government addressed pro- 

 tests to the Dutch about the lawless behaviour of their 

 subjects, and in 1902 the Dutch made the station of '^ 

 Merauke, and established there a small garrison of about 

 one hundred men. The place was chosen partly because 

 it was in the centre of the district of the Tugcri, and 

 partly because on that shallow coast the Merau River 

 alone offered a safe harbour for ships. It is a dreary 

 enough place on the muddy bank of the river and sur- 

 rounded on the other sides by swamps, but the Dutch 

 have made the best of a bad job, and by laborious ditch- 

 ing and dyking they have made the place fairly secure 

 from floods ; in spite of all their draining, however, there 

 are more mosquitoes there than in any other inhabited 

 place I have ever visited. 



Like other Dutch settlements Merauke is laid out on y/ 

 a regular and spacious plan, plent}^ of room being left 

 between the houses of the officials and the quarter 

 occupied by the shops of the Chinese, of which there are 

 about a dozen. There are (or were in 1910) sixteen 

 Europeans * in the place, all of them in the employment 

 of the Government except two, the representatives of an 

 European trading firm. The principal trade of the place 

 is in copra obtained from the hundreds of thousands 

 of coco-palms, which line the neighbouring sea-shore. 

 These palms are the property of the natives, who are too 

 lazy to take advantage of the wealth that lies (or rather 



* Here, as elsewhere in the Dutch colonies, half-castes in official 

 positions are reckoned as Europeans. 



