70 



Company; Glen Bervie Estate, near Tandjong Poera. Be- 

 tween these centres I passed through many other coffee 

 and tobacco estates, where the whorled stems of Hevea 

 were visible. 



Next came the Serdang district, the home of many 

 London rubber companies. In that Residency I had the 

 pleasure of going over Sialang, Soekalowi, and Baloewa 

 Estates, and had excellent opportunities of seeing Ban- 

 goen Poerba, now owned by the United Sumatra Rubber 

 Company, and the Kotangan, Liberia, Sungei Karang, 

 Timbang-Deli, Batu Ginging, Tandjong, Kassan, Deli- 

 Moeda, and numerous other estates, the names of which 

 I dare not attempt to spell. 



These districts finished, I journey from Tebing Tinggi 

 railway station by motor to Gamboes, and during that 

 journey caught sight of Laut Tador and Mendaris Estates, 

 . with fine blocks of Ficus elastica. Along this road I saw 

 some clearings of Para rubber which stretched for seve- 

 ral miles over beautifully flat land parallel to the main 

 road. I then left the main road and went forward into 

 less populous but equally fertile lands in the vicinity of 

 Bandar and Si Antar. I there met Mr. Jut, and saw his 

 fine young rubber estate — Soengei Mangke. During 

 these tours I met planters from many parts of Sumatra, 

 and was much impressed with the activity displayed 

 throughout the East Coast in rubber cultivation. I saw 

 some two dozen rubber estates in all, and left Sumatra 

 on June 3rd for Penang, well satisfied that some day the 

 Dutch East Indies would contribute their fair share of 

 raw rubber to the markets of the world. 



Cultivation in Sumatra. 



The cultivation of plants in Sumatra is limited to the 

 low-lying lands near sea-level, and thereby resembles 

 Malaya and differs from Java, Ceylon, and Southern 

 India. The soil is very similar to that in Java, being 

 light, fertile, and mainly of volcanic origin. You never 

 see anything resembling the stiff blue clay of Malaya or 

 the rocky slopes of Ceylon; everywhere the soil is finely 

 divided and porous, and grows most magnificent crops. 

 The sugar of Java, and the tea and cacao of Ceylon, are 

 replaced by extensive plantations of tobacco in Sumatra. 



