450 



SUMATRA'S WEST COAST 



charming account of travel among its miniature bamboo vil- 

 lages and paddy fields. Sumatra is compared by the Dutch, 

 although incomparably grander and totally different, to Switzer- 

 land. You approach Java with a feeling of how beautiful and 

 lovable everything seems, but as } r ou steam into Emma harbor, 

 on Sumatra's west coast, your mind is overpowered by the sight 

 of the verdure-covered volcanoes and trackless forests stretch- 

 ing away into the unknown and undiscovered. 



IX THE WEST C'dAST I IE. SI" M ATI! A — EAHI.V MIIKMM 



The western coast of this wonderful island, famed among the 

 Dutch as Het Bovea Land van Sumatra, is as near a tropical Swit- 

 zerland (if such an appellation does not convey a confused no- 

 tion) as is to be found anywhere on the globe. New Zealand 

 can boast of glaciers of surpassing beauty, justly entitling it to 

 .the place it holds as the Switzerland of the southern hemisphere, 

 but I am confident that after the sources of the Amazon have 

 been thrown open to the tourist and Orizaba has been surrounded 

 by winter hotels, the most luxuriant vegetation and most wildly 

 fascinating scenery in the world will be sought for among the 

 chain of volcanoes that forms the backbone of Sumatra. 



