SUMATRA'S WEST COAST 451 



There are several ways of visiting Sumatra, none being very- 

 direct, but the pleasantest is to take one of the comfortable 

 steamers of the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij, either from 

 the island of Penang, where tourists call going either way around 

 the world, and steam west to the north point of the island and 

 southward along its western coast to Padang,the principal port, 

 or do as my friend Mr Barbour Lath rop and I did, leaving 

 Batavia on the north coast of Java and steaming west through 

 the straits of Sunda past the famous volcano of Krakatua and 

 northward along the coast, stopping at Padang over one steamer 

 and catching the next, which landed us finally at Penang. The 

 city of Padang seemed on the first night of arrival one of the 

 hottest and wettest places it were possible for water and sunshine 

 to concoct ; but where the sunlight pours down its rays perpen- 

 dicularly and the clouds every afternoon empty an almost un- 

 limited quantity of water, palms are able to live a life really be- 

 coming such royal representatives of the vegetable kingdom. 

 You feel oppressed with the inconceivable power of the living 

 matter, the protoplasm, which surrounds you. In temperate 

 regions you have become accustomed to the supremacy of man. 

 He cuts down and destroys and clears big patches of ground 

 free almost of every living thing. Here you feel as if the plants 

 merely tolerated your presence. 



The hotels serve to distract your attention from nobler thoughts 

 by their insufficiencies and limited capacity. I have often won- 

 dered what a party of Cook's tourists would do if they landed 

 and found 011I3' four or five beds at the disposition of new ar- 

 rivals and not sufficient bananas to go around. To be met at 

 your first meal in the tropics. when you look forward to reveling 

 in the delicious new sorts of bananas with the incomprehensi- 

 ble statement of "tida ada lagi" which, being interpreted by 

 your Dutch acquaintance, means "There are no more," is a hard 

 and unforgetable experience, the more inexplicablesince the level 

 plains about the town are filled with immense banana planta- 

 tions. One small banana is not enough for an appetite whetted 

 by a long ocean voyage. This is, however, an introduction to one 

 of the mah}'- peculiarities of the tropics which irritate you until 

 3 7 ou find the absurdity of being irritated by the unavoidable. 



Padang as a town has nothing to recommend it. Its public 

 buildings and houses are embowered in the most gorgeous trop- 

 ical vegetation, but they themselves are plain, and look as if 

 they were moth-eaten. Termites work rapidly upon the corner 



