452 



SUMATRA'S WEST CO A SI 



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COURT-HOUSE NEAR PADANG PANDJANG, SUMATRA 



posts, and decay soon makes new buildings old. Then, too, the 

 malarial plastnodium finds in the region a most congenial home, 

 and the pallid faces and slow gate of the Europeans tell too 

 plainly of an unequal struggle between blood corpuscles and 

 the invading army of parasites. I do not know that Padang is 

 celebrated for its fevers, though it is certainly not a healthy 

 place. But it is for other reasons that travelers do not stay long- 

 in Padang. As the terminus of a most remarkable mountain 

 railroad, worthy of a Meiggs, one of the earliest cog railways 

 ever constructed for freight purposes, it affords the traveler un- 

 rivaled opportunities to "get into the interior," as explorers 

 express it. The Ombilin coal-fields send to Padang by means 

 of this road the coal for the Netherland steamship line, which 

 calls here both in and out bound. It is not a great way from this 

 region that some of the petroleum fields have been discovered, 

 which the Standard Oil Company tried in vain to get control of r 



