80 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



AN ELABORATE PIGEON-HOUSE IN THE VILLAGE OP 

 KEBON DJAHE 



Sumatra has an area exceeding the combined areas of the 

 New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania. If it 

 were superimposed on this continent, it would extend from 

 St. Louis to Boston. 



drivers are Klings ; the carpenters are 

 Boyans ; the Javanese are woodmen, 

 road-builders, and gardeners ; and the 

 Bataks and Sumatra Malays, who are not 

 obtainable in large numbers nor reliable 

 for sustained labor, clear the land pre- 

 paratory to planting, and build roads and 

 sheds. 



The ubiquitous Sikh is often found in 

 his favorite capacity of guard or police- 

 man. 



At the time of our trip the tobacco 

 plants were half to three-quarters grown 



and the drying-sheds were 

 being prepared to receive 

 them. Upon some of the 

 more advanced estates the 

 lower leaves of the plants 

 had already been picked 

 and were hanging in the 

 sheds, threaded on long 

 strings and labeled, while 

 wood fires smouldered at 

 intervals on the ground. 



Lines of two - wheeled 

 bullock carts with loose 

 roofs of thatched palm 

 leaves, matting, or even 

 sheet tin, rumbled slowly 

 up and down the roads, 

 hauling supplies and ma- 

 terial for the estates. Many 

 of the slow-plodding Indian 

 oxen were magnificent big 

 Guzerat animals, with large 

 humps and long silky dew- 

 laps, and, with their red- 

 turbaned Tamil drivers sit- 

 ting on the floor of the 

 open- fronted carts, were 

 strongly reminiscent of the 

 tea plantations of Ceylon. 



THE HIGHWAYS OF 

 SUMATRA 



The road was very good, 

 wide, well made, and much 

 better than I had expected. 

 There is practically no rock 

 in this part of the island, 

 and the metaling for the 

 roads must be imported ; 

 nevertheless, the chief high- 

 ways of the coastal plains 

 and the pass over the moun- 

 tains are all macadamized. 

 In the highlands, where metaling has 

 not yet been attempted, such roads as 

 exist are of a very different type. These 

 are of dirt or clay, well built and main- 

 tained, and said to be very good in dry 

 weather. 



Unfortunately, we were there when 

 seventeen days of continuous rainfall had 

 reduced them to an almost impassable 

 state of soft mud and slippery clay, and, 

 while our experience is perhaps hardly 

 a fair criterion. I can scarcely believe that 

 with the enormous annual rainfall of 



