BY MOTOR THROUGH THE EAST COAST OF SUMATRA 



101 



ers from the Afghan frontier, long- 

 haired and dirty, with heavy, boat-shaped 

 shoes and lungi trailing from their rak- 

 ishly set caps. 



the Chinese: coolie's growing power 



There were many more, but of every 

 five two were Chinese. Some were nearly 

 naked, half-starved new arrivals peddling 

 trays of small nicknacks hung from poles 

 across their calloused, sweating shoul- 

 ders. Others, laborers earning high 

 wages on the plantations, squatted about 

 a native restaurant in one corner of the 

 market, talking at high speed with their 

 mouths full of rice or sundry delicacies 

 that no one else would eat. 



And there were many, sleek, well 

 dressed, and be jeweled, who had passed 

 in a brief time through both these first 

 stages and now showed the result of in- 

 difference to privation and an infinite 

 capacity for overwork, the only assets 

 brought with them from the Middle 

 Kingdom. 



The irrepressible Chinese immigrant 

 coolie seems destined to become the 

 financial power of Sumatra, as he already 

 is in Malaya, Java, and elsewhere in the 

 East Indies. 



From Siantar we ran back to Medan. 

 The road was hard and dry, a trifle 

 rough at first, but such a transition from 

 the soft ditches we had been following 

 through the highlands that the very 

 steadiness of our progress began to alarm 

 us. 



After the conditions of Batak high- 

 ways, an uninterrupted run of thirty-five 

 miles makes one gravely expectant of 

 dire things to follow; but the road grew 

 better instead of worse, and we drove 

 into Medan early in the afternoon with a 

 ninety-mile run behind us — our longest 

 in Sumatra. 



Before we reached Medan we passed 

 a heavy, two-wheeled transport cart on 

 its way to some estate, drawn by the 

 most enormous buffalo I had even seen. 

 A thin, sweating Chinese coolie walked 

 beside it, wearing a battered pair of blue 

 trousers and a round, peaked hat of 

 bamboo, undoubtedly the aggregate of his 

 worldly possessions. Just as we drew 

 alongside, the buffalo got wind of a 

 near-by wallow, stretched his neck, and 



snapped the extremely simple harness — a 

 piece of rope holding the wooden collar 

 to the shafts. 



While the huge beast ambled off to 

 enjoy his mud bath the coolie repaired 

 the harness by unraveling a few lengths 

 of thread from some burlap sacking in 

 the cart, plaiting it into a cord, and then 

 splicing the broken rope. This done, he 

 extracted from the waistband of his 

 trousers what appeared to be a handful 

 of dried peas — probably counted down to 

 the last grain that would support life — 

 ate his meal, and set out to recover his 

 cumbersome charge. But the buffalo was 

 otherwise minded. 



For thirty-five minutes the patient 

 Chinaman vainly tried to make the huge 

 animal leave the mud-hole, himself get- 

 ting plastered with slime and deeply 

 scratched on some dead branches. 



At last the relentless yanking on his 

 nose-rope spoiled the buffalo's repose, 

 and he followed his driver to the cart 

 with a fine effect of being very bored. 

 When the collar was again fitted over his 

 neck the oversized animal swung his 

 head fretfully and the harness promptly 

 snapped once more. Without a change 

 in expression the coolie started to make 

 a new repair, and the last we saw of him 

 was a patient figure squatting on the 

 road, laboriously sawing off with his 

 teeth the end of the buffalo's nose-rope. 



From Siantar to Tebing Tinggi the 

 road had passed through dense forest, 

 the edges of the right of way choked 

 with wild plantains, "elephant ears," and 

 all the quick-growing plants and vines 

 that the jungle sends out to recover the 

 land stolen from it. 



Only a few ambitious tobacco estates 

 broke in on the ranks of the vine-en- 

 tangled, straight-trunked trees ; but from 

 Tebing Tinggi the run to Medan took us 

 through some of the most thriving estates 

 in Sumatra. In that fertile section was 

 represented nearly every variety of plan- 

 tation found on the island. 



THE RUBBER PLANTATIONS OE SUMATRA 



Second in extent and in importance to 

 the vast tobacco fields — surpassing them 

 in many cases — were the acres devoted to 

 rubber, both indigenous Ficvs clastica, 

 nany branched and buttress-rooted like a 



