186 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
has its little army, which is bound to present itself 
equipped for service at the outbreak of war. This it is, 
combined with thick jungle and want of roads, which has 
caused, and is still causing, the Ache war. The constant 
acts of piracy in the Straits of Malacca led to the English 
Treaty of 1871, which gave Holland a free hand. Hos¬ 
tilities were commenced in 1872, but the Dutch suffered 
a reverse. It was not till a year later, and after a siege 
of forty-seven days, that the Sultan’s fortress, situated 
about two miles inland from Olele, was captured. After 
a struggle of twenty years, an expenditure of over 
£20,000,000, and the loss of many thousands of lives, 
the Dutch find themselves in a hardly better position 
than at the beginning of the war. The greater part of 
the interior is still independent, and will probably remain 
so for many years to come. A new experiment has lately 
been tried,—the blockading of the various ports. By 
this means an opium and tobacco famine has been 
created, from which favourable results are anticipated. 
But the chief weapon upon which the Dutch rely to 
place Ache eventually in their hands is the want of 
cohesion among the numerous petty states of which a 
great part of the country is composed. Of these may be 
mentioned the Gaious and Allas, and the Karos, who 
inhabit the country between the Battaks and the Allas, 
of all of whom little or nothing is known. 
South of Ache comes the country of the Battaks, a 
territory of great extent 1 , for people of this race extend 
south nearly as far as Mount Ophir, up to the head 
waters of the Siak river. They are essentially an inland, 
hill people, and are most thickly grouped around the 
Toba Lake, which they themselves consider as the cradle 
of their race. Those on the Ache border were visited 
by a Dutch Government expedition in 1891, and were 
