utch Government has come
more and more to realize that most of the disaffection and revolts in
their Eastern possessions have been directly traceable to tactlessness
on the part of Dutch officials, who either ignored or were indifferent
to the customs, traditions, and susceptibilities of the natives. It is
the recognition and application of this principle that has been
primarily responsible for the peace, progress, and prosperity which, in
recent years, have characterized the rule of Holland in the Indies.
When a nation with a quarter the area of New York State, and less than
two-thirds its population, with a small army and no navy worthy of the
name, can successfully rule fifty million people of alien race and
religion, half the world away, and keep them loyal and contented, that
nation has, it seems to me, a positive genius for colonial
administration.

* * * * *

Some one has described the Dutch East Indies as a necklace of emeralds
strung on the equator. To those who are familiar only with colder, less
gorgeous lands, that simile may sound unduly fanciful, but to those who
have seen these great, rich islands, festooned across four thousand
miles of sea, green and scintillating under the tropic sun, the
description will not appear as far-fetched as it seems. A necklace of
emeralds! The more I ponder over that description the better I like it.
Indeed, I think that that is what I will call this chapter--The
Emeralds of Wilhelmina.

CHAPTER V

MAN-EATERS AND HEAD-HUNTERS

There is no name between the covers of the atlas which so smacks of
romance and adventure as Borneo. Show me the red-blooded boy who, when
he sees that magic name over the wild man's cage in the circus sideshow
or over the orang-utan's cage in the zoo, does not secretly long to go
adventuring in the jungles of its mysterious interior. So, because
there is still in me a good deal of the boy, thank Heaven, I ordered
the course of the _Negros_ laid for Samarinda, which, if the charts
were to be believed, was the principal gateway to the hinterland of
Eastern Borneo. There are no roads in Borneo, you understand, only
narrow foot-trails through the steaming jungle, so that the only
practicable means of penetrating the interior is by ascending one of
the great rivers. The Koetei, which has its nativity somewhere in the
mysterious Kapuas Mountains, winds its way across four hundred miles of
unmapped wilderness, an