en Wilhelmina is the first rule of
etiquette to be observed by the foreigner traveling in the Outer
Possessions. In Java, which is more highly civilized, it is not so
necessary. Unlike the Latin races, the Dutch are not by nature a
suspicious people, but political unrest is prevalent throughout the
East, and with Bolshevists, Chinese agitators and other fomenters of
disaffection surreptitiously at work among the natives, it is the part
of prudence to establish your respectability at the start. To gain a
friendly footing with the authorities is to save yourself from possible
annoyance later on.

As I approached the shore the glamor lent by distance disappeared. The
river-bank, which had looked so alluring from the cutter's deck, proved
on closer inspection to be as squalid as the back-yard of a Neapolitan
tenement. It was littered with dead cats and fowls and fish and
castaway vegetables and rotten fruit and tin cans and greasy ashes and
refuse from fishing nets and decaying cocoanuts by the million and
sodden rags. This stewing garbage was strewn ankle-deep upon the sand
or was floating on the surface of the river, not drifting seaward, as
one would expect, but languidly following the tide up and down, forever
lolling along the bank. Above this putrefying feast swarmed myriads of
flies, their buzzing combining in a drone like that of an electric fan.
The sun struck viciously down upon the yellow foreshore, its glare
reflected by the hard-packed sands as by a sheet of brass; the
heat-waves danced and flickered. Sending the launch back to the cutter,
I picked my way across this noisome place to the shelter of the trees
along the road. But the shade that had appeared so inviting from the
river proved as illusory as everything else. Grass? There was none. The
earth was baked to the hardness of asphalt.

To make matters worse, I found that I had landed too far down the
beach. The building that I had assumed was the Residency proved to be
the Custom House. The Harbor Master, whom I encountered there, seized
the opportunity to present me with a bill for a hundred
guilders--something over forty dollars--for port dues. It seemed a high
price to pay for the privilege of lying in the stream, a quarter-mile
off-shore. In all the Dutch ports at which we touched I noted this same
disposition on the part of the authorities to charge all that the
traffic would bear--and then some. Foreign vessels are rarely seen at
Samarinda, and one