"WEST FROM SINGAPORE" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

area of 735,268 square miles. In those years it was referred to as the Netherlands
East Indies, and the administration was Dutch. The British had interests there also,
but ships came from all over the world, picking up or delivering cargo. Only the
K.P.M. boats, a Dutch line, worked the smaller ports. Otherwise the shipping was
native craft, mostly under sail, often with auxiliary motors.
Long before the coming of European traders, ancient civilizations were here, and
ships came often from India, Arabia, and China. A thousand years before Columbus
sailed to America, ships had left the Sunda Strait (between Java and Sumatra) to
sail the 3,300 miles to Madagascar, a voyage considerably longer.
Of this I knew nothing when I arrived. It was during my knockabout years, and I was
taking jobs where and when they could be found, at sea or ashore. Nothing in my schooling
had prepared me for what I was to discover.
On a day away from my ship I hired an Arab boy to sail me over to a nearby island
where I wanted to see a ruin that looked interesting. As he spoke English quite well,
I asked how long he had been in the islands. He told me his people had been there
for nearly four hundred years!
A missionary to whom I spoke knew less than I. When I asked him about the boy's statement,
he shrugged it off with the comment that one heard all sorts of stories. About 170
languages are spoken in Indonesia, but Malay was the tongue of the marketplace, and
English speakers were not hard to find. Oddly enough, it was from that trading schooner
captain who could barely read and write that I learned something of what I needed
to know.
Although uneducated in the usual sense, he was an intelligent man who had spent fifty
years in the islands. His curiosity had been aroused by ancient ruins, and he asked
questions. Years of trading had built him a strong relationship with many of the
peoples of the the islands, and they talked as freely to him as among themselves.
It was from him that I first heard of the extensive trade with India, China, and
the Arabs beginning we do not know when but certainly flourishing in the first century
after Christ.
Gradually, I traced the story of the great island empires of
9
FOREWORD
Shrivijaya and Shailendra, to name but two. The earliest positive date for Chinese
knowledge of Bali is A. D. 977, but Hindu culture had already established itself
by A.D. 400 Ptolemy, the geographer from Alexandria, refers to these islands as early
as A.D. 160 Fa-Hien, the Chinese pilgrim, was in the islands in A. D. 414.
Celebes, now called Sulawesi, is a large island in Indonesia (formerly the East Indies),
lying just east of Borneo. It is about 550 miles long, with an area of 71,400 square
miles. Four long arms extend from the central body of the island. The northern peninsula
runs out into the sea for some 400 miles and is nowhere more than 60 miles wide.
Forty years ago, at the time of these stories, Celebes was ruled by the Netherlands.
The people fell roughly into two groups, the Muslims and the pagans, largely animists.
The largest groups were the Bugis (exceptional seamen), the Manders, the Makassars,
and a more primitive people, the Toradjas.
Rivers are short, and a series of mountain ranges run largely north and south through
the central part of the island. Mountains extend the full 400 miles of the northern
peninsula. Gorontalo, a town of approximately 6,000 people, was located on the south
side of the northern peninsula and was served three times a week by K.P.M. steamers.
Various native craft came and went, and occasionally British Blue Funnel boats would
call.