CHAPTER II
The boat did not touch at Moulmain, sothat I first landed in Rangoon.
A remarkable aspect opened in front of our eyes, all yards abd ropes of the ships were covered with crows, who were waiting for food from the crew; the land was as it were poisoned by these black thieves.
At the dinnertable of the consul, with whom I stayed again, they were so cheeky, they pinched the rice of our plates.
Moulmain had a large garrison, at which head stood a colonel of Infantry; I had requested to pay my respects to him and was received by his spouse; she kept me busy in a very charming way and afterwards took me to the office to her husband, who invited me three days later to come round by 5 pm to the officer’s mess and after attending the game of graces and the musical performance to stay for dinner.
The same day I commenced visiting the different steam sawmills. These were all arranged on a large scale and had the peculiarity to be operated by very few workers. To each sawmill a large storage place was attached, where the square beams were piled up in prismatic formation; between these prismas smooth wooden platforms were installed, which were in the middle crossed by a broad similar platform.
Along these platforms the heavy square beams of more than 18m in length and some 1 m thick are being transported by elephants, at which only 2 cornacs ran the whole show.
The elephant places himself above one of the prismatic piles of wood, whips one of the heavy beams with his tusks on the platform next to it, shifts the beam with his leg in the wanted direction and pushes the log with his trunk in a trot to the wider platform, lies that one again in the direction of the mill and again in a trot to the mill.
With the examination of the beams the elephant stands above one of the prismas and turns wiht his tusks every beam each time a quater around and when this has been examined, he starts with the next one.
In this way one can examine a party of wood in less than 1/4th of the time, which is needed on Java with coolies.
When the elephant has done enough to his liking, he then demands a bath and no cornac can keep him working; Mr. goes calmly to the river, jumps in it and keeps splashing himself with his trunk for quite some time.
footnote:
a carnac is an elephant minder.
Remarkable is that the visitor will be asked not to give the animals anything; if someone for instance would give one of them a piece of sugarcane then he would not rest the next day until he had been given something.
The consul had told me, that the forestry chief was a Dutchman and that he would certainly appreciate it if I would pay him a visit; so after having asked if it was ok I drove with the consul’s carriage to the beautiful villa of my countryman, whose first words were:” You must excuse me not to talk Dutch any more”. He received me in the most charming way and told me amongst others that he had stayed behind in Moulmain as a youthful ships mate, but had worked his way up to a high position through hard work and self study.
My time didn’t allow for further visits to him.
On Friday afternoon before I would be leaving I visited another steammill, where a Frenchman stood at the head; he also had planned to go to the mess and he suggested to drive together. So I arrived at the same time with him at the games ground and complimented the colonel. He expressed his surprise that I also spoke French and asked if I could also understand German; to my confirmative answer he said that he was going to introduce me to a German lady, who had no countryman in Moulmain. We did as suggested.
We started to chatter in German and after a little while it was clear that the lady had lived in Rotterdam for 12 years; so I was also allowed to speak in my own language once more and I preferred this despite the colonel giving me a compliment, when he introduced me as: Captain Kerlen, speaks every language.
I didn’t take part in the game of graces, becauseI had never played it and thus concentrated at watching, under the pleasure of the military music band. That band also played at the next dinner, which was really very well done and was lavishly sprinkled with champaign, whilst at the dessert sherry and portwine were going round.
At the table I was seated next to the spouse of the colonel, whilst next to me the second commander of the garrison colonel Nabington was seated.
He was a lupus sufferer and had two quills in his nose, through which he was breathing. I could not understand how such a filthy person could stay in active service.
Besides, in Singapore I was also astonished about the artillery major, who daily came with his carriage driving along the Esplanade whilst his syce harnessed the horse and changed the harness for a military one , drank 3 to 4 brandy cocktails at the bar of the Hotel de l’Euirope and then mounted his horse again; 3 hours later this game was played in reverse order and major went home stoned every day. Such examples we do not tolerate in the army.
In the meantime I had succeeded well and I had signed a contract for a reasonable price with a Persian firm for the complete delivering within three months of the needed goods; since the examination of the wood had to be done by the consul I had someone make standing models of each kind of beam, joist or board, to which a small error was present, lesser quality than these examples were not allowed to be delivered.
3 Days later at my farewell the consul made me a compliment because I had finished the business in good order so quickly; an English officer would have needed 1 to 2 months for it; I was not allowed to pride myself on that as I had a large attraction in Singapore, which encouraged me to be fast.
The return journey didn’t present anything particular; in Penang I found 3 letters from Charlotte, of which one was already an answer to one of my letters from Rangoon. When the Puttiala ( the same boat with which I had left ) dropped the anchor in the street of Singapore I flew in a hirecar and drove immediately to the Castle to embrace my love; I had been away for 3 weeks.
Upon returning I found an order from my chief to hold a tender for the building of a camp in Oleh-leh and this did happen after proper announcement; there were 5 tenders and the least was asked by the firm Howarth, Lyon & Erskine, from which Mr. Lyon was present at the tender. He asked $ 100 000, which in the first place seemed far too dear, although I wasn’t much informed about prices and wages, materials and freights.
I declared the tender a failure, although Mr. Lyon asked me afterwards if he could talk to me about the case in the evening in the hotel, which I agreed to.
At our closer conversation he then asked me if I had taken into account the fact, that in the asked sum of $ 100 000 also my allowance was included, as it was usually done in Singapore.
I answered that this habit didn’t exist amongst Dutch officers and besides that my Government paid me enough, to which he asked if he could hand in a new tender.
This request I also granted and the next morning I received the new form, in which he only asked $ 80 000. After a closer look I assigned him the job; a draft contract was drawn up and the ok from Batavia was requested and granted.
So through my action I had earned 50 000 guilders for my Government.
A day after the signing of the approved contract I was sitting down for breakfast, when a large letter was handed over, in which envelope a second one with the word: private written on it, at the opening of the second envelope a bunch of banknotes appeared, certainly to the value of $ 2000; I showed Hermens in which way one tried to bribe me and asked him to immediately send the money back to Mr. Lyon. That it came from him was certain in my opinion, since I clearly recognised the handwriting on both envelopes.
That I had not misjudged was proved to be right, because Mr. Lyon still came to apologise the same day.
Life in Singapore for me ran smoothly, did I have a lot of work at the many building projects, at 5 pm I had finished, dolled up myself in the hotel and then drove to the Castle, where first crocket was played and music made and after dinner Charlotte and I took our places on the sofa in the big hall, used for this purpose; we were then teased by the eldest sister, Mrs. Maingay, who called us the spoon couple and predicted to C. that she would one day be jealous of the piano, which I so fondly played.
The Sundays on the Castle were evenso boring as we were only allowed to accompany holy songs, luckily though they didn’t touch our little sofa.
This beautiful life wouldn’t actually last for long, as in the beginning of December I received a message from Batavia that my domain in Singapore had finished and I would be releaved by the captain of engineers Haver-Droeze from the Dutch Army.
Discussing my uncoming marriage with my future father in law, he found, that we were engaged still too short to be thinking about it already, besides he wanted to have proof, that we also would be faithful to each other after separation and I simply had to agree with that.
Haver-Droeze came and the change over started. During this change over I received a letter with snall parcel from Mr. Lyon; in this letter he repeated his excuses that he had offered me an allowance at that time, but had the opinion that I would still accept the enclosed golden watch with same chain as a memento for the pleasant way in which we had worked together.
H.D. to whom I had notified everything, thought that I could accept this souvenir, but I was thinking that later on I would feel ashamed if one would ask me from whom I had received that beautiful watch, an opinion which in the evening papa Baumgarten shared with me.
So I send the parcel back the next day with a polite thankyou note and I have never been sorry about that.
On the 21st of December I departed for Batavia and arrived there 2 days later.
So I didn’t get to enjoy a happy Christmas, which I had last year and had given me so much pleasure, with my future family.
Upon arriving in Batavia I understood from colonel Ermeling, that he had suggested to send me in the commision to the Westside of Borneo in order to make up a project for the transfer of the camp from Singkawang to Ponitanak.
Awaiting my departure I was free of service and used that time to visit all my old friends and besides write long letters to Charlotte.
On the 5th of January 1878 I departed with a steamer direct to Singkawang and was invited to move upon my arrival into the house of the officer charged with the engineering service.
I started immediately with the research to transfer buildings, of which most were in exceptional good state.
Especially the frames, roofs and floors excelled because of their perfectness; so were the uprights which were standing in the ground and had been exposed to water and wind for 35 years, the floors were smooth and had nearly become all black as marble and the shingles all still useable. From all of this it was obvious what kind of excellent material iron wood had been.
The inspection lead to nothing particular and I can tell very little about the village itself, sothat I will continue with my story after my return to Singkawang, which I reached in the same way as I had left it. I had to wait for the arrival of the bi-weekly mailboat with the effect that I couldn’t conintue my journey to Pontianak until the 9th February. The mailboad didn’t touch Pontianak, but stopped for the mouth of the Kapoeas river so it could unload passengers and goods; usually a well manned sloop came to pick them up with the mail. This was not the case this time and I had to do with a raft from the crossproa which was lying in front of the river. It went very slowly against the current and I sat there boring and annoying myself for hours, when finally the Resident’s sloop came to meet me close to Pontianak and took me to the jetty.
