Stories from Deli

We would nevertheless like to introduce our readers to the article about Deli in the Penang Gazette of 6 of this occurring. The writer is an American and screaming must therefore be for him the contrasts between the conditions in his native country, where in such an incredibly short time so much grand and useful has been established in the technical field, and in Deli, where everything in that field is still so. is primitive. “As an American citizen,” he indicates, a relatively newly opened country catches something very attractive to me.

In the Far West I saw new settlements supporting and encouraging and in a wonderfully short time wild and uninhabited regions in neat and well-managed places. The difference between the American and Dutch systems is so striking that I was filled with astonishment and disgust as I reflected on what I saw during my last voyage in Deli. At first the steamer cannot get any closer to the port of Laboean. up to 3 miles away, as the water is too shallow, so that the unfortunate traveler must take a seat at anchorage in an open Chinese dinghy, where he is exposed to the scorching rays of the sun and must shelter himself in every way from an attack of heat stroke. road can prevent all the misery of such a trip into the water.

Arrived at the landing site (after lebben rows of Malay huts for (or near perils, compared to which the wigwam of the Indian of Iroquois is a palace), the traveler is greeted with the first signs of civilization in the form of a poor shed and investigative office, where the usual examination of the luggage takes place. After paying the dues, I approach the danger of breaking my legs or falling into the smelly Deli River, in which all kinds of rotting self-conditions dry, up a winding staircase and arrive at a bridge, which is slippery due to the collecting there. impurities.

Laboean is a place with several thousands of inhabitants. But what shall I say about it? Garbage, rotting garbage of all kinds, catches the observant stranger, wherever he turns the eye. “The roads are horrible, as all the tax proceeds go to Batavia and not a cent is spent on the land itself. The road from Labuan to Medan is not a road, it is a nasty swamp from one end to the other, it has holes in which whole carts threaten to be swallowed up. The road I describe is not a shortcut, it is the main road of the country, and as it is, all the public roads are in the department. It is a shame that an administration which claims to be a civilized government should tolerate such conditions.

The Dutch don’t take care of the roads; they do not build bridges, leave the rivers as they are, do nothing for the education of the population; they, in a word, neglect the first duties of a civilized government, and suck the blood from their toiling subjects, in order to be able to transfer millions to the selfish and distant motherland.

“In Deli, although the colony is already 20 years old, there is neither church nor school. Did nothing to raise the moral standard of the people. Prostitution appears everywhere in its most disgusting forms, unrestrained and unregulated. In every door and in front of every window one can see the painted faces of Macao girls and women of 10 years of age and older. The brothels have not been reduced to back streets and corridors, but they are found in the busiest neighborhoods, and the number of prostitutes is thousands; the greediness of the Chinese population is exploited as a source of income by the government; an asylum for the admission of poor and invalids is nowhere to be found, so that lepers and beggars with hideous wounds are found on the corners of the streets.

How badly such a state of affairs must have an effect on all who are supposed to have any civilization. ”The reader has thus again heard a voice from abroad about our maladministration in a region in which much more than in Java the eye of the abroad, and especially of the English, but it was not without hesitation that we proceeded to translate it, because the conditions in Deli are now quite well known and it must be useless to try to persuade the government to do so. She is, trivially put, in indifference to such voices about her shortcomings, dyed in the wool. How else is it possible that such situations, after a personal visit of one of his Governor, can continue? Finally, pause for a moment on the American’s remark about the railroad, which seems very strange to us from an American point of view. ka again the locomotive

Bataviaasch handelsblad
14-10-1884

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