The object and results of a Dutch expedition into the interior of Sumatra in the years 1877, 1878 and 1879
M. A. L. van Hasselt, a Dutch colonial Controleur at Soepajang, published this account in 1885 of the Netherlands Geographical Society’s scientific expedition into the interior of Sumatra, which he led between February 1877 and March 1879. The article, translated from French by R. N. Bland, was originally delivered at the Third International Geographical Congress in Venice in September 1881 and presents the expedition’s geographical, zoological, ethnographical, and linguistic results for the previously unexplored central highlands and river systems of the island.
Summary
The expedition was conceived to fill a vast gap in European knowledge of central Sumatra, where existing maps showed only inaccurate river courses, unknown mountain topography, and no reliable ethnographic or natural-history data. Van Hasselt’s section, accompanied by the civil engineer D. D. Veth (geography, geology, meteorology, photography) and the zoologist S. T. Snelleman, was tasked with the highlands, while a separate naval party under Lieutenant Santvoort (later Cornelissen) surveyed the Batang Hari river and its affluent the Tembesi by steam-launch. The political situation proved far more hostile than anticipated: the expelled Sultan Taha, based at Telok Perdah, continued to incite resistance along the Hari, and the petty states of the Padang highlands barred the western approach, forcing the party to redirect eastward into Djambi territory where even friendly chiefs could not guarantee safe passage without military escort (pp. 41–44).
The scientific programme nonetheless yielded substantial results. The river survey established that the Hari flows due north from the Padang highlands, bringing the furthest navigable point for large vessels considerably closer to the Ombilin coal mines than earlier maps had indicated, and corrected the attribution of the Mamoun and Pottar rivers to the Hari basin rather than the Kouantan. On the linguistic and ethnographic side, van Hasselt collected word-lists of the Rawas and Lebong (Redjang) dialects, songs, proverbs, and manuscripts in Manangkabo, Mourai-Batou, and Touankounan Tjerdeg, and documented the Rentjoung figure-writing system engraved on bamboo strips. He also recorded that the Koubous aborigines spoke what was essentially a harsher dialect of Malay rather than a wholly distinct language (pp. 45–46).
The most dramatic narrative passage describes the party’s attempt, beginning on 5 December 1877, to ascend Korintji (Indrapura), the highest peak in Sumatra at 3,600 metres, which no European or native had previously climbed. After six days of jungle march with native carriers, they reached the crater rim, where a seething sulphur lake lay more than 1,000 metres below, and recorded a barometric pressure of 495 mm and a temperature of 7.8 °C before weather and exhaustion forced their descent (pp. 47–54).
Key Findings
- The Batang Hari was surveyed in full and shown to flow due north from the Padang highlands, placing the upper navigable limit much nearer to the Ombilin coal seams (discovered by Engineer Greve in 1869) than prior maps indicated (pp. 42, 45).
- The expedition collected 30 mammals, 285 birds, 173 reptiles and amphibians, 385 fish, 5–6 thousand insects (including 323 species of lepidoptera), and a large number of molluscs, many of them new species, now housed in the Royal Museum of Natural History at Leyden (p. 46).
- Over 500 ethnographical objects were gathered and deposited in the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Leyden, accompanied by thirteen chapters of ethnographical description (pp. 45–46).
- The summit of Korintji (3,600 m) was reached in December 1877; barometer 495 mm, thermometer 7.8 °C; crater floor with sulphur lakes more than 1,000 m below the rim (pp. 51–53).
- Faunal altitudinal limits recorded on Korintji: rhinoceros tracks to 2,000 m, elephant tracks to 1,500 m, leeches to 1,300 m, spiders (family Lycoides) to 3,000 m, wild chamois (Antilocapra sumatrensis) to the summit (p. 54).
- The political obstacle of Sultan Taha, deposed in 1855 and based at Telok Perdah on the Batang Hari, whose followers controlled the river chiefs to the mouth of the Tembesi, directly impeded the naval surveying party (p. 44).
Conclusion
Van Hasselt’s account demonstrates that a single multi-disciplinary expedition of roughly two years’ duration could transform the known geography, natural history, and ethnography of an entire island interior, converting a region previously mapped only in outline into one with surveyed rivers, photographed peaks, catalogued fauna, and recorded languages—while simultaneously revealing how fragile Dutch administrative control remained over the very territories now claimed.
Context
- The author served as a colonial Controleur at Soepajang and was appointed to lead the expedition by virtue of that office; the text is framed as a report to the Geographical Congress rather than a personal memoir, though the Korintji ascent is rendered in vivid first-person narrative (p. 39).
- The article is a translation from the French version published in the second volume of the Proceedings of the Third International Geographical Congress (Venice, 1881); no English account of the expedition had previously appeared (p. 39).