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Indonesia's wealthiest island, Sumatra, is bigger than California; Java has more people than the American Midwest. Mountains march down the spines of both islands, and a hundred volcanoes drift their smoke against the blue tropical sky. Indonesia bursts with resources, from copra and hemp to teak, tobacco and oil. The world's largest flower, rafflesia, with a diameter of 3 ft., blooms on Madura. The red-brown soil of Java (pop. 52,000,000), terraced with unbelievable ingenuity, produces two rice crops a year. The warm seas send long rollers crashing on the palm-fringed shores of Ternate, with its burgeoning fields of nutmeg and pepper; Sumba, with its fragrant sandalwood; Borneo, with its vast, barely tapped treasure house of oil.
It is a land where the centuries do not follow each other but run side by side. In the oil city of Palembang the streets throb with Cadillacs and motor scooters, while scarcely 50 miles away aboriginal Kubus still live in trees. There are modern textile factories on Java but. close by, a tiger may feast on a wild pig or water buffalo. Elephants trumpet in the rain forest; single-horned rhinos move like tanks through the deltaic swamps; the 10-ft. Komodo lizard looks out from thick underbrush like a dragon from the pages of Arthurian romances.
Bowl-Shaped Gongs. The people are lively, spirited, remarkably intelligent. The basic stock is Malay, with an overlay of Indian, Chinese, Arab and European blood and culture. More than 90% are Moslem, but in Indonesia the religion of the Prophet rests on a foundation of Buddhism, animism and assorted superstitions that date from prehistory. War has always been highly regarded and widely practiced. For centuries, native praus flashed out from inlets and rivers to send kris-waving pirates swarming aboard European merchantmen richly laden with the wealth of the Spice Islands. The conquering Dutch were never able to thoroughly subdue Atjeh, on the northern tip of Sumatra. In 1906 a Balinese rajah, his sons, wives, concubines and soldiers committed mass suicide rather than surrender.
But Indonesians love peace as well. In the soft scented night each village resounds with the rhythmic, curiously tuneful gamelan music of bowl-shaped gongs, bamboo flutes, metal keys, two-stringed violins. Fluid-fingered dancers will hold an audience enchanted all the night long; wayang puppet shows, telling the heroic legends of the past, run from sunset to dawn. Yet together with the industriousness and mannered behavior of the Indonesian is the wild agony of the amok, when a man for no clear reason will throw off all restraint and race through his village wielding his razor-sharp parang against everything in his path.
Quicksilver.