mill.[1] I believe that General van Damme would even have taken a mill, if he had pleased, and do not understand, therefore, how he could have abstained from those provinces in the North if there had not existed more substantial reasons for so doing than right and justice. However this may be, he extended his conquests, not north but east. The provinces Mandhéling and Ankola—[the latter was the name of the Assistant-Residency formed out of the hardly tranquillized Battah countries]—were not yet quite freed from Atchinese influence (for when once fanaticism has taken firm root in a country, extirpation of it is difficult), although the Atchinese were no longer there; but this was not enough for the Governor. He extended his power to the east coast; and Dutch functionaries and Dutch garrison were sent to Bila and Pertibea, which places were, as you know, afterwards evacuated, when at last a Government Commissioner came to Sumatra, who thought this extension purposeless, and therefore disapproved of it, above all because it was contrary to the principles of economy, on which the mother country so much insisted. General van Damme asserted that this extension would not add to the budget; for that the new garrisons consisted of troops for whom money had already been voted, and that he had thus brought a very large province under the Dutch Government without incurring
- ↑ Allusion to Le Meunier de Sans-souci, by Andriena, in which he says of Frederick the Great of Prussia, “On respecte un moulin, on vole une province.”
