Forty years ago the country was a wilderness, the people naked savages, garnishing their rude houses with human heads.

Now it is a garden, worthy of its sweet native name of "Minahasa." Good roads and paths traverse it in every direction; some of the finest coffee plantations in the world surround the villages, interspersed with extensive rice-fields more than sufficient for the support of the population.
The people are now the most industrious, peaceable, and civilized in the whole Archipelago.

They are the best clothed, the best housed, the best fed, and the best educated; and they have made some progress towards a higher social state.

I believe there is no example elsewhere of such striking results being produced in so short a time--results which are entirely due to the system of government now adopted by the Dutch in their Eastern possessions.

The system is one which may be called a "paternal despotism." Now we Englishmen do not like despotism--we hate the name and the thing, and we would rather see people ignorant, lazy, and vicious, than use any but moral force to make them wise, industrious, and good.