Islands of Indonesia

In the first part of this century, few visitors to Indonesia ventured much further than Java, and those who wrote books about their experiences often judged that island by their own Western standards. Violet Clifton, who first visited Indonesia in 1912, was different. She treated Java simply as a transit stop on her travels to more remote islands and left her Western prejudices at home. Traveling by horseback and residing at government rest houses, Violet Clifton and her husband made leisurely progress through scarcely visited places such as Sumatra, Nias, Mentawai, Celebes and Lombok. This book (first published as Islands of Queen Wilhelmina in 1927) is a refreshing look off-the-beaten-track at early twentieth-century Indonesia where tourists were still virtually unknown.