The Schetskaart van het boven-stroomgebied der Atjeh-rivier (Sketch map of the upper basin of the Atjeh river) was the map in chromolithography issued with W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), compiled from the field survey carried out by the military recording brigade — the opnemingsbrigade under 1e Luitenant G. B. Hooijer with two sergeants-opnemers — during the expedition of the Lamtoba column of 26 July–4 September 1879, in particular during the march to Selimoen of 13–20 August 1879.
Method of the survey
The book’s topographical footnotes describe the making of the map. From the high berg-plateau reached on the morning of 14 August 1879 — the point from which the first full view over the valley of Groot-Atjeh opened, with the Atjeh-rivier below and Selimoen at the left — the brigade chief drew a ground plan of the terrain as presented, sighting the striking points — kampong corners, river bends, mountain and hill tops — with his angle-measuring instrument (hoekmeetinstrument). Repeating the procedure at Selimoen and later at Indrapoeri, the surveyors fixed several points on the map with accuracy and computed their heights; the rest was interpolated into the designed sketch and completed by the route measurements made during the marches of both columns to and from Selimoen. The result was the appended sketch map of the upper basin of the Atjeh river: the first cartographic representation of the region through which, in the authors’ words, no European had passed before and which the route to Kemala and the saddle towards Segli closed in the east.
Van der Heijden’s assessment
In his foreword Generaal K. van der Heijden singled out the map as of particular weight, because in his opinion it answered the hitherto unsolved question: “waar en hoe eindigt de Atjeh-rivier vallei?” — where and how does the valley of the Atjeh river end? The newest official map of Groot-Atjeh, dated January 1884, issued by the Topografisch Bureau at Batavia, did not, he wrote, carry this boundary at all — the precision of the data from which the official map was compiled differing too much from that of the material available for the upper Atjeh valley. From the sketch map, by contrast, three things appeared: how small was the portion of the inhabited and habitable terrain not entered by the Dutch troops; how nearly inaccessible the valley was enclosed on the south, east and north by heavy mountain chains — with the sole exception of the side of Segli; and with how much right the Netherlander could then say: “de Atjeh-vallei is ons.”
Cartographic content
As described in the book’s celebrated panorama passage, the map covered the 3,000–4,000-metre-wide valley floor from west to east; the junction where the Selimoen and Lamkabir rivers are taken up into the Atjeh-rivier; the sawah plains and the closed row of kampongs on both banks; the narrowing of the valley east of Selimoen; the low saddle dividing the Atjeh valley from the territory of Segli; the heavily wooded Mentelah chain behind whose southern flank the Atjeh river rises; the tributary kloofs of the Kroeng Semilik, the kampong strips of Aloe-er Gintang, Lip, Pantjar and Kanalo; the 450-metre chalk hills wedged between the Atjeh and Selimoen rivers; the Kroeng Lam Lo-öt; the Glé Raja overlooking Indrapoeri, held to mark the natural boundary between the upper and lower course; and the Goudberg (Selawa Djanten) closing the whole to the north-east.
Significance
The schetskaart was the first map of the upper Atjeh basin made from instrumental survey, and — as Van der Heijden stressed — the only contemporary cartographic source for the limits of settlement and cultivation in the valley at the moment of the Dutch entry. Because no European returned to the region for decades, the map long remained the sole record of the kampongs and topography of the Selimoen country.
See Also
- Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (Cool & Hooijer, 1889)
- G. B. Hooijer
- W. Cool
- Acheh River
- Selimoen
- Goudberg
- Glé Mentelah
- Glé Raja
- Lamtoba
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), Voorwoord pp. VI–VII and pp. 44-45 (footnote), with schetskaart in chromolithographie. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.