Goudberg — the “Gold Mountain” — known natively as Seulawah Agam (1,726 m), is the prominent volcanic peak on the deforested highland east of the Atjeh River that, with its companion Weesberg (Seulawah Inòng, 868 m, the “Orphan Mountain”), forms the backdrop of the Pedir plain and the northern skyline of Groot-Atjeh. De Buitenbezittingen records that the Goudberg and Weesberg owed their Dutch names to the gold workings that had once attracted miners — and through them, the political interest of the Sultanate of Atjeh — to the highlands of north-eastern Atjeh. In the expedition literature of the Atjeh-oorlog the mountain also appears under the name Selawa Djanten, used by W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer (1889) for the massif that towers over Lampanas and the valley of Lamtoba.
Topography and landscape
The Goudberg (Seulawah Agam, the “male” mountain — agam meaning male) and Weesberg (Seulawah Inòng, the “female” mountain — inòng meaning female) rise above the “boomlooze, dorre hoogvlakte” — the treeless, barren high plateau — that extends northward from the valley of the Atjeh River to the O. Batèe (the eastern base of the Groot-Atjehsche coastal plain). The plateau, De Buitenbezittingen records, is crowned by “de nog gedeeltelijk bewoude kegels” — the still partly forested cones — of the two mountains, whose namesakes on the Lam Pisang and Boekit Seboen highlands form the “sawahvlakte” (sawah plain) of the same region.
The Atjeh River valley
Below the Goudberg–Weesberg highland, the Atjeh River cuts its way to the North Coast. From Seulimeum, where the valley emerges from the Barisan range, to Indrapoeri, where the Barisan chains begin to part, the river widens into a “golvende, waterarme, bijna totaal ontwoude hoogvlakte” — a rolling, water-poor, almost completely deforested high plateau — crowned by the Seulawah Agam and Seulawah Inòng. Below Indrapoeri, the valley opens into the fertile “vlakte van Groot-Atjeh” — the plain of Groot-Atjeh — that stretches to the North Coast between Atjeh-hoofd and Pedro-punt.
The gold workings and the Sultanate
The Dutch names Goudberg (Gold Mountain) and Weesberg (Orphan Mountain) preserve the memory of the gold workings that once drew miners to the highlands of north-eastern Atjeh. These workings — together with those of the Kawaj XII in the Pedir highlands — were the source of the boengkaj (lump) of gold dust that the keudjeuroeën mas (gold customs-collector) of the Sultan collected annually from each of the twelve gold-seeker settlements. The decline of these workings — and the cholera epidemic of 1878 that completed the depopulation of the gold districts — led to the dissolution of the Kawaj XII in 1914.
The “Pantjang Alas” and the Pantja Pbladen
The Goudberg–Weesberg region is also associated with the Pantjang Alas — the defile of refuge — through which, in the late nineteenth century, the bands of onverzoenlijken (irreconcilables) driven out of the Groot-Atjeh plain made their way to the East Coast. The route, and the various pangkalan (fortified positions) along it, are mentioned in the military correspondence of the Atjeh-krijg.
Account from De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 1 (1917) — orographic position
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s earlier Sumatra-wide survey (Aflevering 1, Hoofdstuk I) places the Goudberg (numbered 67 in the Bureau’s volcano list) as the point at which the eastern volcanic row of Sumatra terminates in a transverse ridge running to Poeloe Wè: “Over den Goudberg (67) [in Groot-Atjeh] eindigt de Oostrij van het eiland met de oceaanhaven, Sabang, terwijl de Goudberg (67) met den ten Oosten daarvan gelegen Weesberg (68) de Noordelijkste dwarsrij vormt.” The Goudberg thus closes the eastern volcanic row of Sumatra — the row that runs from the Loeboek Raja (56) of Midden-Sumatra northward through the Dolok Saoet (58), the Poesoek Boehit (59), the Wilhelmina gebergte (60–65), and the Abong-Abong (66) to the Goudberg itself — and forms, with the Weesberg (68) and the northernmost volcano (69) of Poeloe Wè, the Noordelijkste dwarsrij (northernmost transverse ridge) of the Sumatran volcanic system.
The Bureau frames the Goudberg’s dwarsrij as the geological foundation of the Sabang oceaanhaven and thus of the Dutch colonial state’s principal northern haven — a strategic reading that complements the De Buitenbezittingen Aflevering 2 account of the mountain’s gold-working history and its role in the geography of the Pantjang Alas refuge route.
Account from Cool & Hooijer (1889) — the Selawa Djanten of the Lamtoba tocht
In Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889), the eyewitness narrative of the Lamtoba column of 1879, the mountain is the constant presence of the march, named interchangeably the Goudberg and the Selawa Djanten. On the march of 28 July 1879: “In the south the Goudberg rose majestically against the blue firmament; at every step forward he became greater, broader, higher, more sombre, more impressive.” From the plateau above Lamtoba on 29 July the eyewitnesses saw two broad spurs of the Goudberg embracing the valley on both sides and uniting again in the north-west in a sharply incised ravine, while at the head of the valley, “against the broad flank of the Selawa Djanten and ascending against its steep slopes”, great strips of the heavy forest lay felled and covered with rice-plantings. Through the fortnight’s occupation of the valley the massif framed the days: in the night-piece of the book it is the darkening of the air behind the Selawa Djanten that makes the mountain-mass appear “yet darker, mightier and more violent” before the bivouac wakes; by its side the sky lightens again in the moon-pieces of the Gelsdorp meditation; and on 14 August the cold mountain wind that stiffened the wet column in its bivouac at 1,700 feet descended “along the steep slopes of the Goudberg.”
It is also the book’s last image of the expedition. When on 4 September 1879 the Graaf van Bijland had steamed away with the last of the troops and the warships had left the roadstead of Lampanas: “Even as before, as though nothing had happened, the white foaming surf beat the lonely strand… and on the horizon, in the dense violet layers of air, faded the green-grey silhouette of the for ever abandoned Selawa Djanten!”
Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)
The Goudberg — “Gold Mountain” — was a height bounding the valley of the Atjeh-rivier in Groot-Atjeh, named by G. B. Hooijer together with the Glé Raja in his description of the storms over the XXII Moekims.
In Hooijer’s description
Wanneer de donder weerkaatst van den Goudberg naar den Glé Raja, de bliksem verblindend licht over de in duisternis gehulde landouwen en tropische regens neerkletteren op de roerloos staande boomen — when the thunder echoed from the Goudberg to the Glé Raja, lightning threw blinding light over the darkened fields and tropical rains clattered down on the motionless trees — then, Hooijer wrote, the surplus water of the middle part of the valley ran off towards the feet of the hills and mountains bounding the plain, and trickled thence through creeks and streams to the lower river or the sea coast.
See Also
- Pedir
- Groot-Atjeh
- Kr. Atjeh
- Weesberg
- Seulawah Agam
- Seulawah Inòng
- Kawaj XII
- Indrapoeri
- Seulimeum
- Aceh War
- De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 1
- Poeloe Wè
- Sabang
- Wilhelmina gebergte
- Lampanas
- Lamtoba
- Selimoen
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- W. Cool
- G. B. Hooijer
- 1878
- 1879
- 1889
- 1914
- 1917
- Glé Raja
- Acheh River
- XXII Moekims
- Anagaloeng
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Mountain near Sigli with a beautiful, regular, and imposing form. Slowly the road circles partly around it, then crosses the connecting ridge and descends along the slopes of the Weesberg to the strandvlakte.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 57, 62.
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 4, 9–13, 55.
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 1: Sumatra, Algemeene Hoofdstukken, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), Hoofdstuk I (Oro-hydrographisch), p. 12, and Lijst der Vulkanen.
De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 40.
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 16, 21, 33-34, 43, 76. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the accounts given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer and in Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889) by W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 57, 62.