S. Kesri-Kiri (Sungei Kesri-Kiri, modern Sungai Kesri Kiri) is a river of the West coast of Atjeh whose headwaters carry abundant gold-bearing quartz-veins, sampled twice in 1937 by engineers from the Marsman’s Algemeene Exploratie Mij but found to be of too low a grade and too remote a location to support further exploration. The S. Kesri-Kiri locality is recorded in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) in the Summary of the Explorations in Sumatra section of the gold-and-silver chapter, and is the only documented colonial-era primary-gold sampling by the M.A.E.M. before the company’s 1940 commencement of dredging production on the Geudong Concession.
The 1937 M.A.E.M. sampling
Van Bemmelen’s record of the 1937 M.A.E.M. sampling at the S. Kesri-Kiri reads:
“The abundant quartz-veins in the headwaters of the S. Kesri-Kiri have been sampled twice by engineers from ‘MaRsman’s Algemeene Exploratie Mij’ in 1937, but grade and remote location did not leave any possibility for further exploration.”
The episode is significant for two reasons. First, it is the earliest documented M.A.E.M. activity in the West-Atjeh interior, predating the 1940 commencement of production at the Geudong Concession by three years. Second, it is the only documented colonial-era sampling of the S. Kesri-Kiri quartz-veins, and the negative result — “grade and remote location did not leave any possibility for further exploration” — accordingly consigned the S. Kesri-Kiri to the small group of Atjeh primary-gold occurrences (alongside the S. Assai and S. Meranging of the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey) that were sampled but never developed.
Place in the Atjeh gold record
The S. Kesri-Kiri occurrence is part of the wider West-Atjeh gold-bearing zone that extends from the primary quartz-veins of the pre-tertiary Slate-formation in the interior to the alluvial placers of the Meulaboh coastal basin downstream. The primary sites of the gold — and, by implication, of the S. Kesri-Kiri quartz-veins — “have to be sought in the pre-tertiary Old Slates Formation and granite contacts of the interior”, but “due to the outbreak of the war these primary deposits have not yet been explored.” For the full account of the West-Atjeh gold record see the entries on Gold and silver in Atjeh and Basin of Meulaboh.
Significance
S. Kesri-Kiri is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the site of the only documented colonial-era primary-gold sampling by the M.A.E.M. before the company’s 1940 commencement of dredging production on the Geudong Concession. The 1937 M.A.E.M. sampling — though unsuccessful, owing to low grade and remote location — is part of the documentary sequence of the West-Atjeh gold exploration that culminated in the M.A.E.M.’s 1940–1941 dredging operation at Meulaboh, and the S. Kesri-Kiri locality accordingly belongs to the same pre-war M.A.E.M. exploration campaign that the company conducted across the West-Atjeh river valleys (Teunom, Woila, Meureuboh, Seunagan) before its drilling data were destroyed in the 1942 Japanese invasion.
See Also
- Acheh
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- B. B. Lindberg
- Basin of Meulaboh
- C. de Groot
- Geudong Concession
- Gold and silver in Atjeh
- H. Wolvekamp
- M.A.E.M.
- P. J. J. Jansen
- S. Assai
- S. Meranging
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1937
- 1940
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 122 (Summary of the Explorations in Sumatra, Atjeh primary deposits, with the S. Kesri-Kiri M.A.E.M. 1937 sampling).