CHAPTER XVII. CELEBES.
(MENADO, JUNE TO SEPTEMBER, 1859.)
IT was after my residence at Timor-Coupang that I visited the northeastern
extremity of Celebes, touching Banda, Amboyna, and Ternate on my way. I
reached Menado on the 10th of June, 1859, and was very kindly received by Mr.
Tower, an Englishman, but a very old resident in Menado, where he carries on a
general business. He introduced me to Mr. L. Duivenboden (whose father had
been my friend at Ternate), who had much taste for natural history; and to Mr.
Neys, a native of Menado, but who was educated at Calcutta, and to whom
Dutch, English, and Malay were equally mother-tongues. All these gentlemen
showed me the greatest kindness, accompanied me in my earliest walks about
the country, and assisted me by every means in their power. I spent a week in the
town very pleasantly, making explorations and inquiries after a good collecting
station, which I had much difficulty in finding, owing to the wide cultivation of
coffee and cacao, which has led to the clearing away of the forests for many
miles around the town, and over extensive districts far into the interior.
The little town of Menado is one of the prettiest in the East. It has the
appearance of a large garden containing rows of rustic villas with broad paths
between, forming streets generally at right angles with each other. Good roads
branch off in several directions towards the interior, with a succession of pretty
cottages, neat gardens, and thriving plantations, interspersed with wildernesses
of fruit trees. To the west and south the country is mountainous, with groups of
fine volcanic peaks 6,000 or 7,000 feet high, forming grand and picturesque
backgrounds to the landscape.
The inhabitants of Minahasa (as this part of Celebes is called) differ much
from those of all the rest of the island, and in fact from any other people in the
Archipelago. They are of a light-brown or yellow tint, often approaching the
fairness of a European; of a rather short stature, stout and well-made; of an open
and pleasing countenance, more or less disfigured as age increases by projecting
check-bones; and with the usual long, straight, jet-black hair of the Malayan
races. In some of the inland villages where they may be supposed to be of the
purest race, both men and women are remarkably handsome; while nearer the