The Mechanical Geniuses Of The Country Have Only Discovered Two
Ways Of Remedying The Evil.
One is, after it has commenced, to
tie the house to a post in the ground on the windward side by a
rattan or bamboo cable.
The other is a preventive, but how they
ever found it out and did not discover the true way is a mystery.
This plan is, to build the house in the usual way, but instead of
having all the principal supports of straight posts, to have two
or three of them chosen as crooked as possible. I had often
noticed these crooked posts in houses, but imputed it to the
scarcity of good, straight timber, until one day I met some men
carrying home a post shaped something like a dog's hind leg, and
inquired of my native boy what they were going to do with such a
piece of wood. "To make a post for a house," said he. "But why
don't they get a straight one, there are plenty here?" said I.
"Oh," replied he, "they prefer some like that in a house, because
then it won't fall," evidently imputing the effect to some occult
property of crooked timber. A little consideration and a diagram.
will, however, show, that the effect imputed to the crooked post
may be really produced by it. A true square changes its figure
readily into a rhomboid or oblique figure, but when one or two of
the uprights are bent or sloping, and placed so as to oppose each
other, the effect of a strut is produced, though in a rude and
clumsy manner.
Just before I had left Mamajam the people had sown a considerable
quantity of maize, which appears above ground in two or three
days, and in favourable seasons ripens in less than two months.
Owing to a week's premature rains the ground was all flooded when
I returned, and the plants just coming into ear were yellow and
dead. Not a grain would be obtained by the whole village, but
luckily it is only a luxury, not a necessity of life. The rain
was the signal for ploughing to begin, in order to sow rice on
all the flat lands between us and the town. The plough used is a
rude wooden instrument with a very short single handle, a
tolerably well-shaped coulter, and the point formed of a piece of
hard palm-wood fastened in with wedges. One or two buffaloes draw
it at a very slow pace. The seed is sown broadcast, and a rude
wooden harrow is used to smooth the surface.
By the beginning of December the regular wet season had set in.
Westerly winds and driving rains sometimes continued for days
together; the fields for miles around were under water, and the
ducks and buffaloes enjoyed themselves amazingly. All along the
road to Macassar, ploughing was daily going on in the mud and
water, through which the wooden plough easily makes its way, the
ploughman holding the plough-handle with one hand while a long
bamboo in the other serves to guide the buffaloes. These animals
require an immense deal of driving to get them on at all; a
continual shower of exclamations is kept up at them, and "Oh! ah!
Gee! ugh!" are to be heard in various keys and in an uninterrupted
succession all day long. At night we were favoured with a different
kind of concert. The dry ground around my house had become a marsh
tenanted by frogs, who kept up a most incredible noise from dusk to
dawn. They were somewhat musical too, having a deep vibrating note
which at times closely resembles the tuning of two or three bass-viols
in an orchestra. In Malacca and Borneo I had heard no such sounds as
these, which indicates that the frogs, like most of the animals of
Celebes, are of species peculiar to it.
My kind friend and landlord, Mr. Mesman, was a good specimen of
the Macassar-born Dutchman. He was about thirty-five years of
age, had a large family, and lived in a spacious house near the
town, situated in the midst of a grove of fruit trees, and
surrounded by a perfect labyrinth of offices, stables, and native
cottages occupied by his numerous servants, slaves, or
dependants. He usually rose before the sun, and after a cup of
coffee looked after his servants, horses, and dogs, until seven,
when a substantial breakfast of rice and meat was ready in a cool
verandah. Putting on a clean white linen suit, he then (trove to
town in his buggy, where he had an office, with two or three
Chinese clerks who looked after his affairs. His business was
that of a coffee and opium merchant. He had a coffee estate at
Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands
near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. About one
he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain,
first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers
and bare feet, and then take a siesta with a book. About four,
after a cup of tea, he would walk round his premises, and
generally stroll down to Mamajam to pay me a visit, and look
after his farm.
This consisted of a coffee plantation and an orchard of fruit
trees, a dozen horses and a score of cattle, with a small village
of Timorese slaves and Macassar servants. One family looked after
the cattle and supplied the house with milk, bringing me also a
large glassful every morning, one of my greatest luxuries. Others
had charge of the horses, which were brought in every afternoon
and fed with cut grass. Others had to cut grass for their
master's horses at Macassar - not a very easy task in the dry
season, when all the country looks like baked mud; or in the
rainy season, when miles in every direction are flooded.
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