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 coasts where the purity of their blood has been destroyed by
the intermixture of other races, they approach to the ordinary
types of the wild inhabitants of the surrounding countries.
In mental and moral characteristics they are also highly
peculiar. They are remarkably quiet and gentle in disposition,
submissive to the authority of those they consider their
superiors, and easily induced to learn and adopt the habits of
civilized people. They are clever mechanics, and seem capable of
acquiring a considerable amount of intellectual education.
Up to a very recent period these people were thorough savages,
and there are persons now living in Menado who remember a state
of things identical with that described by the writers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inhabitants of the
several villages were distinct tribes, each under its own chief,
speaking languages unintelligible to each other, and almost
always at war. They built their houses elevated upon lofty posts
to defend themselves from the attacks of their enemies. They were
headhunters like the Dyaks of Borneo, and were said to be
sometimes cannibals. When a chief died, his tomb was adorned with
two fresh human heads; and if those of enemies could not be
obtained, slaves were killed for the occasion. Human skulls were
the great ornaments of the chiefs' houses. Strips of bark were
their only dress. The country was a pathless wilderness, with
small cultivated patches of rice and vegetables, or clumps of
fruit-trees, diversifying the otherwise unbroken forest. Their
religion was that naturally engendered in the undeveloped human
mind by the contemplation of grand natural phenomena and the
luxuriance of tropical nature. The burning mountain, the torrent
and the lake, were the abode of their deities; and certain trees
and birds were supposed to have special influence over men's
actions and destiny. They held wild and exciting festivals to
propitiate these deities or demons, and believed that men could
be changed by them into animals - either during life or after
death.
Here we have a picture of true savage life; of small isolated
communities at war with all around them, subject to the wants and
miseries of such a condition, drawing a precarious existence from
the luxuriant soil, and living on, from generation to generation,
with no desire for physical amelioration, and no prospect of
moral advancement.
Such was their condition down to the year 1822, when the coffee-
plant was first introduced, and experiments were made as to its
cultivation. It was found to succeed admirably from fifteen
hundred feet, up to four thousand feet above the sea. The chiefs of
villages were induced to undertake its cultivation. Seed and
native instructors were sent from Java; food was supplied to the
labourers engaged in clearing and planting; a fixed price was
established at which all coffee brought to the government
collectors was to be paid for, and the village chiefs who now
received the titles of "Majors" were to receive five percent of
the produce. After a time, roads were made from the port of
Menado up to the plateau, and smaller paths were cleared from
village to village; missionaries settled in the more populous
districts and opened schools; and Chinese traders penetrated to
the interior and supplied clothing and other luxuries in exchange
for the money which the sale of the coffee had produced.
At the same time, the country was divided into districts, and the
system of "Controlleurs," which had worked so well in Java, was
introduced. The "Controlleur "was a European, or a native of
European blood, who was the general superintendent of the
cultivation of the district, the adviser of the chiefs, the
protector of the people, and the means of communication between
both and the European Government. His duties obliged him to visit
every village in succession once a month, and to send in a
report on their condition to the Resident. As disputes between
adjacent villages were now settled by appeal to a superior
authority, the old and inconvenient semi-fortified houses were
disused, and under the direction of the "Controlleurs" most of
the houses were rebuilt on a neat and uniform plan.
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