The People Are So Docile And
So Willing To Adopt The Manners And Customs Of Europeans, That
The Change Might Be Easily Effected By Merely Showing Them That
It Was A Question Of Morality And Civilization, And An Essential
Step In Their Progress Towards An Equality With Their White
Rulers.
After a fortnight's stay at Rurúkan, I left that pretty and
interesting village in search of a locality and climate more
productive of birds and insects.
I passed the evening with the
Controlleur of Tondano, and the next morning at nine, left in a
small boat for the head of the lake, a distance of about ten
miles. The lower end of the lake is bordered by swamps and
marshes of considerable extent, but a little further on, the hills
come down to the water's edge and give it very much the
appearance of a greet river, the width being about two miles.
At the upper end is the village of Kakas, where I dined with the
head man in a good house like those I have already described;
and then went on to Langówan, four miles distant over a level
plain. This was the place where I had been recommended to stay,
and I accordingly unpacked my baggage and made myself comfortable
in the large house devoted to visitors. I obtained a man to shoot
for me, and another to accompany me the next day to the forest,
where I was in hopes of finding a good collecting ground.
In the morning after breakfast I started off, but found I had
four miles to walk over a wearisome straight road through coffee
plantations before I could get to the forest, and as soon as I
did so ,it came on to rain heavily and did not cease until night.
This distance to walk everyday was too far for any profitable
work, especially when the weather was so uncertain. I therefore
decided at once that I must go further on, until I found someplace
close to or in a forest country. In the afternoon my friend
Mr. Bensneider arrived, together with the Controlleur of the next
district, called Belang, from whom I learned that six miles
further on there was a village called Panghu, which had been
recently formed and had a good deal of forest close to it; and
he promised me the use of a small house if I liked to go there.
The next morning I went to see the hot-springs and mud volcanoes,
for which this place is celebrated. A picturesque path among
plantations and ravines brought us to a beautiful circular basin
about forty feet in diameter, bordered by a calcareous ledge, so
uniform and truly curved, that it looked like a work of art. It
was filled with clear water very near the boiling point, and
emitted clouds of steam with a strong sulphureous odour. It
overflows at one point and forms a little stream of hot water,
which at a hundred yards' distance is still too hot to hold the
hand in. A little further on, in a piece of rough wood, were two
other springs not so regular in outline, but appearing to be much
hotter, as they were in a continual state of active ebullition.
At intervals of a few minutes, a great escape of steam or gas took
place, throwing up a column of water three or four feet high.
We then went to the mud-springs, which are about a mile off, and
are still more curious. On a sloping tract of ground in a slight
hollow is a small lake of liquid mud, with patches of blue, red, or
white, and in many places boiling and bubbling most furiously.
All around on the indurated clay are small wells and craters
full of boiling mud. These seem to be forming continually, a
small hole appearing first, which emits jets of steam and boiling
mud, which upon hardening, forms a little cone with a crater in
the middle. The ground for some distance is very unsafe, as it
is evidently liquid at a small depth, and bends with pressure
like thin ice. At one of the smaller, marginal jets which I
managed to approach, I held my hand to see if it was really as
hot as it looked, when a little drop of mud that spurted on to my
finger scalded like boiling water.
A short distance off, there was a flat bare surface of rock as
smooth and hot as an oven floor, which was evidently an old mud-pool,
dried up and hardened. For hundreds of yards around where
there were banks of reddish and white clay used for whitewash, it
was still so hot close to the surface that the hand could hardly
bear to be held in cracks a few inches deep, and from which arose
a strong sulphureous vapour. I was informed that some years back
a French gentleman who visited these springs ventured too near
the liquid mud, when the crust gave way and he was engulfed in
the horrible caldron.
This evidence of intense heat so near the surface over a large
tract of country was very impressive, and I could hardly divest
myself of the notion that some terrible catastrophe might at any
moment devastate the country. Yet it is probable that all these
apertures are really safety-valves, and that the inequalities of
the resistance of various parts of the earth's crust will always
prevent such an accumulation of force as would be required to
upheave and overwhelm any extensive area. About seven miles west
of this is a volcano which was in eruption about thirty years
before my visit, presenting a magnificent appearance and covering
the surrounding country with showers of ashes. The plains around
the lake formed by the intermingling and decomposition of
volcanic products are of amazing fertility, and with a little
management in the rotation of crops might be kept in continual
cultivation.
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