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Here Cap'n Bryant, a retired New Bedford whaling captain, was wont to spend the sunny days in his big cane-seated rocking-chair, puffing meditatively at his pipe and for my boyish edification spinning yarns of adventure in far-distant seas and on islands with magic names Tawi Tawi, Makassar Straits, the Dingdings, the Little Paternosters, the Gulf of Boni, Thursday Island, Java Head.

The official buildings of Makassar, including the Dutch Governor's palace, face a green aloon-aloon, flanked by superb avenues of kanari and tamarind trees.

A quaint water-castle, shaped like a Chinese junk, stands on a rock in a fish-pond reflecting the rosy sky, and the fretted marble of a beautiful Arabian tomb gleams from a clump of white-starred sumboya exhaling incense on the air. As the magic and mystery of night shroud Makassar in a mantle of gloom, the surrounding sea becomes a vision of phosphorescent flame to the furthest horizon.

Before our hawsers had fairly been made fast to the wharf at Makassar it became evident that among the natives our arrival had created a distinct sensation. The wharf was crowded with Bugis, as the natives of the southern Celebes are known, who tried in vain to make themselves understood by our Filipino crew.

The Dutch officials whom I had met in Samarinda and Makassar had depicted the obscure little isle as a flaming, fragrant garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where bronze-brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing loveliness disported themselves on the long white beaches, or loitered the lazy days away beneath the palms.

Science and the arts have not, by extending their views, contributed to enlarge the circle of their desires; and the various refinements of luxury, which in polished societies become necessaries of life, are totally unknown to them. The Makassar and Bugis people, who come annually in their praws from Celebes to trade at Sumatra, are looked up to by the inhabitants as their superiors in manners.

At almost every place of importance which we visited in Malaysia we found these agents of Standard Oil alert and clean-cut young fellows, who, far from home and friends, are helping to build up a commercial empire for America oversea. The native soldiery, who form the bulk of the Makassar garrison, are quartered, with their families, in long, stone barracks ten couples to a room.

They may have reformed, but that did not prevent Captain Galvez from doubling the deck-watch at night while we were in Celebes waters. He believed in safety first. The Winsome Widow had been very enthusiastic about going to the Celebes because Makassar is the greatest market in the world for those ornaments so dear to the feminine heart bird-of-paradise plumes.

The comparison between Balambangan and Labuan may be stated as follows: Balambangan, as a windward post relative to China, is superior, and it commands in time of war the inner passage to Manilla, and the eastern passages to China by the Straits of Makassar. Of its capabilities of defense we know nothing. It was surprised by the Sooloos. Its climate was not well spoken of.

The Koetei, which has its nativity somewhere in the mysterious Kapuas Mountains, winds its way across four hundred miles of unmapped wilderness, and, a score of miles below Samarinda, empties into Makassar Straits, answered my requirements admirably, providing a highroad to the country of my boyish dreams.