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A rash determination to drive across the Minahasa, and pick up the boat at Menado, involves unimagined difficulties. Having frequently experienced the pace accomplished by many a Timor pony of emaciated and dejected aspect, faith accepts even this unpromising team for the long drive of thirty miles. Quaint campongs, with bamboo fences and curiously arched gateways, flank the woodland road.
Menado, divided by the river, is inhabited by two distinct tribes of the mysterious colonists who came from the farthest East to these unknown shores.
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.
As I was wasting valuable time at Panghu, owing to the bad weather and the illness of my hunters, I returned to Menado after a stay of three weeks. Here I had a little touch of fever, and what with drying and packing all of my collections and getting fresh servants, it was a fortnight before I was again ready to start.
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.
The next day we made the northern end of Celebes, for which we were steering, and before dark anchored off the pretty little town of Menado. As we looked at it from our anchorage we could see rows of rustic houses, with broad paths between them forming streets, mostly at right angles with each other.
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.
An Amboyna Christian named Theodorus Watakena, who had been some time with me and had learned to skin birds very well, agreed to go with Allen, as well as a very quiet and industrious lad named Cornelius, whom I had brought from Menado.
The French ship of discovery, L'Astrolabe, also touched at Menado and procured collections.
A few days afterwards I returned to Menado on horse-back, sending my baggage around by sea; and had just time to pack up all my collections to go by the next mail steamer to Amboyna. I will now devote a few pages to an account of the chief peculiarities of the Zoology of Celebes, and its relation to that of the surrounding countries. THE position of Celebes is the most central in the Archipelago.
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