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After dinner and coffee, the Controlleur went on to Tondano, and I strolled about the village waiting for my baggage, which was coming in a bullock-cart, and did not arrive until after midnight. Supper was very similar to dinner, and on retiring I found an elegant little room with a comfortable bed, gauze curtains with blue and red hangings, and every convenience.
From Lotta we had an almost continual ascent for six miles, which brought us on to the plateau of Tondano at an elevation of about 2,400 feet. We passed through three villages whose neatness and beauty quite astonished me.
Tondano, with houses and verandahs gleaming in spotless whiteness among green spaces and luxuriant trees, appears a typical Dutch town, incongruous but picturesque. The absolute purity and transparency of the atmosphere give value and intensity to every shade of colour, and the scarlet hybiscus flowers show the incandescent glow belonging rather to lamps than to blossoms.
The boy mounts one battered steed, the other is left behind in a hospitable stable, and we trot briskly on through lovely scenery of forest and mountain to Kanas, at the head of the beautiful lake of Tondano, hitherto seen in glimpses at an immense depth between encircling peaks.
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.
Wearied almost to stupefaction by eleven hours of a combat, after which victory seems scarcely less ghastly than defeat, we would gladly remain for the night at the little Rest House of Kanas, but prudence compels us to push on to Tondano, at the other end of the lake, while a capable pony remains at disposal.
The descent is a long one, so that I estimated the village to be not more than 1,500 feet above the sea, yet I found the morning temperature often 69°, the same as at Tondano at least 600 or 700 feet higher.
These remarks apply only to a moderate earthquake. A severe one is the most destructive and the most horrible catastrophe to which human beings can be exposed. A few days after the earthquake I took a walk to Tondano, a large village of about 7,000 inhabitants, situated at the lower end of the lake of the same name. I dined with the Controlleur, Mr. Bensneider, who had been my guide to Tomohon.
One had been left at Tondano with fever and diarrhoea, and the other was attacked at Langówan with inflammation of the chest, and as his case looked rather bad I had him sent back to Menado. The people here were all so busy with their rice-harvest, which was important for them to finish owing to the early rains, that I could get no one to shoot for me.
The river Tondano forms a series of lovely cascades below the town, situated four miles from the lake at the present time, for the marshy flats have been reclaimed as rice-grounds, thus somewhat diminishing the stretch of water. The steep drive down to Menado offers a succession of lovely views.
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