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Updated: May 31, 2025
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.
Borneo and Celebes, and indeed the greater portion of the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, are still unknown, and the apathy of two centuries still reigns supreme with the enlightened people of England; while they willingly make the most expensive efforts favorable to science, commerce, or Christianity in other quarters, the locality which eminently combines these three objects is alone neglected and alone uncared for.
'That evening, when the night had fallen, I put on my fighting jacket, and my Celebes drawers, and bound my kris, the "Chinese Axe," about my waist, and took my sword, the "Rising Sun," in my hand. Three or four of my boys followed at my back, and I did not forget to take with me the bottle of the white man's perfume.
Dec. 20th.-At sunrise we were opposite the Bontyne mountain, said to be one of the highest in Celebes. In the afternoon we passed the Salayer Straits and had a little squall, which obliged us to lower our huge mast, sails, and heavy yards. The rest of the evening we had a fine west wind, which carried us on at near five knots an hour, as much as our lumbering old tub can possibly go.
Early this year a Celebes trader becalmed in a prau was watching him at it. He steamed the gunboat full tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark. Did you ever hear of anything more provoking eh?"
The seven hundred miles of Java's length, Sumatra's vast extent of fourteen hundred miles, the area of Borneo equalling that of France and Germany combined, and the fact of Celebes, for which we are bound, exceeding the dimensions of Norway and Sweden, convey startling suggestions of the limitless space occupied by the great Equatorial group.
Whether or not we believe in its existence in the exact form here indicated, the student of geographical distribution must see in the extraordinary and isolated productions of Celebes, proof of the former existence of some continent from whence the ancestors of these creatures, and of many other intermediate forms, could have been derived.
For several days after leaving Unsang, we had but little or no wind, and we were borne away by a strong easterly current, till we were carried in sight of Celebes, which is high and mountainous, and covered with dense forests of gigantic trees.
In Central Celebes when there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-stalks begin to shrivel up, many of the villagers, especially the young folk, go to a neighbouring brook and splash each other with water, shouting noisily, or squirt water on one another through bamboo tubes.
However, this deformation furnishes no clue to the antiquity of the graves. Similar deformations exist in the Celebes, New Britain, etc. Head-shaping has been universal, cf. I have sawed one of these skulls in two along the sagittal suture. The illustration gives a good idea of the amount of compression and of the violence which this skull endured when quite young.
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