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Updated: May 31, 2025
For a similar reason it is a rule with the Toradjas of Central Celebes that no one may stand or loiter on the ladder of a house where there is a pregnant woman, for such delay would retard the birth of the child; and in various parts of Sumatra the woman herself in these circumstances is forbidden to stand at the door or on the top rung of the house-ladder under pain of suffering hard labour for her imprudence in neglecting so elementary a precaution.
Among the Sea Dyaks neither of the parents may bind up anything with a string or make anything fast during the wife's pregnancy. In the Toumbuluh tribe of North Celebes a ceremony is performed in the fourth or fifth month of a woman's pregnancy, and after it her husband is forbidden, among many other things, to tie any fast knots and to sit with his legs crossed over each other.
Instead of digging for food with its snout as other pigs do, it feeds on fallen fruits from various trees. We saw also a number of butterflies, which Mr Hooker said were peculiar to Celebes. Besides the babirusa, herds of wild pigs of large size abound in the northern forests, and numerous jungle-fowl, hornbills, and great fruit-pigeons.
Perhaps in time they will learn to employ the python as a rat-catcher, for the python is not surpassed for this purpose. The forest trees are much like those of the adjacent islands. There are no very large animals, those peculiar to Celebes being the tailless baboon and the "pig-deer," which has tusks and curving horns.
An al fresco picnic party from the hills occupies a green mound, and boils a kettle on sticks of flaming bamboo, though a stray spark might easily burn down the entire campong. A great part of Celebes is uninhabited and uncultivated, but the tribes of the interior, warlike and treacherous, have never been completely subjugated.
But the interruption of the sparking was only temporary, and he reached the island of Celebes safely. Then he thought it merely prudent to descend and overhaul the engine, though he deplored the loss of time. He landed on a solitary spot where there was no likelihood of being molested, and Rodier having cleaned the fouled plug that had caused the trouble, they went on again.
In crossing from Celebes to Borneo and back, we passed nearly over the place where seven islands are laid down in the charts, about 00° 40' to the northward of the line; but, as we saw nothing, I conclude, as Captain Carteret did, "that they exist only upon paper;" or that they may have been some of those islands which have been seen near the coast, and by an incorrect account of their situation, in point of longitude, have been placed here in mid-channel.
The news he heard, during his navigation, caused him suddenly to cast his thoughts on an island situate under the equinoctial, betwixt the Moluccas and Borneo, stretched in length two hundred leagues from north to south, and divided into sundry kingdoms, called by the geographers Celebes, by the historians Macassar, from the names of the two capital cities, of the two principal kingdoms; as to the rest, well peopled, and abounding in all sorts of riches.
According to early writers, the Moro of the Gulf carried on a lucrative slave trade with this and other tribes. As the Moro raids were made by water and often reached as far as the Northeastern coast of this island and south to the Celebes it is quite possible that these remote districts have helped in the upbuilding of the tribe under discussion.
If we travel from Java or Borneo to Celebes or the Moluccas, the difference is still more striking. In the first, the forests abound in monkeys of many kinds, wild cats, deer, civets, and otters, and numerous varieties of squirrels are constantly met with.
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