(MACASSAR, JULY TO NOVEMBER, 1857.)
I REACHED Macassar again on the 11th of July, and established myself in
my old quarters at Mamajam, to sort, arrange, clean, and pack up my Aru
collections. This occupied me a month; and having shipped them off for
Singapore, had my guns repaired, and received a new one from England,
together with a stock of pins, arsenic, and other collecting requisites.
I began to feel eager for work again, and had to consider where I should
spend my time until the end of the year; I had left Macassar seven
months before, a flooded marsh being ploughed up for the rice-sowing.
The rains had continued for five months, yet now all the rice was cut,
and dry and dusty stubble covered the country just as when I had first
arrived there.
After much inquiry I determined to visit the district of Maros, about
thirty miles north of Macassar, where Mr. Jacob Mesman, a brother of my
friend, resided, who had kindly offered to find me house-room and
give me assistance should I feel inclined to visit him. I accordingly
obtained a pass from the Resident, and having hired a boat set off one
evening for Maros. My boy Ali was so ill with fever that I was obliged
to leave him in the hospital, under the care of my friend the German
doctor, and I had to make shift with two new servants utterly ignorant
of everything. We coasted along during the night, and at daybreak
entered the Maros river, and by three in the afternoon reached the
village. I immediately visited the Assistant Resident, and applied for
ten men to carry my baggage, and a horse for myself. These were promised
to be ready that night, so that I could start as soon as I liked in the
morning. After having taken a cup of tea I took my leave, and slept in
the boat. Some of the men came at night as promised, but others did not
arrive until the next morning. It took some time to divide my baggage
fairly among them, as they all wanted to shirk the heavy boxes, and
would seize hold of some light article and march off with it, until made
to come back and wait until the whole had been fairly apportioned. At
length about eight o'clock all was arranged, and we started for our walk
to Mr. M.'s farm.
The country was at first a uniform plain of burned-up rice-grounds, but
at a few miles' distance precipitous hills appeared, backed by the lofty
central range of the peninsula. Towards these our path lay, and after
having gone six or eight miles the hills began to advance into the plain
right and left of us, and the ground became pierced here and there with
blocks and pillars of limestone rock, while a few abrupt conical hills
and peaks rose like islands. Passing over an elevated tract forming
the shoulder of one of the hills, a picturesque scene lay before us.
We looked down into a little valley almost entirely surrounded by
mountains, rising abruptly in huge precipices, and forming a succession
of knolls and peaks and domes of the most varied and fantastic shapes.
In the very centre of the valley was a large bamboo house, while
scattered around were a dozen cottages of the same material.
I was kindly received by Mr. Jacob Mesman in an airy saloon detached
from the house, and entirely built of bamboo and thatched with grass.
After breakfast he took me to his foreman's house, about a hundred yards
off, half of which was given up to me until I should decide where to
have a cottage built for my own use. I soon found that this spot was too
much exposed to the wind and dust, which rendered it very difficult
to work with papers or insects. It was also dreadfully hot in the
afternoon, and after a few days I got a sharp attack of fever, which
determined me to move. I accordingly fixed on a place about a mile off,
at the foot of a forest-covered hill, where in a few days Mr. M. built
for me a nice little house, consisting of a good-sized enclosed verandah
or open room, and a small inner sleeping-room, with a little cookhouse
outside. As soon as it was finished I moved into it, and found the
change most agreeable.
The forest which surrounded me was open and free from underwood,
consisting of large trees, widely scattered with a great quantity of
palm-trees (Arenga saccharifera), from which palm wine and sugar
are made. There were also great numbers of a wild Jack-fruit tree
(Artocarpus), which bore abundance of large reticulated fruit, serving
as an excellent vegetable. The ground was as thickly covered with dry
leaves as it is in an English wood in November; the little rocky streams
were all dry, and scarcely a drop of water or even a damp place was
anywhere to be seen. About fifty yards below my house, at the foot of
the hill, was a deep hole in a watercourse where good water was to be
had, and where I went daily to bathe by having buckets of water taken
out and pouring it over my body.
My host Mr. M. enjoyed a thoroughly country life, depending almost
entirely on his gun and dogs to supply his table. Wild pigs of large
size were very plentiful and he generally got one or two a week, besides
deer occasionally, and abundance of jungle-fowl, hornbills, and great
fruit pigeons. His buffaloes supplied plenty of milk from which he made
his own butter; he grew his own rice and coffee, and had ducks, fowls,
and their eggs, in profusion. His palm-trees supplied him all the year
round with "sagueir," which takes the place of beer; and the sugar made
from them is an excellent sweetmeat. All the fine tropical vegetables
and fruits were abundant in their season, and his cigars were made from
tobacco of his own raising. He kindly sent me a bamboo of buffalo-milk
every morning; it was as thick as cream, and required diluting with
water to keep it fluid during the day. It mixes very well with tea and
coffee, although it has a slight peculiar flavour, which after a time
is not disagreeable. I also got as much sweet "sagueir" as I liked to
drink, and Mr. M. always sent me a piece of each pig he killed, which
with fowls, eggs, and the birds we shot ourselves, and buffalo beef
about once a fortnight, kept my larder sufficiently well supplied.
Every bit of flatland was cleared and used as rice-fields, and on the
lower slopes of many of the hills tobacco and vegetables were grown.
Most of the slopes are covered with huge blocks of rock, very fatiguing
to scramble over, while a number of the hills are so precipitous as to
be quite inaccessible. These circumstances, combined with the excessive
drought, were very unfavourable for my pursuits. Birds were scarce, and
I got but few new to me. Insects were tolerably plentiful, but unequal.
Beetles, usually so numerous and interesting, were exceedingly scarce,
some of the families being quite absent and others only represented
by very minute species. The Flies and Bees, on the other hand, were
abundant, and of these I daily obtained new and interesting species. The
rare and beautiful Butterflies of Celebes were the chief object of my
search, and I found many species altogether new to me, but they were
generally so active and shy as to render their capture a matter of great
difficulty. Almost the only good place for them was in the dry beds of
the streams in the forest, where, at damp places, muddy pools, or even
on the dry rocks, all sorts of insects could be found. In these rocky
forests dwell some of the finest butterflies in the world. Three species
of Ornithoptera, measuring seven or eight inches across the wings, and
beautifully marked with spots or masses of satiny yellow on a black
ground, wheel through the thickets with a strong sailing flight. About
the damp places are swarms of the beautiful blue-banded Papilios,
miletus and telephus, the superb golden green P. macedon, and the rare
little swallow-tail Papilio rhesus, of all of which, though very active,
I succeeded in capturing fine series of specimens.
I have rarely enjoyed myself more than during my residence here. As I
sat taking my coffee at six in the morning, rare birds would often
be seen on some tree close by, when I would hastily sally out in my
slippers, and perhaps secure a prize I had been seeking after for weeks.
The great hornbills of Celebes (Buceros cassidix) would often come with
loud-flapping wings, and perch upon a lofty tree just in front of me;
and the black baboon-monkeys, Cynopithecus nigrescens, often stared down
in astonishment at such an intrusion into their domains while at
night herds of wild pigs roamed about the house, devouring refuse, and
obliging us to put away everything eatable or breakable from our little
cooking-house. A few minutes' search on the fallen trees around my house
at sunrise and sunset, would often produce me more beetles than I would
meet with in a day's collecting, and odd moments could be made valuable
which when living in villages or at a distance from the forest are
inevitably wasted. Where the sugar-palms were dripping with sap, flies
congregated in immense numbers, and it was by spending half an hour at
these when I had the time to spare, that I obtained the finest and most
remarkable collection of this group of insects that I have ever made.
Then what delightful hours I passed wandering up and down the dry
river-courses, full of water-holes and rocks and fallen trees, and
overshadowed by magnificent vegetation. I soon got to know every hole
and rock and stump, and came up to each with cautious step and bated
breath to see what treasures it would produce. At one place I would find
a little crowd of the rare butterfly Tachyris zarinda, which would
rise up at my approach, and display their vivid orange and cinnabar-red
wings, while among them would flutter a few of the fine blue-banded
Papilios. Where leafy branches hung over the gully, I might expect to
find a grand Ornithoptera at rest and an easy prey. At certain rotten
trunks I was sure to get the curious little tiger beetle, Therates
flavilabris. In the denser thickets I would capture the small metal-blue
butterflies (Amblypodia) sitting on the leaves, as well as some rare and
beautiful leaf-beetles of the families Hispidae and Chrysomelidae.
I found that the rotten jack-fruits were very attractive to many
beetles, and used to split them partly open and lay them about in the
forest near my house to rot. A morning's search at these often produced
me a score of species--Staphylinidae, Nitidulidae, Onthophagi, and
minute Carabidae, being the most abundant. Now and then the "sagueir"
makers brought me a fine rosechafer (Sternoplus schaumii) which they
found licking up the sweet sap. Almost the only new birds I met with
for some time were a handsome ground thrush (Pitta celebensis), and a
beautiful violet-crowned dove (Ptilonopus celebensis), both very similar
to birds I had recently obtained at Aru, but of distinct species.
About the latter part of September a heavy shower of rain fell,
admonishing us that we might soon expect wet weather, much to the
advantage of the baked-up country. I therefore determined to pay a visit
to the falls of the Maros river, situated at the point where it issues
from the mountains--a spot often visited by travellers and considered
very beautiful. Mr. M. lent me a horse, and I obtained a guide from a
neighbouring village; and taking one of my men with me, we started
at six in the morning, and after a ride of two hours over the flat
rice-fields skirting the mountains which rose in grand precipices on our
left, we reached the river about half-way between Maros and the falls,
and thence had a good bridle-road to our destination, which we reached
in another hour. The hills had closed in around us as we advanced;
and when we reached a ruinous shed which had been erected for the
accommodation of visitors, we found ourselves in a flat-bottomed
valley about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by precipitous and often
overhanging limestone rocks. So far the ground had been cultivated, but
it now became covered with bushes and large scattered trees.
As soon as my scanty baggage had arrived and was duly deposited in the
shed, I started off alone for the fall, which was about a quarter of a
mile further on. The river is here about twenty yards wide, and issues
from a chasm between two vertical walls of limestone, over a rounded
mass of basaltic rock about forty feet high, forming two curves
separated by a slight ledge. The water spreads beautifully over this
surface in a thin sheet of foam, which curls and eddies in a succession
of concentric cones until it falls into a fine deep pool below. Close
to the very edge of the fall a narrow and very rugged path leads to the
river above, and thence continues close under the precipice along the
water's edge, or sometimes in the water, for a few hundred yards, after
which the rocks recede a little, and leave a wooded bank on one side,
along which the path is continued, until in about half a mile, a second
and smaller fall is reached. Here the river seems to issue from a
cavern, the rocks having fallen from above so as to block up the channel
and bar further progress. The fall itself can only be reached by a path
which ascends behind a huge slice of rock which has partly fallen
away from the mountain, leaving a space two or three feet wide, but
disclosing a dark chasm descending into the bowels of the mountain, and
which, having visited several such, I had no great curiosity to explore.
Crossing the stream a little below the upper fall, the path ascends
a steep slope for about five hundred feet, and passing through a
gap enters a narrow valley, shut in by walls of rock absolutely
perpendicular and of great height. Half a mile further this valley turns
abruptly to the right, and becomes a mere rift in the mountain. This
extends another half mile, the walls gradually approaching until they
are only two feet apart, and the bottom rising steeply to a pass which
leads probably into another valley, but which I had no time to explore.
Returning to where this rift had begun the main path turns up to the
left in a sort of gully, and reaches a summit over which a fine natural
arch of rock passes at a height of about fifty feet. Thence was a steep
descent through thick jungle with glimpses of precipices and distant
rocky mountains, probably leading into the main river valley again. This
was a most tempting region to explore, but there were several reasons
why I could go no further. I had no guide, and no permission to enter
the Bugis territories, and as the rains might at any time set in,
I might be prevented from returning by the flooding of the river. I
therefore devoted myself during the short time of my visit to obtaining
what knowledge I could of the natural productions of the place.
The narrow chasms produced several fine insects quite new to me, and one
new bird, the curious Phlaegenas tristigmata, a large ground pigeon
with yellow breast and crown, and purple neck. This rugged path is the
highway from Maros to the Bugis country beyond the mountains. During
the rainy season it is quite impassable, the river filling its bed and
rushing between perpendicular cliffs many hundred feet high. Even at the
time of my visit it was most precipitous and fatiguing, yet women and
children came over it daily, and men carrying heavy loads of palm sugar
(of very little value). It was along the path between the lower and the
upper falls, and about the margin of the upper pool, that I found most
insects. The large semi-transparent butterfly, Idea tondana, flew lazily
along by dozens, and it was here that I at length obtained an insect
which I had hoped but hardly expected to meet with--the magnificent
Papilio androcles, one of the largest and rarest known swallow-tailed
butterflies. During my four days' stay at the falls, I was so fortunate
as to obtain six good specimens. As this beautiful creature flies, the
long white tails flicker like streamers, and when settled on the beach
it carries them raised upwards, as if to preserve them from injury. It
is scarce even here, as I did not see more than a dozen specimens
in all, and had to follow many of them up and down the river's bank
repeatedly before I succeeded in their capture. When the sun shone
hottest, about noon, the moist beach of the pool below the upper
fall presented a beautiful sight, being dotted with groups of gay
butterflies--orange, yellow, white, blue, and green--which on being
disturbed rose into the air by hundreds, forming clouds of variegated
colours.
Such gorges, chasms, and precipices here abound, as I have nowhere seen
in the Archipelago. A sloping surface is scarcely anywhere to be found,
huge walls and rugged masses of rock terminating all the mountains
and enclosing the valleys. In many parts there are vertical or even
overhanging precipices five or six hundred feet high, yet completely
clothed with a tapestry of vegetation. Ferns, Pandanaceae, shrubs,
creepers, and even forest trees, are mingled in an evergreen network,
through the interstices of which appears the white limestone rock or
the dark holes and chasms with which it abounds. These precipices
are enabled to sustain such an amount of vegetation by their peculiar
structure. Their surfaces are very irregular, broken into holes and
fissures, with ledges overhanging the mouths of gloomy caverns; but from
each projecting part have descended stalactites, often forming a wild
gothic tracery over the caves and receding hollows, and affording an
admirable support to the roots of the shrubs, trees, and creepers, which
luxuriate in the warm pure atmosphere and the gentle moisture which
constantly exudes from the rocks. In places where the precipice offers
smooth surfaces of solid rock, it remains quite bare, or only stained
with lichens, and dotted with clumps of ferns that grow on the small
ledges and in the minutest crevices.
The reader who is familiar with tropical nature only through the medium
of books and botanical gardens will picture to himself in such a spot
many other natural beauties. He will think that I have unaccountably
forgotten to mention the brilliant flowers, which, in gorgeous masses of
crimson, gold or azure, must spangle these verdant precipices, hang over
the cascade, and adorn the margin of the mountain stream. But what is
the reality? In vain did I gaze over these vast walls of verdure, among
the pendant creepers and bushy shrubs, all around the cascade on the
river's bank, or in the deep caverns and gloomy fissures--not one single
spot of bright colour could be seen, not one single tree or bush or
creeper bore a flower sufficiently conspicuous to form an object in
the landscape. In every direction the eye rested on green foliage and
mottled rock. There was infinite variety in the colour and aspect of
the foliage; there was grandeur in the rocky masses and in the exuberant
luxuriance of the vegetation; but there was no brilliancy of colour,
none of those bright flowers and gorgeous masses of blossom so generally
considered to be everywhere present in the tropics. I have here given an
accurate sketch of a luxuriant tropical scene as noted down on the spot,
and its general characteristics as regards colour have been so often
repeated, both in South America and over many thousand miles in the
Eastern tropics, that I am driven to conclude that it represents the
general aspect of nature at the equatorial (that is, the most tropical)
parts of the tropical regions.
How is it then, that the descriptions of travellers generally give
a very different idea? and where, it may be asked, are the glorious
flowers that we know do exist in the tropics? These questions can be
easily answered. The fine tropical flowering-plants cultivated in our
hothouses have been culled from the most varied regions, and therefore
give a most erroneous idea of their abundance in any one region. Many of
them are very rare, others extremely local, while a considerable number
inhabit the more arid regions of Africa and India, in which tropical
vegetation does not exhibit itself in its usual luxuriance. Fine and
varied foliage, rather than gay flowers, is more characteristic of those
parts where tropical vegetation attains its highest development, and in
such districts each kind of flower seldom lasts in perfection more than
a few weeks, or sometimes a few days. In every locality a lengthened
residence will show an abundance of magnificent and gaily-blossomed
plants, but they have to be sought for, and are rarely at any one time
or place so abundant as to form a perceptible feature in the landscape.
But it has been the custom of travellers to describe and group together
all the fine plants they have met with during a long journey, and thus
produce the effect of a gay and flower-painted landscape. They have
rarely studied and described individual scenes where vegetation was most
luxuriant and beautiful, and fairly stated what effect was produced
in them by flowers. I have done so frequently, and the result of these
examinations has convinced me that the bright colours of flowers have a
much greater influence on the general aspect of nature in temperate
than in tropical climates. During twelve years spent amid the grandest
tropical vegetation, I have seen nothing comparable to the effect
produced on our landscapes by gorse, broom, heather, wild hyacinths,
hawthorn, purple orchises, and buttercups.
The geological structure of this part of Celebes is interesting.
The limestone mountains, though of great extent, seem to be entirely
superficial, resting on a basis of basalt which in some places forms low
rounded hills between the more precipitous mountains. In the rocky beds
of the streams basalt is almost always found, and it is a step in this
rock which forms the cascade already described. From it the limestone
precipices rise abruptly; and in ascending the little stairway along the
side of the fall, you step two or three times from one rock on to the
other--the limestone dry and rough, being worn by the water and rains
into sharp ridges and honeycombed holes--the basalt moist, even, and
worn smooth and slippery by the passage of bare-footed pedestrians. The
solubility of the limestone by rain-water is well seen in the little
blocks and peaks which rise thickly through the soil of the alluvial
plains as you approach the mountains. They are all skittle-shaped,
larger in the middle than at the base, the greatest diameter occurring
at the height to which the country is flooded in the wet season,
and thence decreasing regularly to the ground. Many of them overhang
considerably, and some of the slenderer pillars appear to stand upon a
point. When the rock is less solid it becomes curiously honeycombed by
the rains of successive winters, and I noticed some masses reduced to
a complete network of stone through which light could be seen in every
direction.
From these mountains to the sea extends a perfectly flat alluvial plain,
with no indication that water would accumulate at a great depth beneath
it, yet the authorities at Macassar have spent much money in boring a
well a thousand feet deep in hope of getting a supply of water like that
obtained by the Artesian wells in the London and Paris basins. It is not
to be wondered at that the attempt was unsuccessful.
Returning to my forest hut, I continued my daily search after birds and
insects. The weather, however, became dreadfully hot and dry, every drop
of water disappearing from the pools and rock-holes, and with it the
insects which frequented them. Only one group remained unaffected by
the intense drought; the Diptera, or two-winged flies, continued as
plentifully as ever, and on these I was almost compelled to concentrate
my attention for a week or two, by which means I increased my collection
of that Order to about two hundred species. I also continued to obtain
a few new birds, among which were two or three kinds of small hawks and
falcons, a beautiful brush-tongued paroquet, Trichoglossus ornatus, and
a rare black and white crow, Corvus advena.
At length, about the middle of October, after several gloomy days, down
came a deluge of rain which continued to fall almost every afternoon,
showing that the early part of the wet season had commenced. I hoped
now to get a good harvest of insects, and in some respects I was not
disappointed. Beetles became much more numerous, and under a thick bed
of leaves that had accumulated on some rocks by the side of a forest
stream, I found an abundance of Carabidae, a family generally scarce in
the tropics. The butterflies, however, disappeared. Two of my servants
were attacked with fever, dysentery, and swelled feet, just at the time
that the third had left me, and for some days they both lay groaning in
the house. When they got a little better I was attacked myself, and as
my stores were nearly finished and everything was getting very damp,
I was obliged to prepare for my return to Macassar, especially as the
strong westerly winds would render the passage in a small open boat
disagreeable, if not dangerous.
Since the rains began, numbers of huge millipedes, as thick as one's
finger and eight or ten inches long, crawled about everywhere--in the
paths, on trees, about the house--and one morning when I got up I even
found one in my bed! They were generally of a dull lead colour or of
a deep brick red, and were very nasty-looking things to be coming
everywhere in one's way, although quite harmless. Snakes too began to
show themselves. I killed two of a very abundant species--big-headed,
and of a bright green colour, which lie coiled up on leaves and shrubs
and can scarcely be seen until one is close upon them. Brown snakes got
into my net while beating among dead leaves for insects, and made me
rather cautious about inserting my hand until I knew what kind of game I
had captured. The fields and meadows which had been parched and sterile,
now became suddenly covered with fine long grass; the river-bed where
I had so many times walked over burning rocks, was now a deep and rapid
stream; and numbers of herbaceous plants and shrubs were everywhere
springing up and bursting into flower. I found plenty of new insects,
and if I had had a good, roomy, water-and-wind-proof house, I should
perhaps have stayed during the wet season, as I feel sure many things
can then be obtained which are to be found at no other time. With my
summer hut, however, this was impossible. During the heavy rains a fine
drizzly mist penetrated into every part of it, and I began to have the
greatest difficulty in keeping my specimens dry.
Early in November I returned to Macassar, and having packed up my
collections, started in the Dutch mail steamer for Amboyna and Ternate.
Leaving this part of my journey for the present, I will in the next
CHAPTER conclude my account of Celebes, by describing the extreme
northern part of the island which I visited two years later.