The warehouse and office of the shipping firm at Macassar whose principal
acts as British consul assure a wanderer from home that his affairs may
be there considered of consequence. I noticed that office with approval
before I knew it was under my flag. It appeared to be a solid structure
of the Portuguese occupation, and its calm was cloistral. Along the hot
street it cooled the sidewalk with a roofed colonnade. The white columns,
in that sun, were shafts of light, and under them the open doors of the
warehouse admitted to warm gloom and the smell of spices. I stepped
into the shadows, where I could just make out old beams and a vista of
bales, and snuffed it up. I thought this must be the smell of Macassar.
Perhaps smelling it is as good a way of getting the history of a place
as any other. When I called there for my letters, respectfully waiting
for attention in the light of an upper story where clerks in white linen
were silent over great leather volumes, presently I found a difficulty
in raising my voice above a whisper in that immemorial hush. A clerk
approached, listened to me, and vanished without a word. Not important
enough to be noticed? But presently I saw him beckoning, in a side aisle,
like a grave priest to an initiate, and I followed him past a motionless
guardian of the sanctuary—that figure might have been a statue, or it
might have been only the Malay equivalent of a hall porter—to an inner
room, and he left me. I was alone there, with a matured table on which
documents were orderly, and two chairs. I sank into the leathern deep of
one, and looked at Chinese almanacs on the wall. I like Chinese almanacs.
They are always decorated with figures of Chinese girls in embroidered
tunics and trousers. Every one of these girls has a black fringe, and her
expression beyond doubt is exactly what would lead Chinese soldiers to
adorn their dugouts with national almanacs. That is what interests me; I
try to find the angle where a Chinaman would stand to admire something
different from what I see at mine. There were two large maps of Celebes,
and they made that great island greater, than ever with blank spaces
which had no names. On a sideboard were many samples of mace, gums, and
tortoise shell. There was a chart of the East Indies, and advertisements
of ships and their sailing dates. I could have been contented there for
a long time. The feeling came over me that I should like to sit at that
table and play with ships and produce. But when the proprietor entered
it was certain that there was a game at which I should be badly beaten.
There could be no doubt he knew more about it. He knew more of a good
many things; but his bearing gave me the easy notion that his valuable
time was for me to spend as I chose. He appeared to understand Europe
better than most Europeans, and though it would have been easy for me
to have disagreed with him about Mr. Lloyd George, I did not care to do
so. I had not brought the Welsh mountains with me and did not feel equal
to going back for them. There were my letters; and outside afterward
it occurred to me, when I remembered what is so often written of
British consuls, that occasionally there may be bad travelers as well as
unfortunate consuls.
That night, in a ship so still and quiet that it surprised me to find I
could switch on the cabin light, I read in my bunk Wallace’s story of his
visit to Maros. It is a passage I know well. The naturalist so clearly
was surprised by Maros, and could not forget it. Maros is about thirty
miles behind Macassar, and here veritably I was in Macassar; yet a peep
at Maros was no easier than though I were still at home. Indeed, it
seemed more distant than ever, as though time and not distance separated
us. But in London I was unaware of the meaning of thirty miles in Celebes.
When I opened my eyes again it was daylight, and the consul’s clerk stood
by my bunk, regarding me in respectful sadness, as though I were a hero
lying in state. When he saw I was awake, then his hat, which he held
against his breast, began to revolve in his hands. He apologized. But
would I care to go to Maros? The consul’s motor-car was beside the ship.
We went. The consul’s clerk had never seen Maros. Too busy! And on
Saturdays and Sundays there were swimming and tennis. We passed a swamp
overgrown with the plumes of nipa palms, and nearly ran over an eagle
while watching the water for alligators. The great bird got up from under
the bonnet as the brakes ground our wheels on the dust. Our way led us
over flat country. There were many buffaloes in the rice fields; they
were more noticeable than usual because so many of them were albinos. The
villagers were husking cocoanuts, or were out cutting acres of rice stalk
by stalk with little knives. Ahead of us, eastward, was a high blue
rampart to the plain, and in an hour it was right over us.
This wall was broken but unscalable, soaring immediately from the plain
to a height perhaps of a thousand feet. It was an array of pinnacles so
long and sharp, chasms so abrupt, clefts so narrowly cut, and all clothed
with shrub even when the face appeared to be perpendicular, that it was
the most freakish landscape I have seen, and was as surprising as though
in a retired spot Nature were amusing herself with some miraculous fun of
her ordinary media. Here and there was a bare surface of pale limestone
rock, with massive coagulations and stalactites, like the keep of a
castle in Gothic legend. The rock appeared to be as cellular as sponge; a
fact, perhaps, which accounted for the vegetation clinging to the steeps.
Presently the wall stopped us. A precipice was on one hand, and on the
other an incline of water pouring smoothly over domes of rock. Where
the water came from could not be seen. The green crags towered round
it, ascending from shadow into upper sunlight. The water came over the
hummocks as clear and still as glass, only occasionally giving a burst of
foam. Now, in the East Indies a traveler cannot help remarking how poor
that region is in butterflies compared with tropical America. Perhaps in
insect life the Amazon country is the richest in the world. One sees more
butterflies in greater variety of species in a Brazilian forest clearing
in an hour than would be seen in Java in a week. But the inclosing walls
and tiny beaches of this strange watercourse of Celebes were distracting
with swift and brilliant insects. They were at rest like flowers on the
dry rocks of the stream, or were jostling one another for moisture on the
damp sand at the margin, or were soaring like birds athwart the cliffs.
We were told there was a path by which we could reach some upper falls,
and we found it, though occasionally it left us without guidance in a
dark cave, or on a bowlder with the water heaping past, or waist deep in
the herbs of an inclosure to which there seemed no way out. The sky was
but a narrow road of blue above us. In one smooth pool on the opposite
side a party of natives were bathing, but so dim was the water under the
overhanging cliff that even their bright Malay dresses were indistinct.
Some of these people came over to us and conducted us to a shelf from
which we watched the water shooting through an upper chasm in a smooth
vitreous weight. We appeared to be at the bottom of a profound cleft in
the earth. The sun was high enough now to spill day over us. The shaft
was full of light. The natives were sociable, sitting near to watch us,
though only rarely did they make a shy comment. They appeared to consider
us as of greater interest than anything in their strange land. My odd
occupation, the collecting of diptera, compelled them at last out of
their shyness. They helped. What they thought of it I cannot say, but
presently a party of their children came to me with a present. It was a
flying lizard, and from their jolly smiles I have a suspicion that the
joke was against me.