_July 16._—The Jalan Pantai, or the seashore road, of Ternate, has an
affinity with that prelude to the day when the risen sun has still to
surmount the high land of Halmaheira across the sea; or so you think till
you are sauntering there when the sun has fallen behind the volcano at
the back of you. The truth is, that path is so responsive to light that
morning is there before its hour, and day remains when the sun has gone.
This morning the path by the beach was as elated as though with good
tidings which a stranger like myself could not be expected to understand.
I did not know the reason for its joy, but I could share it. It was high
water. The sea itself could have been the dawn. A sailing canoe, with
prow and stern so shaped that the craft was like a black swan with a head
at each end of its long body, was flying in the brightness between us
and that land which lay athwart the east. Tamarinds and other trees made
a dark roof to the path, but the light came low and level through their
colonnade. One tree had strewn the road with white corollas, the size of
goblets, and their stamens were long tassels of white silk tipped with
pink. Careless bounty! By the jetty was a stall for the fishermen, with
coffee, fried cakes of fish, pineapples, and mangosteens; some cockatoos
and lories sat on the branch of a tamarind beside it. The high peak of
Tidore was the first to see the sun, and signaled the news to us from a
cloud. From the end of the pier I thought I could see through the water
even to the little stones lying on the sea floor in five fathoms. Corals
and sea-growths were darkly grouped about the greenish pallor of tracks
in that garden. The coral was tall and branched, or was in rounded beds.
Its shapes wavered and pulsed in the unseen movements of the crystal.
It dilated and diminished in areas of olive green, orange, crimson, and
gray. It appeared to be not much below the surface of the glass, but
bonitos like torpedoes of blue light glanced over it in midspace and
changed the illusion, and other fish, like oscillating silver coins, like
tinted glow lamps intermittently charged, like swooping black and yellow
butterflies, like the petals of flowers quivering in a zephyr, deepened
and extended the sight. Their vivid forms would appear suddenly where
there had been nothing, and then, like apparitions, become absorbed in
their element. The heat of the day, which had come, was unnoticed.
_July 17._—The surgeon of the garrison took me over with him to Tidore in
his motor-launch. He had some cases of yaws and dysentery to attend to
there. I was reminded that this paradise, in spite of its shining aspect,
is only one degree north of the line. Tidore once was the rival sultanate
to Ternate’s; both little islands, in their day, competed for the rule
over many greater neighboring islands, though I believe that Ternate was
in the end the more successful. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English
intrigues in turn encouraged those natives’ claims which promised most
profit at the time to civilized impartiality. About the east side of
Ternate there are several decaying forts, and many derelict cannon, of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The more cut-purse maxims of
a hustling commercial college probably are but transcriptions of the
mottoes on the cannon butts of those lively traders of the past who
wanted spice, and invoked the aid of God’s blessed gunpowder to get it.
As we neared Tidore the islands and coasts changed their outlines, and
Ternate disappeared, for the village of Tidore is on the east side of its
island. There were the usual beaches of black sand of a volcanic island,
and the shore was littered with bowlders of weathered lava. From the
landing place a spacious white terrace, with an occasional cannon by its
balustrade, rose as though to a palace secret in the foliage above. We
had that terrace to ourselves, however, a fact which seemed queer to me,
and mounted it till we came to mounds of grass and shrubs and half-hidden
walls. The palace has been overthrown. In that high sunny place there
was no sultan, but only a silent sprite of a bird, which moved about the
tangle of vines, watching us, as though wondering what men could want
there. The village by the shore is almost derelict, and the esplanade, so
remarkably broad with its white walls resplendent at noon, and the palm
fronds above it, is but a memory of an importance almost hidden now under
grass. Not even Dutch ships visit Tidore to-day. There are stone houses,
and radiant white arches and pillars framed in creepers, and other hints
of Spain when Spanish adventurers had no doubt all the seas were theirs.
But Tidore on my day was abandoned to a brilliant light; we arrived after
it had lost its interest and was beyond the verge of a living world.
_July 19._—The padre showed me some graves of English seamen in the
cemetery to-day, but their stones were illegible. The Chinese cemetery
is next door, with its curious quarter-moon tombs on rising ground, and
that, too, of the Malays, where the little gravestones are overgrown with
shrubs. But I had discovered these places early in my stay on the island.
The frangipani, which in the Malay islands is the “grave flower,” is
freely planted, and so many other shrubs are in bloom that this little
corner of island is a good hunting ground for insects; and, of course,
it is not frequented by the natives. I may loiter there unobserved. The
Chinese and the Malay burial places show that these people somehow have
resolved the fact of death into their view of the earth, and they make
no fuss about it. They don’t invite it, but when it comes they take it
quietly, and their graves are as if they had no doubt the dead know best
what to do with themselves. But the Christian cemetery is a loud and
desperate effort to deny the fact. One curious structure there incloses
the grave of a man named Laurens. It has a roof and an upper story. By
the tomb is a map of Palestine and a series of biblical pictures. The
walls of the inclosure are decorated with a host of framed texts, mainly
of promises to the righteous, as though Laurens was prepared against
the Last Day, and was ready to present God with a bundle of I O U’s.
Surmounting the texts is the crest of a cavalry regiment, and so many
other symbolical figures are scattered about that on the Resurrection Day
Laurens should have no difficulty in establishing his merits, even if the
entries made by the Recording Angel are inadequate. And so that Laurens
shall make no simple but disastrous mistake when he gets up, a hand is
stenciled where he will see it at once, with its dexter finger pointing
to the sky.
The padre has spent most of his life among the islands east of Borneo
and Java, but appears to be doubtful that he has saved many souls, so
I did not pursue like a mean actuary the tender subject of missionary
enterprise. He thought that missionaries merely imposed a form upon what
remained essentially the same thing. The islanders still believe, when
matters are urgent, whether they go to the church or the mosque, that the
spirits are more potent than the prophets. If they go through the form
of Christian marriage it is only to propitiate another doubtful element.
They marry still by the process of _lari-bini_, to run with a wife; or of
_kawin-minta_, to buy a wife. In the first there is a pretense of taking
a girl by force from unwilling parents, and then a formal forgiveness and
a payment. Or the consent of the parents is at once given and the price
is paid. They may come to the missionary after that, to make things right
all round. In the Kei Islands a marriage contract is made on a piece of
wood, on which symbols may show that the bridegroom owes four gongs,
two guns, and three drums, for the girl. He then enters the home of his
wife’s parents and serves until the credit marks on the marriage contract
correspond with the symbols on the other side of the stick. The padre
told me that recently he baptized the black children of an Englishwoman
who lives on Halmaheira. But these mysterious “English,” whenever I have
come across an example, might be Arabs or Tamils just as easily. And they
always speak a Port Said variety of cockney, when they know the language
at all. Their names, however, are solidly British.
_July 24._—Crossed over to Halmaheira to-day, and landed at the village
of Gilolo, at its northwest corner. This extensive island appears to
be covered with forest from the water line to the mountain tops. It is
still unexplored and almost uninhabited. We landed by a mangrove swamp.
The tide was out, and as it will take more than one day to explore so
much mountainous jungle, I sat on a stump and watched the surface of the
glistening mud. It was riddled with the burrows of little crabs. Some
were vermilion, others were white, and one sort was violet with legs of
pale blue. They seemed to have had disturbing news; perhaps it was an
election, perhaps the Gilolo exchange had fallen, but that flat of mud
was a scene of hysterical activity. Each alert crab, whatever his color,
was a morsel of irrepressible curiosity and could not keep indoors, but
must hear all the news, and so sat at the mouth of his burrow, or crept
away from it to eavesdrop on his neighbors. He moved with an air of such
studied and circumventing cunning that he might have been the secret
agent of an embassy or a trust; but at the first haughty gesture of a
neighbor’s claw—now then, none of that; keep away there, quite far off,
please—fear shot him home. When our little motor-boat was returning to
Ternate, a run of six hours, we got caught in opposing tide-rips and
currents that had heaped in the intricate channels of the islands, and
occasionally I wondered whether her engine would stand it. We gyrated at
times in a light-headed and sickening way, and the Malay who steered
us (good man!) had all he could do to keep us from being swamped. It
was a relief to get under the shelter of Ternate, where we picked up an
abandoned sailing _prahu_ and took her in tow.