imputing the effect to some occult property of crooked timber. A little
consideration and a diagram will, however, show, that the effect imputed
to the crooked post may be really produced by it. A true square changes
its figure readily into a rhomboid or oblique figure, but when one or
two of the uprights are bent or sloping, and placed so as to oppose each
other, the effect of a strut is produced, though in a rude and clumsy
manner.
Just before I had left Mamajam the people had sown a considerable
quantity of maize, which appears above ground in two or three days, and
in favourable seasons ripens in less than two months. Owing to a week's
premature rains the ground was all flooded when I returned, and the
plants just coming into ear were yellow and dead. Not a grain would be
obtained by the whole village, but luckily it is only a luxury, not a
necessity of life. The rain was the signal for ploughing to begin, in
order to sow rice on all the flat lands between us and the town. The
plough used is a rude wooden instrument with a very short single handle,
a tolerably well-shaped coulter, and the point formed of a piece of hard
palm-wood fastened in with wedges. One or two buffaloes draw it at a
very slow pace. The seed is sown broadcast, and a rude wooden harrow is
used to smooth the surface.
By the beginning of December the regular wet season had set in. Westerly
winds and driving rains sometimes continued for days together; the
fields for miles around were under water, and the ducks and buffaloes
enjoyed themselves amazingly. All along the road to Macassar, ploughing
was daily going on in the mud and water, through which the wooden plough
easily makes its way, the ploughman holding the plough-handle with one
hand while a long bamboo in the other serves to guide the buffaloes.
These animals require an immense deal of driving to get them on at all;
a continual shower of exclamations is kept up at them, and "Oh! ah! Gee!
ugh!" are to be heard in various keys and in an uninterrupted succession
all day long. At night we were favoured with a different kind of
concert. The dry ground around my house had become a marsh tenanted by
frogs, who kept up a most incredible noise from dusk to dawn. They
were somewhat musical too, having a deep vibrating note which at times
closely resembles the tuning of two or three bass-viols in an orchestra.
In Malacca and Borneo I had heard no such sounds as these, which
indicates that the frogs, like most of the animals of Celebes, are of
species peculiar to it.
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