CHAPTER XVII. CELEBES.
(MENADO, JUNE TO SEPTEMBER, 1859.)
IT was after my residence at Timor-Coupang that I visited the
northeastern extremity of Celebes, touching Banda, Amboyna, and Ternate
on my way. I reached Menado on the 10th of June, 1859, and was very
kindly received by Mr. Tower, an Englishman, but a very old resident in
Menado, where he carries on a general business. He introduced me to Mr.
L. Duivenboden (whose father had been my friend at Ternate), who had
much taste for natural history; and to Mr. Neys, a native of Menado, but
who was educated at Calcutta, and to whom Dutch, English, and Malay
were equally mother-tongues. All these gentlemen showed me the greatest
kindness, accompanied me in my earliest walks about the country, and
assisted me by every means in their power. I spent a week in the
town very pleasantly, making explorations and inquiries after a good
collecting station, which I had much difficulty in finding, owing to the
wide cultivation of coffee and cacao, which has led to the clearing
away of the forests for many miles around the town, and over extensive
districts far into the interior.
The little town of Menado is one of the prettiest in the East. It has
the appearance of a large garden containing rows of rustic villas with
broad paths between, forming streets generally at right angles with each
other. Good roads branch off in several directions towards the interior,
with a succession of pretty cottages, neat gardens, and thriving
plantations, interspersed with wildernesses of fruit trees. To the west
and south the country is mountainous, with groups of fine volcanic peaks
6,000 or 7,000 feet high, forming grand and picturesque backgrounds to
the landscape.
The inhabitants of Minahasa (as this part of Celebes is called) differ
much from those of all the rest of the island, and in fact from any
other people in the Archipelago. They are of a light-brown or yellow
tint, often approaching the fairness of a European; of a rather short
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