stature, stout and well-made; of an open and pleasing countenance, more
or less disfigured as age increases by projecting check-bones; and with
the usual long, straight, jet-black hair of the Malayan races. In some
of the inland villages where they may be supposed to be of the purest
race, both men and women are remarkably handsome; while nearer the
coasts where the purity of their blood has been destroyed by the
intermixture of other races, they approach to the ordinary types of the
wild inhabitants of the surrounding countries.
In mental and moral characteristics they are also highly peculiar.
They are remarkably quiet and gentle in disposition, submissive to the
authority of those they consider their superiors, and easily induced
to learn and adopt the habits of civilized people. They are clever
mechanics, and seem capable of acquiring a considerable amount of
intellectual education.
Up to a very recent period these people were thorough savages, and
there are persons now living in Menado who remember a state of things
identical with that described by the writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The inhabitants of the several villages
were distinct tribes, each under its own chief, speaking languages
unintelligible to each other, and almost always at war. They built their
houses elevated upon lofty posts to defend themselves from the attacks
of their enemies. They were headhunters like the Dyaks of Borneo, and
were said to be sometimes cannibals. When a chief died, his tomb was
adorned with two fresh human heads; and if those of enemies could not
be obtained, slaves were killed for the occasion. Human skulls were the
great ornaments of the chiefs' houses. Strips of bark were their only
dress. The country was a pathless wilderness, with small cultivated
patches of rice and vegetables, or clumps of fruit-trees, diversifying
the otherwise unbroken forest. Their religion was that naturally
engendered in the undeveloped human mind by the contemplation of grand
natural phenomena and the luxuriance of tropical nature. The burning
mountain, the torrent and the lake, were the abode of their deities;
and certain trees and birds were supposed to have special influence
over men's actions and destiny. They held wild and exciting festivals
to propitiate these deities or demons, and believed that men could be
changed by them into animals--either during life or after death.
Here we have a picture of true savage life; of small isolated
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