Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cassar, 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.
My kind friend and landlord, Mr. Mesman, was a good specimen of the Macassar-born
Dutchman. He was about thirty-five years of age, had a large family, and lived in a spacious
house near the town, situated in the midst of a grove of fruit trees, and surrounded by a per-
fect labyrinth of offices, stables, and native cottages occupied by his numerous servants,
slaves, or dependants. He usually rose before the sun, and after a cup of coffee looked after
his servants, horses, and dogs, till seven, when a substantial breakfast of rice and meat was
ready in a cool verandah. Putting on a clean white linen suit, he then drove to town in his
buggy, where he had an office, with two or three Chinese clerks who looked after his affairs.
His business was that of a coffee and opium merchant. He had a coffee estate at Bontyne,
and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl
and tortoiseshell. About one he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain,
first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers and bare feet, and then take a
siesta with a topic. About four, after a cup of tea, he would walk round his premises, and
generally stroll down to Mamájam, to pay me a visit and look after his farm.
This consisted of a coffee plantation and an orchard of fruit trees, a dozen horses and a
score of cattle, with a small village of Timorese slaves and Macassar servants. One family
looked after the cattle and supplied the house with milk, bringing me also a large glassful
every morning, one of my greatest luxuries. Others had charge of the horses, which were
brought in every afternoon and fed with cut grass. Others had to cut grass for their master's
horses at Macassar—not a very easy task in the dry season, when all the country looks like
baked mud; or in the rainy season, when miles in every direction are flooded. How they
managed it was a mystery to me, but they know grass must be had, and they get it. One lame
woman had charge of a flock of ducks. Twice a day she took them out to feed in the marshy
places, let them waddle and gobble for an hour or two, and then drove them back and shut
