The Negros was not fast—thirteen knots was about the best she could do—so that it took us two days to cross from Samarinda, in Borneo, to Makassar, the capital of the Celebes. Our course took us within sight of "the Little Paternosters, as you come to the union Bank," where, as you may remember, Sir Anthony Gloster, of Kipling's ballad of The Mary Gloster, was buried beside his wife. Before our hawsers had fairly been made fast to the wharf at Makassar it became evident that among the natives our arrival had created a distinct sensation. The wharf was crowded with Bugis, as the natives of the southern Celebes are known, who tried in vain to make themselves understood by our Filipino crew. Instead of the boisterous curiosity which had marked the attitude of the natives at the other ports, the Bugis appeared to be laboring under a suppressed but none the less evident excitement. When I went ashore to call on the American Consul they made way for me with a respect which verged on reverence. This curious attitude was explained by the Consul.
"Your coming has revived among the natives a very curious and ancient legend," he told me. "When the[127] Dutch established their rule in the Celebes, something over three centuries ago, the King of the Bugis mysteriously disappeared. Whether he fled or was killed in battle, no one knows. In any event, from his disappearance arose a tradition that he had founded another kingdom in some islands far to the north, but that, when the time was propitious, he would return to free his people from foreign domination. Thus he came in time to be regarded as a divinity, a sort of Messiah. Curiously enough, the natives refer to him by a name which, translated into English, means 'the King of Manila.' Some months ago it was reported in the Makassar papers that the Governor-General of the Philippines expected to visit the Celebes upon his way to Australia, whereupon the rumor spread among the Bugis like wild-fire that 'the King of Manila' was about to return to his ancient kingdom, but the excitement gradually subsided when the Governor-General failed to appear. But when the Negros entered the harbor this morning, and it was reported that she was from Manila and had on board a white man who had some mysterious mission in the interior of the island, the excitement flamed up again. The natives, you see, who are as simple and credulous as children, believe that you are the Messiah of their legend and that you have come to liberate them from Dutch rule."[2]
[128]"But look here," said I, annoyance in my tone, "this isn't as funny as it seems. Tying me up to this fool tradition may result in spoiling my plans for taking pictures in the Celebes. Of course the Dutch authorities know perfectly well that I haven't come here to start a revolution, but, on the other hand, they may not want a person whom the natives regard as a Messiah to go wandering about in the interior, where Dutch rule is none too firmly established anyway, for fear that my presence might be used as an excuse for an insurrection."
"Don't let that worry you," the Consul reassured me. "I'll take you over now to call on the Governor. He's a good sort and he'll do everything he can to help you. Then I'll send the editors of the vernacular papers around to the Negros this afternoon to call on you. You can explain that you're here to get motion-pictures to illustrate the progress and prosperity of the Celebes, and it might be a good idea to tell them that some of your ancestors were Dutch. That will help to make you solid with the authorities. The interview will appear in the papers tomorrow and in twenty-four hours the news will have spread among the Bugis that you're not their Messiah after all."
"But I'm not Dutch," I protested. "All my people were Welsh and English. The only connection I have with Holland is that the house in which I was born is on a street that has a Dutch name."
"Fine!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Born on Van Rensselaer street, you say? Be sure and tell 'em[129] that. That's the next best thing to having been born in Holland."
"I know now," I said, "how it feels to refuse a throne."
At tiffin that noon on the Negros I told the story to the others. "So you see," I concluded, "if I had been willing to take a chance, I might have been King of the Bugis."
"They wouldn't have called you that at home," the Lovely Lady said unkindly. "There they would have called you the King of the Bugs."
Nature must have created Celebes in a capricious moment, such a medley of bold promontories, jutting peninsulas, deep gulfs and curving bays does its outline present. Indeed, its coast line is so irregular and so deeply indented by the three great gulfs or bays of Tomini, Tolo, and Boni that it is small wonder that the first European explorers assumed it was a group of islands and gave it the name of plural form which still perpetuates the very natural mistake. Its length is roughly about five hundred miles but its width is so varying that while it is over a hundred miles across the northern part of the island at the middle it is a scant twenty miles from coast to coast.
Though the census of 1905 gave the population of the island as less than nine hundred thousand, the latest official estimate places it at about three millions. The actual number of inhabitants is probably midway between these figures. But, to tell the truth, the temperament[130] of the savages who inhabit the interior is not conducive to an accurate enumeration, the Dutch census-takers being greeted with about the same degree of cordiality that the moonshiners of the Kentucky mountains extend to United States revenue agents.
The three most important peoples of Celebes are the Bugis, the Makassars, and the Mandars. The medley of more or less savage tribes dwelling in the island are known as Alfuros—literally "wild"—which is the term applied by the Malays to all the uncivilized non-Mohammedan peoples in the eastern part of the archipelago. For the Bugis to refer to the tribes of the interior as wild is like the pot calling the kettle black. The Bugis, a passionate, half-savage, extremely revengeful people, originally occupied only the kingdom of Boni, in the southwestern peninsula, but from this district they have spread over the whole of Celebes and have founded settlements on many of the adjacent islands. They are the seamen of the archipelago, the greatest navigators and the most enterprising tradesmen, and were, in times gone by, the greatest pirates as well. In fact, the harbor master at Makassar told us that the crews of many of the rakish looking sailing craft which were anchored in close proximity to the Negros were reformed buccaneers. Certainly they looked it. They may have reformed, but that did not prevent Captain Galvez from doubling the deck-watch at night while we were in Celebes waters. He believed in safety first.
The Winsome Widow had been very enthusiastic about going to the Celebes because Makassar is the greatest market in the world for those ornaments so dear to the feminine heart—bird-of-paradise plumes. I explained to her that it was against the law to bring them into the United States, but no matter, she wanted to buy some. To visit Makassar without buying bird-of-paradise plumes, she said, would be like visiting Japan without buying a kimono. The bird is usually sold entire, the prices ranging from twenty-five to thirty dollars, according to size and condition, though, owing to the ruthless slaughter of the birds to meet the demands of the European market, prices are steadily advancing. The Winsome Widow bought four of the finest birds I have ever seen—gorgeous, flame-colored things with plumes nearly two feet long. How she proposed getting them into the United States she did not tell me, and I thought it as well not to ask her. She had them carefully packed in a wooden box made for the purpose which she did not open until nearly two months later, when we were steaming down the coast of Siam on a cargo boat, long after I had sent the Negros back to Manila. Imagine her feelings when, upon opening the box to feast her eyes on her contraband treasures, she found it to contain nothing but waste paper! I suspect that the sweetheart of one of our Filipino cabin-boys is now wearing a hat fairly smothered in bird-of-paradise plumes.
The Bugis' love of the sea has given them almost a monopoly of the trade around Celebes. Despite their fierce and warlike dispositions they are industrious and[132] ingenious—qualities which usually do not go together; they practise agriculture more than the neighboring tribes and manufacture cotton cloth not only for their own use but for export. They also drive a thriving trade in such romantic commodities as gold dust, tortoise shell, pearls, nutmegs, camphor, and bird-of-paradise plumes. They dwell for the most part in walled enclosures known as kampongs, in flimsy houses built of bamboo and thatched with grass or leaves. But as diagonal struts are not used the walls soon lean over from the force of the wind, giving to the villages a curiously inebriated appearance. In several of the eight petty states which comprise the confederation of Boni the ruler is not infrequently a woman, the female line having precedence over the male line in succession to the throne. The women rulers of the Bugis have invariably shown themselves as astute, capable and warlike as the men, the princess who ruled in Boni during the middle of the last century having defeated three powerful military expeditions which the Dutch sent against her. Everything considered, the Bugis are perhaps the most interesting race in the entire archipelago.
The Bugis are said to be more predisposed toward "running amok" than any other Malayan people. Having been warned of this unpleasant idiosyncrasy, I took the precaution, when among them, of carrying in the right-hand pocket of my jacket a service automatic, loaded and ready for instant action. For when a Bugi runs amok he will almost certainly get you[133] unless you get him first. Running amok, I should explain, is the native term for the homicidal mania which attacks Malays. Without the slightest warning, and apparently without reason, a Malay, armed with a kris or other weapon, will rush into the street and slash at everybody, friends and strangers alike, until he is killed. These frenzies were formerly regarded as due to sudden insanity, but it is now believed that the typical amok is the result of excitement due to circumstances, such as domestic jealousy or gambling losses, which render the man desperate and weary of life. It is, in fact, the Malay equivalent of suicide. Though so intimately associated with the Malay, there are good grounds for believing the word to have an Indian origin. Certainly the act is far from unknown in Indian history. In Malabar, for example, it was long the custom for the zamorin or king of Calicut to cut his throat in public after he had reigned twelve years. But in the seventeenth century there was inaugurated a variation in this custom. After a great feast lasting for nearly a fortnight the ruler, surrounded by his bodyguard, had to take his seat at a national assembly, on which occasion it was lawful for anyone to attack him, and, if he succeeded in killing him the murderer himself assumed the crown. In the year 1600, it is recorded, thirty men who would be king were killed while thus attempting to gain the throne. These men were called Amar-khan, and it has been suggested that their action was "running amok" in the true sense of the term. From this it would appear that a king of[134] Calicut was about as good an insurance risk as a president of Haiti.
The act of running amok is probably due to causes over which the culprit has some measure of control, as the custom has now virtually died out in the Philippines and in the British possessions in Malaysia, owing to the drastic measures adopted by the authorities. Among the Mohammedans of the southern Philippines, where the custom is known as juramentado, it was discouraged by burying the carcass of a pig—an animal abhorred by all Moslems—in the grave with the ............