When we were three miles from the northern end of Buru, we struck into a series of tide-rips, exactly like those seen in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, hundreds and hundreds of miles from any shore. Night now came on, and it was so dark and thick that we could not see fifty yards in any direction. It is especially at such a time, when there is no moon, no stars, no light in the whole heavens, except the lightning which fitfully darts and flashes anywhere and everywhere over the sky, that one can feel the inestimable value of the mariner’s compass. That night we had much rough sea, and I was thankful that I was on a good steamer instead of the old prau on which I had been expecting to make this voyage. In the afternoon of the next day we passed the islands of Bachian and Tawali, which are heaved up into ridges about a thousand feet in height, and are separated by a long, narrow strait, abounding in the grandest scenery. On Bachian the clove-tree grows wild. The northern part of the island is of sedimentary origin of various ages, and there some coal and copper have been found, and gold has been washed since 1774. The southern part of the island is chiefly of volcanic origin. North of Bachian lies a small group of islands, and north of these Makian, an old volcano. In 1646 it underwent a fearful eruption, and all the villages on its flanks were destroyed. They were said to contain a population of some seven thousand. At that time the whole mountain was so completely split in two in a northeast and southwest direction, that when viewed from either of those points two peaks were seen. After this destruction it was again settled, and in 1855 its population numbered six thousand. In 1862 it again burst forth, destroying nearly every one on the whole island. So great a quantity of ashes was thrown out, that at Ternate, about forty miles distant, they covered the ground to the depth of from three to four inches, and nearly all the vegetation, except the large trees, was destroyed. A similar devastation caused the severest suffering within all that radius. But this eruption, fearful as it was, could not be compared to that of Mount Tomboro, already described.
North of Makian is Motir, a deep cone of trachytic lava, about one thousand feet in height. During the next night we passed between the high, sharp peak of Tidore on the right and that of Ternate on the left, and, entering a large, well-sheltered bay, anchored off the village, situated on the eastern declivity of the latter mountain. This morning as the sun rose the scene was both charming and imposing—imposing, while we looked upward to the lofty summit of this old volcano and watched the clouds of white gas rising in a perpendicular column high into the sky, until they came up to a level where the air was moving, and at once spread out into a broad, horizontal band, while the sun was pouring down a perfect flood of bright light over the high crest of the ancient peak and the city on its flanks; charming as we looked below the level water-line on the shore, and beheld the whole grand sight above, perfectly mirrored beneath in the quiet sea. This was the first mountain, whose flanks are cultivated, that I had seen since leaving Java. Many small ridges extend from its crest part way down its sides, and then spread out into little plateau-like areas; and there the natives have cleared away the luxuriant shrubbery and formed their gardens, and from them were rising small columns of smoke as if from sacrificial altars. The whole island is merely a high volcano, whose base is beneath the ocean. Its circumference at the shore line is about six miles, and its height five thousand four hundred feet. From Valentyn, Reinwardt, Bleeker, and Junghuhn, we learn that severe and destructive eruptions took place in 1608, 1635, and 1653. In 1673 another occurred, and a considerable quantity of ashes was carried even to Amboina. Then, for one hundred and sixty-five years, only small clouds of gas rose from the summit—not even hot stones were thrown out, and the mountain seemed to have undergone its last labor, when, on the 26th of February, 1838, another but not a severe eruption took place. This, however, came suddenly—so suddenly that, of a party of six natives who chanced to be on the summit collecting sulphur, four who had gone down into the crater did not have time to escape, and the two who remained on its edge only saved themselves by hastening down the mountain; and even they were badly burned and lacerated by the showers of hot stones. On the 25th of March, of the next year, a more violent eruption occurred. A heavy thundering roared in the earth, thick clouds of ashes enveloped the whole island, and streams of glowing lava flowed down the mountain. Again, the next year, on the 2d of February, at nine o’clock in the forenoon, a third eruption, yet more severe, began. Heavier thundering was heard, smoke and ashes poured out, and hot stones rose from the crater, and fell like hail on the sides of the volcano, setting fire to the dense wood which had completely spread over it during its long rest, and causing it to assume the appearance by night of a mountain of flame. At the same time much lava poured out over the crater on the north side, and flowed down to the sea between Fort Toluko and Batu Angus, “the Hot Stone.” This destruction continued for twenty-four hours, and at four o’clock the next day all was still. During the next ten days clouds of black smoke continued to pour out, but all trusted that the worst had passed, when, on the 14th, at half-past twelve or almost exactly at midnight, a “frightful, unearthly thundering” began again, and the shocks became heavier and more frequent until half-past three (before it would have been light if the sky had been clear), when the last house in the whole place had been laid in ruins. The earth split open with a cracking that could be distinctly heard above the awful thundering of the mountain. Out of the fissures jets of hot water rose for a moment, and then the earth closed again, to open in another place. An educated gentleman, who, from his great wealth, generosity, and liberality, is justly known as the “Prince of the Moluccas,” assured me that when two men were about one thousand yards apart, one would see the other rise until his feet seemed as high as the head of the observer, then immediately he would sink and the observer rise until he seemed as much above his fellow as he had been below him before. The published accounts entirely agree with this statement. For fifteen hours the solid ground thus rolled like the sea, but the heaviest wave did not occur till ten o’clock on the 15th of February. Fort Orange, which had withstood all the shocks of two hundred and thirty years, was partly thrown down, and wholly buried under a mass of pumice-stone and the débris of the forests above it. The people, as soon as this last day of destruction commenced, betook themselves to their boats, for, while the land was heaving like a troubled ocean, the sea continued quiet; no great wave came in to complete the work of destruction on the shore. It seemed, indeed, as if the laws that govern these two great elements had been suddenly exchanged, and the fixed land had become the mobile sea. The whole loss caused by this devastating phenomenon was estimated at four hundred thousand Mexican dollars; and yet, after all this experience, so great was the attachment of both foreigners and natives to this particular spot, that they would not select some one less dangerous on the neighboring shores, but all returned and once more began to build their houses for another earthquake to lay in the dust, proving that the common remark in regard to them is literally true, that “they are less afraid of fire than the Hollanders are of water.” The present city, however, judging by the area of the ruins, is not more than two-thirds the size of the former one. Its total population is about 9,000. Of these, 100 are Europeans, 300 mestizoes, 200 Arabs, 400 Chinese, and the others natives of this and the adjoining islands. It is divided into two parts, the southern or European quarter, known by the peculiar name Malayu, and north of this the Chinese and Arab quarter. Near the latter is Fort Orange, which was built in 1607, as early as the settlement of Jamestown. In 1824 this fort was pronounced by the governor-general the best in all the Netherlands India. Beyond the fort is “the palace” of the Sultan of Ternate, and north of this is the native village. The palace is a small residence, built in the European style, and stands on a terrace, facing a wide, beautiful lawn, that descends to the sea. Near it is a flag-staff, which leans over as if soon to fall, a fit emblem of the decaying power of its owner, whose ancestors were once so mighty as to make the Dutch regard them with fear as well as with respect.
According to Valentyn, who gathered his information from the native records, there were formerly in Gilolo a number of independent states, each with its “kolano” or chief. In about A. D. 1250, two hundred and seventy years before any European sailed in these seas, a great migration took place to the neighboring islands, and a village named Tabona was formed on the top of this mountain, which has been an active volcano ever since it was known to Europeans. In A. D. 1322, many Javanese and Arabs came here to buy cloves. This is the first historical record we have of the spice-trade. The inhabitants of Obi and Bachian now united to counteract the growing power of the prince of Ternate, but this union effected little, for, in A. D. 1350, Molomateya, who was then reigning at Ternate, learned from the Arabs how to build vessels, and, having prepared a fleet, conquered the Sula Islands. The Arabs and Javanese meantime made great exertions to convert these people to Mohammedanism, and in A. D. 1460,[44] a little more than two centuries after it had been introduced into Java, Mahum, the prince of Ternate, became a Mohammedan “through the influence of the Javanese.” About this time Malays and Chinese came from Banda to purchase cloves, which they sold to Indian traders at Malacca. In 1512 Francisco Serano, whose vessel struck on the Turtle Islands, when returning with D’Abreu from Amboina and Banda, induced the natives to assist him in getting his ship afloat while the rest of the fleet were returning to Malacca, and to pilot him to Ternate; and thus he was the first European who reached the great centre of the clove-trade. In 1521 the fleet of Magellan anchored off Tidore, an island separated from Ternate by only a narrow strait.
Ferdinand Magellan, who organized this fleet, was a Portuguese nobleman. He sailed, however, under the patronage of Charles V. of Spain. On the 20th of September, 1519, he left the port of St. Lucas with “five small ships of from sixty to one hundred and thirty tons,” his object being to find a western passage to the Indies, particularly the Spice Islands. Coasting southward along the shores of Brazil, he found the strait which still continues to bear his name. This he passed through with three ships, one having been wrecked, and one having turned back. For one hundred and sixteen days he continued sailing in a northwest direction, over (as it seemed to them) an endless ocean. Their food became exhausted, but they yet kept on the same course until at last their eyes were blessed with the sight of land. Pigafetta, a member of this expedition, thus pictures their sufferings: “On Wednesday, the 28th day of November, 1520, we issued from the strait, engulfing ourselves in the ocean, in which, without comfort or consolation of any kind, we sailed for three months and twenty days. We ate biscuit which was biscuit no longer, but a wormy powder, for the worms had eaten the substance, what remained being fetid with the urine of rats and mice. The dearth was such that we were compelled to eat the leathers with which the yards of the ships were protected from the friction of the ropes. This leather, too, having been long exposed to the sun, rain, and wind, had become so hard that it was necessary to soften it by immersion in the sea for four or five days, after which it was broiled on the embers and eaten. We had to sustain ourselves by eating sawdust, and a rat was in such request that one was sold for half a ducat.”
The first islands Magellan saw were those he named the Ladrones or “Islands of Thieves.”[45] From those he came to the Philippines, and on one of these (Mactan, near Zebu) he was murdered by the natives, as was also Barbosa, a gentleman of Lisbon, who had previously visited and described India, and from whose writings we have frequently had occasion to quote. From Zebu, Magellan’s companions sailed to the northern part of Borneo and Tidore. Thence they continued southward, touching at Bachian and Timur, in 1522, and finally arrived safely back in Spain, having completed the first circumnavigation of our globe. This great voyage was accomplished nearly a century before the Pilgrims landed on our New-England shores. Soon after the Portuguese had established themselves at Ternate, they began to teach the natives their Catholic creed, and in 1535 the native king, who had accepted that religion and been christened at Goa, returned to Ternate and began his reign. Other native princes then proposed to the Portuguese to become Catholics, if they would take them under their protection, and thus Catholicism began to spread rapidly, but the same year all the native converts were destroyed by Mohammedans, headed by Cantalino, who was styled “the Moluccan Vesper.” In 1546, Francis Xavier,[46] a Catholic priest, visited Ternate. He afterward went back to Malacca and proceeded to China and Japan, and returning from the latter country died on an island off Macao, near Canton. The Dutch first came to Ternate under Admiral Houtman, in 1578. In 1605, under Stephen van der Hagen, they stormed and took Ternate, and thus drove the Portuguese out of the Moluccas, and the island, since that date, has continued in their hands, the English not being able to capture it during the early part of this century, when they took Amboina and the neighboring islands. They now continued their strenuous attempts to dislodge the Spaniards from their stronghold on Tidore, until the besieged, finding themselves constantly in danger, deserted the whole Moluccas to the Dutch in 1664.
As the Portuguese and Spaniards had been anxious to convert the natives to Catholicism, so the Dutch were anxious to convert them to Protestantism, but they did not, however, labor in the same manner as the former. Pigafetta informs us that in eight days “all the inhabitants of this island” (Zebu, one of the Philippines) “were baptized, and also some of the other neighboring islands. In one of the latter we set fire to a village” (because the inhabitants would neither obey the king of Zebu nor Magellan). “Here we planted a wooden cross, as the people were Gentiles. Had they been Moors” (Arabs), “we should have erected a stone column, in token of their hardness of heart, for the Moors were more difficult of conversion than the Gentiles.” In three days after this conversion, these very natives murdered Magellan, and in twelve days more they waylaid and butchered twenty-four of his companions. The natives were first instructed in Protestant doctrines by teachers in 1621, and in 1623 the first Protestant clergyman came into the Moluccas. This faith has made little progress, however, and, except the inhabitants of Haruku, Saparua, and Nusalaut, and small communities at the chief places of Amboina and Ternate, the whole native population east of Celebes is either Mohammedan or heathen.
The islands on which the clove-tree grew spontaneously, and the ones originally known as “the Moluccas,” are Ternate, Tidore, Motir, Makian, and Bachian, which are situated in a row off the west coast of the southern half of Gilolo. Of this group Tidore and Bachian, only, belong to the prince of Ternate, and the Dutch East India Company, in order to make the monopoly they already enjoyed more perfect, offered this prince a yearly sum of seventeen thousand four hundred guilders, nearly seven thousand dollars, for the privilege of destroying all the clove and nutmeg trees they could find in his wide territory; for besides these five islands and other smaller ones near them, and also the adjoining coast of Gilolo, where the clove-tree was indigenous, it had been introduced by the natives themselves into Ceram, Buru, and Amboina, before the arrival of the Portuguese. This offer the prince accepted in 1652, perhaps because he could not refuse longer. From that date his power began to decline, and in 1848 he was unable to make the people of the little island of Makian acknowledge his sovereignty, which once extended from north of Gilolo to Buton and Muna south of Celebes, a distance of six hundred geographical miles. His empire also included the western coast of Celebes; and the islands that lie between it and Bachian, Buru, and a large part of Ceram, and one-half the area of Gilolo, were within its limits. For a long time expeditions were fitted out every year by the Dutch, to search each island anew, and destroy all the trees which had sprung up from seed planted by birds. Another such piece of selfishness it would be difficult to find in all history. The result of this agreement and this policy has been that, for a considerable number of years, the income of the government in the Moluccas and Bandas, taken together, has not been nearly equal to its expenses in these islands; and it is now evident to all that very much has been lost by this ungenerous and exclusive mode of trade.
On landing at this village I found a pleasant residence with a good English lady, the second it had been my good fortune to meet since I left Java. After living so long among a people speaking another language, it is a privilege indeed to hear one’s native tongue spoken without a foreign accent, and to converse with a person whose religion, education, and views of life accord with one’s own. On these outer borders of civilization, Americans and Englishmen are—as we ought to be everywhere—members of the same family.
The same afternoon, as it was clear, I rode with an officer up the mountain to a summer-house, two thousand four hundred feet above the sea. From this high position we had a fine view over the wide bay of Dodinga, formed by the opposite re treating coast of Gilolo. High mountains are seen to rise in the interior, and several of these are said to be volcanoes, either active or extinct. In the northern part of the island, opposite the island of Morti, the Resident informed me that there was a crater which, according to the accounts given him by the officials who had visited it, must be nearly as large as the famous one in the Tenger Mountains on Java. On Morti itself is Mount Tolo, which suffered a severe eruption in the previous century. Before that time Morti was said to be well peopled, but now only the natives of the adjoining coast of Gilolo, who are most notorious pirates, stay there from time to time.
A large number of the natives of Gilolo were then here at Ternate. Though frequently called “Alfura,” they are strictly of the Malay type, and have not the dark skin and frizzly hair of the Alfura of Ceram and Buru, though representatives of that people may exist in other parts of Gilolo. Of the whole population of Gilolo, which is supposed to be about twenty-seven thousand, all but five thousand are under the Sultan of Ternate. During the war in Java, from 1825 to 1830, the sultan sent a considerable force of his subjects to assist the Dutch, and those who were then at Ternate had been ordered to come over to hold themselves in readiness to aid in suppressing the revolt in Ceram, for the Dutch believe in the motto “cut diamond with diamond.” These natives appear to be quite as mild as most Malays, but the foreigners here say that they fought so persistently while in Java, that soon they were styled “the bloodhounds of Gilolo.” A small number of Papuans are also seen in the village. They were mostly brought here from Papua by the fleet that collects the yearly tribute for the Sultan of Tidore. While I was at Amboina a very unfavorable account of them was given by a native captain of Macassar, who had been taken prisoner near this place. According to his report to the government, when he returned, all his crew was seized and eaten one after another, and the only thing that saved him from a like fate was that he read parts of the Koran. This led them to believe him a priest, and finally induced them to allow him to depart on the next vessel that came to their shores. East of Geelvink Bay two Dutch expeditions have found that the whole population, men, women, and children, always go absolutely naked.