Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

From the shore near Temumpa we had a delightful view over the bay of Menado. The sea was as smooth as glass, and scarcely a ripple broke on the sandy beach, which was shaded by graceful, overhanging palms. Before me to the south rose the high mountains which form the great buttresses to the plateau they enclose, and on my right was the sharp volcanic peak called Old Menado because foreigners first established themselves on that island, and then moved over to Celebes.

In the evening the Resident showed me the large wooden store-houses where the coffee is received from the interior, and kept for exportation. As we entered the building, I was surprised at the rich aromatic fragrance that filled the air. It differed much more from the fragrance given out by the coffee seen in our land than any one will readily believe. Here it is stored in bags, just as it comes in from the plantations. In order that I might see what superior coffee the Minahassa produces, the Resident had several bags opened. I found the kernels, instead of being opaque, and having, as when we usually see them, a tinge of bronze, were translucent, and of a greenish-blue color. The best are those which have these characters, and at the same time are very hard. This coffee commands a much higher price than that of Java, and is superior to any raised in the archipelago, unless it may be some that comes from the highlands in the interior of Sumatra.

The coffee crop is subject to some variation, but the Resident informs me that the average yield of the government gardens during the last few years has been no less than 37,000 piculs (5,000,000 pounds). The whole number of trees belonging to the government is 5,949,616, but a large proportion of these are young, and therefore bear little or no fruit. Several private individuals also own large plantations, that yield as well in proportion to the number of trees they contain. The trees are found to thrive best above an elevation of one thousand feet.

The native name of this plant and its fruit is kopi, a corruption of the name in Dutch, the people who introduced it into this archipelago. The tree, Coffea Arabica, is a native of Africa, between the tenth and fifteenth degrees of north latitude,[49] but it thrives anywhere within the tropics on the hundreds of high islands in the archipelago, as well as in the dry lands where it is indigenous. It was as late as 1450, about half a century before the discovery of our continent, that it was brought over from Abyssinia to the mountainous parts of Arabia. In this way it happened that the Arabians were the people who introduced it into Europe. In 1690, forty years after, the people of Europe had learned to use it as a beverage. Governor-General Van Hoorne had some of the seeds brought to him from ports on the Arabian Gulf, by the vessels of the Dutch East India Company, who then carried on some trade between those places and Java. The seeds were planted in a garden near Batavia, where the plants flourished well and bore so much fruit that their culture was at once begun, and since that time has spread to many parts of the archipelago, but the chief islands from which coffee is now exported are Celebes, Bali, Java, and Sumatra. It is also raised to some extent in the Philippines, and these and the Malay Islands furnish one-fourth or more of all that is used. One of the first plants raised at Batavia was sent to Holland, to Nicholas Witsen, the head of the East India Company, where it arrived safely and bore fruit, and the plants from its seeds were sent to Surinam, where they flourished, and in 1718 coffee began to be an article of export from that part. Ten years later, in 1728, it was introduced from Surinam into the French and English islands of the West Indies, having previously been successively introduced into Arabia, Java, and Holland. I am told that it was first brought here from Java by a native prince, and, the remarkable manner in which it thrived having attracted the attention of the officials, more trees were introduced. In 1822 only eighty piculs were produced; in 1834, a remarkably favorable year, 10,000, but in the next year only 4,000 were obtained. In 1853 the crop was 13,000 piculs, and in 1854, 23,000. This indicates how remarkably this crop varies in the same locality—in that year the total number of trees was 4,600,000—and that there has been a steady increase since, both in the number of trees and in the quantity of fruit they have yielded; but yet not more than one-half the number are planted that might be if the population was sufficiently great to take proper care of them. With such an enormous yield a large surplus is left in the hands of the government after it has paid the natives who cultivate it, the percentage to the chiefs, and the cost of transportation from the small store-houses in the interior to the large ones at Menado, from which it is put on board of vessels either directly for foreign ports or to be taken to Macassar and thence be reshipped to Europe. Though the government wishes to give up its monopoly in the cultivation of spices in the Bandas and Moluccas, I did not hear that it is particularly anxious to do so here with the profitable cultivation of coffee.

From the store-houses we walked to the hospital, where I was shown a patient whose case was most remarkable. He was a native of Kema, and was bathing in one of the streams that flow through the village, when suddenly he found his head between the teeth of an enormous crocodile. Fortunately, the great reptile did not close his jaws, nor settle down with his prey as usual, and another native, hearing the cries of his friend, caught a large stick, and beat the brute until he let go. The man was at once brought here to the hospital, and has now nearly recovered. On his left jaw-bone there was one continuous incision from the ear to the chin, and on the right side of his face the muscles near the cheek-bone and on the temple were dreadfully lacerated. That a man should ever escape alive after his head had once been between a crocodile’s jaws is certainly the next thing to a miracle. I asked him what he thought when he found his head in such a vice. “Well,” said he, coolly, “I thought my time had come, but that I had better sing out while I could, and that’s what saved me, you see.”

December 28th.—At 6 A. M. bade the Resident good-by, and started for the highlands in the interior with an opas or official servant as a guide and attendant. It was a lovely morning. The cuckoos were pouring out their early songs, and the gurgling of the brook by the wayside was almost the only other sound that disturbed the stillness of the morning. A few cirri were floating high in the sky, and also a number of cumuli, whose perpendicular sides reflected the bright sunlight like pearly, opaque crystals. Along the way we met natives of both sexes carrying tobacco and vegetables to market, the men having their loads in a sled-shaped frame on their backs, and the women carrying theirs in shallow baskets on their heads. Our road, which led to the south, was—like all in the Minahassa—broad and well graded, and where it ascended an acclivity coarse fibres from the leaves of the gomuti palm were laid across it from place to place to cause the water to drain off into the ditches by its sides. When the road came to a village it always divided, that all the carts may go round the village, and not through it. This arrangement enables the natives to keep the street through their village neat and smooth. Such streets usually consist of a narrow road, bordered on either side by a band of green turf, and outside of these are sidewalks of naked soil like the road. Six miles out we came to Lotta, a village of about four hundred souls, and soon after began to rapidly ascend by a well-built road, that zigzags up the sides of Mount Empung, which forms one of the northern buttresses of the plateau situated to the south and east. Nine paals from Menado, when we were about twelve hundred feet above the sea, I wheeled round my horse and enjoyed a magnificent view over the bay of Menado and the adjacent shore. Out in the bay rose several high islands, among them the volcanic peak of Menado Tua, its head raised high in the blue sky, and its feet bathed in the blue sea. Near the shore the land is very low, and abounds in various species of palms. Farther back it begins to rise, and soon curves up toward the lofty peak of Klabat.

The beautiful cirri which we had noticed in the early morning now began to change into rain-clouds, and roll down the mountain, and soon the beautiful landscape beneath us was entirely hidden from our view. The road here passes through deep cuts that show well the various kinds of rocks, which are trachytic sand, pumice-stone, and a conglomerate of these materials. As we ascended we passed many places on the mountain-side where the natives were cultivating maize, and from far above us and beneath us came the echoing and reëchoing songs of the natives, who were busy cultivating this exotic but most useful plant. The custom of these people to sing while working in the field is the more noticeable, because the Javanese and Malays usually toil without thinking of thus lightening their monotonous labor. Upward and upward we climbed until we were about three thousand feet above the sea, when we came to two small villages. Beyond, the road again became level, and soon we reached Tomohon, where I met the controleur from Tondano, a large village to the east, who had come at the Resident’s request to accompany me for the rest of that day’s journey. Another horse was brought and saddled for me, and we continued on toward the south, our party now numbering six or eight, for the chief of each village and one or two servants are obliged by law to accompany the controleur from their own village to the next one he comes to, in whatever direction he may choose to travel. We soon after entered the charming village of Saronsong. In the centre of it and on one side of the street is the chiefs house, and opposite to it but back from the street is the ruma négri, and the space between the two is a pretty garden abounding in roses. This reminder of home gave me a thrill of pleasure that I shall remember as long as I love to look on this, the most beautiful of all flowers. As we galloped out of this village the thick rain-clouds and fog cleared away, and only cumuli and cirri were again to be seen in the sky. I now had a magnificent view, on the left, of the high range along the west side of lake Tondano, toward the northwest of the sharp volcanic cone of Lohon, about five thousand feet in height, west of that of Empung, attaining nearly that height, and in the northeast Gunong Api with its three peaks. Somewhat farther on we rode down into a little valley, where the road ran along the side of a small lake, whose muddy water was of a dirty-white color, and from which strong, almost strangling, fumes of sulphur were rising—a most unearthly place, and one that would remind the traveller of Bunyan’s picture of “the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” where the way was narrow, and on either hand “ever and anon came up flame and smoke in great abundance with sparks and hideous noises.” In one place a flock of ducks was swimming in this sulphurous pool, and on its margin I noticed a few waders running to and fro seeking food. Its banks were mostly covered with ferns, the leaves of which were of a bright red, reminding one of the brilliantly-colored leaves of our maples in autumn.

Near the next village, Lahendong, we made a short excursion to the left, up a high but not a steep hill, to see the remarkable lake Linu. The hill is the top of an old volcano, and soon, as we descended and turned a sharp point, we found before us the lake now filling the bottom of the crater. On our way down to a house near its edge, we passed a place where much sulphurous gas was escaping. It looked indeed much like the top of a great half-slaked lime-kiln. The lake is about half a mile in diameter, and has an outlet on the southwest, through a former split in the old crater-wall. In most parts the water has a blue color, but in some it has a whitish tinge from gases that rise up through the bottom of its basin. On the northeast end there is a large solfatara, like the one we passed in coming down to the lake, but larger. Here it was that the Italian count, Carlo de Vidua, who had travelled over a large part of the globe, met with a misfortune that caused his untimely death. He ventured too far on the soft, hot clay, and sank in, and before the natives, who had cautioned him against going there, could take him out, he was burned so badly that he died in a short time afterward at Amboina, whither he was taken, that he might be cared for in the best possible manner. He had travelled over a considerable portion of our own continent, and, after escaping many imminent dangers, ventured in this spot too far. Such is the history of many a daring traveller, and no one who comes out here, where on the sea there are pirates, and on the land earthquakes and savage beasts, and in some places still more savage men, can know at what moment he is planning a fatal voyage, or when he is taking the step that may be his last. Yet some one must take this risk if the limited boundaries of our knowledge of these remote lands are ever to be extended.

Although the water of this lake is largely impregnated with sulphur and other substances that rise up through its bottom, yet Dr. Bleeker found two kinds of fish here, Ophiocephalus striatus, Bl., and Anabas scandens, Cuv., and an eel, Anguilla Elphinstonei, Syk., which are also found in the fresh waters of Java and Sumatra, and in India. Returning to the main road, we continued on to Sonder, and, passing through a part of the village, came to the ruma négri, a public-house for any officer who chances to come to that place. This house is said to be far better even than any of the same kind in Java. It stands at the end of a long, beautifully-shaded avenue. The road is bordered with a narrow band of grass, neatly clipped, and the sidewalks are of a white earth, which has been brought from some distance. A fine grove surrounds the house, and here are many casuarina or cassowary-trees, the long, needle-like leaves of which closely resemble the downy plumage of that strange bird. This evening, as the full moon shines through the foliage, the whole grove is transformed into an enchanted place.