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 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 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 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 body of the assassin. When I was in Jolo the governor told me of a novel and highly effective method which had been adopted by the officer commanding the American forces in that island for discouraging the custom. A number of American soldiers had been killed by Moros running amok. The American commander took up the matter with the local priests but they only shrugged their shoulders with true Oriental stoicism, saying that when a man went juramentado it was the will of Allah and that nothing could be done. The next day an American soldier, a revolver in either hand, burst into a Moro village, notorious for its juramentados, firing at everyone whom he saw and yelling like a mad man. The terrified villagers took to the bush, where they remained in fear and trembling until the crazy Americano had taken his departure. That evening the village priests appeared at headquarters to complain to the American commander.
"But Americans have just as much right to go juramentado as the Moros," said the general. "I can do nothing. The man is not responsible. It is the will of Allah." That was the end of juramentado in Jolo.
The wharves and godowns which line Makassar's water-front form an unattractive screen to a picturesque and charming town. Though, owing to its commercial importance as a half-way station on the road from Asia to Australia, Makassar promises to become a second Singapore, it has as yet neither an electric lighting, gas, nor water system. It is, however, very beautifully laid out, the streets, which are broad and well-kept, being lined by double rows of magnificent canarium trees or tamarinds, whose branches interlace high overhead in a canopy of green. The European life of Makassar centers in the great grass-covered plein, or common, where band concerts, reviews, horse races, festivals, and similar events are held. Facing on the plein is the palace of the Governor of the Celebes, a one-story, porticoed building with white walls and green blinds, in the Dutch colonial style, a type of architecture which is admirably adapted to the tropics. Next to the palace is the Oranje Hotel, a well-kept and comfortable hostelry as hotels go in Malaysia. On its terrace the homesick Europeans gather toward twilight to sip advocat—a drink which is a first cousin to the egg-nogg of pre-Volstead days, very popular in the Indies—and to listen to the military band playing on the plein.
Diagonally across the plein rise the massive walls of Fort Rotterdam, erected by one of the native rulers, the King of Goa, with the assistance of the Portuguese, when the seventeenth century was still in its infancy and when the settlement on the lower end of Manhattan Island was still called Nieuw Amsterdam. The capture of the fort by the Dutch in 1667 signalized the passing of Portuguese power in Asia. Pass the slovenly native sentry at the outer gate, cross the creaking drawbridge, and, were it not for the tropical vegetation and the oppressive heat, you might think yourself in the Low Countries instead of a few degrees below the Line, for the crenelated ramparts, the shaded, gravelled paths, the ancient garrison church, the officers' quarters with their steep-pitched, red-tiled roofs, make the interior a veritable bit of Holland, transplanted to a tropic island half the world away.
Makassar has a population of about fifty thousand, including something over a thousand Europeans and some five thousand Chinese, but as most of the natives live in their walled kampongs in the environs, the city appears much smaller than it really is. The retail trade is almost wholly in the hands of the Chinese, many of whom are men of great wealth and influence. There was also a small colony of Japanese, but, as a result of the boycott which the Chinese had instituted against them in reprisal for Japan's refusal to evacuate Shantung, they were unable to find markets for their wares or to obtain employment and, in consequence, were being forced to leave the island. The only American in the Celebes when we were there was the representative of the Standard Oil Company—a desperately homesick youngster from Missouri who had been a lieutenant of aviation. He introduced himself to us on the terrace of the Oranje Hotel, begged the privilege of buying the drinks, and pleaded with an eagerness that was almost pathetic for the latest news from God's Country. At almost every place of importance which we visited in Malaysia we found these agents of Standard Oil—alert and clean-cut young fellows, who, far from home and friends, are helping to build up a commercial empire for America oversea.
The native soldiery, who form the bulk of the Makassar garrison, are quartered, with their families, in long, stone barracks—ten couples to a room. For every soldier of the colonial forces, whether European or native, is permitted to keep a woman in the barracks with him. If she is the soldier's wife, well and good, but the authorities do not frown if the couple have omitted the formality of standing up before a clergyman. The rooms in which the soldiers and their families live have no partitions, to each couple being assigned a space about eight feet square, which is chalk-marked on the floor. The only article of furniture in each of these "apartments" is a bed, which is really a broad, low platform covered with a grass-mat, for in a land where the mercury not infrequently climbs to 120 in the shade, there is no need for bedding. Here they eat and sleep and make their toilets, the women preparing the meals for their men and for themselves in ovens out-of-doors. At night the beds may be separated by drawing the flimsiest of cotton curtains—the only concession to privacy that I could discover. As Malays invariably have large families, the barrack room usually has the appearance of a day nursery, with naked brown youngsters crawling everywhere, but at night they are disposed of in fiber hammocks which are slung over the parents' heads. The colonel in command at Fort Rotterdam told me that in the new type of barracks which were being built in Java each family would be assigned a separate room, but he seemed to regard such provisions for privacy as wholly unnecessary and a shameful waste of money.