CHAPTER XIX
The warehouse and office of the shipping firm at Macassar whose principal acts as British consul assure a wanderer from home that his affairs may be there considered of consequence. I noticed that office with approval before I knew it was under my flag. It appeared to be a solid structure of the Portuguese occupation, and its calm was cloistral. Along the hot street it cooled the sidewalk with a roofed colonnade. The white columns, in that sun, were shafts of light, and under them the open doors of the warehouse admitted to warm gloom and the smell of spices. I stepped into the shadows, where I could just make out old beams and a vista of bales, and snuffed it up. I thought this must be the smell of Macassar. Perhaps smelling it is as good a way of getting the history of a place as any other. When I called there for my letters, respectfully waiting for attention in the light of an upper story where clerks in white linen were silent over great leather volumes, presently I found a difficulty in raising my voice above a whisper in that immemorial hush. A clerk approached, listened to me, and vanished without a word. Not important enough to be noticed? But presently I saw him beckoning, in a side aisle, like a grave priest to an initiate, and I followed him past a motionless guardian of the sanctuary—that figure might have been a statue, or it might have been only the Malay equivalent of a hall porter—to an inner room, and he left me. I was alone there, with a matured table on which documents were orderly, and two chairs. I sank into the leathern deep of one, and looked at Chinese almanacs on the wall. I like Chinese almanacs. They are always decorated with figures of Chinese girls in embroidered tunics and trousers. Every one of these girls has a black fringe, and her expression beyond doubt is exactly what would lead Chinese soldiers to adorn their dugouts with national almanacs. That is what interests me; I try to find the angle where a Chinaman would stand to admire something different from what I see at mine. There were two large maps of Celebes, and they made that great island greater, than ever with blank spaces which had no names. On a sideboard were many samples of mace, gums, and tortoise shell. There was a chart of the East Indies, and advertisements of ships and their sailing dates. I could have been contented there for a long time. The feeling came over me that I should like to sit at that table and play with ships and produce. But when the proprietor entered it was certain that there was a game at which I should be badly beaten. There could be no doubt he knew more about it. He knew more of a good many things; but his bearing gave me the easy notion that his valuable time was for me to spend as I chose. He appeared to understand Europe better than most Europeans, and though it would have been easy for me to have disagreed with him about Mr. Lloyd George, I did not care to do so. I had not brought the Welsh mountains with me and did not feel equal to going back for them. There were my letters; and outside afterward it occurred to me, when I remembered what is so often written of British consuls, that occasionally there may be bad travelers as well as unfortunate consuls.
That night, in a ship so still and quiet that it surprised me to find I could switch on the cabin light, I read in my bunk Wallace’s story of his visit to Maros. It is a passage I know well. The naturalist so clearly was surprised by Maros, and could not forget it. Maros is about thirty miles behind Macassar, and here veritably I was in Macassar; yet a peep at Maros was no easier than though I were still at home. Indeed, it seemed more distant than ever, as though time and not distance separated us. But in London I was unaware of the meaning of thirty miles in Celebes.
When I opened my eyes again it was daylight, and the consul’s clerk stood by my bunk, regarding me in respectful sadness, as though I were a hero lying in state. When he saw I was awake, then his hat, which he held against his breast, began to revolve in his hands. He apologized. But would I care to go to Maros? The consul’s motor-car was beside the ship.
We went. The consul’s clerk had never seen Maros. Too busy! And on Saturdays and Sundays there were swimming and tennis. We passed a swamp overgrown with the plumes of nipa palms, and nearly ran over an eagle while watching the water for alligators. The great bird got up from under the bonnet as the brakes ground our wheels on the dust. Our way led us over flat country. There were many buffaloes in the rice fields; they were more noticeable than usual because so many of them were albinos. The villagers were husking cocoanuts, or were out cutting acres of rice stalk by stalk with little knives. Ahead of us, eastward, was a high blue rampart to the plain, and in an hour it was right over us.
This wall was broken but unscalable, soaring immediately from the plain to a height perhaps of a thousand feet. It was an array of pinnacles so long and sharp, chasms so abrupt, clefts so narrowly cut, and all clothed with shrub even when the face appeared to be perpendicular, that it was the most freakish landscape I have seen, and was as surprising as though in a retired spot Nature were amusing herself with some miraculous fun of her ordinary media. Here and there was a bare surface of pale limestone rock, with massive coagulations and stalactites, like the keep of a castle in Gothic legend. The rock appeared to be as cellular as sponge; a fact, perhaps, which accounted for the vegetation clinging to the steeps. Presently the wall stopped us. A precipice was on one hand, and on the other an incline of water pouring smoothly over domes of rock. Where the water came from could not be seen. The green crags towered round it, ascending from shadow into upper sunlight. The water came over the hummocks as clear and still as glass, only occasionally giving a burst of foam. Now, in the East Indies a traveler cannot help remarking how poor that region is in butterflies compared with tropical America. Perhaps in insect life the Amazon country is the richest in the world. One sees more butterflies in greater variety of species in a Brazilian forest clearing in an hour than would be seen in Java in a week. But the inclosing walls and tiny beaches of this strange watercourse of Celebes were distracting with swift and brilliant insects. They were at rest like flowers on the dry rocks of the stream, or were jostling one another for moisture on the damp sand at the margin, or were soaring like birds athwart the cliffs.
We were told there was a path by which we could reach some upper falls, and we found it, though occasionally it left us without guidance in a dark cave, or on a bowlder with the water heaping past, or waist deep in the herbs of an inclosure to which there seemed no way out. The sky was but a narrow road of blue above us. In one smooth pool on the opposite side a party of natives were bathing, but so dim was the water under the overhanging cliff that even their bright Malay dresses were indistinct. Some of these people came over to us and conducted us to a shelf from which we watched the water shooting through an upper chasm in a smooth vitreous weight. We appeared to be at the bottom of a profound cleft in the earth. The sun was high enough now to spill day over us. The shaft was full of light. The natives were sociable, sitting near to watch us, though only rarely did they make a shy comment. They appeared to consider us as of greater interest than anything in their strange land. My odd occupation, the collecting of diptera, compelled them at last out of their shyness. They helped. What they thought of it I cannot say, but presently a party of their children came to me with a present. It was a flying lizard, and from their jolly smiles I have a suspicion that the joke was against me.