suddenly appeared on some part of the adjacent
coasts, fires have been instantly lighted on the
tops of the neighboring hills, evidently as signals to
pirates in the immediate vicinity. As soon as they
receive this alarm they hide away in the shallow
creeks and bays among the mangrove-trees, so that
a war-vessel might steam past them again and again
without discovering the slightest indication of where
they are concealed. To the Dutch almost exclusively
belongs the honor of having rendered the navigation
of these seas so comparatively safe as it now is.
The English have assisted in the western part of
the archipelago, but the Spaniards, from whose territory
these marauders now come, have effected little
toward removing this pest from the Philippines,
where it is as rife as it was two hundred years ago.
CHAPTER X.
THE NORTHERN PENINSULA OP CELEBES.
O n the morning of the 13th of December Mount
Klabat, a conical volcanic mountain attaining an elevation
of six thousand five hundred feet, appeared on
the horizon; and soon after, north of Klabat, was
seen Mount Sudara, “ The Sisters,” a twin cone whose
highest peak is about four thousand four hundred feet
above the sea. North of this again is Batu angus,
two thousand three hundred feet in height. Its name
in Malay means “ the . hot rock,” but it is really a large
volcano, whose top has been blown off and a great
crater thus formed; and this shows the fearful fate
that awaits each of the other two cones, as soon as
the gases pent up beneath their mighty masses have
acquired the necessary power. "We now approached
Limbi, a high, uninhabited island with abrupt shores
extending in a northwest and southeast direction, and
soon after came to anchor in the road off Kema, thu
coast here curving inward so as to form a small bay.
This is the port used now in the western monsoon.
During the eastern monsoon, steamers and ships go
round the northern end of Celebes to Menado, in
the Strait of Macassar. Kema is a village of two
thousand inhabitants. Its streets are very broad,