through which the wooden plough easily makes its way,
the ploughman holding the plough-handle with one hand
while a long bamboo in the other serves to guide the
buffaloes. These animals require an immense deal of
driving to get them on at a ll; a continual shower of
exclamations is kept up at them, and “ Oh! ah! gee!
ugh! are to be heard in various keys and in an uninterrupted
succession all day long. At night we were favoured
with a different kind of concert. The dry ground around
my house had become a marsh tenanted by frogs, who
kept up a most incredible noise from dusk to dawn. They
were somewhat musical too, having a deep vibrating note
which at times closely resembles the tuning of two or
three bass-viols in an orchestra. In Malacca and Borneo
I had heard no such sounds as these, which indicates that
the frogs, like most of the animals of Celebes, are of
species peculiar to it.
My kind friend and landlord, Mr. Mesman,7 was a Osood
specimen of the Macassar-born Dutchman. He was about
thirty-five years of age, had a large family, and lived in a
spacious house near the town, situated in the midst of a
grove of fruit trees, and surrounded by a perfect labyrinth
of offices, stables, and native cottages occupied by his
numerous servants, slaves, or dependants. He usually
rose before the sun, and after a cup of coffee looked after
his servants, horses, and dogs, till seven, when a substantial
breakfast of rice and meat was ready in a cool
verandah. Putting on a clean white linen suit, he then
drove to town in his buggy, where he had an office, with
two or three Chinese clerks who looked after his affairs.
His business was that of a coffee and opium merchant.
He had a coffee estate at Bontyne, and a small prau which
traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-
of-pearl and tortoiseshell. About one he would return home,
have coffee and cake or fried plantain, first changing his
dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers and bare
feet, and then take a siesta with a book. About four, after
a cup of tea, he would walk round his premises, and
generally stroll down to Mamajam, to pay me a visit and
look after his farm.
This consisted of a coffee plantation and an orchard
of fruit trees, a dozen horses and a score of cattle, with
a small village of Timorese slaves and Macassar servants.
One family looked after the cattle and supplied the house
with milk, bringing me also a large glassful every morning,
one of my greatest luxuries. Others had charge of
the horses, which were brought in every afternoon and fed
with cut grass. Others had to cut grass for their master’s
horses at Macassar—not a very easy task in the dry
season, when all the country looks like baked mud; or
in the rainy season, when miles in every direction are
flooded. How they managed it was a mystery to me,
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