stroyed by the intermixture of other races, they approach
to the ordinary types of the wild inhabitants of the surrounding
countries.
In mental and moral characteristics they aré also highly
peculiar. They are remarkably quiet and gentle in disposition,
submissive to the authority of those they consider
their superiors, and easily induced to learn and adopt the
habits of civilized people. They are clever mechanics, and
seem capable of acquiring a considerable amount of intellectual
education.
Up to a very recent period these people were thorough
savages, and there are persons now living in Menado who
remember a state of things identical with that described by
the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The inhabitants of the several villages were distinct tribes,
each under its own chief, speaking languages unintelligible
to each other, and almost always at war. They built
their houses elevated upon lofty posts to defend themselves
from the attacks of their enemies. They were head
hunters like the Dyaks of Borneo, and were said to be
sometimes cannibals. When a chief died, his tomb was
adorned with two fresh human heads; and if those of
enemies could not be obtained, slaves were killed for the
occasion. Human skulls were the great ornaments of the
chiefs’ houses. Strips of bark were their only dress. The
country was a pathless wilderness, with small cultivated
patches of rice and vegetables, or clumps of fruit-trees,
diversifying the otherwise unbroken forest. Their religion
was that naturally engendered in the undeveloped human
mind by the contemplation of grand natural phenomena
and the luxuriance of tropical nature. The burning
mountain, the torrent and the lake, were the abode of their
deities; and certain trees and birds were supposed to have
especial influence over men’s actions and destiny. They
held wild and exciting festivals to propitiate these deities
or demons; and believed that men could be changed by
them into animals, either during life or after death.
Here we have a picture of true savage life; of small
isolated communities at war with all around them, subject
to the wants and miseries of such a condition, drawing a
precarious existence from the luxuriant soil, and living on
from generation to generation, with no desire for physical
amelioration, and no prospect of moral advancement.
Such was their condition down to the year 1822, when
the coffee-plant was first introduced, and experiments were
made as to its cultivation. It was found to succeed admirably
at from fifteen hundred up to four thousand feet
above the sea. The" chiefs of villages were induced to
undertake its cultivation. Seed and native instructors
were sent from Java ; food was supplied to the labourers
engaged in clearing and planting; a fixed price was established
at which all coffee brought to the government col