Archibald Forbes - "Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places"

Robert W. Chambers - "The Fighting Chance"

Edward Gibbon - "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II"

Louisa de la Rame) - "A Dog of Flanders"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Malay Archipelago Volume 1

b >> by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago Volume 1




On catechising evenings the schoolmaster was a great man,
preaching and teaching for three hours at a stretch much in the
style of an English ranter. This was pretty cold work for his
auditors, however warming to himself; and I am inclined to think
that these native teachers, having acquired facility of speaking
and an endless supply of religious platitudes to talk about, ride
their hobby rather hard, without much consideration for their
flock. The Missionaries, however, have much to be proud of in
this country. They have assisted the Government in changing a
savage into a civilized community in a wonderfully short space of
time. Forty years ago the country was a wilderness, the people
naked savages, garnishing their rude houses with human heads. Now
it is a garden, worthy of its sweet native name of "Minahasa."
Good roads and paths traverse it in every direction; some of the
finest coffee plantations in the world surround the villages,
interspersed with extensive rice-fields more than sufficient for
the support of the population.

The people are now the most industrious, peaceable, and civilized
in the whole Archipelago. They are the best clothed, the best
housed, the best fed, and the best educated; and they have made
some progress towards a higher social state. I believe there is
no example elsewhere of such striking results being produced in
so short a time--results which are entirely due to the system of
government now adopted by the Dutch in their Eastern possessions.
The system is one which may be called a "paternal despotism." Now
we Englishmen do not like despotism--we hate the name and the
thing, and we would rather see people ignorant, lazy, and
vicious, than use any but moral force to make them wise,
industrious, and good. And we are right when we are dealing with
men of our own race, and of similar ideas and equal capacities
with ourselves. Example and precept, the force of public opinion,
and the slow, but sure spread of education, will do every thing
in time, without engendering any of those bitter feelings, or
producing any of that servility, hypocrisy, and dependence, which
are the sure results of despotic government. But what should we
think of a man who should advocate these principles of perfect
freedom in a family or a school? We should say that he was
applying a good, general principle to a case in which the
conditions rendered it inapplicable--the case in which the
governed are in an admitted state of mental inferiority to those
who govern them, and are unable to decide what is best for their
permanent welfare. Children must be subjected to some degree of
authority, and guidance; and if properly managed they will
cheerfully submit to it, because they know their own inferiority,
and believe their elders are acting solely for their good. They
learn many things the use of which they cannot comprehend, and
which they would never learn without some moral and social, if not
physical, pressure. Habits of order, of industry, of cleanliness,
of respect and obedience, are inculcated by similar means.
Children would never grow up into well-behaved and well-educated
men, if the same absolute freedom of action that is allowed to
men were allowed to them. Ruder the best aspect of education,
children are subjected to a mild despotism for the good of
themselves and of society; and their confidence in the wisdom and
goodness of those who ordain and apply this despotism,
neutralizes the bad passions and degrading feelings, which under
less favourable conditions are its general results.

Now, there is not merely an analogy--there is in many respects
an identity of relation between master and pupil or parent and
child on the one hand, and an uncivilized race and its civilized
rulers on the other. We know (or think we know) that the
education and industry, and the common usages of civilized man,
are superior to those of savage life; and, as he becomes
acquainted with them, the savage himself admits this. He admires
the superior acquirements of the civilized man, and it is with
pride that he will adopt such usages as do not interfere too
much with his sloth, his passions, or his prejudices. But as the
willful child or the idle schoolboy, who was never taught
obedience, and never made to do anything which of his own free
will he was not inclined to do, would in most cases obtain
neither education nor manners; so it is much more unlikely that
the savage, with all the confirmed habits of manhood and the
traditional prejudices of race, should ever do more than copy a
few of the least beneficial customs of civilization, without some
stronger stimulus than precept, very imperfectly backed by
example.

If we are satisfied that we are right in assuming the government
over a savage race, and occupying their country, and if we
further consider it our duty to do what we can to improve our
rude subjects and raise them up towards our own level, we must
not be too much afraid of the cry of "despotism" and "slavery,"
but must use the authority we possess to induce them to do work
which they may not altogether like, but which we know to be an
indispensable step in their moral and physical advancement. The
Dutch have shown much good policy in the means by which they have
done this. They have in most cases upheld and strengthened the
authority of the native chiefs, to whom the people have been
accustomed to render a voluntary obedience; and by acting on the
intelligence and self-interest of these chiefs, have brought
about changes in the manners and customs of the people, which
would have excited ill-feeling and perhaps revolt, had they been
directly enforced by foreigners.

In carrying out such a system, much depends upon the character
of the people; and the system which succeeds admirably in one
place could only be very partially worked out in another. In
Minahasa the natural docility and intelligence of the race have
made their progress rapid; and how important this is, is well
illustrated by the fact, that in the immediate vicinity of the
town of Menado are a tribe called Banteks, of a much less
tractable disposition, who have hitherto resisted all efforts of
the Dutch Government to induce them to adopt any systematic
cultivation. These remain in a ruder condition, but engage
themselves willingly as occasional porters and labourers, for
which their greater strength and activity well adapt them.

No doubt the system here sketched seems open to serious
objection. It is to a certain extent despotic, and interferes
with free trade, free labour, and free communication. A native
cannot leave his village without a pass, and cannot engage
himself to any merchant or captain without a Government permit.
The coffee has all to be sold to Government, at less than half
the price that the local merchant would give for it, and he
consequently cries out loudly against "monopoly" and "oppression."
He forgets, how ever, that the coffee plantations were established
by the Government at great outlay of capital and skill; that it
gives free education to the people, and that the monopoly is in lieu
of taxation. He forgets that the product he wants to purchase and
make a profit by, is the creation of the Government, without whom
the people would still be savages. He knows very well that free
trade would, as its first result, lead to the importation of whole
cargoes of arrack, which would be carried over the country and
exchanged for coffee. That drunkenness and poverty would spread over
the land; that the public coffee plantations would not be kept up;
that the quality and quantity of the coffee would soon deteriorate;
that traders and merchants would get rich, but that the people would
relapse into poverty and barbarism. That such is invariably is the
result of free trade with any savage tribes who possess a valuable
product, native or cultivated, is well known to those who have
visited such people; but we might even anticipate from general
principles that evil results would happen.

If there is one thing rather than another to which the grand law
of continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress.
There are certain stages through which society must pass in its
onward march from barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages
has always been some form or other of despotism, such as feudalism
or servitude, or a despotic paternal government; and we have every
reason to believe that it is not possible for humanity to leap
over this transition epoch, and pass at once from pure savagery
to free civilization. The Dutch system attempts to supply this
missing link, and to bring the people on by gradual steps to that
higher civilization, which we (the English) try to force upon
them at once. Our system has always failed. We demoralize and we
extirpate, but we never really civilize. Whether the Dutch system
can permanently succeed is but doubtful, since it may not be
possible to compress the work of ten centuries into one; but at
all events it takes nature as a guide, and is therefore, more
deserving of success, and more likely to succeed, than ours.

There is one point connected with this question which I think the
Missionaries might take up with great physical and moral results.
In this beautiful and healthy country, and with abundance of food
and necessaries, the population does not increase as it ought to
do. I can only impute this to one cause. Infant mortality,
produced by neglect while the mothers are working in the
plantations, and by general ignorance of the conditions of health
in infants. Women all work, as they have always been accustomed
to do. It is no hardship to them, but I believe is often a
pleasure and relaxation. They either take their infants with
them, in which case they leave them in some shady spot on the
ground, going at intervals to give them nourishment, or they
leave them at home in the care of other children too young to
work. Under neither of these circumstances can infants be
properly attended to, and great mortality is the result, keeping
the increase of population far below the rate which the
general prosperity of the country and the universality of
marriage would lead us to expect. This is a matter in which the
Government is directly interested, since it is by the increase of
the population alone that there can be any large and permanent
increase in the production of coffee. The Missionaries should take
up the question because, by inducing married women to confine
themselves to domestic duties, they will decidedly promote a
higher civilization, and directly increase the health and
happiness of the whole community. The people are so docile and
so willing to adopt the manners and customs of Europeans, that
the change might be easily effected by merely showing them that
it was a question of morality and civilization, and an essential
step in their progress towards an equality with their white
rulers.

After a fortnight's stay at Rurúkan, I left that pretty and
interesting village in search of a locality and climate more
productive of birds and insects. I passed the evening with the
Controlleur of Tondano, and the next morning at nine, left in a
small boat for the head of the lake, a distance of about ten
miles. The lower end of the lake is bordered by swamps and
marshes of considerable extent, but a little further on, the hills
come down to the water's edge and give it very much the
appearance of a greet river, the width being about two miles.
At the upper end is the village of Kakas, where I dined with the
head man in a good house like those I have already described;
and then went on to Langówan, four miles distant over a level
plain. This was the place where I had been recommended to stay,
and I accordingly unpacked my baggage and made myself comfortable
in the large house devoted to visitors. I obtained a man to shoot
for me, and another to accompany me the next day to the forest,
where I was in hopes of finding a good collecting ground.

In the morning after breakfast I started off, but found I had
four miles to walk over a wearisome straight road through coffee
plantations before I could get to the forest, and as soon as I
did so ,it came on to rain heavily and did not cease until night.
This distance to walk everyday was too far for any profitable
work, especially when the weather was so uncertain. I therefore
decided at once that I must go further on, until I found someplace
close to or in a forest country. In the afternoon my friend
Mr. Bensneider arrived, together with the Controlleur of the next
district, called Belang, from whom I learned that six miles
further on there was a village called Panghu, which had been
recently formed and had a good deal of forest close to it; and
he promised me the use of a small house if I liked to go there.

The next morning I went to see the hot-springs and mud volcanoes,
for which this place is celebrated. A picturesque path among
plantations and ravines brought us to a beautiful circular basin
about forty feet in diameter, bordered by a calcareous ledge, so
uniform and truly curved, that it looked like a work of art. It
was filled with clear water very near the boiling point, and
emitted clouds of steam with a strong sulphureous odour. It
overflows at one point and forms a little stream of hot water,
which at a hundred yards' distance is still too hot to hold the
hand in. A little further on, in a piece of rough wood, were two
other springs not so regular in outline, but appearing to be much
hotter, as they were in a continual state of active ebullition.
At intervals of a few minutes, a great escape of steam or gas took
place, throwing up a column of water three or four feet high.

We then went to the mud-springs, which are about a mile off, and
are still more curious. On a sloping tract of ground in a slight
hollow is a small lake of liquid mud, with patches of blue, red, or
white, and in many places boiling and bubbling most furiously.
All around on the indurated clay are small wells and craters
full of boiling mud. These seem to be forming continually, a
small hole appearing first, which emits jets of steam and boiling
mud, which upon hardening, forms a little cone with a crater in
the middle. The ground for some distance is very unsafe, as it
is evidently liquid at a small depth, and bends with pressure
like thin ice. At one of the smaller, marginal jets which I
managed to approach, I held my hand to see if it was really as
hot as it looked, when a little drop of mud that spurted on to my
finger scalded like boiling water.

A short distance off, there was a flat bare surface of rock as
smooth and hot as an oven floor, which was evidently an old mud-pool,
dried up and hardened. For hundreds of yards around where
there were banks of reddish and white clay used for whitewash, it
was still so hot close to the surface that the hand could hardly
bear to be held in cracks a few inches deep, and from which arose
a strong sulphureous vapour. I was informed that some years back
a French gentleman who visited these springs ventured too near
the liquid mud, when the crust gave way and he was engulfed in
the horrible caldron.

This evidence of intense heat so near the surface over a large
tract of country was very impressive, and I could hardly divest
myself of the notion that some terrible catastrophe might at any
moment devastate the country. Yet it is probable that all these
apertures are really safety-valves, and that the inequalities of
the resistance of various parts of the earth's crust will always
prevent such an accumulation of force as would be required to
upheave and overwhelm any extensive area. About seven miles west
of this is a volcano which was in eruption about thirty years
before my visit, presenting a magnificent appearance and covering
the surrounding country with showers of ashes. The plains around
the lake formed by the intermingling and decomposition of
volcanic products are of amazing fertility, and with a little
management in the rotation of crops might be kept in continual
cultivation. Rice is now grown on them for three or four years in
succession, when they are left fallow for the same period, after
which rice or maize can be again grown. Good rice produces
thirty-fold, and coffee trees continue bearing abundantly for ten
or fifteen years, without any manure and with scarcely any
cultivation.

I was delayed a day by incessant rain, and then proceeded to
Panghu, which I reached just before the daily rain began at 11
A.M. After leaving the summit level of the lake basin, the road
is carried along the slope of a fine forest ravine. The descent
is a long one, so that I estimated the village to be not more
than 1,500 feet above the sea, yet I found the morning
temperature often 69°, the same as at Tondano at least 600 or 700
feet higher. I was pleased with the appearance of the place,
which had a good deal of forest and wild country around it; and
found prepared for me a little house consisting only of a
verandah and a back room. This was only intended for visitors to
rest in, or to pass a night, but it suited me very well. I was so
unfortunate, however, as to lose both my hunters just at this
time. One had been left at Tondano with fever and diarrhoea, and
the other was attacked at Langówan with inflammation of the
chest, and as his case looked rather bad I had him sent back to
Menado. The people here were all so busy with their rice-harvest,
which was important for them to finish owing to the early rains,
that I could get no one to shoot for me.

During the three weeks that I stayed at Panghu it rained nearly
everyday, either in the afternoon only, or all day long; but
there were generally a few hours' sunshine in the morning, and I
took advantage of these to explore the roads and paths, the rocks
and ravines, in search of insects. These were not very abundant,
yet I saw enough to convince me that the locality was a good one,
had I been there at the beginning instead of at the end of the
dry season. The natives brought me daily a few insects obtained
at the Sagueir palms, including some fine Cetonias and stag-
beetles. Two little boys were very expert with the blowpipe, and
brought me a good many small birds, which they shot with pellets
of clay. Among these was a pretty little flower-pecker of a new
species (Prionochilus aureolimbatus), and several of the
loveliest honeysuckers I had yet seen. My general collection of
birds was, however, almost at a standstill; for though I at
length obtained a man to shoot for me, he was not good for much,
and seldom brought me more than one bird a day. The best thing he
shot was the large and rare fruit-pigeon peculiar to Northern
Celebes (Carpophaga forsteni), which I had long been seeking.

I was myself very successful in one beautiful group of insects,
the tiger-beetles, which seem more abundant and varied here than
anywhere else in the Archipelago. I first met with them on a
cutting in the road, where a hard clayey bank was partially
overgrown with mosses and small ferns. Here, I found running
about, a small olive-green species which never took flight; and
more rarely, a fine purplish black wingless insect, which was
always found motionless in crevices, and was therefore, probably
nocturnal. It appeared to me to form a new genus. About the roads
in the forest, I found the large and handsome Cicindela heros,
which I had before obtained sparingly at Macassar; but it was in
the mountain torrent of the ravine itself that I got my finest
things. 0n dead trunks overhanging the water and on the banks and
foliage, I obtained three very pretty species of Cicindela, quite
distinct in size, form, and colour, but having an almost
identical pattern of pale spots. I also found a single specimen
of a most curious species with very long antennae. But my finest
discovery here was the Cicindela gloriosa, which I found on mossy
stones just rising above the water. After obtaining my first
specimen of this elegant insect, I used to walk up the stream,
watching carefully every moss-covered rock and stone. It was
rather shy, and would often lead me on a long chase from stone to
stone, becoming invisible every time it settled on the damp moss,
owing to its rich velvety green colour. On some days I could
only catch a few glimpses of it; on others I got a single
specimen; and on a few occasions two, but never without a more or
less active pursuit. This and several other species I never saw
but in this one ravine.

Among the people here I saw specimens of several types, which,
with the peculiarities of the languages, gives me some notion of
their probable origin. A striking illustration of the low state
of civilization of these people, until quite recently, is to be
found in the great diversity of their languages. Villages three
or four miles apart have separate dialects, and each group of
three or four such villages has a distinct language quite
unintelligible to all the rest; so that, until the recent
introduction of Malay by the Missionaries, there must have been a
bar to all free communication. These languages offer many
peculiarities. They contain a Celebes-Malay element and a Papuan
element, along with some radical peculiarities found also in the
languages of the Siau and Sanguir islands further north, and
therefore, probably derived from the Philippine Islands. Physical
characteristics correspond. There are some of the less civilized
tribes which have semi-Papuan features and hair, while in some
villages the true Celebes or Bugis physiognomy prevails. The
plateau of Tondano is chiefly inhabited by people nearly as white
as the Chinese, and with very pleasing semi-European features.
The people of Siau and Sanguir much resemble these, and I believe
them to be perhaps immigrants from some of the islands of North
Polynesia. The Papuan type will represent the remnant of the
aborigines, while those of the Bugis character show the extension
northward of the superior Malay races.

As I was wasting valuable time at Panghu, owing to the bad weather
and the illness of my hunters, I returned to Menado after a stay
of three weeks. Here I had a little touch of fever, and what with
drying and packing all of my collections and getting fresh
servants, it was a fortnight before I was again ready to start. I
now went eastward over an undulating country skirting the great
volcano of Klabat, to a village called Lempias, situated close to
the extensive forest that covers the lower slopes of that
mountain. My baggage was carried from village to village by
relays of men; and as each change involved some delay, I did not
reach my destination (a distance of eighteen miles) until sunset.
I was wet through, and had to wait for an hour in an uncomfortable
state until the first installment of my baggage arrived, which
luckily contained my clothes, while the rest did not come in until
midnight.

This being the district inhabited by that singular annual the
Babirusa (Hog-deer), I inquired about skulls and soon obtained
several in tolerable condition, as well as a fine one of the rare
and curious "Sapiutan" (Anoa depressicornis. Of this animal I had
seen two living specimens at Menado, and was surprised at their
great resemblance to small cattle, or still more to the Eland of
South Africa. Their Malay name signifies "forest ox," and they
differ from very small highbred oxen principally by the low-
hanging dewlap, and straight, pointed horns which slope back over
the neck. I did not find the forest here so rich in insects as I
had expected, and my hunters got me very few birds, but what they
did obtain were very interesting. Among these were the rare
forest Kingfisher (Cittura cyanotis), a small new species of
Megapodius, and one specimen of the large and interesting Maleo
(Megacephalon rubripes), to obtain which was one of my chief
reasons for visiting this district. Getting no more, however,
after ten days' search, I removed to Licoupang, at the extremity
of the peninsula, a place celebrated for these birds, as well as
for the Babirusa and Sapiutan. I found here Mr. Goldmann, the
eldest son of the Governor of the Moluccas, who was
superintending the establishment of some Government salt-works.
This was a better locality, and I obtained some fine butterflies
and very good birds, among which was one more specimen of the
rare ground dove (Phlegaenas tristigmata), which I had first
obtained near the Maros waterfall in South Celebes.

Hearing what I was particularly in search of, Mr. Goldmann kindly
offered to make a hunting-party to the place where the "Maleos"
are most abundant, a remote and uninhabited sea-beach about
twenty miles distant. The climate here was quite different from
that on the mountains; not a drop of rain having fallen for four
months; so I made arrangements to stay on the beach a week, in
order to secure a good number of specimens. We went partly by
boat and partly through the forest, accompanied by the Major or
head-man of Licoupang, with a dozen natives and about twenty
dogs. On the way they caught a young Sapi-utan and five wild
pigs. Of the former I preserved the head. This animal is entirely
confined to the remote mountain forests of Celebes and one or two
adjacent islands which form part of the same group. In the adults
the head is black, with a white mark over each eye, one on each
cheek and another on the throat. The horns are very smooth and
sharp when young, but become thicker and ridged at the bottom
with age. Most naturalists consider this curious animal to be a
small ox, but from the character of the horns, the fine coat of
hair and the descending dewlap, it seemed closely to approach the
antelopes.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.