186 CELEBES. [chap. 



From liiiu we soon learnt the few facts of interest connected with 

 the plantation. Cacao, coffee, bananas, and coconuts had been 

 tried, and the former was doing well. The island, which is neai^ly 

 seven miles long, and rises into a central lofty ridge about twelve 

 hundred feet in height, supports a native population of 400 

 people, 150 of whom are engaged on the plantation. They are 

 almost all of the Talautse or Sanghir tribes, and speak a language 

 distinct from any found in Celebes. 



Talisse was the haunt of numbers of the large Fruit-eating 

 Pigeons, Carjjophaga radiata and C. 'paulina. The latter is a fine 

 bird, weighing a pound and a quarter or even more, and its metallic 

 green back shot with bronze, and a curious tawny patch upon the 

 nuque, render it conspicuously handsome. The lower mandible of 

 birds of this genus is capable of being expanded laterally to an 

 enormous extent, — a special adaptation to enable them to feed on 

 the various large fruits of the forest-trees. The size of those they 

 manage to swallow is astonishing. I have found fruits nearly as 

 large as a small Tangerine orange in their crops. The only other 

 bird of interest that we met with on the island was a Glossy Starling 

 {Ccdornis ncglecta), a genus supposed by Mr. Wallace to be absent 

 from Celebes. 



Mr. EijkschroefiP told us that there were but few Maleos upon 

 the island, so after a couple of days' stay we left for Likoupang, a 

 village on the mainland about ten miles to the south. Our host 

 accompanied us, together with a native who was supposed to have 

 a good knowledge of the coast, and who, when a child of six, had 

 been rescued from the pirates of lUanun. We found the anchorage 

 a tolerably good one, though with many surrounding reefs and 

 sandbanks, and lay about a mile oft' the mouth of a little river, on 

 the banks of which the village is situated. Huts were too plentiful 

 in the surrounding forest for us to expect to obtain either the 

 Anoa or Babirusa, so we made arrangements to visit Maim Bay — 

 an uninhabited part of the coast four or five miles farther east — 

 having previously asked the chief for men to act as guides. We 



