CH. VII TO SANGIE AND TALAUT 165 



not followed by a severe epidemic, because if it bad been, I 

 am sure these poor people must bare called down upon 

 my bead aU manner of curses for baving robbed tbem of, 

 or rather bought from them, their most potent preventive 

 medicines. 



As soon as I had finished negotiations about the canoes 

 I wished to penetrate into the other compartments in search 

 of an altar, which I was told was to be found somewhere in 

 the house ; but as I was warned that I should frighten the 

 women, who were there in great numbers watching our 

 movements through the chinks in the walls and over the 

 partitions, and that I should seriously displease the rajah if 

 I went any further, I was persuaded not to, and thus I left 

 this interesting but extremely dirty house with only a view 

 of the entrance ball. 



Before the boat came to take us off, I had an opportunity 

 of examining the coast-line for a few minutes, and was 

 surprised to find a great reef of hard coral limestone just 

 below high-water mark. I had had suspicions in Lirung 

 that the Talaut islands have been sHghtly elevated, from 

 the wide marshy plains raised a few feet above the sea-level 

 which extend from the hill slopes to the seashore, and that 

 they could not have been formed in the same way as the 

 shore plains of Talisse and the north of Celebes, as there 

 is no vigorous coral reef nor mangrove swamps. 



This reef, then, of old coral hmestone, raised about 

 some eight or nine feet above the level of coral growth, 

 was of great interest to me, as it confirmed the view I had 

 tentatively held that the Talaut islands are being, or 

 perhaps I ought to say have been, slowly elevated. T should 

 not like to assert that the Sangir islands and the northern 

 portions of Celebes are not also being slowly elevated, as is 

 very commonly the case in volcanic regions, but so far as I 

 am aware we have no conclusive proof of it, and for many 



