CELEBES 
293 
esteemed over the whole archipelago, those ornamented 
with gold thread bringing very high prices. 
Omitting the cities of Java, Makassar is the most 
important town in the whole of the Dutch East Indies— 
the centre of trade of a vast extent of country, a position 
it owes to the wonderful mercantile energy of the Bugis, 
a people who are to the archipelago what the Chinese 
are to Asia proper. Makassar may be said to be 
the Hongkong of the Dutch, while Batavia is their 
Singapore. Although an open roadstead, the port affords 
safe anchorage at almost all seasons. It has good piers, 
and is frequented by much shipping. The town is low 
and flat, but healthy, although from December to March 
the rains are heavy. It contains over 20,000 inhabitants. 
The business quarter, thick with powdery dust in the 
dry season, lines the shore for half a mile, and is crowded 
with Chinese, Bugis, and Arabs. Here are the offices 
and “ godowns ” of the Dutch and German merchants, the 
latter being strongly represented here, as in other Malay 
towns. Northward is a populous native suburb. The 
European quarter lies at the south of the town, the 
villas thickly shaded with trees, and near it is Fort 
Rotterdam, where the garrison is quartered, strongly 
built, but now useless against large ordnance. The 
town is walled, and many of the streets are kept clean 
by means of narrow canals into which the tidal waters 
are admitted at high tide and allowed to run out with 
the ebb. Northward of Makassar, and lining the coast 
for nearly 50 miles, lies the Spermonde Archipelago, a 
complex network of countless islands, reefs, and shoals, 
densely populated by tripang fishermen and covered with 
coco-palms. 
The Menado Residency consists of the volcanic region 
of Minahasa, about 70 miles long, and an extensive 
