it feels to refuse a throne."

At tiffin that noon on the _Negros_ I told the story to the others. "So
you see," I concluded, "if I had been willing to take a chance, I might
have been King of the Bugis."

"They wouldn't have called you that at home," the Lovely Lady said
unkindly. "There they would have called you the King of the Bugs."

* * * * *

Nature must have created Celebes in a capricious moment, such a medley
of bold promontories, jutting peninsulas, deep gulfs and curving bays
does its outline present. Indeed, its coast line is so irregular and so
deeply indented by the three great gulfs or bays of Tomini, Tolo, and
Boni that it is small wonder that the first European explorers assumed
it was a group of islands and gave it the name of plural form which
still perpetuates the very natural mistake. Its length is roughly about
five hundred miles but its width is so varying that while it is over a
hundred miles across the northern part of the island at the middle it
is a scant twenty miles from coast to coast.

Though the census of 1905 gave the population of the island as less
than nine hundred thousand, the latest official estimate places it at
about three millions. The actual number of inhabitants is probably
midway between these figures. But, to tell the truth, the temperament
of the savages who inhabit the interior is not conducive to an accurate
enumeration, the Dutch census-takers being greeted with about the same
degree of cordiality that the moonshiners of the Kentucky mountains
extend to United States revenue agents.

The three most important peoples of Celebes are the Bugis, the
Makassars, and the Mandars. The medley of more or less savage tribes
dwelling in the island are known as Alfuros--literally "wild"--which is
the term applied by the Malays to all the uncivilized non-Mohammedan
peoples in the eastern part of the archipelago. For the Bugis to refer
to the tribes of the interior as wild is like the pot calling the
kettle black. The Bugis, a passionate, half-savage, extremely
revengeful people, originally occupied only the kingdom of Boni, in the
southwestern peninsula, but from this district they have spread over
the whole of Celebes and have founded settlements on many of the
adjacent islands. They are the seamen of the archipelago, the greatest
navigators and the most enterprising tradesmen, and were, in times gone
by, the greatest pirates as well. In fact, th