traight road between crowding palms
crosses a wide rice-plain, opening out of the cleft carved by the
mountain river, and leads to the curious Lake of Limbotto, a green mass
of luxuriant water-weeds, the dense vegetation solidifying into
floating islands of verdure, intersected by narrow channels, only
navigable to a native _bloto_ skilfully handled, for Nature alternately
builds up and disperses these flowery oases, blocking up old water-ways
and opening new ones with bewildering confusion. Buffaloes wallow
between the tangled clumps of pink lotus and purple iris, and wild
ducks nest in the waving sedges, or darken the air in a sudden flight
down the long lake. A noisy market flanks the water, and bronze
figures, in red turbans row gaily-clad women, laden with purchases, to
some distant _campong_, reached through the mazes of verdure. The
country _passer_, a shifting scene of gaudy colouring, contains greater
elements of interest than commercial Gorontalo, where the native
_campong_ loses individuality in gaining the prosaic adjuncts of a
trading centre. The lovely harbour dreams in the moonlight as we steam
slowly out of the widening estuary to pick up cargo in the great bay of
Tomini, which sweeps in a mighty curve round half the Eastern coast of
Celebes. The conical island of Oena-Oena rises sheer from the waves,
the red peak of a lofty volcano composing the apex of a green pyramid,
formed by a forest of palms. Until six years ago no anchorage for ships
was possible at this forest-clad isle, but a volcanic eruption deepened
the bay, and a thriving trade in _copra_ was initiated, for the whole
surface of Oena-Oena is clothed with a dense mass of drooping cocoanut
trees. Scattered dwellings nestle in the thick woods, but no regular
_campong_ exists in this thinly-peopled spot, a vernal Eden set in the
purple sea. The heat of the day, though intense, is everywhere tempered
by the interlacing canopies of the feathery fronds, until sunset fuses
them into the vivid transparency of green fire, and a fluttering zephyr
stirs the whispering foliage. The shy brown people, who at first hide
in their _atap_ huts at the approach of strangers, venture out to see
the last of the departing steamer, which forms the sole link between
barbarism and civilisation, and a month must elapse before any contact
with the outside world can vary the seclusion of this lonely spot, a
dreamland vision of repose. At Posso, the next port on Celebes, we