MACASSAR SEA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4533, 6 February 1942, Page 6

MACASSAR SEA

STRATEGICAL PORTS QUAINT SAILING CRAFT (By H.W.L.S.) With the attacks on isolated ports and stations in the Pacific area, the strategic potentialities and economic conditions of every port in the Indies became increasingly important. Among-these the ports of the Macassar Strait, from Bira to Manado on the east seaboard and from Bima to Sandakan on the west, are of outstanding significance from their position relative to the oil fields of East Borneo and the aerial network of N.E.I. with its northern terminus at Macassar. The island-studded strait roughly follows the course of the Wallace line established by the great scientist 73 years ago. It divides the Indo-Malay-

an and Austro-Malayan ~regions,l. in which both plant and animal types are as distinct as if they were worlds apart. Traversing the straits northward we can feel that away to the west, among the innumerable isles of the Asiatic seaboard and the South’ China Sea, the Indian and West Mal-> ayan fauna and flora are dominant while on our right, from bile coasts' of Celebes and beyond in all points east, the Austral type thrives and multiplies. Celebes itself was regarded by Wallace as the transition island. SCENIC DROP-CURTAINS Travelling down the west coast of Celebes toward the capital, Macassar, one revels . in the loveliness of the place. Its natural beauty is so fantastically unreal that it appears to be a series of drop-curtains exotically painted to represent a mythical landscape with steep gorges and cliffs rising suddenly from the plain, the sides draped in delicate trails of clinging vines and clothed with .feathery trees. Throughout this region, from Bali to Manado, we are balanced on

■ the Wallace line, and, to quote Mayi nard Williams, “ What Wallace did for the scientists, Joseph Conrad did I for the lover of romance in the Malay seas. The slime on the mangrove roots, the response of native praus ■ to paddle and wind, the houses on stilts add the low-bowing trees, the light in Malay eyes, the suspicion of the foreigner, the sound of Moslem welcome here one follows in the wake of Conrad.”

Nowhere is the Conrad scene more evident than in Macassar. A few

steps from big business and the tiny shops where Kendari silver workers fashion delicate filigree into silver cobwebs and gold-lace lizards with emerald eyes is the little harbour where are tied up the sailing praus of the Makassarans and the Boeginese, men whose tradition is the sea, whose, platform is a tossing deck. Seeing the high-pooped “ palaris ” in the prau harbour gives one a sense of antiquity, for such ships carried Columbus across the Atlantic, Vasco da Gama around the Cape, and Magelmen around the world. Rather more than a century ago the Dayaks of southern Borneo and parts of Celebes still plied the Java Sea in seaworthy ships, carrying on a trade which, for their mode of existence, was quite substantial. They used to travel even as far as Singapore- Then a paternal Government closed the estuaries of the great rivto trade. The natives sold their ships or turned them into firewood. In 1863 the river mouths were once more opened to trade. But it was of no avail—the people had lost all memory of the sea. PROFESSIONAL PIRACY The coasts of Borneo and Celebes were one great nest of pirates. The measures taken by European Governments made life very hard for the natives; their prosperity, due to trading, which at times was quite substantial, disappeared rapidly, so sb that it seemed only reasonable that they should take to piracy to eke out an existence. Thus they made a practice ■ of robbing traders of their goods and turning captives into slaves. No earlier prosperity could compare with that derived from piracy and slave trading. The pirate’s profession was highly esteemed. In time it became so much part of the people’s normal existence that it came to be looked upon as an honest means of earning one’s livelihood. Any

success achieved by the pirates was considered a propitious dispensation of the Divine Power. Many pirates were established on the north and the north-east coasts of Borneo, the men being Dayaks or Malays. Piracy had an economic necessity for its cause. By a combination of military measures and others calculated to relieve economic pressure, piracy has gradually been exterminated, even to the point of making some of the Dayak tribes lose all memory of their seafaring past. On the other hand, it is by no means strange that even so they should make use of seaworthy and sea-going vessels to ferry their dead back to the spirit land, throughout their curious art forms.

The Malay is so generally regarded as primarily a rice producer that his prowess as a navigator is apt to be overlooked. He has strong claims, however, as a man bf the sea, for, like his cousins the Javanese, the Malay is a natural denizen of the seaboard, whose skill was doubtless handed down to him, as was that of the Javanese and Balanese, whose ancestors acquired it in the course of their piratical exploits in earlier days. ASSORTED EXPORTS Spices from the Molucca seas still come by Macassar. Tortoiseshell, sandalwood, and - mother-of-pearl, ebony and kapok, and endless bags of rice and copra are loaded from the two long landing piers’of the outer harbour. Until recently birds of paradise skins from myriads of these lovely birds, sacrificed for the export trade, were a feature of the merchandise. The nostrils are assailed by the odour of gum dammar and all the cane, rattan, and pith products of the island forests. The butts of the rattans are stained a deep crimson, and bundles of long sticks are carried by bronzeshouldered porters to the loading stations, where the ship’s winch picks them up and drops them, floppy and rattling, like enormous macaroni, into the waiting holds. What romance, and sometimes tragedy, are associated with the rattan trade, product of the hornets of the jungle beasts of the island. Ultimately seen as tea waggons and jauntily swung malacca sticks, the rattan finds its way to minister to man’s comfort in a thousand forms.

Macassar is indeed a city of contrasts. Sailing craft, like those whose milky wakes wove history around the port when the spice hunters of Portugal arrived in 1512, and prahus whose forbears welcomed Cornelius Speelman’s Dutch ships, rub shoulders with the most modern of ships, large and small; and when the sun sinks behind Borneo, and sea-birds float like shadows against the blazing sky, archipelago life is symbolised by sails, scudding in for a night’s rest at Macassar, haven of Malay ships.