CELEBES is called by the natives Wugi. It is an island in the Eastern Archipelago. In con figuration it has been compared to a star-fish, from which the radiating limbs on one side have been removed • and this very singular form also distin guishes Gilolo, an island not far distant from it to the eastward. Celebes occupies the centre of the tropical zone, and lies in the Molucca sea. It is composed of four peninsulas, with an area of 3578 miles. Its coast presents a great number of bays, gulfs, and capes of eccentric outline. The surface is lofty, with considerable hills, and towards the north are several active volcanoes. Some of the mountains rise 7000 feet above the level of the sea, usually with round or fiat tops. Along the borders of the sea are wide plains covered with verdure ; and beautiful valleys, some of which enclose magnificent basins of limpid water, raised on a smooth plateau, encircled by a rim of low hills. Thick forests cover the hills and large tracts of the level country with oaks, maples, sycamores, cedars, teak trees, and the upas. Two southern prongs form the Gulf of Boni, which stretches three degrees northward into the centre of the island. Its entrance is about 80 miles wide, but narrows to 30 miles, till at its head it again expands to 96 miles. Celebes, on its eastern coast, is fronted by islands ; and many islands are scattered over the bays of Tolo and Tominie, or Gunong Tella. Celebes, on its north coast, is in general high, bold land. Its extreme point is called Cape Coffin; and the whole of the islands that stretch from it to Menado Bay are sometimes called Banat islands. The tongue of land in the north of Celebes, known administratively under the name of the Dutch Residency of Menado, comprehends all the northern extent of the island, from the bay of Palos in the west to the cape of Taliabo in the east, and com prises the great bay or arm of the sea of Gunong Tella, which stretches in a westerly direction between the two peninsulas. The Residency of Menado includes under its jurisdiction the whole federative states of Minahassa ; the small kingdom of the northern coast ; also the very extensive districts in the west part of the peninsula, where Government exercise sway, besides the islands of Sangir and Talaut to the north, as well as the lesser island of the west coast and the large gulf of Tomini. In 1842 its population was estimated about 180,000 souls, exclusive of the Alfura race. In 1881 it was 379,795.
In the S.W. Peninsula, two languages are spoken, the Mangkasa or Mangkasara (which gives its name to the Netherland capital Macassar), and the Wugi or Bugi, which originally was more particularly limited to the coast of the Gulf of Boni. North of Macassar, in the most western
part of the island, is another people, the Mandhar, who speak a third language. On the island of Baton, which may be regarded as a part of the Peninsula east of the Gulf of Boni, a fourth tongue is spoken. In the northern Peninsula are the people speaking the Gorontalo and the Menado languages (Bikmore, p. 97). Minahassa is in the northern extremity of Celebes. In the interior are a people whom the coast t ibex call Turaju, who are said to be cannibals and ead-hunters (Bikmore). Macassar is the most notori place in the Eastern Archipelago for the Bugi peop e to run amok. It is in fact the national mode of committing suicide amongst the natives of Celebes, and, is therefore the fashionable mode of escaping difficulties. Ten or twenty persons are sometimes killed and wounded at one of the amok. Stabbini and killing all he meets, the amok runner is at last overpowered, and dies in all the excitement of battle. It is a delirious intoxication, a tem porary madness, absorbing every thought and action (Wallace, i. p. 174). Macassar men is a common name of the Bugi race. The Macassar people were taught Mahomedanism in the early part of the 16th century, but the Portuguese arrived A.D. 1525, and they embraced Christianity (Bikmore, p. 99). The Bugi are now the great navigators and traders and the most enterprising race of the Eastern Archipelago. In the begin ning of ,the western monsoon they go in great numbers to the Aru islands, which is the principal rendezvous for the people of Ceram,• Goram, the Ki islands, Tenimber, Baba, and the adjacent coast of New Guinea, a distance from Macassar of upwards of 1000 miles. They carry English cali coes, cotton goods of their own manufacture, Chinese gongs, and arrack ; and the return cargoes are tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl shell, pearls, birds of paradise, and trepang, the Malay term for all the kinds of holothurim or sea-cucumbers. Of trepang alone about 14,000 pikuls are yearly shipped from Macassar, of the value of 600,000 dollars, or £150,000. It is estimated that the annual value of goods carried by the Bugi to the Aru islands from Macassar alone is 80,000 dollars, or 200,000 guilders ; and of those taken to the Aru group from other places, 20,000 dollars, or 50.000 guilders.—Bikniore, 101.