File:Macassar Craft, Celebes.jpg

English: Excerpt from the book: MACASSAR CRAFT

These vessels should be included in the ark or house-boat class, as we live in an age of classification. Celebes runs from the Equator 0°. in a long slip of an island down to 5° south, lying to the eastward of the lower pari of Borneo, so that it is rather out of the way and not much frequented by Europeans, save a few Dutchmen who come up from Java.

The craft here are the most villagey looking vessels we know : it would have been very interesting to have gone over the establishment to see how they were arranged. The large parallelogrammic sail with the wide band of colour running through it is quite Malay in form and character, so also the outside rudder and inverted beak stern; the Derrick masts and heavy mast-head belong to the same school. The houses represent the local peculiarity, and very odd they are. the only reason one can give to account lor all the thatching resorted to is that in these equatorial latitudes the smaller boats adopted the same protection against the sun's perpendicular rays, and as it is so successful in the smaller essays the Celebes people thought liny would show the world what the) could do in their own waters.

The boat on the right in this illustration is a two-master with Probolingo sails going before the wind goosewinged : she too has a thatched roof in a more moderate degree. The rig is very picturesque, and much more pleasing to the eye than the Celebes sail rolled up in the vessel in the centre. Quaint as they appear, they were carefully drawn and are faithful to the originals. The heaviness of the hulls is admirably relieved by the ornamentation round the gunwale, which is a Mohammedan green pattern on a white ground, the Malays being mostly Moslems.