The burning mountain, the torrent and the lake, were the abode of their deities; and certain trees and birds were supposed to have special influence over men's actions and destiny.

They held wild and exciting festivals to propitiate these deities or demons, and believed that men could be changed by them into animals--either during life or after death.
Here we have a picture of true savage life; of small isolated communities at war with all around them, subject to the wants and miseries of such a condition, drawing a precarious existence from the luxuriant soil, and living on, from generation to generation, with no desire for physical amelioration, and no prospect of moral advancement.
Such was their condition down to the year 1822, when the coffee-plant was first introduced, and experiments were made as to its cultivation.
It was found to succeed admirably from fifteen hundred feet, up to four thousand feet above the sea.

The chiefs of villages were induced to undertake its cultivation.

Seed and native instructors were sent from Java; food was supplied to the labourers engaged in clearing and planting; a fixed price was established at which all coffee brought to the government collectors was to be paid for, and the village chiefs who now received the titles of "Majors" were to receive five percent of the produce.

After a time, roads were made from the port of Menado up to the plateau, and smaller paths were cleared from village to village; missionaries settled in the more populous districts and opened schools; and Chinese traders penetrated to the interior and supplied clothing and other luxuries in exchange for the money which the sale of the coffee had produced.
At the same time, the country was divided into districts, and the system of "Controlleurs," which had worked so well in Java, was introduced.