5S4t HISTORY OF CELEBES. petty conquests made, and soon lost, with perj>c- tiial anarchy and violence. The character of the people and their rulers seem to have acquired a new energy on the adoption of the Mahomedan reli- gion. As early as the year i5I2, when the Por- tuguese first visited Macassar, they found among them a few Mahomedans, but it was not until near a century afterwards that the religion of Mahomed was generally adopted. * The principal agents in the conversion were inhabitants of various Malay
- *' To return to the king of Macassar, you must know that
the Jesuits once endeavoured to convert him ; and perhaps they might have brought it to pass, had they not negkcted one proposal which he made them. For at the same time that the Jesuits laboured to bring him to Christianity, the Mahomedans used all their endeavours to oblige him to stick to their law. The king, willing to leave his idolatry, yet not knowing which part to take, commanded the Mahomedans to send for two or three of their most able MouUas, or doctors, from Mecca ; and the Jesuits he ordered to send him as many of the most learn- ed among them, that he might be instructed in botli religions, vhich they both promised to do. But the Mahomedans were more diligent than the Christians, for in eight months they fetched from Mecca two leafned Moulias; whereupon the king seeing that the Jesuits sent nobody to him, embraced the IMahomedan law. True it is, that three years after there came two Portugal Jesuits, but then it was too late." — Taver- nier, Part 2. Book 3. There is some foundation for this story, but I have generally found Tavernier a superficial and un- faithful narrator.
