People
The population, mainly a mixed race of Makasars (see Makasar), Bugis, the natives of Luvu and Buton, is estimated at 57,000 on the main island and 24,000 on the nearby islands. They use the Macassar language, are for the most part nominally Moslems (though many non-Muslim customs survive), and support themselves by agriculture, fishing, seafaring, trade, the preparation of salt (on the south coast) and weaving. Raw and prepared cotton, tobacco, trepang, tortoise-shell, coconuts and coconut oil, and salt are exported. There is frequent movement between the area and other parts of Sulawesi as well as to other parts Indonesia. For that reason, and also because of its excellent horses and numerous water buffaloes, Saleyer is often compared with Madura, being of the same importance to Celebes as is Madura to Java.
Read more about this topic: Selayar Islands
Famous quotes containing the word people:
“The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it... After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.”
—Will Durant (1885–1981)
“The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old “laissez faire” school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)