PAPUANPAPUAN OF SOUTH-EAST NEW GUINEA, NEAR PORT MORESBY(From a drawing by the late Professor T.H. Huxley)
PAPUAN OF SOUTH-EAST NEW GUINEA, NEAR PORT MORESBY(From a drawing by the late Professor T.H. Huxley)
PAPUAN OF SOUTH-EAST NEW GUINEA, NEAR PORT MORESBY(From a drawing by the late Professor T.H. Huxley)
OCEANICOCEANIC NEGRO TYPE FROM THE NORTHERNMOST SOLOMON ISLANDS(From a photograph)
OCEANIC NEGRO TYPE FROM THE NORTHERNMOST SOLOMON ISLANDS(From a photograph)
OCEANIC NEGRO TYPE FROM THE NORTHERNMOST SOLOMON ISLANDS(From a photograph)
Melanesians, like Polynesians and Papuans, lived much on a fish diet if dwelling anywhere near the sea. The Papuans of New Guinea do not seem to have known the Bread-fruit until modern times, though that tree was themost important staple of life in so many Pacific islands, and under another name appears anciently to have been a favourite article of food in the Malay Archipelago. There was, however, no Bread-fruit among the New Zealanders, though they had sweet potatoes, taro yams, and gourds. Likewise the New Zealanders omitted to take the pig with them from their original home in Samoa: perhaps, however, the pig had not then reached those islands from the west. The New Zealanders ate their dogs, and the domestic dog throughout Oceania was bred for eating, and not merely as a hunting companion. Like the Dingo of Australia, and the domestic dogs of Negro Africa, the breeds of Malaysia and Polynesia could not bark. In Melanesia and most parts of the Pacific, including New Zealand, one or more species of rat were much in request as food, and were introduced by these different races of men into almost all the islands, including New Zealand.
All the Melanesians, like the Papuans of New Guinea, and the Negroes of the Bismarck Archipelago, were thorough-going cannibals, and this vice—the eating of human flesh—infected some of the Polynesian peoples, especially the New Zealanders. Cannibalism probably existed at one time in all the Polynesian islands, but had died out in most by the time they were discovered by Europeans, only remaining as a well-established custom in New Zealand and throughout Melanesia. The New Zealand Maoris used after one of their inter-tribal battles to collect the bodies of their slain enemies, cut off their scalps and right ears, and offer these first as a sacrifice to the gods. Then a row of cooking pits were dug on the right hand "for the gods" and on the left for humans. The eyes and the brain were removed from a dead warrior, and were eaten raw by the chief man of the victoriousparty. When the cut-up bodies of the vanquished were cooked, the chief's sons and relations first, and the whole of the army afterwards, fell on the meat cooked on the left-hand row of pits and devoured all they could at a sitting. The right-hand section of the feast was presided over by the priests and the contents of the pits partly consumed by them, and partly carried off to be stored against future requirements. What was left over on the left-hand side was packed up in baskets and sent to friendly tribes, who by accepting and eating the remains of these slain men took the side in the quarrel of the victorious force.
In Fiji human flesh was, above all, the food of chiefs, but everyone partook who could. Slaves were captured in war or purchased from other islands and were carefully fattened up for the table.
Cannibalism was partly an act of revenge, a desire more completely to extinguish a fallen enemy, and in part a sacrifice to the gods of the victorious tribe, or it began as an act of atonement or propitiation to win the favour of a deity. In New Caledonia and New Zealand—perhaps also in Fiji—it was often provoked by mere hunger for meat, a hunger less easy to satisfy than in the large islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and the mainland of New Guinea, where there were the great Cassowary birds, large fruit bats, tree kangarus, phalangers, and an immense variety of pigeons.
In religion there was mostly this difference between Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians: the two latter had castes of priests who devoted themselves to the conduct of religious ceremonies, and were often unmarried; whereas amongst the Melanesians and Papuans there were no priests, anyone—usually the chief of the village or tribe—being competent to sacrifice to the gods, or to conduct the semi-religious ceremonies (so like those of Negro Africa) connected with birth and death: most of all, the solemn rites observed in the initiation of boys and girls into the duties of adult life on their entering manhood or womanhood. The dwarf Negroes or Negritos of New Guinea and the islands to the west had very little religious belief; the Papuans more, but not so much as the Melanesians of the Pacific archipelagoes. These last, no doubt, had been taught and influenced for many hundred years by the Polynesians. All these peoples believed in a variety of gods, devils, spirits, and fairies. (The Fijians even believed in water-babies!) Sometimes the supernatural being was the soul of a deceased hero or chief, canonized after his death, and still working for or against the survivors in the form of a shark, a turtle, a fish, snake, or lizard.
Stones and trees were worshipped as the form or the home of a god; so were lizards, snakes, birds, the sea, a volcano, the sun, the moon, stars, and vault of heaven. Nearly everything of fixed form had a soul, was alive, was connected in some way with the spirit world. A belief among Papuans, Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians in the immortality of human beings was almost universal. Only perhaps among the Negritos was it absent or "not thought about".
As to the arts and industries, all this region lay outside the range of metal-using countries, except where iron had been introduced by the Malays, as on the north-west coasts of New Guinea and the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Otherwise the races of Australasia and the Pacific were still in the Stone Age. The Papuans and Melanesians, however, had a great feeling for art and colour. They carved wood most skilfully with chisels made ofbivalve shells, or stone adzes. There was a great tendency, derived from Malaysia, especially in New Guinea and Melanesia, to build houses on piles, with platforms rising high above the ground: a most convenient architecture both for defending the dwelling against attack (by drawing up the ladder of approach) and for raising sleeping places above the range of mosquitoes, centipedes, snakes, and damp. In some parts of New Guinea the people constructed their houses high up in the forks of great trees, and used rope ladders to ascend and descend.
But in Polynesia and those island groups to the east and north-east of New Guinea much influenced by the Polynesians, the houses were mostly built on the ground, sometimes with a stone floor, or were raised on a mound of earth. They were usually oblong in shape, and of considerable length, with a roof of thatch or palm leaves in shape like a long boat turned upside down. In the Solomon Islands the houses (occupied by several families) were occasionally as much as 70 feet long and 40 wide. The thatched roof was in some instances carried right down to the ground, in other cases it formed a veranda supported on posts. But in parts of New Guinea and the islands adjacent to its eastern half, in Fiji and New Caledonia there were round or oval-shaped huts, looking like hayricks. The houses of the New Zealanders had firm walls made of slabs of wood, and one small window facing eastward. There was a porch over the door. In the southern part of the great South Island, near the snowy mountains, there were winter houses made by excavating a square or oblong pit in the ground and roofing this over. In wintertime a fire was lighted inside this underground dwelling, and the temperature under the heavily thatched roof became very high, whilst it wasfreezing outside; but as the dwelling was unventilated it was often unwholesome for its occupants. Except among the wildest Negritos and Papuans, there were in every village a club house and a guest house, or the two uses combined in one large dwelling. And on this club house the men of the village lavished their best ideas of art and decoration. The beams and posts would be handsomely carved and painted, or even inlaid with beautifully coloured sea shells; mats woven of palm fibre or grass covered the walls, and the timbered floor might be lacquered with some vegetable varnish. Similar decorations were bestowed on their temples and their chiefs' houses.
The furniture consisted of little else than a rude bed made of slabs of wood covered with matting; chairs or stools were carved out of solid blocks of wood, or made from bamboo sections. The fireplace was a thick cane basket covered with clay. Canes or reeds and the invaluable bamboo equally made light but firm frames which did duty as tables in Polynesian households, but the Melanesians were usually content with mats and stools for all furniture. Pottery—baked clay—was made by the Melanesians and by most Papuan (but not Negrito) and Micronesian tribes; it was also known to the Polynesians, but for some reason had in late centuries almost gone out of use, its place being taken by wood vessels, gourds, the halves of coconuts, and the shells of clams. Still, the manufacture and use of clay pots were retained by the Polynesians of Easter Island. Food was cooked by placing it between hot stones, which were then sprinkled with water, and the whole thing covered over till the food was steamed and cooked. Water was boiled in wooden vessels by dropping in red-hot stones.
Sharp knives in New Guinea and Melanesia were made from splinters of bamboo. The ground was tilled and prepared for cultivation all over these Oceanic regions by wooden implements—pointed stakes, forked branches made into hoes, flat slabs rubbed down into smooth spades. Papuans (but not Negritos)—still more Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians—were industrious agriculturists, and besides food plants they cultivated bright-coloured flowers (such as the crimson Hibiscus) and the paper Mulberry tree, from the bast of which they obtained the famoustapa"bark cloth", as also from the bast of fig trees and a relation of the Bread-fruit. There was no loom or idea of weaving anywhere, except here and there on the coast of New Guinea and in the Santa Cruz Islands (near the New Hebrides), whither it may have been introduced by Malay seafarers. But the plaiting of leaves, rushes, and fibre was carried to a fine art by all these Oceanic peoples. In New Zealand the Maoris made much use of the now-celebrated New Zealand flax, the fibre ofPhormium tenax, a liliaceous plant related to aloes.
Not having any metal (as already related), axes were made of chipped flakes of obsidian (a glassy, flint-like volcanic stone) or of other stones ground to a sharp edge, or of hard, sharp-edged bivalve shells, or sharp-edged bones from the flattened spine of the tortoise or turtle. Terrible instruments for slaying and beheading were devised from the lower jawbones of large fishes, with saw-like rows of recurved teeth; or by implanting razor-edged sharks' teeth into the sides of wooden swords. Daggers with saw-like edges were made from the spines of the ray or skate, as well as from very hard wood rubbed down into a sharp cutting edge by sharks' skin. Spears and pikes were also made from hard wood and sharpened by burning the pointin the fire. Or the point of the spear was made from the bony spines in the tail of the great Ray fish, or the wooden haft of the spear was fastened to a sharpened stone or obsidian blade by means of resin. Bows and arrows were in use nearly throughout New Guinea and most of the adjacent island groups; also in the New Hebrides. But they had not been introduced into New Zealand, and had fallen into disuse in most parts of Micronesia and Polynesia, though they were originally used by all these Oceanic peoples. In the eastern Melanesian islands slings were employed to hurl stones. Clubs and throwing sticks were common Papuan and Melanesian weapons, some of the former as executioners' weapons being fitted with stone heads. Shields scarcely penetrated to Polynesia, but were much developed and most fantastically carved and painted in New Guinea and some of the western Melanesian islands. In the northern parts of Oceania armour made of fibre, cord, or matting, and helmets of fibre, wood, or basketwork were worn, but more for ornament than to shield the head.
The Negritos, Papuans, and most of the Melanesians went about in complete, or almost complete, nudity before they were influenced by the Malays or by Europeans. On the other hand, the Polynesians were scarcely ever seen without some covering; they had, in fact, a sense of decency which was almost entirely absent from the negroid races of Oceania in their primitive condition. But whether or not clothing was worn for a covering or for propriety, the men, and in a lesser degree the women, of all the Oceanic races were passionately fond of ornaments. The more highly developed Polynesians decorated the face and body of men and also women by tatuing; that is to say, by pricking the skin with a sharp implementand rubbing in some colouring matter. The Melanesians and Papuans, however, were more addicted to what is called "cicatrization", that is to say, slashing the skin and raising permanent blobs or blisters by introducing some irritant. The more or less bushy hair was dressed sometimes with great elaborateness. Necklaces of teeth (human, dogs', pigs', kangarus', phalangers', fishes', and whales'), of seeds, shells, pebbles, bones, and pieces of wood were worn, together with armlets, bracelets, and anklets; so also were girdles of plaited fibre. The brightly coloured feathers of birds entered largely into personal adornments—in breastplates, masks, headdresses, and robes.
All these Oceanic races possessed musical instruments, chiefly drums, flutes, Pan pipes, and slabs of resonant wood. They loved singing—especially the Melanesians—and dancing.
In both Melanesia and Polynesia—even also in Australia—there were the rudiments of picture writing, which in Easter Island became developed into regular hieroglyphics.
All the Oceanic peoples, except the dwarfish Negritos, were fond of birds, partly owing to their love of colour and partly due to a sense of the poetry of nature which thrilled them all, the handsome Polynesians most of all. In Easter Island the pretty little terns, or "sea-swallows", were tamed and trained to perch on the men's shoulders. Some of the island pigeons were partially domesticated. In New Guinea and the big islands near by a great admiration was felt for the fantastic Hornbills, and to wear a hornbill's head and casque was a privilege of brave men only. The New Zealanders regarded their parrots as semi-sacred. They would seem, however, in the earliest daysof their settlements on these two great islands, to have exterminated the gigantic Moas. Perhaps, however, Nature had already begun the killing off of most of these flightless birds before man came on the scene. Certainly some Moas survived to the coming of the Polynesian New Zealanders from Samoa and Tonga; for the legend goes that, when the earliest pioneers of these adventurous people returned to Samoa with proofs of the discovery of a vast New Land in the southern ocean, they brought with them the bones and feathers of a gigantic bird.
Most of these Oceanic peoples had some idea of a currency, except in the savage interior of New Guinea; that is to say, there were objects used in trade which had a more or less fixed value, such as, in some island groups, the red hair-tufts from the necks of fruit bats, parrots' feathers, the feathers of the starling-likeDrepanidæ(in Hawaii), brightly coloured shells—or, in others, pieces of bark cloth, rolls of matting, beautiful seeds, disks, pieces or points of shells strung on fibre (like the wampum of America), or the teeth of dolphins, whales, dogs, phalangers, and boars; also the vertebræ of the Dugong. (See p. 40.) In Micronesia the currency was more in objects like stones, either large "millstones" made of a yellowish limestone in Palao Island; or small red stones, polished pebbles, enamelled beads of unknown age and origin, prisms of polished, baked, red clay (known asbrak), bits of glass or porcelain (obviously from China).
How were the Oceanic peoples living, from a social point of view, before the advent of the European? The Negritos of New Guinea and those which lingered in the interior of Malayan islands like Buru led an absolutely savage existence scarcely superior in intellectual level to that of the ape. They were hunters dwelling in the denseforest on grubs, termites, wild fruits, roots, and edible leaves; on the flesh of such birds and beasts or monitor lizards as they could snare or slay. They built rough shelters as temporary dwellings, and wandered from one part of the forest to another in search of food. They were expert at catching fish or climbing trees after birds' nests or honey, but they had no canoes, no implements, no religion (only a vague belief in a life beyond the grave), and no ceremonies connected with birth, puberty (or the "coming of age"), marriage, death, or burial. They belonged to the human species, but were primitive human types who had degenerated rather than advanced, and were almost drifting back into the life of the beast.
Then there were the jolly, ferocious, excitable, laughter-loving vigorous Papuans, with their nearly black skins, their mops of frizzled hair, their big arched noses and tall, well-made bodies. The Papuans lived in small tribes and passed their lives raiding other tribes, eating their captives, hunting ground kangarus, tree kangarus, phalangers, cassowaries, Birds of Paradise, parrots, and Crowned pigeons. They came to trade with the Malays on the coasts, where sometimes they settled down under Malay sultans. As often as not, however, they would turn treacherous, fall on some band of traders (if they could take them at a disadvantage), slay, and eat them.
On parts of the north-west and north-east coasts of New Guinea, as on some of the outlying islands of the Jilolo group and of the Bismarck Archipelago, there were settlements of Caucasian-like people, called by anthropologistsIndonesian—a term scarcely distinguishable from Polynesian. They were of the same stock as the similar folk (with faces like dark-complexioned Europeans) to be met with on the islands off western Sumatra. These Indonesianshad broadened out into Polynesians eastwards of New Guinea. They had mingled in most of the Melanesian islands with the primitive Negroes, and had introduced many new ideas in religion, warfare, and art. They were a little less cruel, perhaps, than the Papuans. In the extreme limits of their range to the north-east—Hawaii archipelago—and to the south-east—Easter Island—they had developed a considerable civilization, though it is by no means certain whether they were the first inhabitants of those islands (the existing Hawaiians, according to their traditions, came from Samoa and had only been in the Hawaiian archipelago for about nine hundred years when they were discovered or re-discovered by Captain Cook). They may have been preceded in both groups by the ancient race that built in huge blocks of stone, but which either passed on to America or died out, leaving, however, its mixed and slightly degenerate descendants in the Polynesians, who from some such centre as the Marquezas Islands and Tahiti spread westwards to Samoa, and thence to nearly all the Pacific islands.
Both in Easter Island and in Hawaii the development of religion was a development of terror. The common people were especially harassed by their belief in evil spirits waiting to torture them cruelly after death (a belief engendered in the Hawaii archipelago by the terrible earthquakes and the active volcanoes with their seething craters). And at any moment they were liable to be seized by the priests, the nobles, or the king to be offered up as human sacrifices to the gods of sky, earth, mountains, and sea. The priests and kings or chiefs (and in some islands a king or chief was not merely a high priest as well, but was often worshipped as a god during his lifetime) had immense power over the community by being able toestablish "tabu". To declare a thing or a person "tabu" was equivalent to saying that it was sacred, under the protection of the gods—might not be touched, drunk, eaten, smelt, or even looked at, without risk of death, through the action of some supernatural force or as a punishment administered for impiety by the human authority. This practice penetrated to New Zealand and spread its influence over much of Melanesia. It could be wielded with great benefit in keeping the people in order, but it also checked their enterprise in many directions, and was shockingly misused by both priests and chiefs for their own advantage.
All the Oceanic peoples were immoral, and their numbers were slowly decreasing in the Pacific islands as the result of superstition, vice, and selfishness. In order that there should be no scarcity of food in the smaller islands families were often limited to one or two children, many infants being killed at birth. They were particularly averse from daughters, so that in not a few tribes and communities the women were much fewer than the men, perhaps only one woman to four men; thus not a few of the men (priests, generally) were unmarried. Women were very unfairly treated, as is frequently the case among barbarous peoples. They were often forbidden to eat the more nourishing forms of food, in case there should not be enough for the men. In Hawaii, for example, they were put to death if caught eating bananas, coconuts, or the flesh of pigs or turtles. Their husbands (in Tahiti and Samoa) sometimes made them wean their children and bring up instead young pigs or puppies. (A similar practice is referred to in my book on the Pioneers of Canada in regard to the rearing of young bears by Amerindian women.)
Wars were constantly being waged between island and island, tribe and tribe—especially in the Melanesian division of Oceania. In the western Pacific, indeed, the lives of the natives, before the establishment of the White Man's rule, was one perpetual acquaintance with terror. At any moment in the offing might appear the war canoes of an enemy, and ensue the sudden invasion of a village, the defeat of its fighting men, the cannibal feast on the bodies of the slain, the carrying off of the young women and children into captivity, there perhaps to be fattened up and killed for more cannibal feasts. Or when bathing and swimming (which nearly all these people delighted in) they might be seized and devoured by sharks; or their islet or island coast was suddenly swamped by an enormous tidal wave, or a mighty earthquake swallowed up the village in an earthcrack or landslide; or red-hot ashes and burning lava from a suddenly active volcano destroyed several communities; or hurricanes devastated their settlements and swamped their fleets of canoes. It is true that they never suffered from cold (except in New Zealand), and seldom from famine; for the sea provided bountifully fish and edible seaweed, there were the sea birds' eggs on the rocks, innumerable oysters, clams, sea slugs[21], crabs, langoustes, and prawns; there were pigeons, parrots, rails, plovers, ducks, on most of the smaller islands, and a bewildering abundance of bird life in New Guinea and the big islands. There was the Bread-fruit tree, there were bananas, yams, the invaluable coconut—giving food and a wholesome drink; and in New Zealand, where tropical products were mostly lacking (though the Maoris introduced sweet potatoes and taro yams), there was the bracken fern, which from root stems yielded a palatablesubstance like that sago which in west Melanesia and Fiji, as in Malaysia, was an important article of diet.
Yet in spite of an abundant food supply and a genial climate, these Oceanic peoples suffered a good deal from disease before the Europeans came. There was leprosy, which was a terrible plague in some islands; there were various forms of germ fevers introduced into the blood by mosquitoes; smallpox had come from the west, spread by the Malays. Mostly these primitive Oceanians led short lives; and if they were mainly merry and irresponsible, these spells of light-heartedness, of dancing, immoderate feasting and drinking, song-singing, lovemaking, gambling, and living the life of mermen and mermaids in the foaming breakers of a warm sea, alternated with heart-breaking struggles against the forces of nature, panics in regard to new diseases, terrors of unseen devils, torturing sacrifices to malevolent gods, murders, cannibal feasts, poisonings, and enslavement.
In this description of the condition of man in Oceania I have made no allusion to Australia and Tasmania, for the reason that the natives of the southern continent (of which Tasmania recently formed an outlying peninsula) differed so remarkably from the peoples of the Malay islands, New Guinea, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (including New Zealand) as to require separate treatment.
The aboriginal Australoids are the most primitive, the least improved of existing human races: although peculiarly developed in some points, they are the lowliest form of real mankind known to us. They were considered at one time to be the descendants of a brutish but big-brained type, a veritable "ogre" which dwelt in Europe some hundred thousand years ago: the Man of Neanderthal. But this impression was wrong; the Australoidsmore nearly resemble the less specialised, ancestral human race of Europe. Australia was originally peopled by two distinct types of men: the Australoids and the negroid Tasmanians. These last had the curly black hair and depressed noses of Negroes, though they were also akin to the Australoids; which last people, except that they are dark-skinned and brutish-looking, are remarkably like savage white men! They have head-hair which is neither lank like that of the Mongolian nor frizzly or tightly curled like the "wool" of Negroes and Papuans. Unlike the Papuans, moreover, and still more unlike the smooth-skinned Mongolian and Amerindian, the Australoid has much hair growing on the face and body, as is often the case among European and Indian peoples. But they also exhibit a feature present both in primitive man and in the modern European—an exaggerated projection of the brows, of the bones of the forehead which shade the eyes. The stature is not much below the European mean, but the lower limbs are usually short and rather slender. The forehead is retreating, the large jaws prominent, and the teeth bigger in proportion than in other races of modern men.
Considering the great area of the island-continent on which the Australoids must have lived for many thousand years, there is considerable uniformity of physical appearance amongst them, and a general resemblance in the structure and sounds of their languages, though these last are divisible into two main groups: those of the north and north-west, and the speech of the remainder of Australia. In considering their language, to some extent, and still more in examining their rudimentary arts and religious ideas, it is obvious that the people of the north-east of Australia have been visited for centuries by Malays,Papuans, and even Polynesians, yet that none of these superior races succeeded in getting a permanent foothold.
So far as any sense of shame was concerned, the Australoids of both sexes went quite naked, or merely wore a girdle round the hips, to which strings or strips of fur were attached; but in cold weather or at night they put round their shoulders cloaks made from the skins of marsupials, skins sewn together after being scraped, softened, and dressed. Their own bodies they decorated or mutilated in various ways, such as knocking out two of the upper front teeth, passing a bone nose pin 5 or 6 inches long through the septum of the nose, cutting off the end joints of their fingers, and marking the skin of the upper arm, chest, and belly by terrific scars of raised skin. This was "cicatrization", so often referred to in describing the skin decoration of savages, especially the negroes of the Congo basin. The Australoids did not tatu their bodies (with pin-pricks and paint) like the Polynesians and Malays. They painted their skins for warfare or for ceremonial dances with red and yellow ochre, white and grey clay, and black mineral substances or charcoal. Also the men would gum to their bodies the white down or fluff of certain birds and beasts.
TYPICALA TYPICAL POLYNESIAN(A man of Tongatabu, Tonga Archipelago)AN AUSTRALOID TYPE FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND(From photographs)
A TYPICAL POLYNESIAN(A man of Tongatabu, Tonga Archipelago)AN AUSTRALOID TYPE FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND(From photographs)
A TYPICAL POLYNESIAN(A man of Tongatabu, Tonga Archipelago)
AN AUSTRALOID TYPE FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND(From photographs)
They had no agriculture, and no domestic animals but the Dingo. This dog they kept as much for eating as for hunting. Although each tribe occupied a definite area, they had scarcely any settled homes or permanent villages. They roamed about looking for food, and living for days, weeks, or months alongside their food supply, which consisted of the produce of the chase—kangarus, phalangers, wombats, koalas (tailless phalangers), emus, bustards, swans, parrots, and pigeons; fish, snakes, lizards, turtles (on the coast), and shellfish. They ate a good manyinsects—fat-bodied moths, beetle grubs, termites (white ants), the pupæ of real ants, and the larvæ of bees. Honey was, of course, much liked and much sought after, and from it they made with water a sweet drink which sometimes became slightly fermented like mead. Their women obtained from the ground wild yams, truffles, and the roots and tubers of various plants or the seeds of others. They cooked their food by broiling, by baking in the ashes, and by the use of hot stones. Although they did not know tobacco till the Europeans introduced it, they already possessed the idea of inhaling the smoke of other dried leaves through a bamboo pipe, and chewed some leaves for their soothing qualities.
When hard up for food, they occasionally became cannibals, and after an inter-tribal fight the slain were generally eaten. They had a vague sense of religion, believed that there was a life after the grave, that men's spirits mostly went to a land beyond the visible sky, and sometimes returned again in the bodies of newborn children. But some of these men—famous chiefs in their day—stopped in the sky and became gods. There was one principal God, who was sometimes identified with the creator of all things, and who might be seen at night time in the form of a very bright star. Much of their religion was associated with the discipline of the community, and was manifested in elaborate dances. Nearly every clan or tribe had "medicine" men—individuals who were learned in the customs and laws of the tribe, and who had some rough knowledge of medicine and surgery. Their tribal organization was based on the association for common purposes of defence of a number of groups, which last were either united by family ties or formed a brotherhood because they all inherited or adopted the same"totem"[22]or crest. It was usually forbidden for a man to marry a woman who belonged to the same clan or totem group as himself; he must secure a wife from another coterie. Marriage was actually or generally pretended to be an affair of capture, though frequently based on a bargain; and the unwilling young woman was sometimes dragged to her new home by the hair of her head, or knocked senseless by a club and then hoisted on to her husband's shoulders. The women, in fact, were very badly treated, and did all the hard work of the community.
The Australoids when first discovered were a degree or two farther advanced than the "Eolithic"[23]Tasmanians. They were, in effect, in a "Palæolithic" stage of culture, similar to that of Europe some fifty thousand years ago. Their weapons and utensils were made of wood, stone, and bone. They did not know the bow and arrow, but used a rather elaborate wooden rest for throwing their spears with greater force than by the unaided arm. The spearhead was either of finely pointed hard wood, carved with notched barbs, or it was a separate piece from the haft and made of stone, bone, or shell, tied strongly on to the haft, and further fastened by resinous gum. This gum from the Eucalyptus trees was very useful for attaching the blades of stone axes and knives to their handles.
But the Australoids were specially celebrated for two things: their "bull-roarers" and their "boomerangs". The bull-roarer was a carved and flattened piece of wood or stone something in the shape of an axe blade. At thenarrow end of this implement (which had a sacred character, as it was usually inscribed or painted with the "crest" or device of the clan's totem) were indentations, to which a piece of fibre string or strip of hide could be tied. The "churinga" (as it was called in south-east Australia) was then whirled round and round in the air till it made a loud booming noise. This the women were persuaded was the voice of a spirit, and only youths after their initiation, or full-grown men, were in the secret. [All over the world of savagery in ancient times, and in the few places where savages now remain, women have been very easily "gammoned", and have been made to believe much nonsense which the men invented to scare them and keep them in submission.]
The boomerang was a wooden throwing stick, very thin and flat, and curved or crooked in the middle. Although more or less fiat in surface, it nevertheless had a slight twist, a little like the plane of a bird's wing. Hurled flat-wise through the air it was a very effective weapon; and some kinds, if they did not hit the object aimed at, would return and fall near the place from which they had been thrown. But both boomerang and bull-roarer, though they seemed very novel and unusual to the early pioneers in Australian discovery, were really not peculiar to this savage people. They have existed in many parts of Negro Africa, and even anciently in Europe, India, and in Egypt.
The houses of the Australoids were rough shelters of sticks, fronds, and grass. In warm weather the natives did not bother to put up huts, but slept with their feet towards the fire and their heads against a low wind screen of boughs and grass. The aborigines of Australia had some gift for painting and drawing objects, and had eveninvented a rough alphabet of symbolic signs or primitive writing, with which they marked their "message sticks" or churingas. These message sticks, in fact, were the germ of letters.
Finally, it might be mentioned that, even when first discovered, Australia—an island continent of 2,946,691 square miles—was very sparsely inhabited, and the bulk of the population was confined to the districts near the seacoast. If there are, as is sometimes computed, one hundred thousand aborigines still living in Australia at the present day, there were probably not more than double that number a hundred years ago. They did much to limit their own increase by killing or abandoning their children; they were often engaged in civil wars; in times of scarcity they turned cannibal. What, however, is so remarkable about this isolated people is their having gone on living with very little change or improvement in the life which was that of our ancestors fifty thousand years ago. While the races of Europe and northern Asia have tried so many experiments, have achieved so many conquests over nature, have had such a marvellous insight into the workings of the universe—have, in fact, for ten thousand years or so, been leading the lives of demigods, the Tasmanians and the Australoids have been content just with the day's provision of food, a fairly dry sleeping place at night, a little fighting and dancing, lovemaking of a more or less brutal kind, and a span of life which, owing to its excessive hardships and the callous if not cruel treatment of the men and women past their prime, was seldom more than fifty years. They have, it is true, seen God in the stars, and they have felt like us the tragedy of death and the hope of a resurrection; but, unlike us (their far-off cousins, whose "Tasmanian" and "Australoid" ancestors stayedin Europe), they achieved no conquest over nature, their lives were scarcely better than the lives of beasts.
The Tasmanians shared some of the physical features of the Australoids. Like them they were dark-skinned—a very dark brown—and of brutish appearance, especially in the women. The men were usually better looking than the females, but both alike represented perhaps the lowest type of humanity which has been known to scientific men in a living state—for they just lived long enough to be photographed. The Tasmanians were distinctly more negroid than the Australoids. They were of medium height. The nose was broader, shorter, and more depressed than that of the Australoid, and the hair inclined to be tightly curled. They looked, in fact, with their long and large upper lips, their receding chins, projecting brows and jaws, big teeth, woolly hair, small, deepset eyes, and hairy faces and bodies (even the women had slight whiskers) like the most primitive form ofHomo sapiens, and the joint ancestor of the Negro and the European.
Probably they entered north-eastern Australia at a very remote period, and were pushed down by the succeeding Australoids into the south-easternmost extremity of the continent—first the peninsula, then later the island of Tasmania. They were then (and they remained) in the lowest stage of human culture, like the Negritos or pigmy Negroes of Malaysia and Africa. They had no dwelling good enough to be called a hut: merely a circle of sticks stuck in the ground with their points converging. On to the top of these bent wands was thrown a mass of fern or grass, which made a rough thatch. Or the savages contented themselves in fine weather with a mere wind shelter of branches and bark strips. Whenever there wasa cave or a cranny in the rocks handy to their hunting ground, they lived in that. They had no agriculture and no domestic animals, not even the Dingo or semi-wild dog of Australia. They lived much on shellfish, on the cray-fish of the streams, and the flesh of kangarus and other marsupial beasts, and such birds as they could bring down with their throwing sticks; though they also ate roots, fungi, fruits, gum, and the sweet sap of certain trees. This even they sometimes allowed to collect in hollows at the base of the trunk till it became slightly fermented. Their method of cooking was by broiling over a fire or placing the dead beast to cook in its skin in the hot ashes. Their only weapons and implements were heavy stones used as hammers; flaked stones—big chunks of sand-stone with sharp edges, held in the hand as scrapers or choppers; long stakes, their points sharpened and hardened by being charred in the fire, and their stems straightened by heat and pressure; stems of small trees fashioned into rough clubs; and short, straight, thin but heavy sticks used as missile weapons for hurling at birds or small mammals.
Their language was never properly written down by the Europeans. It is described as being full of rough sounds and not possessing a great number of words, but we really know very little on the subject. They were without any sense of shame, and if they wore any clothing it was for warmth or ornament. As a matter of fact, it was limited in the men to strips of kangaru hide tied round the neck or ankle, and other pieces of hide which were fastened round the legs like gaiters when travelling through thorny bush country. The women tied an undressed kangaru skin round the neck and waist, in which they carried their babies. Both sexes wore necklaces ofshells, flowers, or seeds; and the men decorated their hair with kangaru teeth. The bodies—especially of the men—were anointed with kangaru fat and coloured with red ochre, and this red dust and fat were also rubbed into the hair and beard.
They had no religion, other than a vague belief in a life after the death of the body. Yet they were not cannibals, as was the case with the Australoids and the Oceanians; and they treated their women better than did the brutal Australoids. But their tribes or clans were constantly at war with one another, and this fact rather than any scarcity of food was the cause of their being in small numbers after many thousands of years of settlement in this large and fertile island. At the end of the eighteenth century—when Tasmania was first explored by Europeans—it was estimated that the aborigines numbered a total of between six and seven thousand. Between 1800 and 1830 they were reduced to only two hundred by warfare with the invading English settlers, by murder, by the effects of alcohol, and the spread of European diseases. After 1830 the two hundred gradually died out, till in 1876 the last of the old Tasmanian race expired.
It is remarkable what a bait to the European in discovery have been both spices and strong perfumes, once so popular in cookery and in the toilette. The Romans and Greeks were drawn through Egypt to the Indian trade by the pepper and cinnamon of India and Ceylon, by the sweet-smelling woods and gums of India and Further India—sandalwood, eaglewood, benzoin, storax, dragon's blood from the Calamus palm, rasamala—the resin from a liquid-amber tree of Java. It was to reach pepper-and-spice-producing regions that the Portuguese (and after them the English) were drawn into the exploration of the Guinea coast; and that the Portuguese felt impelled to circumnavigate Africa, so as to gain unfettered access to the commerce of India. The search for an Atlantic route to India and China impelled Spaniards and English, under Genoese and Venetian leadership, to discover Tropical and North America. And having reached India, Ceylon, Sumatra and Malacca, the Portuguese found that the most precious of all spices (cloves and nutmeg) still lay in undiscovered regions to the East—the Maluk or Muluk Islands, as they were called by Arab seamen: a name afterwards corrupted to Moluccas.
When Malacca on the Malay peninsula had been conquered by the Portuguese, the great viceroy Albuquerquedispatched in the same year, 1511, one of his boldest captains—Antonio de Abreu—to search for the Molucca and the Banda Islands, whence the Malay ships brought cloves and nutmegs. De Abreu touched at Java and the Sunda Islands and reached first Amboina, a small island off the south-west coast of Ceram; then passed on northwards till he again anchored off Ternate, one of the smallest of the five small Spice Islands lying close to the west coast of the big island of Jilolo. Here he found the clove trees growing, and probably met Chinese junks trading in cloves: for the Chinese had for several previous centuries been accustomed to travel as far afield as Papuasia in their quest of spices and perfumes. In 1512 de Abreu discovered the little Banda archipelago, lying in the open sea to the south of Ceram, and consisting of twelve islets, all very small, and one of them containing a terrific volcano, Gunong Api—which occasionally becomes active and devastates the neighbourhood of its cone. Just as the original "Moluccas"[24]were five very small islands (Ternate, Tidore, Mare, Mutir, and Makian), off the coast of Jilolo, and were the only places, in those days (besides the not-far-distant island of Bachian), where the right kind of clove tree grew; so the Banda Islands—only 17 square miles in area altogether—were the only home of the proper nutmeg, though inferior nutmegs grew on some of the other islets off the coast of Ceram and the west end of New Guinea.
Cloves nowadays are cultivated on other equatorial islands far away from eastern Malaysia; but in the sixteenth century they were only to be obtained from the Moluccas. The clove tree is a member of the great Myrtlefamily, and belongs to the genusEugenia. It grows in favourable places to a height of 40 feet, bears a rich evergreen foliage of large oval leaves, and clusters of long, slender crimson flowers growing at the extremity of the twigs. These flowers have their petals concealed in the centre of the calyx opening, but the sepals (false petals or petal-like leaves which often precede the real petals in flowers) stick out in four projections round the mouth of the calyx. These tubular flowers, with their four short sepals at the ends, are in fact the cloves of commerce. They are gathered when ripe, and are a bright crimson in colour, afterwards turning brown or black. The nutmeg (the name is a mixture of English and old French and means musk nut) is the fruit of a tree with the Latin name of Myristica, which has a natural order all to itself,Myristicaceæ. It is evergreen, grows to about 50 feet in height in the Banda Islands, and bears male and female flowers without petals, that are green in colour and inconspicuous. The female flowers produce a quince-like downy fruit, which when mature and dry splits and reveals inside a walnut-like nut surrounded by a network of crimson fibre. This fibre is as precious as the actual kernel or nut, for it is the spice known as mace, quite distinct in flavour and use from the actual nutmeg. This last is, of course, the kernel of the hard-shelled nut which is surrounded by the crimson fibre of the mace, and the outer husk of the pear-like fruit.
The Portuguese—to put it vulgarly—soon knew they had got hold of a good thing in these small islands of clove and nutmeg trees. They established themselves more or less as the rulers of the Moluccas, with their headquarters at Ternate. But they treated the Malay subjects badly, and these were soon on the lookout for the arrivalof other foreigners whom they could play off against the Portuguese. Yet for some ten years the Portuguese had no rivals in Malaysia. Their conquests and discoveries spread far and wide. They entered into relations with Celebes, reached the Island of Mindanao (the southernmost of the Philippines), and even passed out into the open Pacific, and sighted the Caroline islands of Micronesia. They seem also to have been the first to discover the western promontories of New Guinea, the Island of Timor, and to have had news of a continental territory to the south—Australia—all of which information soon afterwards reached the Spaniards, who put it to practical use.
Among the Portuguese, who thus became acquainted with the Spice Islands of eastern Malaysia, was Fernão de Magalhaẽs—stupidly miscalled, in English literature,Magellan. His earlier story has already been told in a previous volume of this series.[25]Having been very badly treated by the King of Portugal, Magellan and several of his friends and relations passed over into the service of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which were about to become the great kingdom of Spain. It will be remembered by the reader that, in 1494, the King of Portugal and the King and Queen of Aragon-Castile, to avoid quarrelling about the marvellous discoveries their adventurers were making, had concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas under the auspices of the Pope, a treaty which practically divided between these kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula all the non-Christian world outside Europe and the Turkish Empire. Their boundaries were a meridian of longitude running from pole to pole, and cutting the globe into two divisions. The meridian was fixed at a distance of 1110 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, and moreor less coincident with the fiftieth degree of longitude west of Greenwich. Consequently, in the west it gave Portugal the Brazilian part of the South American continent; while on the other side of the globe the corresponding meridian (130° E. of Greenwich) cut off the Portuguese from entering into possession of all Australasia, and afforded Spain the pretext of attempting to reach Malaysia from the east (across the Pacific), and thus of laying claim to the Spice Islands which might be found to lie outside the Portuguese sphere. [As a matter of fact, when the longitude was correctly calculated, both Philippines and Moluccas lay in the Portuguese domain.] The great Spanish adventurer, Nuñez de Balboa, had in 1513, "from a peak in Darien" near the isthmus of Panama, sighted the Pacific Ocean, which the Spaniards at first called the Southern Sea. The Portuguese realization of the wide ocean which lay to the east of Malaysia, combined with the news that Central America had on the western side of it an ocean at least as vast as the Atlantic, decided Magellan to propose to the new ruler of Spain, the Emperor Charles V, the great project of finding a way round—or a strait through—South America, and the complete fulfilment of the original plan of Columbus—the reaching of the Indies by a western route across the Atlantic. His proposals were accepted, and he was given, in 1518, command over a little fleet of five ships,[26]the largest of which (theSan Antonio) was only 120 tons in capacity and the smallest 75 tons. He left Spain on September 21, 1519, to search for this passage round orthrough South America to the Southern Sea. His expedition included 190 Spaniards, and a number of Portuguese, Genoese, and other Italians—including the famous Lombard geographer of those days,Antonio Pigafetta—several Frenchmen and Flemings, one Englishman (named Andres, a gunner from Bristol), and one or two German gunners or artillerymen. The first account given to the world of this first-recorded circumnavigation of the globe was written by the accomplished Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied Magellan from mere love of knowledge, and was one of the few who actually returned to Spain after voyaging right round the world.
Magellan explored the east coast of South America for an opening which should lead into the other sea. At first he thought he had found it in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, but as soon as he noticed the water was fresh he continued southward along the coast of Patagonia, spending five months in that region to rest ships and men, and quelling a dangerous mutiny, till at last he found a likely opening between the mountains of Patagonia and the snowclad peaks of Tierra del Fuego. He had already lost the smallest of his ships on the Patagonian coast, and in the Straits of Magellan theSan Antoniodeserted and sailed back to Spain; but the crews of the others remained faithful to Magellan after their captains had taken anxious counsel together. At length these three little vessels rounded "Cape Deseado"—the desired Cape—and found themselves within sight of a mighty ocean at the end of November, 1520; an ocean which seemed so calm after the stormy Atlantic that Magellan called it the "Pacific Sea".
After emerging into the Pacific Ocean, Magellan's three ships voyaged for ninety-six days without stoppingat any land, and the crews went for no days (from the Straits of Magellan to the Ladrone Islands) without getting any kind of fresh food. "We ate", wrote Antonio Pigafetta, "biscuit which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms and stinking terribly because it had been befouled by rats. We drank yellow water which had been putrid for many days. We also ate ox hides that covered the top of the mainyard to prevent the mast from chafing the shrouds, which had become exceedingly hard because of its exposure to sun, rain, and wind. These pieces of hide were soaked in sea water for four or five days and then placed for a few minutes on top of glowing charcoal and afterwards eaten." But in their hunger the men often ate sawdust, and as to the rats that were caught, they were sold at a high price. Scurvy soon broke out, and the gums of the men's jaws swelled so that some could not eat at all, and therefore died of starvation—nineteen in all, amongst them a giant Patagonian captured in South America to be carried back to Spain. And thus they sailed some 12,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. "Truly it was very pacific," wrote Pigafetta, "for during that time we suffered no storm. We saw no land except two desert islands on which were found nothing but birds and trees." The water round them swarmed with sharks. But that they were favoured with such good weather, and sailed a steady 180 to 210 miles a day, they "would all have died of hunger in that exceeding vast sea". But Magellan held on with a tenacity which leaves Columbus behind in resolution, for Columbus reached land on his first voyage after only thirty-six days of anxious expectancy, whereas it was the ninety-seventh day of Magellan's long agony before a land wasreached which was likely to be of use as a place of refreshment.
They noted that the skies in this Southern Hemisphere were not so full of stars as in the North, but they also observed the splendid Southern Cross with five bright stars pointing straight towards the west. They passed not far from the Marquezas Islands. Apparently the only land they sighted on their way across the Pacific, except the small islands frequented by birds, was St. Paul Island, of the Paumotu group, and perhaps Malden Island. Magellan's voyage, amongst other things, was remarkable for what he missed quite as much as for what he attained. It is wonderful to think that he sailed across the Pacific from the coast of Chili to Guam, which is well within the Asiatic region, and only sighted land four times, and then only in the form of small and desert islands. His chiefest desire, however, was to get out of stormy latitudes into the peaceful equatorial belt, and to reach as quickly as possible the comparative security of the known, not liking to trust the fate of his crews to unknown lands which might be without good supplies of fresh water and food, and be peopled by savages incapable of understanding them. For it must be remembered that his previous experience had given him a great deal of insight into the islands of Malaysia, and he had managed to obtain from Sumatra before he started on this great voyage an interpreter named Henrique, who spoke Malay as his native tongue.
On the 6th March, 1521, the Spaniards sighted three islands, of which one was higher and larger than the other two. Off this the next day they came to a stop. It was afterwards known as the Island of Guam. The inhabitants, without any fear, boarded the ships and stolewhatever they could lay their hands on, even wrenching off and carrying away the small boat that was fastened to the poop of the flagship. Thereupon Magellan in great anger went ashore with forty armed men, burnt many houses and canoes, and killed seven of the natives. He recovered his small boat and the expedition immediately sailed away. Yet so terrible was the craving for fresh food on board that when the sick men, dying of scurvy, realized that the armed party were going on shore, they begged them to bring back the entrails of any man or woman they might kill, the eating of which these poor mad sailors believed would restore them to health!
It is noteworthy that the Spaniards when they landed fought with crossbows and arrows, which were in those days much more effective weapons than the guns of the period. The Micronesian people they met on the Island of Guam they described as going naked, many of the men being bearded and having black hair that reached to the waist. They wore small palm-leaf hats, were as tall as the Spaniards, well-built and of tawny skin, with teeth turned red and black by the chewing of betel. The women, who were good-looking, delicately formed, and much lighter in complexion than the men, had black hair which was worn loose and reached almost to the ground. The women did not work in the fields but stayed at home, weaving mats and baskets from palm leaves. The mats were beautifully made and used to decorate the walls and the floors of their houses. They slept on palm straw, which was soft and fine. Their houses were built of planks and thatched with banana fronds. The food of the people was chiefly coconuts, sweet potatoes, fowls, bananas (really long plantains 1 foot in length), sugar cane, and flying-fish. The chiefamusement of both men and women was to plough the seas with their small boats, which were usually painted black, white, or red. Pigafetta describes the outriggers, and says the sails were made of palm leaves.[27]Having no fixed rudder, but only using a long paddle for such a purpose, and the boats being sharp at both ends, they could be sent backwards or forwards without turning round.[28]
At dawn on 16 March, 1521, the expedition sighted high land. This was the Island of Samar, on the eastern side of the Philippine archipelago.
Magellan's first thought was for his sick men, and to give them some chance of recovering he landed them on an uninhabited islet, put up tents there, and had a pig killed to provide fresh meat. Two days afterwards they saw a boat coming towards them and nine men in it. These were very different from the wild-natured barbarians of Guam. They were evidently familiar with the idea of white men and white men's ships, being of course Malays. They were described by Pigafetta as "reasonable men". Presents were exchanged, the Spaniards giving red caps, mirrors, combs, bells, ivory, and cotton cloths of Turkish manufacture. The Philippine Islanders offered fish, a jar of palm wine, a few coconuts, and bunches of long bananas. They promised further supplies of fresh food in a few days, but in the meantimethe coconuts seemed to the Spaniards perfectly delicious, and Pigafetta wrote a long description of the tree and its many useful products, and of the nuts with their rich pulp and pleasant-tasting milk.
The name of St. Lazarus, because of the saint's day on which they were first discovered, was given to the islands of this archipelago.[29]The people encountered in the coast regions of these western and southern Philippine Islands do not seem to have been negritos or little negroes like those of the great Island of Luzon, but all more or less of the Malayan-Mongolian stock. They had very black straight hair which fell to the waist; went nearly naked except for cloths round the waist—but some of these cloths were beautifully embroidered; and in the waistbelt the men thrust large daggers ornamented with gold.
The expedition passed on between the islands of Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao, and came to anchor off a small island named Masawa, now not easily identified, but apparently between Leyte and Bohol, arriving there on 7 April. The ruler of this islet, whom they referred to as "the king", received them with some wonderment but great friendliness, and expressed a wish to enter into brotherhood with Magellan. The king understood the Malay spoken by the interpreter on board, for, says Pigafetta, the kings of these districts knew more languages than the common people. He presented Magellan with a basketful of ginger and a large bar of gold, which for some reason or other the great Portuguese would not accept. The next day, Good Friday, the king came on board Magellan's ship, embraced him, and gave him three porcelain jars full of raw rice, twovery large fish, and other things. He received in exchange a Turkish dress and a fine red cap, while to his courtiers were given knives and mirrors. The king and Magellan made brotherhood together. In order to impress him, Magellan had one of his men put into complete armour, and then placed this man in a group of three men armed with swords and daggers, who forthwith struck him in all parts of his body, but of course did him no harm; "thereby the king was rendered almost speechless". Magellan went on to impress the monarch with the fact that one of these armed men was worth a hundred naked savages, and as there were 200 men in the ships armed with this steel armour from head to foot, the expedition was invincible.
Magellan, and amongst other people Pigafetta, went on shore to return the visit. They were received by the king on the stern deck of a very large prau or native vessel[30](about 70 feet long). Here pork was brought to them, together with jars filled with palm wine. Although it was Good Friday, they were obliged to sink their religious scruples and feast with the king. Pigafetta then applied himself to writing down a vocabulary in their language, with which feat the natives were greatly astonished. Later on, when it was time for the evening meal, two large porcelain dishes were brought, one containing rice and the other pork and gravy. After this meal was consumed the party of Europeans went to the king's palace, which was raised up high from the ground on huge posts of wood, so that it was necessary to ascend to it by means of ladders. There more food was brought, a roast fish cut in pieces and freshly gathered ginger and palm wine. As it grew dark, lights werefurnished, a kind of candle made of resin wrapped in palm or banana leaves. All the party went to sleep where they were, and when day dawned Pigafetta and the Spaniards returned to the ship.
He relates that pieces of gold of the size of walnuts and eggs were found by sifting the earth in the island of Masawa. All the dishes of the king were of gold, and also some part of his furniture. The king is described as being a fine-looking man, with glossy black hair hanging down to his shoulders, a covering of silk on his head, two large golden ear-rings, and a cotton cloth embroidered with silk covering him from the waist to the knees. At his side hung a dagger, the haft of which was of gold. Moreover, this king had anticipated American fashions, and had three plugs of gold let into each front tooth, while gold seems also to have been rammed in between the teeth. He was perfumed with storax and benzoin, and his skin was tatued all over. A brother king was apparently chief of the northern part of the great Island of Mindanao, lying to the south. On Easter Sunday Magellan decided to land with his chaplain and have Mass celebrated on shore. He came with fifty men unarmed and dressed in their best clothes. The two kings of Masawa and Mindanao embraced Magellan and were placed with him in the procession. Before the commencement of Mass Magellan sprinkled their bodies with musk water. Apparently at that time all these Malay people of the eastern Philippines were pagans, and had not been converted to Muhammadanism.[31]They were favourably impressed with their first experience ofChristianity, and eagerly took part in the service of the mass. They exactly imitated all the Spaniards did, kissing the cross and remaining on their knees with clasped hands at the elevation of the Host.
When Mass was over, Magellan arranged a fencing tournament, at which the kings were greatly pleased.
Magellan, becoming very friendly with the King of Masawa, asked if he had any enemies whom he wished to be destroyed. The king replied that there was indeed one island hostile to his rule.
After a cruise round the islands in the centre of the archipelago—in the course of which they killed a very large fruit-bat, "as big as an eagle", and ate it, finding it to resemble chicken in taste; and also observed the mound-building megapodes (see p. 30)—they reached the important Island of Sebu or Zubu (Cebu). Here the king of the island asked them to pay tribute, and pointed out a ship which had just arrived from Siam to fetch gold and slaves, but which had paid tribute or customs duties to him. But Magellan, through his interpreter, caused the king to be told that he was the captain of so great a monarch that he did not pay tribute to any other prince in the world; that if he wished peace he could have peace, but that otherwise the Spaniards were quite ready for war. The interpreter went on to point out that the employer of Magellan was the great Emperor of the Christians and the King of Spain, a much more powerful monarch than the King of Portugal, though this last had conquered all the coast of India. After consideration, the king decided to make blood brotherhood with Magellan, and even desired to know if he should pay tribute to the Spaniards. Magellan replied, No; it was sufficient that he should give them liberty totrade. Magellan, in his conversations with the notabilities, impressed on them the importance of the Christian religion, promising them if they became Christians they would have perpetual peace with the King of Spain.
Pigafetta accompanied Magellan and his party on shore to visit the King of Sebu. They found this prince in his palace surrounded by many people. He was seated on a palm mat on the ground, an embroidered scarf round his head, and nothing but a cotton cloth about his waist, in order, no doubt, that his elaborately tatued skin might be duly exhibited. He wore, however, a necklace of great value and two large gold ear-rings set with precious stones. In person he was fat and short. At the time the visit took place he was eating turtles' eggs out of porcelain dishes, and had four jars full of palm wine in front of him, covered with sweet-smelling herbs and arranged each with a small reed in the jar, through which he sucked up the palm wine. The Spaniards, whilst joining him in his feast of turtles' eggs and palm wine, renewed their exhortations to him to adopt the Christian religion. He put the question aside for the time whilst he treated them to a concert at which four young girls played on instruments like gongs, "so harmoniously that one would believe they possessed a good musical sense". They were nearly as white skinned as Europeans, and as beautiful, with long black hair. The gongs were made of brass, and apparently came from China. They were, in fact, very like the musical dinner gongs from Japan so much in vogue at the present day.
The king decided to adopt Christianity as his religion, but he complained that some of his chiefs did not wish to follow his example. However, they yielded apparentlyto Magellan's arguments and agreed to the setting up of a cross. On 14 April, at a ceremonial arranged with great splendour by the Spaniards, the King of Sebu was baptized and given the name of Don Carlos, after the Emperor Charles V. The heir apparent was called Don Fernando, the friendly King of Masawa was named Juan, and all the leading chiefs and notabilities, to the number of 500, were similarly baptized and given Christian names. In the evening the chaplain of the fleet went ashore and baptized the queen[32]and forty of her women. In all, the Spaniards baptized 800 Filipinos. One village on an islet, which refused baptism for its people, was burnt to the ground.
On the following day the queen came with great pomp to hear Mass. Three girls preceded her, carrying other specimens of her tiara hats in their hands. The women who accompanied her were nearly naked, the queen herself being again dressed in black and white, with a large silk scarf crossed with gold stripes. Having made due reverence to the altar she seated herself on a silk embroidered cushion. Magellan then arose, and before the commencement of the Mass sprayed her and her women with rose-water.
In spite of the natives telling Magellan at first that they worshipped nothing but a god in the sky, they seem to have had a number of fetishes to which they paid reverence, especially when pleading for recovery from sickness. These idols were mostly made of wood, were hollow, and were probably representations of wild boars. Magellan incited the people to the destruction oftheir idols in order that their conversion to Christianity might be better affirmed. This they did, crying out: "Castilla, Castilla!" as they threw the idols and the meat consecrated to them into the flames.
The islet on which a village had been burnt as punishment for its refusing Christianity was called Maktan, and towards the end of April the chief of Maktan sent messengers to Magellan with a present of two goats, and a request that he would send soldiers to assist him in fighting another chief on the islet who had refused allegiance to the King of Spain. Magellan decided to go himself with three boatloads of soldiers. Many of his officers entreated him not to take such a risk, but he persisted, and reached Maktan three hours before dawn with sixty armed men. He then sent messengers to the refractory chief, calling on him to recognize the King of Sebu as his immediate sovereign, and to give in his allegiance to the Crown of Spain and pay the Spaniards tribute. The natives sent back a warlike message. The Spaniards advanced, but found the people had dug pit-holes before their houses in order that they might fall into them. In the village the Spaniards were attacked by about 1500 people, who charged down on them with shouts and cries. The musketeers and the crossbowmen discharged their pieces with little effect on natives who leapt hither and thither incessantly, and covered themselves nimbly with their shields, while at the same time they shot so many arrows and iron-tipped bamboo spears at the Spaniards (besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud) that Magellan and his sixty soldiers despite their armour were overwhelmed. Eight of the soldiers were killed, and Magellan was shot in the leg with a poisoned arrow. [The steel armour of which Magellan boastedseems to have been of little avail.] The order to retreat was given, and as the small party waded back through the water to the boats Magellan was killed by the impetuous assault of the natives, who hurled themselves upon him and practically cut him to pieces. He fought long for his life, and ever and again turned his face seaward, to assure himself that his men were safely retreating to their boats. Some of the Spaniards, it is true, stayed to see what was happening to their captain, but their defence of him seems to have been half-hearted, and as soon as he was down they made the best of their way to the boats.
The King of Sebu is said to have wept on hearing of the death of Magellan (on 27 April, 1521). Nevertheless, this death changed very considerably the attitude of the king and his chiefs towards the Spaniards. It was now realized that the armoured Europeans were mortal like the Filipinos, and could be killed in battle. Therefore a plot was laid to get rid of them altogether, a plot apparently instigated by the Sumatra interpreter already referred to, who was a slave and wished to regain his liberty. By means of fair words, invitations to a banquet, and promises of a present of jewels for the King of Spain, the King of Sebu lured on shore twenty-four Spaniards, including "an astrologer" and the commanders of three of the ships.[33]Pigafetta, fortunately for our records of this voyage, could not go, as he was suffering from the wound of a poisoned arrow in his face. The Spaniards, soon after they landed, were set upon by the natives, and all of them killed except the Malay interpreter. One commander, Juan Serrano, was seen running down to the beach nearly naked andwounded, and crying out to the Spaniards not to fire any more, as he too would be killed. He then told them how the others had been massacred, and begged that he might be redeemed with merchandise. He made a special appeal to his boon companion, the pilot Joam Carvalho, but the latter would not run the risk of sending any boat on shore, and poor Serrano was left weeping on the strand and probably soon shared the fate of his companions.