Chapter XII

Chapter XIIPentecosteThe term of service of my Ambrym boys being over, I tried to replace them in Paama, but failed; but Mr. G. kindly took me to Epi, where I engaged four new boys. However, they proved as sulky as they were dirty, and I was disgusted with them, and quite glad they had refused to sign for more than a month. As they were all troubled with many sores, they were of very little service to me, and I gladly sent them home by steamer when their month was up.I returned to Dip Point, and a few days later Dr. B. escorted me to Olal, where I took up my quarters with Mr. D., a young Australian who was trying to make a living by the coprah trade. In Olal, at the northern point of Ambrym, the alcohol trade is particularly flourishing, and numerous settlers along the coast earn large sums by selling liquor. Everybody knows this, and numbers of intoxicated natives are always to be seen, so that it is somewhat surprising that the authorities pretend not to have sufficient proof to punish these traders. If ever one of them is fined, the amount is so minute that the sale of half a dozen bottles makes up for it, so that they go on as before. I myself witnessed two cases of death inconsequence of drinking, alone and at one sitting, a bottle of pure absinthe.The house of Mr. D. was typical of the dwellings built by the colonists. In a circumference of about 50 mètres, the bush had been cleared, on a level spot somewhat off the shore and slightly elevated. Here stood a simple grass hut, 3 mètres wide and 6 long; the floor was covered with gravel, and the interior divided into a store-room and a living-room. On the roof lay a few sheets of corrugated iron, the rain from which was collected in a tank to provide water. A few paces off was another hut, where the coprah was smoked and the boys slept, and on the beach was a shed for storing the coprah.The actual work a coprah trader has to do is very small, amounting to little besides waiting for the natives who bring the coprah or the fresh nuts, to weigh them and sell his goods. Occasionally he may visit a distant village by boat to buy coprah there; but there is plenty of unoccupied time, and it is not surprising that many of the settlers take to drink from pure boredom. Not so Mr. D., who tried to educate the neighbouring natives, but with small success.I did not see much of interest here, or learn anything new about the natives, but I was able to obtain some interesting objects, and my collection of skulls was nicely started, until some one told the natives not to bring me any more skulls, as on the day of resurrection the former owners would not be able to find their heads. The same person created all sorts of difficulties when I attempted some excavations,and at last insinuated that I was a German spy. It is sad to see that the very people who, by virtue of their education and position, ought to help one most, work against one, while very often poor and plain people make sacrifices to help one along.A young Ambrymese who had worked for me for some days, wanted to enlist in my service when I left, although he grew tearful at the thought of Malekula, where I intended to go next, and where he was convinced he would be killed. Lingban was a light-haired native, very nice-looking, and a favourite with the ladies; this fact had brought him into considerable trouble, and he was obliged to leave his home. He stayed with me for three months, and was not killed, but suffered much from home-sickness. He finally settled at the south end of Pentecoste, whence he could see his beloved Ambrym, count the cocoa-nut trees on the shore and see the heavy clouds over the volcano.From Dip Point Mr. S. took me over to Aunua on Malekula, the station of the Rev. F. Paton, a son of the celebrated J. G. Paton, the founder of the Presbyterian missions in the New Hebrides. He lived there as a widower, devoting all his strength, time and thought to the spiritual and physical welfare of the natives.Malekula has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous islands in the group. The natives in the north, the Big Nambas, are certainly not very gentle, and the others, too, are high-spirited and will not submit to ill-treatment from the settlers. Malekulais the second largest island of the group, and its interior is quite unexplored. I could not penetrate inland, as I was unable to find boys and guides for a voyage they all thought extremely dangerous. Mr. Paton, who had traversed the island at various points, consoled me by telling me that the culture inland was much the same as along the coast. So I gave up my plan, though with some regret.GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.Mr. Paton took me to the south end of Malekula, and left me on one of the flat coral islands, which are all connected under the surface by an extensive reef. The landscape is charming, the sea above the reef shining in all possible shades, and small flat islands enlivening the view in all directions. In these islands only Christians live, the few remaining heathen having retired to the mainland.Here on the south coast the strange fashion obtains of deforming the head. This habit is very rare in the Pacific, and restricted to two small districts. It is now purely a matter of fashion or vanity,—the longer the head, the handsomer the individual is thought to be,—but probably there was originally some religious or hygienic notion at the bottom of the peculiar custom. The operation is begun about a month after birth, by rubbing the child’s head with grease and soot, and then putting on a small cap of braided pandanus fibre, which is very tight and allows the head to develop only in the direction of the crown. When the cap becomes too tight, it is cut off, and another, a little larger, put on, until the parents are satisfied with the shape of thechild’s head. These baby skulls have an extreme shape which is very ugly, and the whole process can hardly be agreeable to the patient; but the operation does not seem to have any prejudicial effect on the intellect, and in later years the shape of the head becomes somewhat less marked, although a man from the south of Malekula is always unmistakable.This region is remarkable, too, for its highly developed ancestor-worship. Although the general ideas on the subject are the same here as elsewhere in the archipelago, there is a special veneration here for the head or skull of deceased ancestors. The bones are generally used in making arrow-heads and lance-points, and the head, which is useless, is thrown away in most islands, or buried again; but in the south of Malekula, the heads are kept, and the face is reproduced in a plastic material of fibres, clay and sticky juice. The work is very cleverly done, and the face looks quite natural, with fine, slightly Semitic features. The surface is varnished and painted with patterns corresponding to the caste of the dead. Often the face has eyes made of bits of shell, the real hair is stuck on, and the plumes and nose-stick are not forgotten, so that the whole becomes an exact portrait of the deceased. Whether this head is to have a body or not is a question of caste. The higher the caste of the dead, the more completely is his body modelled. The heads of low castes are simply stuck on poles, higher ones have bodies of carved wood, often branches to indicate arms; but the bodies of the highest castes are composed ofbamboo, fibres and straw, and modelled throughout in the same way as the head. They are covered with varnish, and every detail reproduced, including dress, ornaments and caste signs. In their right hands these statues carry a “bubu” or shell horn, and in their left, a pig’s jaw. The shoulders are modelled in the shape of faces, and from these, occasionally, sticks protrude, bearing the heads of dead sons, so that such a statue often has three or four heads. These figures stand along the walls of the gamal, smiling with expressionless faces on their descendants round the fires, and are given sacrifices of food.Side by side with this ancestor-worship there goes a simpler skull-cult, by which a man carries about the head of a beloved son or wife, as a dear remembrance of the departed. Among a flourishing population it would naturally be impossible to obtain such objects, but here, where the people are rapidly decreasing in number, a statue often enough loses its descendants, whereupon others have no objection to sell it.The taste for plastic art shows in other things as well. I found several grotesque dancing-masks and sticks, made for some special dance. The feeling for caricature expressed in these articles is extraordinary and amusing even, from a European point of view. Here, too, the Semitic type appears, and the natives seem to delight in the hooked noses, thick lips and small chins. I gathered a rich harvest of these curios near the little island of Hambi; unfortunately Mr. Paton came to take me home beforeI had time to pack the objects carefully, and I had to leave them in charge of natives until the arrival of the steamer; when I found them again, after six months, they had suffered a good deal.Towards evening, while rounding the south-east corner of Malekula, our motor broke down, and we had neither oars nor sail. Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we improvised a sail from a blanket, so that we drifted slowly along and reached the anchorage late at night.Mr. Paton then took me to Malo, where a Frenchman, Mr. I., was expecting me. On the east coast there was but little to be done, as the natives had nearly all disappeared; but I was able to pick up some skulls near a number of abandoned villages. I found very considerable architectural remains,—walls, mounds and altars, all of masonry; buildings of this importance are to be found nowhere else except in Aoré and the Banks Islands, and it seems probable that the populations of these three districts are related.I had an interesting experience here. Mr. I. and his neighbour did not enjoy the best of reputations as regarded their treatment of natives. One day Mr. I. took me over to N.’s place. N. was just returning from a recruiting trip to Malekula. We saw him come ashore, staggering and moaning; on being questioned, he told us that he had been attacked by the natives, and his crew eaten up. He was in a frightful state, completely broken, weeping like a child, and cursing the savages, to whom, hesaid, he had never done any wrong. His grief was so real that I began to pity the man, and thought he had probably been paying the penalty for the misdeeds of another recruiter. Mr. I. was just as emphatic in cursing the bloodthirstiness of the natives, but while we were going home, he told me that Mr. N. had kidnapped thirty-four natives at that very place a year before, so that the behaviour of the others was quite comprehensible. From that moment I gave up trying to form an opinion on any occurrence of the kind without having carefully examined the accounts of both parties. One can hardly imagine how facts are distorted here, and what innocent airs people can put on who are really criminals. I have heard men deplore, in the most pathetic language, acts of cruelty to natives, who themselves had killed natives in cold blood for the sake of a few pounds. It requires long and intimate acquaintance with the people to see at all clearly in these matters, and for a Resident it is quite impossible not to be deceived unless he has been on the spot for a year at least.While waiting at Dip Point for an opportunity to cross to Pentecoste, I saw the volcano in full activity, and one day it rained ashes, so that the whole country was black as if strewn with soot, and the eruptions shook the house till the windows rattled. I made a second ascent of the mountain, but had such bad weather that I saw nothing at all. We came back, black as chimney-sweeps from the volcanic dust we had brushed off the bushes. I heard later that theextinct eastern crater had unexpectedly broken out again, and that several lava streams were flowing towards the coast.Pentecoste, a long, narrow island running north and south, resembles Maevo in shape. My host here was a missionary who seemed to connect Christianity with trousers and other details of civilization. It was sad to see how many quaint customs, harmless enough in themselves, were needlessly destroyed. The wearing of clothes constitutes a positive danger to health, as in this rainy climate the natives are almost constantly soaked, do not trouble to change their wet clothes, sleep all night in the same things and invariably catch cold. Another source of infection is their habit of exchanging clothes, thus spreading all sorts of diseases. That morals are not improved by the wearing of clothes is a fact; for they are rather better in the heathen communities than in the so-called Christian ones. It is to be hoped that the time is not far off when people will realize how very little these externals have to do with Christianity and morality; but there is reason to fear that it will then be too late to save the race.We undertook an excursion into the interior, to a district whose inhabitants had only recently been pacified by Mr. F., my host; the tribes we visited were very primitive, especially on the east coast, where there is little contact with whites. The people were still cannibals, and I had no difficulty in obtaining some remnants of a cannibal meal.We frequently tried to obtain information about the organization of the family among these natives, but, being dependent on biche la mar, we made small progress. My observations were supplemented later by the Rev. Mr. Drummond, for which I am very much indebted to him; some of these observations may be of interest.The population is divided into two clans—the Bule and the Tabi. The former is supposed to have originated from the tridacna shell, the latter from the taro. Every individual knows exactly to which clan he belongs, although there are no external signs. There is a strict rule forbidding marriage within the clan, and an offence against this law was formerly punished by death; to this day, even in Christian districts, marriage within the clan is extremely rare. No one can change his clan. Children do not belong to the clan of the father, but to that of the mother, and property cannot be alienated from the clan. The father has no rights over his children, and the head of the family is not the father, but the eldest brother of the mother, who educates the boys and helps them along in the Suque. Land belongs to the clan, which is like a large family, and indeed seems a stronger organization than the family itself; but the clans live together in the villages, and as such they form a whole with regard to the outside world. Quarrels between two clans are not so rare as those inside a clan, and the vendetta does not act inside the clan, whereas a murder outside the clan must be avenged. Uncles and aunts within the clan arecalled father and mother, and the cousins are called sister and brother.However, this exogamic system could not prevent inbreeding, as there was always the possibility that uncles and nieces might marry, so that a “horizontal” system was superimposed across this “vertical” one, forbidding all marriages between different generations. Thus, all marriages between near relations being impossible, the chances to marry at all are considerably diminished, so that nowadays, with the decreased population, a man very often cannot find a wife, even though surrounded by any number of girls. I do not mean to imply by this that the whole clan-system was organized simply to prevent inbreeding.As I have said before, young men, as a rule, either cannot marry, being too poor to buy a wife, or, at best, can only afford to pay for an old widow, a low-priced article. The young, pretty girls are generally bought by old men, who often buy them when children, paying half the price down, and waiting till the girl is of marriageable age. As soon as she is old enough, she has to work for her future husband, and is under the care of one of his wives. Later on, the husband pays the rest of the money, builds a house for the girl, and the marriage takes place without any ceremony beyond a dinner to the nearest relatives of the couple. In most islands the girl cannot object to a match otherwise than by running away from a disagreeable husband. Generally, when she has run away several times, and repeated beatings have not changed her mind, herparents pay back the money and the husband gives up his wife. What is valued highest in a woman is her capacity for work; but the young men have a marked taste for beauty, and there are girls that are courted by all the young fellows of the village, and who, although married to an old man, accept the addresses of a young one. The husband does not seem to mind much, provided the woman continues to work well for him.There is such a thing as love even here, and it has been known to grow so powerful as to lead, if unrequited, to suicide or to rapid pining away and to death.On the whole, the women are treated fairly well by their husbands, but for an occasional beating, which is often provoked by foolish behaviour; and they are taken care of, as they represent a great value. There are old ruffians, however, who take a perverse pleasure in torturing their wives, and these unhappy women are quite helpless, as they are entirely in the power of their husbands. Otherwise, the fate of the women is not as bad as many people think, and the severest rules have never yet prevented Eve from finding and taking her pleasure.During babyhood the children stay with their mothers; but from the age of four on the boys spend most of their time in the gamal, while the girls remain under their mother’s care. Clothes are not worn by the boys till they have joined the Suque, which, in some cases, takes place long after puberty. The girls seem to begin to wear something whenever themother thinks fit, generally between the ages of four and seven. From that moment every connection between brother and sister ceases; they may not speak to each other, not meet on the road, in some regions not even see each other, and to mention the sister’s name before the brother is, if not an actual insult, certainly very tactless. Similar rules regulate the relations between parents- and children-in-law.The parents are very lenient to their children, and pass over every impertinence; they get small thanks for their kindness, and the boys, especially, often treat their mothers very badly. The natives’ fondness for children makes them very good nurses, and it is a source of the greatest pride to a native boy to take care of a white child.The father’s death is of little importance to the children, and not much to their mother, who, as a rule, goes over to her husband’s oldest brother. If the mother dies, the children are adopted by a maternal aunt or some other woman of the clan. One reason why all this is of no great importance is the far-reaching communism which is a feature of native life, every one sleeping and eating wherever he pleases.Mr. F. took me up north, where I wished to study the population. I must not omit to mention that the population of Pentecoste is divided into two distinct types: the people in the south are like those of Ambrym, those in the north resemble the inhabitants of Aoba. This is evident not only in the dress, but also quite distinctly in the exterior of the people.Yet in spite of the close relations with Ambrym, the art of sculpture, so highly developed in the other island, is entirely lacking in the south of Pentecoste.In the north we find a dress similar to that of Aoba: the men do not wear the nambas, while the women have a small mat around the waist. The art of braiding is brought to great perfection here, and the mats from Pentecoste are surpassed only by those from Maevo. The material is pandanus, whose leaves are split into narrow strips, bleached and then braided. Some of the mats are dyed with the root of a plant, by boiling in a dyeing vat of bark. Besides the small mats, chiefly used for the women’s dress, there are larger ones which serve as money and represent a great amount. They are as much as 1 mètre wide and 4 long, and are always dyed. The manufacture of these mats is very laborious, and only high-caste men with many wives can afford to have them made. The patterns for dyeing are cut out of banana-sheath, which is then tied tightly on the mat, and the whole rolled round a thick stick. The dyeing takes almost an entire day. These mats are used, for example, to buy the valuable tusked pigs.The only form of wood-carving in this region are clubs, and those made here are the most elegant of the whole group, and so much in demand in all the islands that they are quite largely exported. At present they are mostly used as ceremonial clubs at dances. All those of modern make are inferior to the old ones in regard to hardness, elegance of shape, polish and strength. Here, in Pentecoste, I foundthe first basket-plates I had ever seen. They are frequent farther north, in the Banks Islands, but do not exist in the south. These plates had no centre, and had to be lined with leaves to make them serviceable, being mere rings. They are used to carry cooked food about. In the Banks Islands the natives have learned to braid the centre too.Up in these northern mountains I spent a most unpleasant week in wet, cold weather, in a wretched house; but I had the satisfaction of finding two boys to take the place of Lingban, who had, by this time, become semi-idiotic with home-sickness.I returned to the coast and waited for an opportunity to cross to Aoba, but the weather was so bad that even Mr. G., an old sea-dog, would not risk the voyage; so we tried to get to Ambrym instead, where I could meet the steamer for Aoba. We waited for a calm day, and started out in the tiny whale-boat. Soon we were caught by one after another of the ill-famed Pentecoste squalls, and though my skipper was known as one of the best sailors in the islands, one squall struck us so suddenly that the boat heeled over, and only a very quick turn of the wheel saved us from capsizing. The escape was such a narrow one that even Mr. G. turned pale, and decided to go back, especially as the boys sat on deck, quite useless, green with fear and incapable of helping us in any way.It took us a long time to beat back, and we were all glad to feel solid ground under our feet once more. After a few days we started again, but luck wasagainst me on this occasion, and inside of twelve hours I missed the steamer no less than three times, which, in the New Hebrides, implies a delay of four weeks.So, in a heavy whale-boat, I rowed along the coast toward Olal with some natives. A dull rain drenched us, followed by glaring sunshine that stewed us in heavy dampness. Like the ruins of a giant wall, black lava blocks lay here and there along the coast. The surf foamed white in the crevasses, and the forest rose, sallow and greenish-yellow, above the high bank. Here and there naked natives squatted on the rocks, motionless, or looking lazily for crabs; among the huge boulders they looked tiny, and their colouring scarcely distinguished them from their surroundings; so that they seemed rather like animals, or the shyest of cave-dwellers. Floating slowly on the grey sea, in the sad broken light, I thought I had never seen a more inhospitable coast.Owing to the heavy swell, we had difficulty in passing through the narrow channel inside the reef. The great rollers pounded against the coral banks, and poured back in a thousand white streamlets, like a wonderful cascade, to be swallowed by the next wave.I found my friend, Mr. D., in a sad state with fever, cold and loneliness; wrapped up in woollen caps, blankets and heavy clothes, he looked more like an Arctic explorer than a dweller near the Equator. He spoke of leaving the islands, and, indeed, did so some months later.On my way to Aoba I had to spend a few days off Pentecoste, in such rainy weather that I went ashore but once in all that time. The day was fine, and I shall never forget the beauty of that woodland scene. A lovely creek winds through reeds, reflecting the bright sand and the bushes on its banks. Dark iron-woods rise in stiff, broken lines, and their greyish needles quiver like a light plume against the blue sky, where white clouds float serenely. Inland the forest swells in a green wall, and farther off it lies in rounded cupolas and domes of soft green, fading into a light around the distant hills. Under overhanging branches I lie, sheltered from the sun; at my feet the ripples caress the bank; delicate lianas hang from the branches and trail lazily in the water. Swallows dart across the stream, and sometimes the low call of a wood-dove sounds from far away. A cricket shrieks, and stops suddenly, as if shocked at the discordant sound of its own voice. Far off in the hills I can hear the rushing of the wind, like a deep chord that unites in a sacred symphony with the golden sun and the glittering water to voice the infinite joy of living that penetrates all creation to-day.Down-stream I can see the heavy coast banks, with a narrow strip of brilliant blue sea shining above them, and now and then a glint of snowy foam. Two pandanuses frame the view, their long leaves waving softly in the breeze that comes floating down the valley. Half asleep, I know the delights of the lotus-eaters’ blessed isle.Chapter XIIIAobaNext day I landed in Aoba, at “Albert’s.” He was an American negro, who, after having been a stoker and sailor, had settled here as a coprah trader. His language was of the strangest, a mixture of biche la mar, negro French and English, and was very hard to understand. With the help of two native women he kept his house in good order, and he was decidedly one of the most decent colonists of the group, and tried to behave like a gentleman, which is more than can be said of some whites. He seemed to confirm the theory that the African is superior to the Melanesian. Albert sheltered me to the best of his ability, although I had to sleep in the open, under a straw roof, and his bill of fare included items which neither my teeth nor my stomach could manage, such as an octopus. There were several other negroes in Aoba; one was Marmaduke, an enormous Senegalese, who had grown somewhat simple, and lived like the natives, joining the Suque and dancing at their festivals. He occasionally came to dinner at Albert’s; this was always amusing, as Albert thought himself far superior to Marmaduke, and corrected his mistakes with still more comical impossibilities. Both were most polite and perfectly sober. Thetalk, as a rule, turned on stories of ghosts, in which both of them firmly believed, and by which both were much troubled. Marmaduke was strangled every few nights by old women, while a goblin had sat on Albert’s chest every night until he had cleared the bush round his house and emptied his Winchester three times into the darkness. This had driven the ghosts away,—a pretty case of auto-suggestion. I was interested in hearing these stories, though I should hardly have thought a sensible man like Albert could have believed such things.COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.The people of Aoba are quite different from those of the other islands,—light-coloured, often straight-haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite good-looking, intelligent, and their habits show many Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society, and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on. Men and women live together, and the fires do not appear to be separated. As a result, there is real family life, owing in part to the fact that meals are eaten in common. The gamal is replaced by a cooking-house, which is open to the women; generally it is nothing but a great gabled roof, reaching to the ground on one side and open on the others. Here the families live during the day, and the young men and guests sleep at night, while the married couples sleep in their huts, which are grouped around the cooking-house.The position of the women, so much better here than elsewhere, is not without effect on theirbehaviour. They are independent and self-possessed, and do not run away from a stranger nor hide in dark corners when a white man wants to speak to them. Because of their intelligence they are liked on plantations as house-servants, and so many of them have gone away for this purpose that Aoba has been considerably depopulated in consequence; few of these women ever return, and those who do are usually sick. Some Aoba women have made very good wives for white men.The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes. The women are very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk, give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The men, too, are good to look at. Considering the intelligence and thriftiness of the race, it is doubly regrettable that alcoholism, recruiting and consumption have had such evil effects of recent years.I roamed about in the neighbourhood of Nabutriki and attended several festivals; they are much the same as elsewhere, except that the pigs are not killed by braining, but by trampling on their stomachs, which apparently causes rupture of the heart and speedy death.As I mentioned elsewhere, a man’s rise in caste is marked on every occasion by the receipt of new fire, rubbed on a special stick ornamented with flowers. Fire is lighted here, as in all Melanesia, by “ploughing,” a small stick being rubbed lengthwise in a larger one. If the wood is not damp, it will burn in less than two minutes: it is not necessary, as is often stated, to use two different kinds of wood. To-day matches are used nearly everywhere, and the natives hardly ever “plough” their fire, except for ceremonial purposes; but they are still very clever about keeping the fire burning, and often take along a smouldering log on their walks.FIRE RUBBING.FIRE RUBBING.Wood-carving and sculpture are wanting, except in the shape of drums, which are placed in a horizontal position, and often reach considerable dimensions.Not far from Albert’s lived a man of the highest caste, my friend Agelan. He was planning to kill one hundred tusked pigs in the near future, which would raise him to the highest caste far and wide, but would also impoverish him for the rest of his life. He lived quietly and comfortably, like a country squire, surrounded by his relatives and descendants. He seemed fond of good living, and his wife was an excellent housekeeper. In the midst of a somewhat colourless Christian population, wearing trousers and slovenly dresses, using enamel pots and petrol-lamps, Agelan and his household were a genuine relic of the good old times, and no one could have pretended that his home was less pleasant than those aroundhim. These things are largely a matter of taste; and those who prefer grotesque attire to beautiful nakedness will be happy to know that their wishes will soon be fulfilled. I liked the old heathen, and spent a good deal of time with him. A sketch of his home life may not come amiss, just because these primitive ways are dying out so fast.As I near the house, some dogs rush out at me, and a woman’s voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly cough, for which we have tried in turn: iodine, Peruvian balsam, eucalyptus oil, quinine, and other medicines; nothing helps, but he seems to enjoy swallowing the drugs.The floor of the house is hard clay; there are two fireplaces at one end, and at the other some large drums serve as seats. Everywhere in the roofing hang bows, arrows, bones, plummets, ropes, and clubs. Agelan has been toasting himself at a little fire of his own; now he rises, coughing, and shakes hands. He is a very tall, strongly-made man of about sixty, with a high forehead, long, hooked nose, wide mouth, thin lips and white beard. His dress is the old-fashioned loin-mat, and around his wrists he wears heavy strands of shell money. His wife, too, is very tall and strong, with quiet, dignified movements; she maybe forty years old. Everything about her is calm and determined; while not handsome, she has such a kind expression as to look very pleasant. She wears a small loin-cloth, and her light coffee-coloured skin is scrupulously clean. Around her neck and over her left shoulder she wears a string of shells, and around her ankles, small red beads. Near her squats her little daughter, a pretty child of six; an adopted daughter plays near the fire with a small, thick-bellied orphan boy, who is always crying. The girls, too, wear little ornaments; and their dainty movements, curly heads, round faces and great dark eyes are very attractive.The midday meal is steaming under a heap of leaves and dust, and a man is busily scraping cocoa-nuts for the delicious cocoa-nut milk. Agelan sends one of the girls for an unripe nut, which is opened in three deft cuts, and I am offered the refreshing drink as a welcome. Now Agelan, who has been brooding for days over these matters, questions me as to my origin and plans, and he roars himself nearly hoarse, for we cannot understand each other. The other man, a fugitive from the east coast, is asked to interpret, but he is sulky and awkward; not that he is a bad sort, but he is sick, and spends most of his time asleep in a shed he has built for himself in a corner of the house, and only appears at meals.The youngest son comes in, the last left to Agelan, for the older ones have all joined the mission,—it is the fashion. This boy is a quiet, cheerful lad of twelve, already a high caste, for his father has killedmany pigs for him. He has shot a miserable pigeon, and his mother and the girls laugh at the poor booty, much to his chagrin.Agelan now takes me to “view” a particularly fine tusked pig, tied under a roof, on a clean couch of straw; the boy shows it bits of cocoa-nut to make it open its mouth, so that I can see and admire its tusks. Agelan would like nothing better than to show off all his pigs, and if I were a native I would pass them in review as we Europeans visit picture-galleries; but I refuse as politely as I can. We return to the cook-house, where the cocoa-nut rasping is finished; the man washes his hands in the water of a nut, splitting it open and squeezing the water in a little spray on to his hands. Mrs. Agelan knows a simpler way; she fills her mouth with water and squirts it on her hands. The cocoa-nut gratings are kneaded with a little water, while the girls sweep the earth off the cooking-place and uncover the stones; an appetizing smell spreads, and the master of the house watches the preparations with a sharp eye and a silent tongue. One feels that the least carelessness will provoke an outburst, and, indeed, a solemn silence has fallen on the company, only the wife smiles quietly.“Lap-lap banana good!” Agelan roars in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, andreturns to his corner silent, but evidently satisfied. His wife cannot quite hide a smile of pride.The stranger now squeezes the cocoa-nut gratings over a wooden bowl, and a creamy juice runs through his fingers. The bowl is brought to Agelan, who looks at it as if reading an oracle; then he selects a hot stone from his own fire, and sends the bowl back to be embedded in the gratings. He approaches with his stone in a wooden fork, and squats down near the bowl lost in thought, as if anxious not to miss the right moment; then he drops the stone into the milk, which hisses, bubbles and steams. A fine smell of burnt fat is noticeable; and while the liquid thickens, Agelan behaves as if he could perform miracles and was in league with supernatural powers. After a while his wife hands him the bowl, and he holds it over the pudding, undecided how and where to pour the milk; one would think the fate and welfare of creation depended on his action. Being a man of energy, he makes up his mind, and pours one stream right across the pudding, then empties his bowl and retires with a sigh to his seat. About ten more bowlfuls are needed, but these are poured by Mrs. Agelan without further ceremony. The solemn hush is over. With a long bush-knife, Mama cuts the pudding into strips and squares and distributes it, and the meal proceeds amid general satisfaction. I am given a large slab; fortunately it tastes very good and is easily digestible, for politeness ordains that one must eat enormous quantities. At one stage of the proceedings the girls are sent to take some food tothe neighbours as a present. When everyone has finished, Agelan lies down for a siesta, while his wife lights a pipe and squats in silent happiness near the fire. The girls play with the dirty little boy, and the son plucks his tiny pigeon and a flying-fox; singeing the creature’s fur off occasions such an evil smell that I prefer to take my leave. Mrs. Agelan smiles her farewell, the girls giggle, and when I have gone some distance I hear Agelan, awakened from his siesta, roar a sleepy good-bye after me.Chapter XIVLoloway—Malo—The Banks IslandsHaving traversed the western part of the island, I sailed to Loloway, near the eastern point, one of the loveliest spots in the archipelago. Lofty cliffs flank two sides of a round bay; at the entrance a barrier-reef breaks the swell, which glides in a soft undulation over the quiet water, splashing up on the sandy beach. All around is the forest, hanging in shadowy bowers over the water, and hardly a breeze is astir. The white whale-boat of the Anglican missionary floats motionless on the green mirror; sometimes a fish leaps up, or a pigeon calls from the woods. In the curve of the bay the shore rises in two terraces; on the lower lies the Anglican missionary’s house, just opposite the entrance. In the evening the sun sets between the cliffs, and pours a stream of the purest gold through the narrow gap. It is a pity this fairy spot is so rarely inhabited; Melanesian missionaries are not often at home, being constantly on the road, or at work in the native villages. Mr. G., too, was on the point of departure, and agreed to take me with him on his trip.In his alarmingly leaky boat we sailed westward, two boys baling all the time. We ran into a small anchorage, pulled the boat ashore, and marched offinland. The people I found here were similar to those in the west, except that they had developed certain arts to a greater degree of perfection, particularly mat-braiding and tattooing. The braiding is done by a method verysimilarto that in vogue on Pentecoste. The tattooing is mostly done by women and on women; but the men, especially the high castes, often have a beautifully designed sicca leaf running from the chest towards one shoulder, which probably has some religious significance. The women often have their whole body, arms and legs, covered with tattooing, as if with fine lace. The operation is done bit by bit, some one part being treated every few days. The colour used is the rosin of a nut-tree precipitated on a cool stone and mixed with the juice of a plant; the pattern is drawn on the skin with a stick, and then traced with the tattooing-needle. This consists of three orange thorns, tied at right angles to a stick. The needles are guided along the design with the left hand, while the right keeps striking the handle softly with a light stick, to drive the needles into the skin. This is kept up until a distinct outline is produced; the operation is not very painful. The skin is then washed and rubbed with a certain juice, which evidently acts as a disinfectant; at least I never saw any inflammation consequent on tattooing. During the next few days some of the dye works out and falls off with the dry crust that forms on the wound, leaving the tattooing a little paler. The patterns are rather complicated, and at the present day there areno recognizable representations of real objects; yet there seems no doubt that at one time all the designs represented some real thing. They are carefully adapted to the body, and accentuate its structure. The women who do the tattooing are well paid, so that only the wealthy can afford to have their wives and daughters tattooed all over; and naturally a tattooed woman brings a higher price in the matrimonial market than a “plain” one.TATTOOING ON AOBA.TATTOOING ON AOBA.In this same place I had occasion to observe an interesting zoological phenomenon, the appearance of the palolo-worm, which occurs almost all over the Pacific once a year, at a certain date after the October full moon. The natives know the date exactly, which proves the accuracy of their chronology. The palolo is a favourite delicacy, and they never fail to fish for it. We went down to the shore on the first night; there were not many worms as yet, but the next evening the water was full of the greenish and brownish threads, wriggling about helplessly. Each village had its traditional fishing-ground, and we could see the different fires all along the coast. The worms were gathered by hand and thrown into baskets, and after midnight we went home with a rich harvest. The palolo is mixed with pudding, and said to taste like fish; I am not in a position to pronounce an opinion.I returned to Nabutriki, and thence to Malo, where Mr. W. informed me that the Burns-Philp steamer had already passed, and asked me to stay with him and his kind family until I should find an opportunityto cross. I accepted all the more gladly, as this part of Malo was still quite unknown to me. The population I found here is probably identical with that which formerly inhabited the south shore of Santo. This was interesting to me because of certain scientific details, though on the whole the life was much the same as elsewhere in Melanesia, with the Suque, etc. I collected a number of charms and amulets, which the people sold willingly, as they no longer believed in their power. Formerly, they were supposed to be useful for poisoning, as love-charms, or for help in collecting many tusked pigs.I also visited the neighbouring islands, and heard the gruesome story of how the last village on Aoré disappeared. The Aoré people were for ever at war with those of South Santo, across the Segond Channel. The men of Aoré were about sixty strong, and one day they attacked a Santo village. Everyone fled except one man, who was helpless from disease. He was killed and eaten up, and in consequence of this meal thirty out of the sixty men from Aoré died. The others dispersed among the villages of Malo. In Aoré, I had the rare sensation of witnessing an earthquake below the surface. I was exploring a deep cave in the coral banks when I heard the well-known rumbling, felt the shock, and heard some great stalactites fall from the ceiling. This accumulation of effects seemed then to me a little theatrical and exaggerated.The next steamer took me to the Banks Islands, and I went ashore at Port Patterson on Venua Lava.Here were the headquarters of a rubber planting company; but the rubber trees had not grown well, and the company had started cocoa-nuts. I had met Mr. Ch., the director, before, and he took me in. The company owned a motor-launch, which cruised all through the Banks Islands, visiting the different plantations; this gave me a good opportunity to see nearly all the islands. The sea is much more dangerous here than in the New Hebrides, being open everywhere; and the strong currents cause heavy tide rips at the points of the jagged coasts.An excursion to Gaua was a failure, owing to bad weather. After having shivered in a wet hut for four days, we returned to Port Patterson only just in time; for in the evening the barometer fell, a bad sign at that season, and the wind set in afresh. The launch was anchored in a sheltered corner of the bay, near an old yacht and a schooner belonging to Mr. W., a planter on a neighbouring islet. All the signs pointed to a coming cyclone, and suddenly it shot from the mountains, furrowed the sea, and ruled supreme for two days. From the director’s house I watched the whirling squalls gliding over the water, lifting great lumps of spray, that shot like snow over the surface and disappeared in the misty distance. Rain rattled in showers on the roof; everywhere was a hissing, rushing, thundering; the surf broke in violent, irregular shocks like the trampling of an excited horse; the wind roared in the forest till the strongest trees trembled and the palms bent over with inverted crowns. In a moment the creeksswelled to torrents, and in every gully there ran rivers, which collected to a deep lake in the plain. In the house the rain penetrated everywhere, leaked through the roof, dripped on the beds, and made puddles on the floor.DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.Meanwhile the captain and engineer of the launch had passed an unpleasant time; they had stayed aboard till the rolling of the boat drove them to the larger yacht; but seeing the schooner break her two chains and drift on to the reef, they became frightened and went ashore in the dinghey, and home along the beach. Later they arrived at the station and reported “all well,” and were amazed when I told them that the launch had stranded. I had just been looking from the veranda through the glass at the boats, when a huge wave picked up the launch and threw her on the beach. There she had rolled about a little, and then dug herself into the sand, while the tide fell and the wind changed. Next day the cyclone had passed, but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke over her decks and gurgled in the hold. The rigging was torn, the cabin washed away, and the shore strewn with herdoors, planks, beams and trade goods. It was a pitiful sight to see the handsome ship bending over like a fallen warrior, while the company’s old yacht had weathered the cyclone quite safely.During the work of refloating the boat, Mr. Ch. was taken very ill with fever, and I nursed him for some days; he was somewhat better by Christmas Eve, and we had the satisfaction of bringing the saved launch back to the station. He was visibly relieved, and his good humour was agreeably felt by his boys as well as by his employés, to whom he sent a goodly quantity of liquor to celebrate the occasion. We sat down to a festive dinner and tried to realize that this was Christmas; but it was so different from Christmas at home, that it was rather hard. At our feet lay the wide bay, turquoise blue, edged with white surf; in the distance rose the wonderful silhouette of Mota Lava Island; white clouds travelled across the sky, and a gentle breeze rustled in the palms of the forest. The peaceful picture showed no trace of the fury with which the elements had fought so few days ago.Tired with his exertions, Mr. Ch. withdrew early, and I soon followed; but we were both aroused by the barking of the dogs, followed by the pad of bare feet on the veranda, whispering and coughing, and then by a song from rough and untrained throats. The singers were natives of a Christian village some miles away, who came to sing Christmas hymns in a strange, rough language, discordant and yet impressive. When they had finished the director went outto them; he was a man whom one would not have believed capable of any feeling, but he had tears in his eyes; words failed him, and he thanked the singers by gestures. We all went down to the store, where they sang to the employés, and received presents; after which they spent the rest of the night with the hands, singing, eating and chatting. On Christmas Day the natives roasted a fat pig, the employés spent the day over their bottles, and I was nurse once more, my patient being delirious and suffering very much.Before New Year’s Day the launch was sent to all the different stations to fetch the employés, an interesting crowd of more or less ruined individuals. There was a former gendarme from New Caledonia, a cavalry captain, an officer who had been in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year’s Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director’s house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one by one. Thus the new year was begun miserably, and the next few days were just as bad. The natives looked on at the fights with round-eyed astonishment; and the director was in despair, for a second cyclone was threatening,and there was hardly anyone in a fit condition to help him secure the launch.ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.All one morning it rained, and at noon the cyclone broke, coming from the south-west, as it had done the first time, but with threefold violence. We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn. The blasts grew ever more violent and frequent, and if the house had not been protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and a little iron shed went rolling along the ground like a die. Down in the plain the storm tore the leaves off the palms, and uprooted trees and blew down houses. The cyclone reached its climax at sunset, then the barometer rose steadily, and suddenly both wind and rain ceased. The stillness lasted for about half an hour and then the storm set in again, this time from the north, striking the house with all its strength; fortunately it was not so violent as at first. With the rising barometer the storm decreased and changed its direction to the east. All next day it rained and blew; but on the third morning the storm died out in a faint breeze from the south-east, and when we came to reckon up our damages, we found that it might have been worse. Meanwhile the employés had had time to recover from their orgy. A brilliant day dried the damp house, and soon everything resumeda normal aspect except the forest, which looked brown and ragged, like autumn woods at home.I made use of the first calm day to visit the lonely little islet of Meralava. As it has no anchorage, no one can land there except in quiet weather, and so it had come about that the company’s employé had had no communication with the outside world for four months. The island is an extinct volcano, a regular cone, with the crater as a deep cavity in the top. There is hardly a level square mètre on the whole island, and the shores rise steeply out of the sea; only a few huge lava blocks form a base, on which the swell breaks and foams. When we reached the island, this swell was so heavy as to render landing almost impossible. All we could do was to take the employé aboard and return home. I was very sorry to have to give up my visit to Meralava, as the natives, though all christianized, have preserved more of their old ways than those of other islands, owing to their infrequent intercourse with civilization. For the same reason, the population is quite large; but every time a ship has landed an epidemic goes through the island, the germs of which appear to be brought by the vessels, and the natives evidently have very small powers of resistance. We may here observe on a small scale what has taken place all over the archipelago in the degeneration and decimation of the aborigines.The people of Meralava live on taro, which they grow in terraced fields, the water being obtainedfrom holes in the rocks, and on cocoa-nuts, of which the island yields a fair supply.The following day we started for Ureparapara, also a volcanic island, with an enormous crater, one side of which has fallen in; because, as the natives say, a great fish knocked against it. The sea has penetrated into the interior of the crater, forming a lovely bay, so that ships now lie at anchor where formerly the lava boiled and roared.In consequence of the frequent intercourse with whites, the population is scanty. There is hardly a level patch, except the small strip at the base of the slope and the great reef outside. Here, too, we had difficulty in landing, but in the evening we found an ideal anchorage inside the bay. The water was scarcely ruffled, and little wavelets splashed on the shore, where mangrove thickets spread their bright foliage. Huge trees bent over the water, protecting the straw roofs of a little village. In the deep shade some natives were squatting round fires, and close by some large outrigger-canoes lay on the beach. On three sides the steep wooded slopes of the former crater’s walls rise up to a sharply dented ridge, and it all looks like a quiet Alpine lake, so that one involuntarily listens for the sound of cow-bells. Instead, there is the call of pigeons, and the dull thunder of the breakers outside.We took a holiday in this charming bay; and though the joys of picnicking were not new to us, the roasting of some pigeons gave us a festive sensation and a hearty appetite. The night underthe bright, starlit sky, on board the softly rocking launch, wrapped me in a feeling of safety and coziness I had not enjoyed for a long time.DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.Along the steepest path imaginable I climbed next morning to the mountain’s edge. The path often led along smooth rocks, where lianas served as ropes and roots as a foothold; and I was greatly surprised to find many fields on top, to which the women have to climb every day and carry the food down afterwards, which implies acrobatic feats of no mean order.Ureparapara was the northernmost point I had reached so far, and the neighbourhood of the art-loving Solomon Islands already made itself felt. Whereas in the New Hebrides every form of art, except mat-braiding, is at once primitive and decadent, here any number of pretty things are made, such as daintily designed ear-sticks, bracelets, necklaces, etc.; I also found a new type of drum, a regular skin-drum, with the skin stretched across one end, while the other is stuck into the ground. The skin is made of banana leaves. These and other points mark the difference between this people and that of the New Hebrides. As elsewhere all over the Banks group, the people have long faces, high foreheads, narrow, often hooked, noses, and a light skin. Accordingly, it would seem that they are on a higher mental plane than those of the New Hebrides, and cannibalism is said never to have existed here.My collections were not greatly enriched, as aBritish man-of-war had anchored here for a few days a short time before; and anyone who knows the blue-jackets’ rage for collecting will understand that they are quite capable of stripping a small island of its treasures. A great deal of scientifically valuable material is lost in this way, though fortunately these collectors go in for size chiefly, leaving small objects behind, so that I was able to procure several valuable pieces.After our return to Port Patterson the launch took me to a plantation from which I ascended the volcano of Venua Lava. Its activity shows principally in sulphur springs, and there are large sulphur deposits, which were worked fifteen years ago by a French company. A large amount of capital had been collected for the purpose, and for a few weeks or months the sulphur was carried down to the shore by natives and exported. Then it was found that the deposits were not inexhaustible, that the employés were not over-conscientious, that the consumption of alcohol was enormous, and finally the whole affair was given up, after large quantities of machinery had been brought out, which I saw rusting away near the shore. In this way numerous enterprises have been started and abandoned of late years, especially in Nouméa. It is probably due to this mining scheme that the natives here have practically disappeared; I found one man who had once carried sulphur from the mine, and he was willing to guide me up the volcano.There are always clouds hanging round the topof the mountain, and the forest is swampy; but on the old road we advanced quite rapidly, and soon found ourselves on the edge of a plateau, from which two streams fell down in grand cascades, close together, their silver ribbons gleaming brightly in the dark woods. One river was milk-white with sulphur precipitate, the other had red water, probably owing to iron deposits. The water was warm, and grew still warmer the farther up we followed the river. Suddenly we came upon a bare slope, over certain spots of which steam-clouds hung, while penetrating fumes irritated one’s eyes and nose. We had come to the lower margin of the sulphur springs, and the path led directly across the sulphur rocks. Mounting higher, we heard the hissing of steam more distinctly, and soon we were in the midst of numerous hillocks with bright yellow tops, and steam hissing and whistling as it shot out of cracks, to condense in the air into a white cloud. The whole ground seemed furrowed with channels and crevasses, beneath which one heard mysterious noises; one’s step sounded hollow, and at our side ran a dark stream, which carried the hot sulphur water to the shore. Great boulders lay about, some of them so balanced that a slight touch sent them rolling into the depths, where they broke into atoms. Sometimes we were surrounded by a thick cloud, until a breeze carried it away, and we had a clear view over the hot, dark desert, up to the mountain-top. It was uncanny in the midst of those viciously hissing hillocks, and I could not blame my boys for turning green with fear and wishing to gohome. But we went on to a place where water boiled in black pools, sometimes quietly, then with a sudden high jump; some of the water was black, some yellowish, and everything around was covered with sulphur as if with hoar-frost.INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.We followed the course of a creek whose water was so hot as to scald our feet, and the heat became most oppressive. We were glad to reach the crater, though it was a gloomy and colourless desert, in the midst of which a large grey pool boiled and bubbled. In front was a deep crevice in the crater wall, and a cloud of steam hid whatever was in it; yet we felt as though something frightful must be going on there. Above this gloomy scene stretched a sky of serenest blue, and we had a glimpse of the coast, with its little islands bathing in the sapphire sea.Next day we left for Gaua. Unhappily the captain met friends, and celebrated with them to such an extent that he was no longer to be relied on, which was all the more unpleasant as the weather was of the dirtiest, and the barometer presaged another cyclone. After two days it cleared up a little; I went ashore at the west point of Gaua, where the launch was to pick me up again two days later, as I meant to visit the interior while the others went to buy coprah. Even now the wind and the swell from the north-west were increasing suspiciously, and after I had spent a rainy night in a village off the shore, I saw the launch race eastward along the coast, evidently trying to make a safe anchorage, with the storm blowing violent squalls and the sea very high.On my way inland I still found the paths obstructed by fallen trees from the last cyclone, while nearly all the cocoa-nut palms had lost their nuts. And again the storm raged in the forest, and the rain fell in torrents.I was anxious to buy statues of tree-fern wood; they are frequently to be seen here, standing along a terrace or wall near the gamal, and seem not so much images of ancestors, as signs of rank and wealth. The caste may be recognized by the number of pigs’ jaws carved on the statues. Often the artist first makes a drawing of the statue in red, white and black paint on a board; and these same designs are used as patterns for tattooing, as well as on ear-sticks and other objects. Female statues are common, which is an unusual thing.I obtained a good number of skulls, which were thrown into the roots of a fig tree, where I was allowed to pick them up as I pleased.The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an earlier population that has entirely disappeared.When I returned from my excursion I lookeddown on a wild foam-flecked sea, over which the storm was raging as it did during the previous cyclones. I realized that I should have to stay here for some time, and ate my last provisions somewhat pensively. I only hoped that the launch had found an anchorage, else she must inevitably have been wrecked, and I should be left at the mercy of the natives for an indefinite time. The hut in which I camped did not keep off the rain, and I was wet and uncomfortable; thus I spent the first of a series of miserable nights. I was anxious to know the fate of the launch, and this in itself was enough to worry me; then I was without reading or writing materials, and my days were spent near a smoky fire, watching the weather, trying to find a dry spot, sleeping and whistling. Sometimes a few natives came to keep me company; and once I got hold of a man who spoke a little biche la mar, and was willing to tell me about some old-time customs. However, like most natives, he soon wearied of thinking, so that our conversations did not last long.The natives kept me supplied with food in the most hospitable manner: yam, taro, cabbage, delicately prepared, were at my disposal; but, unaccustomed as I was to this purely vegetable diet, I soon felt such a craving for meat that I began to dream about tinned-meat, surely not a normal state of things. To add to my annoyance, rumours got afloat to the effect that the launch was wrecked; and if this was true, my situation was bad indeed.On the fifth day I decided to try and find theanchorage where I supposed the launch to be. The wind had dropped a little, but it was still pouring, and the walk through the slippery, devastated forest, up and down steep hills and gullies, across fallen trees, in a thick, oppressive fog, was strenuous enough. In the afternoon, hearing that the launch was somewhere near, we descended to the coast, where we came upon the captain and the crew. They had managed to anchor the launch at the outbreak of the storm, and had camped in an old hut on the beach; but the huge waves, breaking over the reef, had created such a current along the beach that the launch had dragged her anchors, and was now caught in the worst of the waves and would surely go down shortly. Unfortunately the captain had sent the dinghey ashore some time before coming to this bay, so that there was no means whatever of reaching the launch. The rising sea had threatened to wash away the hut, and the captain, leaving the boat to her fate, had gone camping inland.I went down to the beach to see for myself how things stood, and was forced to admit that the man had not exaggerated. In the midst of the raging surf the launch rocked to and fro, and threatening waves rose on every side and often seemed to cover her. Still she was holding her own, and had evidently not struck a rock as yet; and if her cables held out, hope was not lost. I watched her fight for life for some time, and she defended herself more gallantly than I should ever have expected from so clumsy a craft; but I had little hope. We spent a miserablenight in the village, in a heavy atmosphere, amid vermin and filth, on an uneven stone floor. The rain rattled on the roof, the storm roared in the forest like a passing express train, the sea thundered from afar, and a river echoed in a gorge near by; to complete the gloomy scene, a violent earthquake shook the hills.In the morning the launch was still afloat on the same spot; the wind had abated, and the sky no longer looked quite so stormy. During the night things improved still more, and we ventured to camp on the shore. The boys went for the dinghey, and although they had hard work, half dragging, half carrying it along the shore over the cliffs, they succeeded in bringing it to our beach, and then made an attempt to row to the launch, but were almost carried out beyond the reef. Encouraged by a faintly rosy sunset and a few stars, we waited another day; then the current along the coast had nearly ceased, only outside the reef huge mountains of water rolled silently and incessantly past, and broke thundering against the cliffs. The second attempt to reach the launch was successful, and, wonderful to relate, she had suffered no damage, only she had shipped so much water that everything was soaked and rusty. The engineer began to repair her engines, and by evening she steamed back to her anchorage, where we welcomed her as if she had been a human being.The wind had quite fallen when we steamed out next day. It was dull weather, and we were rockedby an enormous swell; yet the water was like a mirror, and the giant waves rose and disappeared without a sound. It all seemed unnatural and uncanny, and this may have produced the frightened feeling that held us all that morning. While we were crossing over to Port Patterson a sharp wind rose from the north, and the barometer fell, so that we feared another edition of the storm. If our engines had broken down, which happened often enough, we should have been lost, for we were in a region where the swell came from two directions, and the waves were even higher than in the morning. Fortunately the wind increased but slowly; presently we were protected by the coast, and at night we arrived at Port Patterson. The men had given us up, and welcomed us with something akin to tenderness. Here, too, the cyclone had been terrible, the worst of the three that had passed in four weeks.Soon afterwards the steamer arrived, bringing news of many wrecks and accidents. A dozen ships had been smashed at their anchorages, four had disappeared, and three were known to have foundered; in addition, news came of the wreck of a steamer. Hardly ever had so many fallen victims to a cyclone.Painfully and slowly our steamer ploughed her way south through the abnormally high swell. None of the anchorages on the west coast could be touched, and everywhere we saw brown woods, leafless as in winter, and damaged plantations; and all the way down to Vila we heard of new casualties.

Chapter XIIPentecosteThe term of service of my Ambrym boys being over, I tried to replace them in Paama, but failed; but Mr. G. kindly took me to Epi, where I engaged four new boys. However, they proved as sulky as they were dirty, and I was disgusted with them, and quite glad they had refused to sign for more than a month. As they were all troubled with many sores, they were of very little service to me, and I gladly sent them home by steamer when their month was up.I returned to Dip Point, and a few days later Dr. B. escorted me to Olal, where I took up my quarters with Mr. D., a young Australian who was trying to make a living by the coprah trade. In Olal, at the northern point of Ambrym, the alcohol trade is particularly flourishing, and numerous settlers along the coast earn large sums by selling liquor. Everybody knows this, and numbers of intoxicated natives are always to be seen, so that it is somewhat surprising that the authorities pretend not to have sufficient proof to punish these traders. If ever one of them is fined, the amount is so minute that the sale of half a dozen bottles makes up for it, so that they go on as before. I myself witnessed two cases of death inconsequence of drinking, alone and at one sitting, a bottle of pure absinthe.The house of Mr. D. was typical of the dwellings built by the colonists. In a circumference of about 50 mètres, the bush had been cleared, on a level spot somewhat off the shore and slightly elevated. Here stood a simple grass hut, 3 mètres wide and 6 long; the floor was covered with gravel, and the interior divided into a store-room and a living-room. On the roof lay a few sheets of corrugated iron, the rain from which was collected in a tank to provide water. A few paces off was another hut, where the coprah was smoked and the boys slept, and on the beach was a shed for storing the coprah.The actual work a coprah trader has to do is very small, amounting to little besides waiting for the natives who bring the coprah or the fresh nuts, to weigh them and sell his goods. Occasionally he may visit a distant village by boat to buy coprah there; but there is plenty of unoccupied time, and it is not surprising that many of the settlers take to drink from pure boredom. Not so Mr. D., who tried to educate the neighbouring natives, but with small success.I did not see much of interest here, or learn anything new about the natives, but I was able to obtain some interesting objects, and my collection of skulls was nicely started, until some one told the natives not to bring me any more skulls, as on the day of resurrection the former owners would not be able to find their heads. The same person created all sorts of difficulties when I attempted some excavations,and at last insinuated that I was a German spy. It is sad to see that the very people who, by virtue of their education and position, ought to help one most, work against one, while very often poor and plain people make sacrifices to help one along.A young Ambrymese who had worked for me for some days, wanted to enlist in my service when I left, although he grew tearful at the thought of Malekula, where I intended to go next, and where he was convinced he would be killed. Lingban was a light-haired native, very nice-looking, and a favourite with the ladies; this fact had brought him into considerable trouble, and he was obliged to leave his home. He stayed with me for three months, and was not killed, but suffered much from home-sickness. He finally settled at the south end of Pentecoste, whence he could see his beloved Ambrym, count the cocoa-nut trees on the shore and see the heavy clouds over the volcano.From Dip Point Mr. S. took me over to Aunua on Malekula, the station of the Rev. F. Paton, a son of the celebrated J. G. Paton, the founder of the Presbyterian missions in the New Hebrides. He lived there as a widower, devoting all his strength, time and thought to the spiritual and physical welfare of the natives.Malekula has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous islands in the group. The natives in the north, the Big Nambas, are certainly not very gentle, and the others, too, are high-spirited and will not submit to ill-treatment from the settlers. Malekulais the second largest island of the group, and its interior is quite unexplored. I could not penetrate inland, as I was unable to find boys and guides for a voyage they all thought extremely dangerous. Mr. Paton, who had traversed the island at various points, consoled me by telling me that the culture inland was much the same as along the coast. So I gave up my plan, though with some regret.GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.Mr. Paton took me to the south end of Malekula, and left me on one of the flat coral islands, which are all connected under the surface by an extensive reef. The landscape is charming, the sea above the reef shining in all possible shades, and small flat islands enlivening the view in all directions. In these islands only Christians live, the few remaining heathen having retired to the mainland.Here on the south coast the strange fashion obtains of deforming the head. This habit is very rare in the Pacific, and restricted to two small districts. It is now purely a matter of fashion or vanity,—the longer the head, the handsomer the individual is thought to be,—but probably there was originally some religious or hygienic notion at the bottom of the peculiar custom. The operation is begun about a month after birth, by rubbing the child’s head with grease and soot, and then putting on a small cap of braided pandanus fibre, which is very tight and allows the head to develop only in the direction of the crown. When the cap becomes too tight, it is cut off, and another, a little larger, put on, until the parents are satisfied with the shape of thechild’s head. These baby skulls have an extreme shape which is very ugly, and the whole process can hardly be agreeable to the patient; but the operation does not seem to have any prejudicial effect on the intellect, and in later years the shape of the head becomes somewhat less marked, although a man from the south of Malekula is always unmistakable.This region is remarkable, too, for its highly developed ancestor-worship. Although the general ideas on the subject are the same here as elsewhere in the archipelago, there is a special veneration here for the head or skull of deceased ancestors. The bones are generally used in making arrow-heads and lance-points, and the head, which is useless, is thrown away in most islands, or buried again; but in the south of Malekula, the heads are kept, and the face is reproduced in a plastic material of fibres, clay and sticky juice. The work is very cleverly done, and the face looks quite natural, with fine, slightly Semitic features. The surface is varnished and painted with patterns corresponding to the caste of the dead. Often the face has eyes made of bits of shell, the real hair is stuck on, and the plumes and nose-stick are not forgotten, so that the whole becomes an exact portrait of the deceased. Whether this head is to have a body or not is a question of caste. The higher the caste of the dead, the more completely is his body modelled. The heads of low castes are simply stuck on poles, higher ones have bodies of carved wood, often branches to indicate arms; but the bodies of the highest castes are composed ofbamboo, fibres and straw, and modelled throughout in the same way as the head. They are covered with varnish, and every detail reproduced, including dress, ornaments and caste signs. In their right hands these statues carry a “bubu” or shell horn, and in their left, a pig’s jaw. The shoulders are modelled in the shape of faces, and from these, occasionally, sticks protrude, bearing the heads of dead sons, so that such a statue often has three or four heads. These figures stand along the walls of the gamal, smiling with expressionless faces on their descendants round the fires, and are given sacrifices of food.Side by side with this ancestor-worship there goes a simpler skull-cult, by which a man carries about the head of a beloved son or wife, as a dear remembrance of the departed. Among a flourishing population it would naturally be impossible to obtain such objects, but here, where the people are rapidly decreasing in number, a statue often enough loses its descendants, whereupon others have no objection to sell it.The taste for plastic art shows in other things as well. I found several grotesque dancing-masks and sticks, made for some special dance. The feeling for caricature expressed in these articles is extraordinary and amusing even, from a European point of view. Here, too, the Semitic type appears, and the natives seem to delight in the hooked noses, thick lips and small chins. I gathered a rich harvest of these curios near the little island of Hambi; unfortunately Mr. Paton came to take me home beforeI had time to pack the objects carefully, and I had to leave them in charge of natives until the arrival of the steamer; when I found them again, after six months, they had suffered a good deal.Towards evening, while rounding the south-east corner of Malekula, our motor broke down, and we had neither oars nor sail. Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we improvised a sail from a blanket, so that we drifted slowly along and reached the anchorage late at night.Mr. Paton then took me to Malo, where a Frenchman, Mr. I., was expecting me. On the east coast there was but little to be done, as the natives had nearly all disappeared; but I was able to pick up some skulls near a number of abandoned villages. I found very considerable architectural remains,—walls, mounds and altars, all of masonry; buildings of this importance are to be found nowhere else except in Aoré and the Banks Islands, and it seems probable that the populations of these three districts are related.I had an interesting experience here. Mr. I. and his neighbour did not enjoy the best of reputations as regarded their treatment of natives. One day Mr. I. took me over to N.’s place. N. was just returning from a recruiting trip to Malekula. We saw him come ashore, staggering and moaning; on being questioned, he told us that he had been attacked by the natives, and his crew eaten up. He was in a frightful state, completely broken, weeping like a child, and cursing the savages, to whom, hesaid, he had never done any wrong. His grief was so real that I began to pity the man, and thought he had probably been paying the penalty for the misdeeds of another recruiter. Mr. I. was just as emphatic in cursing the bloodthirstiness of the natives, but while we were going home, he told me that Mr. N. had kidnapped thirty-four natives at that very place a year before, so that the behaviour of the others was quite comprehensible. From that moment I gave up trying to form an opinion on any occurrence of the kind without having carefully examined the accounts of both parties. One can hardly imagine how facts are distorted here, and what innocent airs people can put on who are really criminals. I have heard men deplore, in the most pathetic language, acts of cruelty to natives, who themselves had killed natives in cold blood for the sake of a few pounds. It requires long and intimate acquaintance with the people to see at all clearly in these matters, and for a Resident it is quite impossible not to be deceived unless he has been on the spot for a year at least.While waiting at Dip Point for an opportunity to cross to Pentecoste, I saw the volcano in full activity, and one day it rained ashes, so that the whole country was black as if strewn with soot, and the eruptions shook the house till the windows rattled. I made a second ascent of the mountain, but had such bad weather that I saw nothing at all. We came back, black as chimney-sweeps from the volcanic dust we had brushed off the bushes. I heard later that theextinct eastern crater had unexpectedly broken out again, and that several lava streams were flowing towards the coast.Pentecoste, a long, narrow island running north and south, resembles Maevo in shape. My host here was a missionary who seemed to connect Christianity with trousers and other details of civilization. It was sad to see how many quaint customs, harmless enough in themselves, were needlessly destroyed. The wearing of clothes constitutes a positive danger to health, as in this rainy climate the natives are almost constantly soaked, do not trouble to change their wet clothes, sleep all night in the same things and invariably catch cold. Another source of infection is their habit of exchanging clothes, thus spreading all sorts of diseases. That morals are not improved by the wearing of clothes is a fact; for they are rather better in the heathen communities than in the so-called Christian ones. It is to be hoped that the time is not far off when people will realize how very little these externals have to do with Christianity and morality; but there is reason to fear that it will then be too late to save the race.We undertook an excursion into the interior, to a district whose inhabitants had only recently been pacified by Mr. F., my host; the tribes we visited were very primitive, especially on the east coast, where there is little contact with whites. The people were still cannibals, and I had no difficulty in obtaining some remnants of a cannibal meal.We frequently tried to obtain information about the organization of the family among these natives, but, being dependent on biche la mar, we made small progress. My observations were supplemented later by the Rev. Mr. Drummond, for which I am very much indebted to him; some of these observations may be of interest.The population is divided into two clans—the Bule and the Tabi. The former is supposed to have originated from the tridacna shell, the latter from the taro. Every individual knows exactly to which clan he belongs, although there are no external signs. There is a strict rule forbidding marriage within the clan, and an offence against this law was formerly punished by death; to this day, even in Christian districts, marriage within the clan is extremely rare. No one can change his clan. Children do not belong to the clan of the father, but to that of the mother, and property cannot be alienated from the clan. The father has no rights over his children, and the head of the family is not the father, but the eldest brother of the mother, who educates the boys and helps them along in the Suque. Land belongs to the clan, which is like a large family, and indeed seems a stronger organization than the family itself; but the clans live together in the villages, and as such they form a whole with regard to the outside world. Quarrels between two clans are not so rare as those inside a clan, and the vendetta does not act inside the clan, whereas a murder outside the clan must be avenged. Uncles and aunts within the clan arecalled father and mother, and the cousins are called sister and brother.However, this exogamic system could not prevent inbreeding, as there was always the possibility that uncles and nieces might marry, so that a “horizontal” system was superimposed across this “vertical” one, forbidding all marriages between different generations. Thus, all marriages between near relations being impossible, the chances to marry at all are considerably diminished, so that nowadays, with the decreased population, a man very often cannot find a wife, even though surrounded by any number of girls. I do not mean to imply by this that the whole clan-system was organized simply to prevent inbreeding.As I have said before, young men, as a rule, either cannot marry, being too poor to buy a wife, or, at best, can only afford to pay for an old widow, a low-priced article. The young, pretty girls are generally bought by old men, who often buy them when children, paying half the price down, and waiting till the girl is of marriageable age. As soon as she is old enough, she has to work for her future husband, and is under the care of one of his wives. Later on, the husband pays the rest of the money, builds a house for the girl, and the marriage takes place without any ceremony beyond a dinner to the nearest relatives of the couple. In most islands the girl cannot object to a match otherwise than by running away from a disagreeable husband. Generally, when she has run away several times, and repeated beatings have not changed her mind, herparents pay back the money and the husband gives up his wife. What is valued highest in a woman is her capacity for work; but the young men have a marked taste for beauty, and there are girls that are courted by all the young fellows of the village, and who, although married to an old man, accept the addresses of a young one. The husband does not seem to mind much, provided the woman continues to work well for him.There is such a thing as love even here, and it has been known to grow so powerful as to lead, if unrequited, to suicide or to rapid pining away and to death.On the whole, the women are treated fairly well by their husbands, but for an occasional beating, which is often provoked by foolish behaviour; and they are taken care of, as they represent a great value. There are old ruffians, however, who take a perverse pleasure in torturing their wives, and these unhappy women are quite helpless, as they are entirely in the power of their husbands. Otherwise, the fate of the women is not as bad as many people think, and the severest rules have never yet prevented Eve from finding and taking her pleasure.During babyhood the children stay with their mothers; but from the age of four on the boys spend most of their time in the gamal, while the girls remain under their mother’s care. Clothes are not worn by the boys till they have joined the Suque, which, in some cases, takes place long after puberty. The girls seem to begin to wear something whenever themother thinks fit, generally between the ages of four and seven. From that moment every connection between brother and sister ceases; they may not speak to each other, not meet on the road, in some regions not even see each other, and to mention the sister’s name before the brother is, if not an actual insult, certainly very tactless. Similar rules regulate the relations between parents- and children-in-law.The parents are very lenient to their children, and pass over every impertinence; they get small thanks for their kindness, and the boys, especially, often treat their mothers very badly. The natives’ fondness for children makes them very good nurses, and it is a source of the greatest pride to a native boy to take care of a white child.The father’s death is of little importance to the children, and not much to their mother, who, as a rule, goes over to her husband’s oldest brother. If the mother dies, the children are adopted by a maternal aunt or some other woman of the clan. One reason why all this is of no great importance is the far-reaching communism which is a feature of native life, every one sleeping and eating wherever he pleases.Mr. F. took me up north, where I wished to study the population. I must not omit to mention that the population of Pentecoste is divided into two distinct types: the people in the south are like those of Ambrym, those in the north resemble the inhabitants of Aoba. This is evident not only in the dress, but also quite distinctly in the exterior of the people.Yet in spite of the close relations with Ambrym, the art of sculpture, so highly developed in the other island, is entirely lacking in the south of Pentecoste.In the north we find a dress similar to that of Aoba: the men do not wear the nambas, while the women have a small mat around the waist. The art of braiding is brought to great perfection here, and the mats from Pentecoste are surpassed only by those from Maevo. The material is pandanus, whose leaves are split into narrow strips, bleached and then braided. Some of the mats are dyed with the root of a plant, by boiling in a dyeing vat of bark. Besides the small mats, chiefly used for the women’s dress, there are larger ones which serve as money and represent a great amount. They are as much as 1 mètre wide and 4 long, and are always dyed. The manufacture of these mats is very laborious, and only high-caste men with many wives can afford to have them made. The patterns for dyeing are cut out of banana-sheath, which is then tied tightly on the mat, and the whole rolled round a thick stick. The dyeing takes almost an entire day. These mats are used, for example, to buy the valuable tusked pigs.The only form of wood-carving in this region are clubs, and those made here are the most elegant of the whole group, and so much in demand in all the islands that they are quite largely exported. At present they are mostly used as ceremonial clubs at dances. All those of modern make are inferior to the old ones in regard to hardness, elegance of shape, polish and strength. Here, in Pentecoste, I foundthe first basket-plates I had ever seen. They are frequent farther north, in the Banks Islands, but do not exist in the south. These plates had no centre, and had to be lined with leaves to make them serviceable, being mere rings. They are used to carry cooked food about. In the Banks Islands the natives have learned to braid the centre too.Up in these northern mountains I spent a most unpleasant week in wet, cold weather, in a wretched house; but I had the satisfaction of finding two boys to take the place of Lingban, who had, by this time, become semi-idiotic with home-sickness.I returned to the coast and waited for an opportunity to cross to Aoba, but the weather was so bad that even Mr. G., an old sea-dog, would not risk the voyage; so we tried to get to Ambrym instead, where I could meet the steamer for Aoba. We waited for a calm day, and started out in the tiny whale-boat. Soon we were caught by one after another of the ill-famed Pentecoste squalls, and though my skipper was known as one of the best sailors in the islands, one squall struck us so suddenly that the boat heeled over, and only a very quick turn of the wheel saved us from capsizing. The escape was such a narrow one that even Mr. G. turned pale, and decided to go back, especially as the boys sat on deck, quite useless, green with fear and incapable of helping us in any way.It took us a long time to beat back, and we were all glad to feel solid ground under our feet once more. After a few days we started again, but luck wasagainst me on this occasion, and inside of twelve hours I missed the steamer no less than three times, which, in the New Hebrides, implies a delay of four weeks.So, in a heavy whale-boat, I rowed along the coast toward Olal with some natives. A dull rain drenched us, followed by glaring sunshine that stewed us in heavy dampness. Like the ruins of a giant wall, black lava blocks lay here and there along the coast. The surf foamed white in the crevasses, and the forest rose, sallow and greenish-yellow, above the high bank. Here and there naked natives squatted on the rocks, motionless, or looking lazily for crabs; among the huge boulders they looked tiny, and their colouring scarcely distinguished them from their surroundings; so that they seemed rather like animals, or the shyest of cave-dwellers. Floating slowly on the grey sea, in the sad broken light, I thought I had never seen a more inhospitable coast.Owing to the heavy swell, we had difficulty in passing through the narrow channel inside the reef. The great rollers pounded against the coral banks, and poured back in a thousand white streamlets, like a wonderful cascade, to be swallowed by the next wave.I found my friend, Mr. D., in a sad state with fever, cold and loneliness; wrapped up in woollen caps, blankets and heavy clothes, he looked more like an Arctic explorer than a dweller near the Equator. He spoke of leaving the islands, and, indeed, did so some months later.On my way to Aoba I had to spend a few days off Pentecoste, in such rainy weather that I went ashore but once in all that time. The day was fine, and I shall never forget the beauty of that woodland scene. A lovely creek winds through reeds, reflecting the bright sand and the bushes on its banks. Dark iron-woods rise in stiff, broken lines, and their greyish needles quiver like a light plume against the blue sky, where white clouds float serenely. Inland the forest swells in a green wall, and farther off it lies in rounded cupolas and domes of soft green, fading into a light around the distant hills. Under overhanging branches I lie, sheltered from the sun; at my feet the ripples caress the bank; delicate lianas hang from the branches and trail lazily in the water. Swallows dart across the stream, and sometimes the low call of a wood-dove sounds from far away. A cricket shrieks, and stops suddenly, as if shocked at the discordant sound of its own voice. Far off in the hills I can hear the rushing of the wind, like a deep chord that unites in a sacred symphony with the golden sun and the glittering water to voice the infinite joy of living that penetrates all creation to-day.Down-stream I can see the heavy coast banks, with a narrow strip of brilliant blue sea shining above them, and now and then a glint of snowy foam. Two pandanuses frame the view, their long leaves waving softly in the breeze that comes floating down the valley. Half asleep, I know the delights of the lotus-eaters’ blessed isle.

The term of service of my Ambrym boys being over, I tried to replace them in Paama, but failed; but Mr. G. kindly took me to Epi, where I engaged four new boys. However, they proved as sulky as they were dirty, and I was disgusted with them, and quite glad they had refused to sign for more than a month. As they were all troubled with many sores, they were of very little service to me, and I gladly sent them home by steamer when their month was up.

I returned to Dip Point, and a few days later Dr. B. escorted me to Olal, where I took up my quarters with Mr. D., a young Australian who was trying to make a living by the coprah trade. In Olal, at the northern point of Ambrym, the alcohol trade is particularly flourishing, and numerous settlers along the coast earn large sums by selling liquor. Everybody knows this, and numbers of intoxicated natives are always to be seen, so that it is somewhat surprising that the authorities pretend not to have sufficient proof to punish these traders. If ever one of them is fined, the amount is so minute that the sale of half a dozen bottles makes up for it, so that they go on as before. I myself witnessed two cases of death inconsequence of drinking, alone and at one sitting, a bottle of pure absinthe.

The house of Mr. D. was typical of the dwellings built by the colonists. In a circumference of about 50 mètres, the bush had been cleared, on a level spot somewhat off the shore and slightly elevated. Here stood a simple grass hut, 3 mètres wide and 6 long; the floor was covered with gravel, and the interior divided into a store-room and a living-room. On the roof lay a few sheets of corrugated iron, the rain from which was collected in a tank to provide water. A few paces off was another hut, where the coprah was smoked and the boys slept, and on the beach was a shed for storing the coprah.

The actual work a coprah trader has to do is very small, amounting to little besides waiting for the natives who bring the coprah or the fresh nuts, to weigh them and sell his goods. Occasionally he may visit a distant village by boat to buy coprah there; but there is plenty of unoccupied time, and it is not surprising that many of the settlers take to drink from pure boredom. Not so Mr. D., who tried to educate the neighbouring natives, but with small success.

I did not see much of interest here, or learn anything new about the natives, but I was able to obtain some interesting objects, and my collection of skulls was nicely started, until some one told the natives not to bring me any more skulls, as on the day of resurrection the former owners would not be able to find their heads. The same person created all sorts of difficulties when I attempted some excavations,and at last insinuated that I was a German spy. It is sad to see that the very people who, by virtue of their education and position, ought to help one most, work against one, while very often poor and plain people make sacrifices to help one along.

A young Ambrymese who had worked for me for some days, wanted to enlist in my service when I left, although he grew tearful at the thought of Malekula, where I intended to go next, and where he was convinced he would be killed. Lingban was a light-haired native, very nice-looking, and a favourite with the ladies; this fact had brought him into considerable trouble, and he was obliged to leave his home. He stayed with me for three months, and was not killed, but suffered much from home-sickness. He finally settled at the south end of Pentecoste, whence he could see his beloved Ambrym, count the cocoa-nut trees on the shore and see the heavy clouds over the volcano.

From Dip Point Mr. S. took me over to Aunua on Malekula, the station of the Rev. F. Paton, a son of the celebrated J. G. Paton, the founder of the Presbyterian missions in the New Hebrides. He lived there as a widower, devoting all his strength, time and thought to the spiritual and physical welfare of the natives.

Malekula has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous islands in the group. The natives in the north, the Big Nambas, are certainly not very gentle, and the others, too, are high-spirited and will not submit to ill-treatment from the settlers. Malekulais the second largest island of the group, and its interior is quite unexplored. I could not penetrate inland, as I was unable to find boys and guides for a voyage they all thought extremely dangerous. Mr. Paton, who had traversed the island at various points, consoled me by telling me that the culture inland was much the same as along the coast. So I gave up my plan, though with some regret.

GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.

GROUP OF DRUMS AND STATUES ON MALEKULA.

Mr. Paton took me to the south end of Malekula, and left me on one of the flat coral islands, which are all connected under the surface by an extensive reef. The landscape is charming, the sea above the reef shining in all possible shades, and small flat islands enlivening the view in all directions. In these islands only Christians live, the few remaining heathen having retired to the mainland.

Here on the south coast the strange fashion obtains of deforming the head. This habit is very rare in the Pacific, and restricted to two small districts. It is now purely a matter of fashion or vanity,—the longer the head, the handsomer the individual is thought to be,—but probably there was originally some religious or hygienic notion at the bottom of the peculiar custom. The operation is begun about a month after birth, by rubbing the child’s head with grease and soot, and then putting on a small cap of braided pandanus fibre, which is very tight and allows the head to develop only in the direction of the crown. When the cap becomes too tight, it is cut off, and another, a little larger, put on, until the parents are satisfied with the shape of thechild’s head. These baby skulls have an extreme shape which is very ugly, and the whole process can hardly be agreeable to the patient; but the operation does not seem to have any prejudicial effect on the intellect, and in later years the shape of the head becomes somewhat less marked, although a man from the south of Malekula is always unmistakable.

This region is remarkable, too, for its highly developed ancestor-worship. Although the general ideas on the subject are the same here as elsewhere in the archipelago, there is a special veneration here for the head or skull of deceased ancestors. The bones are generally used in making arrow-heads and lance-points, and the head, which is useless, is thrown away in most islands, or buried again; but in the south of Malekula, the heads are kept, and the face is reproduced in a plastic material of fibres, clay and sticky juice. The work is very cleverly done, and the face looks quite natural, with fine, slightly Semitic features. The surface is varnished and painted with patterns corresponding to the caste of the dead. Often the face has eyes made of bits of shell, the real hair is stuck on, and the plumes and nose-stick are not forgotten, so that the whole becomes an exact portrait of the deceased. Whether this head is to have a body or not is a question of caste. The higher the caste of the dead, the more completely is his body modelled. The heads of low castes are simply stuck on poles, higher ones have bodies of carved wood, often branches to indicate arms; but the bodies of the highest castes are composed ofbamboo, fibres and straw, and modelled throughout in the same way as the head. They are covered with varnish, and every detail reproduced, including dress, ornaments and caste signs. In their right hands these statues carry a “bubu” or shell horn, and in their left, a pig’s jaw. The shoulders are modelled in the shape of faces, and from these, occasionally, sticks protrude, bearing the heads of dead sons, so that such a statue often has three or four heads. These figures stand along the walls of the gamal, smiling with expressionless faces on their descendants round the fires, and are given sacrifices of food.

Side by side with this ancestor-worship there goes a simpler skull-cult, by which a man carries about the head of a beloved son or wife, as a dear remembrance of the departed. Among a flourishing population it would naturally be impossible to obtain such objects, but here, where the people are rapidly decreasing in number, a statue often enough loses its descendants, whereupon others have no objection to sell it.

The taste for plastic art shows in other things as well. I found several grotesque dancing-masks and sticks, made for some special dance. The feeling for caricature expressed in these articles is extraordinary and amusing even, from a European point of view. Here, too, the Semitic type appears, and the natives seem to delight in the hooked noses, thick lips and small chins. I gathered a rich harvest of these curios near the little island of Hambi; unfortunately Mr. Paton came to take me home beforeI had time to pack the objects carefully, and I had to leave them in charge of natives until the arrival of the steamer; when I found them again, after six months, they had suffered a good deal.

Towards evening, while rounding the south-east corner of Malekula, our motor broke down, and we had neither oars nor sail. Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we improvised a sail from a blanket, so that we drifted slowly along and reached the anchorage late at night.

Mr. Paton then took me to Malo, where a Frenchman, Mr. I., was expecting me. On the east coast there was but little to be done, as the natives had nearly all disappeared; but I was able to pick up some skulls near a number of abandoned villages. I found very considerable architectural remains,—walls, mounds and altars, all of masonry; buildings of this importance are to be found nowhere else except in Aoré and the Banks Islands, and it seems probable that the populations of these three districts are related.

I had an interesting experience here. Mr. I. and his neighbour did not enjoy the best of reputations as regarded their treatment of natives. One day Mr. I. took me over to N.’s place. N. was just returning from a recruiting trip to Malekula. We saw him come ashore, staggering and moaning; on being questioned, he told us that he had been attacked by the natives, and his crew eaten up. He was in a frightful state, completely broken, weeping like a child, and cursing the savages, to whom, hesaid, he had never done any wrong. His grief was so real that I began to pity the man, and thought he had probably been paying the penalty for the misdeeds of another recruiter. Mr. I. was just as emphatic in cursing the bloodthirstiness of the natives, but while we were going home, he told me that Mr. N. had kidnapped thirty-four natives at that very place a year before, so that the behaviour of the others was quite comprehensible. From that moment I gave up trying to form an opinion on any occurrence of the kind without having carefully examined the accounts of both parties. One can hardly imagine how facts are distorted here, and what innocent airs people can put on who are really criminals. I have heard men deplore, in the most pathetic language, acts of cruelty to natives, who themselves had killed natives in cold blood for the sake of a few pounds. It requires long and intimate acquaintance with the people to see at all clearly in these matters, and for a Resident it is quite impossible not to be deceived unless he has been on the spot for a year at least.

While waiting at Dip Point for an opportunity to cross to Pentecoste, I saw the volcano in full activity, and one day it rained ashes, so that the whole country was black as if strewn with soot, and the eruptions shook the house till the windows rattled. I made a second ascent of the mountain, but had such bad weather that I saw nothing at all. We came back, black as chimney-sweeps from the volcanic dust we had brushed off the bushes. I heard later that theextinct eastern crater had unexpectedly broken out again, and that several lava streams were flowing towards the coast.

Pentecoste, a long, narrow island running north and south, resembles Maevo in shape. My host here was a missionary who seemed to connect Christianity with trousers and other details of civilization. It was sad to see how many quaint customs, harmless enough in themselves, were needlessly destroyed. The wearing of clothes constitutes a positive danger to health, as in this rainy climate the natives are almost constantly soaked, do not trouble to change their wet clothes, sleep all night in the same things and invariably catch cold. Another source of infection is their habit of exchanging clothes, thus spreading all sorts of diseases. That morals are not improved by the wearing of clothes is a fact; for they are rather better in the heathen communities than in the so-called Christian ones. It is to be hoped that the time is not far off when people will realize how very little these externals have to do with Christianity and morality; but there is reason to fear that it will then be too late to save the race.

We undertook an excursion into the interior, to a district whose inhabitants had only recently been pacified by Mr. F., my host; the tribes we visited were very primitive, especially on the east coast, where there is little contact with whites. The people were still cannibals, and I had no difficulty in obtaining some remnants of a cannibal meal.

We frequently tried to obtain information about the organization of the family among these natives, but, being dependent on biche la mar, we made small progress. My observations were supplemented later by the Rev. Mr. Drummond, for which I am very much indebted to him; some of these observations may be of interest.

The population is divided into two clans—the Bule and the Tabi. The former is supposed to have originated from the tridacna shell, the latter from the taro. Every individual knows exactly to which clan he belongs, although there are no external signs. There is a strict rule forbidding marriage within the clan, and an offence against this law was formerly punished by death; to this day, even in Christian districts, marriage within the clan is extremely rare. No one can change his clan. Children do not belong to the clan of the father, but to that of the mother, and property cannot be alienated from the clan. The father has no rights over his children, and the head of the family is not the father, but the eldest brother of the mother, who educates the boys and helps them along in the Suque. Land belongs to the clan, which is like a large family, and indeed seems a stronger organization than the family itself; but the clans live together in the villages, and as such they form a whole with regard to the outside world. Quarrels between two clans are not so rare as those inside a clan, and the vendetta does not act inside the clan, whereas a murder outside the clan must be avenged. Uncles and aunts within the clan arecalled father and mother, and the cousins are called sister and brother.

However, this exogamic system could not prevent inbreeding, as there was always the possibility that uncles and nieces might marry, so that a “horizontal” system was superimposed across this “vertical” one, forbidding all marriages between different generations. Thus, all marriages between near relations being impossible, the chances to marry at all are considerably diminished, so that nowadays, with the decreased population, a man very often cannot find a wife, even though surrounded by any number of girls. I do not mean to imply by this that the whole clan-system was organized simply to prevent inbreeding.

As I have said before, young men, as a rule, either cannot marry, being too poor to buy a wife, or, at best, can only afford to pay for an old widow, a low-priced article. The young, pretty girls are generally bought by old men, who often buy them when children, paying half the price down, and waiting till the girl is of marriageable age. As soon as she is old enough, she has to work for her future husband, and is under the care of one of his wives. Later on, the husband pays the rest of the money, builds a house for the girl, and the marriage takes place without any ceremony beyond a dinner to the nearest relatives of the couple. In most islands the girl cannot object to a match otherwise than by running away from a disagreeable husband. Generally, when she has run away several times, and repeated beatings have not changed her mind, herparents pay back the money and the husband gives up his wife. What is valued highest in a woman is her capacity for work; but the young men have a marked taste for beauty, and there are girls that are courted by all the young fellows of the village, and who, although married to an old man, accept the addresses of a young one. The husband does not seem to mind much, provided the woman continues to work well for him.

There is such a thing as love even here, and it has been known to grow so powerful as to lead, if unrequited, to suicide or to rapid pining away and to death.

On the whole, the women are treated fairly well by their husbands, but for an occasional beating, which is often provoked by foolish behaviour; and they are taken care of, as they represent a great value. There are old ruffians, however, who take a perverse pleasure in torturing their wives, and these unhappy women are quite helpless, as they are entirely in the power of their husbands. Otherwise, the fate of the women is not as bad as many people think, and the severest rules have never yet prevented Eve from finding and taking her pleasure.

During babyhood the children stay with their mothers; but from the age of four on the boys spend most of their time in the gamal, while the girls remain under their mother’s care. Clothes are not worn by the boys till they have joined the Suque, which, in some cases, takes place long after puberty. The girls seem to begin to wear something whenever themother thinks fit, generally between the ages of four and seven. From that moment every connection between brother and sister ceases; they may not speak to each other, not meet on the road, in some regions not even see each other, and to mention the sister’s name before the brother is, if not an actual insult, certainly very tactless. Similar rules regulate the relations between parents- and children-in-law.

The parents are very lenient to their children, and pass over every impertinence; they get small thanks for their kindness, and the boys, especially, often treat their mothers very badly. The natives’ fondness for children makes them very good nurses, and it is a source of the greatest pride to a native boy to take care of a white child.

The father’s death is of little importance to the children, and not much to their mother, who, as a rule, goes over to her husband’s oldest brother. If the mother dies, the children are adopted by a maternal aunt or some other woman of the clan. One reason why all this is of no great importance is the far-reaching communism which is a feature of native life, every one sleeping and eating wherever he pleases.

Mr. F. took me up north, where I wished to study the population. I must not omit to mention that the population of Pentecoste is divided into two distinct types: the people in the south are like those of Ambrym, those in the north resemble the inhabitants of Aoba. This is evident not only in the dress, but also quite distinctly in the exterior of the people.Yet in spite of the close relations with Ambrym, the art of sculpture, so highly developed in the other island, is entirely lacking in the south of Pentecoste.

In the north we find a dress similar to that of Aoba: the men do not wear the nambas, while the women have a small mat around the waist. The art of braiding is brought to great perfection here, and the mats from Pentecoste are surpassed only by those from Maevo. The material is pandanus, whose leaves are split into narrow strips, bleached and then braided. Some of the mats are dyed with the root of a plant, by boiling in a dyeing vat of bark. Besides the small mats, chiefly used for the women’s dress, there are larger ones which serve as money and represent a great amount. They are as much as 1 mètre wide and 4 long, and are always dyed. The manufacture of these mats is very laborious, and only high-caste men with many wives can afford to have them made. The patterns for dyeing are cut out of banana-sheath, which is then tied tightly on the mat, and the whole rolled round a thick stick. The dyeing takes almost an entire day. These mats are used, for example, to buy the valuable tusked pigs.

The only form of wood-carving in this region are clubs, and those made here are the most elegant of the whole group, and so much in demand in all the islands that they are quite largely exported. At present they are mostly used as ceremonial clubs at dances. All those of modern make are inferior to the old ones in regard to hardness, elegance of shape, polish and strength. Here, in Pentecoste, I foundthe first basket-plates I had ever seen. They are frequent farther north, in the Banks Islands, but do not exist in the south. These plates had no centre, and had to be lined with leaves to make them serviceable, being mere rings. They are used to carry cooked food about. In the Banks Islands the natives have learned to braid the centre too.

Up in these northern mountains I spent a most unpleasant week in wet, cold weather, in a wretched house; but I had the satisfaction of finding two boys to take the place of Lingban, who had, by this time, become semi-idiotic with home-sickness.

I returned to the coast and waited for an opportunity to cross to Aoba, but the weather was so bad that even Mr. G., an old sea-dog, would not risk the voyage; so we tried to get to Ambrym instead, where I could meet the steamer for Aoba. We waited for a calm day, and started out in the tiny whale-boat. Soon we were caught by one after another of the ill-famed Pentecoste squalls, and though my skipper was known as one of the best sailors in the islands, one squall struck us so suddenly that the boat heeled over, and only a very quick turn of the wheel saved us from capsizing. The escape was such a narrow one that even Mr. G. turned pale, and decided to go back, especially as the boys sat on deck, quite useless, green with fear and incapable of helping us in any way.

It took us a long time to beat back, and we were all glad to feel solid ground under our feet once more. After a few days we started again, but luck wasagainst me on this occasion, and inside of twelve hours I missed the steamer no less than three times, which, in the New Hebrides, implies a delay of four weeks.

So, in a heavy whale-boat, I rowed along the coast toward Olal with some natives. A dull rain drenched us, followed by glaring sunshine that stewed us in heavy dampness. Like the ruins of a giant wall, black lava blocks lay here and there along the coast. The surf foamed white in the crevasses, and the forest rose, sallow and greenish-yellow, above the high bank. Here and there naked natives squatted on the rocks, motionless, or looking lazily for crabs; among the huge boulders they looked tiny, and their colouring scarcely distinguished them from their surroundings; so that they seemed rather like animals, or the shyest of cave-dwellers. Floating slowly on the grey sea, in the sad broken light, I thought I had never seen a more inhospitable coast.

Owing to the heavy swell, we had difficulty in passing through the narrow channel inside the reef. The great rollers pounded against the coral banks, and poured back in a thousand white streamlets, like a wonderful cascade, to be swallowed by the next wave.

I found my friend, Mr. D., in a sad state with fever, cold and loneliness; wrapped up in woollen caps, blankets and heavy clothes, he looked more like an Arctic explorer than a dweller near the Equator. He spoke of leaving the islands, and, indeed, did so some months later.

On my way to Aoba I had to spend a few days off Pentecoste, in such rainy weather that I went ashore but once in all that time. The day was fine, and I shall never forget the beauty of that woodland scene. A lovely creek winds through reeds, reflecting the bright sand and the bushes on its banks. Dark iron-woods rise in stiff, broken lines, and their greyish needles quiver like a light plume against the blue sky, where white clouds float serenely. Inland the forest swells in a green wall, and farther off it lies in rounded cupolas and domes of soft green, fading into a light around the distant hills. Under overhanging branches I lie, sheltered from the sun; at my feet the ripples caress the bank; delicate lianas hang from the branches and trail lazily in the water. Swallows dart across the stream, and sometimes the low call of a wood-dove sounds from far away. A cricket shrieks, and stops suddenly, as if shocked at the discordant sound of its own voice. Far off in the hills I can hear the rushing of the wind, like a deep chord that unites in a sacred symphony with the golden sun and the glittering water to voice the infinite joy of living that penetrates all creation to-day.

Down-stream I can see the heavy coast banks, with a narrow strip of brilliant blue sea shining above them, and now and then a glint of snowy foam. Two pandanuses frame the view, their long leaves waving softly in the breeze that comes floating down the valley. Half asleep, I know the delights of the lotus-eaters’ blessed isle.

Chapter XIIIAobaNext day I landed in Aoba, at “Albert’s.” He was an American negro, who, after having been a stoker and sailor, had settled here as a coprah trader. His language was of the strangest, a mixture of biche la mar, negro French and English, and was very hard to understand. With the help of two native women he kept his house in good order, and he was decidedly one of the most decent colonists of the group, and tried to behave like a gentleman, which is more than can be said of some whites. He seemed to confirm the theory that the African is superior to the Melanesian. Albert sheltered me to the best of his ability, although I had to sleep in the open, under a straw roof, and his bill of fare included items which neither my teeth nor my stomach could manage, such as an octopus. There were several other negroes in Aoba; one was Marmaduke, an enormous Senegalese, who had grown somewhat simple, and lived like the natives, joining the Suque and dancing at their festivals. He occasionally came to dinner at Albert’s; this was always amusing, as Albert thought himself far superior to Marmaduke, and corrected his mistakes with still more comical impossibilities. Both were most polite and perfectly sober. Thetalk, as a rule, turned on stories of ghosts, in which both of them firmly believed, and by which both were much troubled. Marmaduke was strangled every few nights by old women, while a goblin had sat on Albert’s chest every night until he had cleared the bush round his house and emptied his Winchester three times into the darkness. This had driven the ghosts away,—a pretty case of auto-suggestion. I was interested in hearing these stories, though I should hardly have thought a sensible man like Albert could have believed such things.COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.The people of Aoba are quite different from those of the other islands,—light-coloured, often straight-haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite good-looking, intelligent, and their habits show many Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society, and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on. Men and women live together, and the fires do not appear to be separated. As a result, there is real family life, owing in part to the fact that meals are eaten in common. The gamal is replaced by a cooking-house, which is open to the women; generally it is nothing but a great gabled roof, reaching to the ground on one side and open on the others. Here the families live during the day, and the young men and guests sleep at night, while the married couples sleep in their huts, which are grouped around the cooking-house.The position of the women, so much better here than elsewhere, is not without effect on theirbehaviour. They are independent and self-possessed, and do not run away from a stranger nor hide in dark corners when a white man wants to speak to them. Because of their intelligence they are liked on plantations as house-servants, and so many of them have gone away for this purpose that Aoba has been considerably depopulated in consequence; few of these women ever return, and those who do are usually sick. Some Aoba women have made very good wives for white men.The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes. The women are very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk, give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The men, too, are good to look at. Considering the intelligence and thriftiness of the race, it is doubly regrettable that alcoholism, recruiting and consumption have had such evil effects of recent years.I roamed about in the neighbourhood of Nabutriki and attended several festivals; they are much the same as elsewhere, except that the pigs are not killed by braining, but by trampling on their stomachs, which apparently causes rupture of the heart and speedy death.As I mentioned elsewhere, a man’s rise in caste is marked on every occasion by the receipt of new fire, rubbed on a special stick ornamented with flowers. Fire is lighted here, as in all Melanesia, by “ploughing,” a small stick being rubbed lengthwise in a larger one. If the wood is not damp, it will burn in less than two minutes: it is not necessary, as is often stated, to use two different kinds of wood. To-day matches are used nearly everywhere, and the natives hardly ever “plough” their fire, except for ceremonial purposes; but they are still very clever about keeping the fire burning, and often take along a smouldering log on their walks.FIRE RUBBING.FIRE RUBBING.Wood-carving and sculpture are wanting, except in the shape of drums, which are placed in a horizontal position, and often reach considerable dimensions.Not far from Albert’s lived a man of the highest caste, my friend Agelan. He was planning to kill one hundred tusked pigs in the near future, which would raise him to the highest caste far and wide, but would also impoverish him for the rest of his life. He lived quietly and comfortably, like a country squire, surrounded by his relatives and descendants. He seemed fond of good living, and his wife was an excellent housekeeper. In the midst of a somewhat colourless Christian population, wearing trousers and slovenly dresses, using enamel pots and petrol-lamps, Agelan and his household were a genuine relic of the good old times, and no one could have pretended that his home was less pleasant than those aroundhim. These things are largely a matter of taste; and those who prefer grotesque attire to beautiful nakedness will be happy to know that their wishes will soon be fulfilled. I liked the old heathen, and spent a good deal of time with him. A sketch of his home life may not come amiss, just because these primitive ways are dying out so fast.As I near the house, some dogs rush out at me, and a woman’s voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly cough, for which we have tried in turn: iodine, Peruvian balsam, eucalyptus oil, quinine, and other medicines; nothing helps, but he seems to enjoy swallowing the drugs.The floor of the house is hard clay; there are two fireplaces at one end, and at the other some large drums serve as seats. Everywhere in the roofing hang bows, arrows, bones, plummets, ropes, and clubs. Agelan has been toasting himself at a little fire of his own; now he rises, coughing, and shakes hands. He is a very tall, strongly-made man of about sixty, with a high forehead, long, hooked nose, wide mouth, thin lips and white beard. His dress is the old-fashioned loin-mat, and around his wrists he wears heavy strands of shell money. His wife, too, is very tall and strong, with quiet, dignified movements; she maybe forty years old. Everything about her is calm and determined; while not handsome, she has such a kind expression as to look very pleasant. She wears a small loin-cloth, and her light coffee-coloured skin is scrupulously clean. Around her neck and over her left shoulder she wears a string of shells, and around her ankles, small red beads. Near her squats her little daughter, a pretty child of six; an adopted daughter plays near the fire with a small, thick-bellied orphan boy, who is always crying. The girls, too, wear little ornaments; and their dainty movements, curly heads, round faces and great dark eyes are very attractive.The midday meal is steaming under a heap of leaves and dust, and a man is busily scraping cocoa-nuts for the delicious cocoa-nut milk. Agelan sends one of the girls for an unripe nut, which is opened in three deft cuts, and I am offered the refreshing drink as a welcome. Now Agelan, who has been brooding for days over these matters, questions me as to my origin and plans, and he roars himself nearly hoarse, for we cannot understand each other. The other man, a fugitive from the east coast, is asked to interpret, but he is sulky and awkward; not that he is a bad sort, but he is sick, and spends most of his time asleep in a shed he has built for himself in a corner of the house, and only appears at meals.The youngest son comes in, the last left to Agelan, for the older ones have all joined the mission,—it is the fashion. This boy is a quiet, cheerful lad of twelve, already a high caste, for his father has killedmany pigs for him. He has shot a miserable pigeon, and his mother and the girls laugh at the poor booty, much to his chagrin.Agelan now takes me to “view” a particularly fine tusked pig, tied under a roof, on a clean couch of straw; the boy shows it bits of cocoa-nut to make it open its mouth, so that I can see and admire its tusks. Agelan would like nothing better than to show off all his pigs, and if I were a native I would pass them in review as we Europeans visit picture-galleries; but I refuse as politely as I can. We return to the cook-house, where the cocoa-nut rasping is finished; the man washes his hands in the water of a nut, splitting it open and squeezing the water in a little spray on to his hands. Mrs. Agelan knows a simpler way; she fills her mouth with water and squirts it on her hands. The cocoa-nut gratings are kneaded with a little water, while the girls sweep the earth off the cooking-place and uncover the stones; an appetizing smell spreads, and the master of the house watches the preparations with a sharp eye and a silent tongue. One feels that the least carelessness will provoke an outburst, and, indeed, a solemn silence has fallen on the company, only the wife smiles quietly.“Lap-lap banana good!” Agelan roars in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, andreturns to his corner silent, but evidently satisfied. His wife cannot quite hide a smile of pride.The stranger now squeezes the cocoa-nut gratings over a wooden bowl, and a creamy juice runs through his fingers. The bowl is brought to Agelan, who looks at it as if reading an oracle; then he selects a hot stone from his own fire, and sends the bowl back to be embedded in the gratings. He approaches with his stone in a wooden fork, and squats down near the bowl lost in thought, as if anxious not to miss the right moment; then he drops the stone into the milk, which hisses, bubbles and steams. A fine smell of burnt fat is noticeable; and while the liquid thickens, Agelan behaves as if he could perform miracles and was in league with supernatural powers. After a while his wife hands him the bowl, and he holds it over the pudding, undecided how and where to pour the milk; one would think the fate and welfare of creation depended on his action. Being a man of energy, he makes up his mind, and pours one stream right across the pudding, then empties his bowl and retires with a sigh to his seat. About ten more bowlfuls are needed, but these are poured by Mrs. Agelan without further ceremony. The solemn hush is over. With a long bush-knife, Mama cuts the pudding into strips and squares and distributes it, and the meal proceeds amid general satisfaction. I am given a large slab; fortunately it tastes very good and is easily digestible, for politeness ordains that one must eat enormous quantities. At one stage of the proceedings the girls are sent to take some food tothe neighbours as a present. When everyone has finished, Agelan lies down for a siesta, while his wife lights a pipe and squats in silent happiness near the fire. The girls play with the dirty little boy, and the son plucks his tiny pigeon and a flying-fox; singeing the creature’s fur off occasions such an evil smell that I prefer to take my leave. Mrs. Agelan smiles her farewell, the girls giggle, and when I have gone some distance I hear Agelan, awakened from his siesta, roar a sleepy good-bye after me.

Next day I landed in Aoba, at “Albert’s.” He was an American negro, who, after having been a stoker and sailor, had settled here as a coprah trader. His language was of the strangest, a mixture of biche la mar, negro French and English, and was very hard to understand. With the help of two native women he kept his house in good order, and he was decidedly one of the most decent colonists of the group, and tried to behave like a gentleman, which is more than can be said of some whites. He seemed to confirm the theory that the African is superior to the Melanesian. Albert sheltered me to the best of his ability, although I had to sleep in the open, under a straw roof, and his bill of fare included items which neither my teeth nor my stomach could manage, such as an octopus. There were several other negroes in Aoba; one was Marmaduke, an enormous Senegalese, who had grown somewhat simple, and lived like the natives, joining the Suque and dancing at their festivals. He occasionally came to dinner at Albert’s; this was always amusing, as Albert thought himself far superior to Marmaduke, and corrected his mistakes with still more comical impossibilities. Both were most polite and perfectly sober. Thetalk, as a rule, turned on stories of ghosts, in which both of them firmly believed, and by which both were much troubled. Marmaduke was strangled every few nights by old women, while a goblin had sat on Albert’s chest every night until he had cleared the bush round his house and emptied his Winchester three times into the darkness. This had driven the ghosts away,—a pretty case of auto-suggestion. I was interested in hearing these stories, though I should hardly have thought a sensible man like Albert could have believed such things.

COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.

COOKING-HOUSE ON AOBA.

The people of Aoba are quite different from those of the other islands,—light-coloured, often straight-haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite good-looking, intelligent, and their habits show many Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society, and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on. Men and women live together, and the fires do not appear to be separated. As a result, there is real family life, owing in part to the fact that meals are eaten in common. The gamal is replaced by a cooking-house, which is open to the women; generally it is nothing but a great gabled roof, reaching to the ground on one side and open on the others. Here the families live during the day, and the young men and guests sleep at night, while the married couples sleep in their huts, which are grouped around the cooking-house.

The position of the women, so much better here than elsewhere, is not without effect on theirbehaviour. They are independent and self-possessed, and do not run away from a stranger nor hide in dark corners when a white man wants to speak to them. Because of their intelligence they are liked on plantations as house-servants, and so many of them have gone away for this purpose that Aoba has been considerably depopulated in consequence; few of these women ever return, and those who do are usually sick. Some Aoba women have made very good wives for white men.

The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes. The women are very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk, give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The men, too, are good to look at. Considering the intelligence and thriftiness of the race, it is doubly regrettable that alcoholism, recruiting and consumption have had such evil effects of recent years.

I roamed about in the neighbourhood of Nabutriki and attended several festivals; they are much the same as elsewhere, except that the pigs are not killed by braining, but by trampling on their stomachs, which apparently causes rupture of the heart and speedy death.

As I mentioned elsewhere, a man’s rise in caste is marked on every occasion by the receipt of new fire, rubbed on a special stick ornamented with flowers. Fire is lighted here, as in all Melanesia, by “ploughing,” a small stick being rubbed lengthwise in a larger one. If the wood is not damp, it will burn in less than two minutes: it is not necessary, as is often stated, to use two different kinds of wood. To-day matches are used nearly everywhere, and the natives hardly ever “plough” their fire, except for ceremonial purposes; but they are still very clever about keeping the fire burning, and often take along a smouldering log on their walks.

FIRE RUBBING.FIRE RUBBING.

FIRE RUBBING.

Wood-carving and sculpture are wanting, except in the shape of drums, which are placed in a horizontal position, and often reach considerable dimensions.

Not far from Albert’s lived a man of the highest caste, my friend Agelan. He was planning to kill one hundred tusked pigs in the near future, which would raise him to the highest caste far and wide, but would also impoverish him for the rest of his life. He lived quietly and comfortably, like a country squire, surrounded by his relatives and descendants. He seemed fond of good living, and his wife was an excellent housekeeper. In the midst of a somewhat colourless Christian population, wearing trousers and slovenly dresses, using enamel pots and petrol-lamps, Agelan and his household were a genuine relic of the good old times, and no one could have pretended that his home was less pleasant than those aroundhim. These things are largely a matter of taste; and those who prefer grotesque attire to beautiful nakedness will be happy to know that their wishes will soon be fulfilled. I liked the old heathen, and spent a good deal of time with him. A sketch of his home life may not come amiss, just because these primitive ways are dying out so fast.

As I near the house, some dogs rush out at me, and a woman’s voice calls them back; Agelan roars a welcome—he always shouts, and likes to put on masterful airs; for in years gone by he was a very unpleasant customer, until the man-of-war—but that is all ancient history, and now his bark is much worse than his bite. I have the honour of being in his good books, thanks to certain medical services I was able to render him; he has an ugly cough, for which we have tried in turn: iodine, Peruvian balsam, eucalyptus oil, quinine, and other medicines; nothing helps, but he seems to enjoy swallowing the drugs.

The floor of the house is hard clay; there are two fireplaces at one end, and at the other some large drums serve as seats. Everywhere in the roofing hang bows, arrows, bones, plummets, ropes, and clubs. Agelan has been toasting himself at a little fire of his own; now he rises, coughing, and shakes hands. He is a very tall, strongly-made man of about sixty, with a high forehead, long, hooked nose, wide mouth, thin lips and white beard. His dress is the old-fashioned loin-mat, and around his wrists he wears heavy strands of shell money. His wife, too, is very tall and strong, with quiet, dignified movements; she maybe forty years old. Everything about her is calm and determined; while not handsome, she has such a kind expression as to look very pleasant. She wears a small loin-cloth, and her light coffee-coloured skin is scrupulously clean. Around her neck and over her left shoulder she wears a string of shells, and around her ankles, small red beads. Near her squats her little daughter, a pretty child of six; an adopted daughter plays near the fire with a small, thick-bellied orphan boy, who is always crying. The girls, too, wear little ornaments; and their dainty movements, curly heads, round faces and great dark eyes are very attractive.

The midday meal is steaming under a heap of leaves and dust, and a man is busily scraping cocoa-nuts for the delicious cocoa-nut milk. Agelan sends one of the girls for an unripe nut, which is opened in three deft cuts, and I am offered the refreshing drink as a welcome. Now Agelan, who has been brooding for days over these matters, questions me as to my origin and plans, and he roars himself nearly hoarse, for we cannot understand each other. The other man, a fugitive from the east coast, is asked to interpret, but he is sulky and awkward; not that he is a bad sort, but he is sick, and spends most of his time asleep in a shed he has built for himself in a corner of the house, and only appears at meals.

The youngest son comes in, the last left to Agelan, for the older ones have all joined the mission,—it is the fashion. This boy is a quiet, cheerful lad of twelve, already a high caste, for his father has killedmany pigs for him. He has shot a miserable pigeon, and his mother and the girls laugh at the poor booty, much to his chagrin.

Agelan now takes me to “view” a particularly fine tusked pig, tied under a roof, on a clean couch of straw; the boy shows it bits of cocoa-nut to make it open its mouth, so that I can see and admire its tusks. Agelan would like nothing better than to show off all his pigs, and if I were a native I would pass them in review as we Europeans visit picture-galleries; but I refuse as politely as I can. We return to the cook-house, where the cocoa-nut rasping is finished; the man washes his hands in the water of a nut, splitting it open and squeezing the water in a little spray on to his hands. Mrs. Agelan knows a simpler way; she fills her mouth with water and squirts it on her hands. The cocoa-nut gratings are kneaded with a little water, while the girls sweep the earth off the cooking-place and uncover the stones; an appetizing smell spreads, and the master of the house watches the preparations with a sharp eye and a silent tongue. One feels that the least carelessness will provoke an outburst, and, indeed, a solemn silence has fallen on the company, only the wife smiles quietly.

“Lap-lap banana good!” Agelan roars in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, andreturns to his corner silent, but evidently satisfied. His wife cannot quite hide a smile of pride.

The stranger now squeezes the cocoa-nut gratings over a wooden bowl, and a creamy juice runs through his fingers. The bowl is brought to Agelan, who looks at it as if reading an oracle; then he selects a hot stone from his own fire, and sends the bowl back to be embedded in the gratings. He approaches with his stone in a wooden fork, and squats down near the bowl lost in thought, as if anxious not to miss the right moment; then he drops the stone into the milk, which hisses, bubbles and steams. A fine smell of burnt fat is noticeable; and while the liquid thickens, Agelan behaves as if he could perform miracles and was in league with supernatural powers. After a while his wife hands him the bowl, and he holds it over the pudding, undecided how and where to pour the milk; one would think the fate and welfare of creation depended on his action. Being a man of energy, he makes up his mind, and pours one stream right across the pudding, then empties his bowl and retires with a sigh to his seat. About ten more bowlfuls are needed, but these are poured by Mrs. Agelan without further ceremony. The solemn hush is over. With a long bush-knife, Mama cuts the pudding into strips and squares and distributes it, and the meal proceeds amid general satisfaction. I am given a large slab; fortunately it tastes very good and is easily digestible, for politeness ordains that one must eat enormous quantities. At one stage of the proceedings the girls are sent to take some food tothe neighbours as a present. When everyone has finished, Agelan lies down for a siesta, while his wife lights a pipe and squats in silent happiness near the fire. The girls play with the dirty little boy, and the son plucks his tiny pigeon and a flying-fox; singeing the creature’s fur off occasions such an evil smell that I prefer to take my leave. Mrs. Agelan smiles her farewell, the girls giggle, and when I have gone some distance I hear Agelan, awakened from his siesta, roar a sleepy good-bye after me.

Chapter XIVLoloway—Malo—The Banks IslandsHaving traversed the western part of the island, I sailed to Loloway, near the eastern point, one of the loveliest spots in the archipelago. Lofty cliffs flank two sides of a round bay; at the entrance a barrier-reef breaks the swell, which glides in a soft undulation over the quiet water, splashing up on the sandy beach. All around is the forest, hanging in shadowy bowers over the water, and hardly a breeze is astir. The white whale-boat of the Anglican missionary floats motionless on the green mirror; sometimes a fish leaps up, or a pigeon calls from the woods. In the curve of the bay the shore rises in two terraces; on the lower lies the Anglican missionary’s house, just opposite the entrance. In the evening the sun sets between the cliffs, and pours a stream of the purest gold through the narrow gap. It is a pity this fairy spot is so rarely inhabited; Melanesian missionaries are not often at home, being constantly on the road, or at work in the native villages. Mr. G., too, was on the point of departure, and agreed to take me with him on his trip.In his alarmingly leaky boat we sailed westward, two boys baling all the time. We ran into a small anchorage, pulled the boat ashore, and marched offinland. The people I found here were similar to those in the west, except that they had developed certain arts to a greater degree of perfection, particularly mat-braiding and tattooing. The braiding is done by a method verysimilarto that in vogue on Pentecoste. The tattooing is mostly done by women and on women; but the men, especially the high castes, often have a beautifully designed sicca leaf running from the chest towards one shoulder, which probably has some religious significance. The women often have their whole body, arms and legs, covered with tattooing, as if with fine lace. The operation is done bit by bit, some one part being treated every few days. The colour used is the rosin of a nut-tree precipitated on a cool stone and mixed with the juice of a plant; the pattern is drawn on the skin with a stick, and then traced with the tattooing-needle. This consists of three orange thorns, tied at right angles to a stick. The needles are guided along the design with the left hand, while the right keeps striking the handle softly with a light stick, to drive the needles into the skin. This is kept up until a distinct outline is produced; the operation is not very painful. The skin is then washed and rubbed with a certain juice, which evidently acts as a disinfectant; at least I never saw any inflammation consequent on tattooing. During the next few days some of the dye works out and falls off with the dry crust that forms on the wound, leaving the tattooing a little paler. The patterns are rather complicated, and at the present day there areno recognizable representations of real objects; yet there seems no doubt that at one time all the designs represented some real thing. They are carefully adapted to the body, and accentuate its structure. The women who do the tattooing are well paid, so that only the wealthy can afford to have their wives and daughters tattooed all over; and naturally a tattooed woman brings a higher price in the matrimonial market than a “plain” one.TATTOOING ON AOBA.TATTOOING ON AOBA.In this same place I had occasion to observe an interesting zoological phenomenon, the appearance of the palolo-worm, which occurs almost all over the Pacific once a year, at a certain date after the October full moon. The natives know the date exactly, which proves the accuracy of their chronology. The palolo is a favourite delicacy, and they never fail to fish for it. We went down to the shore on the first night; there were not many worms as yet, but the next evening the water was full of the greenish and brownish threads, wriggling about helplessly. Each village had its traditional fishing-ground, and we could see the different fires all along the coast. The worms were gathered by hand and thrown into baskets, and after midnight we went home with a rich harvest. The palolo is mixed with pudding, and said to taste like fish; I am not in a position to pronounce an opinion.I returned to Nabutriki, and thence to Malo, where Mr. W. informed me that the Burns-Philp steamer had already passed, and asked me to stay with him and his kind family until I should find an opportunityto cross. I accepted all the more gladly, as this part of Malo was still quite unknown to me. The population I found here is probably identical with that which formerly inhabited the south shore of Santo. This was interesting to me because of certain scientific details, though on the whole the life was much the same as elsewhere in Melanesia, with the Suque, etc. I collected a number of charms and amulets, which the people sold willingly, as they no longer believed in their power. Formerly, they were supposed to be useful for poisoning, as love-charms, or for help in collecting many tusked pigs.I also visited the neighbouring islands, and heard the gruesome story of how the last village on Aoré disappeared. The Aoré people were for ever at war with those of South Santo, across the Segond Channel. The men of Aoré were about sixty strong, and one day they attacked a Santo village. Everyone fled except one man, who was helpless from disease. He was killed and eaten up, and in consequence of this meal thirty out of the sixty men from Aoré died. The others dispersed among the villages of Malo. In Aoré, I had the rare sensation of witnessing an earthquake below the surface. I was exploring a deep cave in the coral banks when I heard the well-known rumbling, felt the shock, and heard some great stalactites fall from the ceiling. This accumulation of effects seemed then to me a little theatrical and exaggerated.The next steamer took me to the Banks Islands, and I went ashore at Port Patterson on Venua Lava.Here were the headquarters of a rubber planting company; but the rubber trees had not grown well, and the company had started cocoa-nuts. I had met Mr. Ch., the director, before, and he took me in. The company owned a motor-launch, which cruised all through the Banks Islands, visiting the different plantations; this gave me a good opportunity to see nearly all the islands. The sea is much more dangerous here than in the New Hebrides, being open everywhere; and the strong currents cause heavy tide rips at the points of the jagged coasts.An excursion to Gaua was a failure, owing to bad weather. After having shivered in a wet hut for four days, we returned to Port Patterson only just in time; for in the evening the barometer fell, a bad sign at that season, and the wind set in afresh. The launch was anchored in a sheltered corner of the bay, near an old yacht and a schooner belonging to Mr. W., a planter on a neighbouring islet. All the signs pointed to a coming cyclone, and suddenly it shot from the mountains, furrowed the sea, and ruled supreme for two days. From the director’s house I watched the whirling squalls gliding over the water, lifting great lumps of spray, that shot like snow over the surface and disappeared in the misty distance. Rain rattled in showers on the roof; everywhere was a hissing, rushing, thundering; the surf broke in violent, irregular shocks like the trampling of an excited horse; the wind roared in the forest till the strongest trees trembled and the palms bent over with inverted crowns. In a moment the creeksswelled to torrents, and in every gully there ran rivers, which collected to a deep lake in the plain. In the house the rain penetrated everywhere, leaked through the roof, dripped on the beds, and made puddles on the floor.DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.Meanwhile the captain and engineer of the launch had passed an unpleasant time; they had stayed aboard till the rolling of the boat drove them to the larger yacht; but seeing the schooner break her two chains and drift on to the reef, they became frightened and went ashore in the dinghey, and home along the beach. Later they arrived at the station and reported “all well,” and were amazed when I told them that the launch had stranded. I had just been looking from the veranda through the glass at the boats, when a huge wave picked up the launch and threw her on the beach. There she had rolled about a little, and then dug herself into the sand, while the tide fell and the wind changed. Next day the cyclone had passed, but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke over her decks and gurgled in the hold. The rigging was torn, the cabin washed away, and the shore strewn with herdoors, planks, beams and trade goods. It was a pitiful sight to see the handsome ship bending over like a fallen warrior, while the company’s old yacht had weathered the cyclone quite safely.During the work of refloating the boat, Mr. Ch. was taken very ill with fever, and I nursed him for some days; he was somewhat better by Christmas Eve, and we had the satisfaction of bringing the saved launch back to the station. He was visibly relieved, and his good humour was agreeably felt by his boys as well as by his employés, to whom he sent a goodly quantity of liquor to celebrate the occasion. We sat down to a festive dinner and tried to realize that this was Christmas; but it was so different from Christmas at home, that it was rather hard. At our feet lay the wide bay, turquoise blue, edged with white surf; in the distance rose the wonderful silhouette of Mota Lava Island; white clouds travelled across the sky, and a gentle breeze rustled in the palms of the forest. The peaceful picture showed no trace of the fury with which the elements had fought so few days ago.Tired with his exertions, Mr. Ch. withdrew early, and I soon followed; but we were both aroused by the barking of the dogs, followed by the pad of bare feet on the veranda, whispering and coughing, and then by a song from rough and untrained throats. The singers were natives of a Christian village some miles away, who came to sing Christmas hymns in a strange, rough language, discordant and yet impressive. When they had finished the director went outto them; he was a man whom one would not have believed capable of any feeling, but he had tears in his eyes; words failed him, and he thanked the singers by gestures. We all went down to the store, where they sang to the employés, and received presents; after which they spent the rest of the night with the hands, singing, eating and chatting. On Christmas Day the natives roasted a fat pig, the employés spent the day over their bottles, and I was nurse once more, my patient being delirious and suffering very much.Before New Year’s Day the launch was sent to all the different stations to fetch the employés, an interesting crowd of more or less ruined individuals. There was a former gendarme from New Caledonia, a cavalry captain, an officer who had been in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year’s Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director’s house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one by one. Thus the new year was begun miserably, and the next few days were just as bad. The natives looked on at the fights with round-eyed astonishment; and the director was in despair, for a second cyclone was threatening,and there was hardly anyone in a fit condition to help him secure the launch.ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.All one morning it rained, and at noon the cyclone broke, coming from the south-west, as it had done the first time, but with threefold violence. We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn. The blasts grew ever more violent and frequent, and if the house had not been protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and a little iron shed went rolling along the ground like a die. Down in the plain the storm tore the leaves off the palms, and uprooted trees and blew down houses. The cyclone reached its climax at sunset, then the barometer rose steadily, and suddenly both wind and rain ceased. The stillness lasted for about half an hour and then the storm set in again, this time from the north, striking the house with all its strength; fortunately it was not so violent as at first. With the rising barometer the storm decreased and changed its direction to the east. All next day it rained and blew; but on the third morning the storm died out in a faint breeze from the south-east, and when we came to reckon up our damages, we found that it might have been worse. Meanwhile the employés had had time to recover from their orgy. A brilliant day dried the damp house, and soon everything resumeda normal aspect except the forest, which looked brown and ragged, like autumn woods at home.I made use of the first calm day to visit the lonely little islet of Meralava. As it has no anchorage, no one can land there except in quiet weather, and so it had come about that the company’s employé had had no communication with the outside world for four months. The island is an extinct volcano, a regular cone, with the crater as a deep cavity in the top. There is hardly a level square mètre on the whole island, and the shores rise steeply out of the sea; only a few huge lava blocks form a base, on which the swell breaks and foams. When we reached the island, this swell was so heavy as to render landing almost impossible. All we could do was to take the employé aboard and return home. I was very sorry to have to give up my visit to Meralava, as the natives, though all christianized, have preserved more of their old ways than those of other islands, owing to their infrequent intercourse with civilization. For the same reason, the population is quite large; but every time a ship has landed an epidemic goes through the island, the germs of which appear to be brought by the vessels, and the natives evidently have very small powers of resistance. We may here observe on a small scale what has taken place all over the archipelago in the degeneration and decimation of the aborigines.The people of Meralava live on taro, which they grow in terraced fields, the water being obtainedfrom holes in the rocks, and on cocoa-nuts, of which the island yields a fair supply.The following day we started for Ureparapara, also a volcanic island, with an enormous crater, one side of which has fallen in; because, as the natives say, a great fish knocked against it. The sea has penetrated into the interior of the crater, forming a lovely bay, so that ships now lie at anchor where formerly the lava boiled and roared.In consequence of the frequent intercourse with whites, the population is scanty. There is hardly a level patch, except the small strip at the base of the slope and the great reef outside. Here, too, we had difficulty in landing, but in the evening we found an ideal anchorage inside the bay. The water was scarcely ruffled, and little wavelets splashed on the shore, where mangrove thickets spread their bright foliage. Huge trees bent over the water, protecting the straw roofs of a little village. In the deep shade some natives were squatting round fires, and close by some large outrigger-canoes lay on the beach. On three sides the steep wooded slopes of the former crater’s walls rise up to a sharply dented ridge, and it all looks like a quiet Alpine lake, so that one involuntarily listens for the sound of cow-bells. Instead, there is the call of pigeons, and the dull thunder of the breakers outside.We took a holiday in this charming bay; and though the joys of picnicking were not new to us, the roasting of some pigeons gave us a festive sensation and a hearty appetite. The night underthe bright, starlit sky, on board the softly rocking launch, wrapped me in a feeling of safety and coziness I had not enjoyed for a long time.DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.Along the steepest path imaginable I climbed next morning to the mountain’s edge. The path often led along smooth rocks, where lianas served as ropes and roots as a foothold; and I was greatly surprised to find many fields on top, to which the women have to climb every day and carry the food down afterwards, which implies acrobatic feats of no mean order.Ureparapara was the northernmost point I had reached so far, and the neighbourhood of the art-loving Solomon Islands already made itself felt. Whereas in the New Hebrides every form of art, except mat-braiding, is at once primitive and decadent, here any number of pretty things are made, such as daintily designed ear-sticks, bracelets, necklaces, etc.; I also found a new type of drum, a regular skin-drum, with the skin stretched across one end, while the other is stuck into the ground. The skin is made of banana leaves. These and other points mark the difference between this people and that of the New Hebrides. As elsewhere all over the Banks group, the people have long faces, high foreheads, narrow, often hooked, noses, and a light skin. Accordingly, it would seem that they are on a higher mental plane than those of the New Hebrides, and cannibalism is said never to have existed here.My collections were not greatly enriched, as aBritish man-of-war had anchored here for a few days a short time before; and anyone who knows the blue-jackets’ rage for collecting will understand that they are quite capable of stripping a small island of its treasures. A great deal of scientifically valuable material is lost in this way, though fortunately these collectors go in for size chiefly, leaving small objects behind, so that I was able to procure several valuable pieces.After our return to Port Patterson the launch took me to a plantation from which I ascended the volcano of Venua Lava. Its activity shows principally in sulphur springs, and there are large sulphur deposits, which were worked fifteen years ago by a French company. A large amount of capital had been collected for the purpose, and for a few weeks or months the sulphur was carried down to the shore by natives and exported. Then it was found that the deposits were not inexhaustible, that the employés were not over-conscientious, that the consumption of alcohol was enormous, and finally the whole affair was given up, after large quantities of machinery had been brought out, which I saw rusting away near the shore. In this way numerous enterprises have been started and abandoned of late years, especially in Nouméa. It is probably due to this mining scheme that the natives here have practically disappeared; I found one man who had once carried sulphur from the mine, and he was willing to guide me up the volcano.There are always clouds hanging round the topof the mountain, and the forest is swampy; but on the old road we advanced quite rapidly, and soon found ourselves on the edge of a plateau, from which two streams fell down in grand cascades, close together, their silver ribbons gleaming brightly in the dark woods. One river was milk-white with sulphur precipitate, the other had red water, probably owing to iron deposits. The water was warm, and grew still warmer the farther up we followed the river. Suddenly we came upon a bare slope, over certain spots of which steam-clouds hung, while penetrating fumes irritated one’s eyes and nose. We had come to the lower margin of the sulphur springs, and the path led directly across the sulphur rocks. Mounting higher, we heard the hissing of steam more distinctly, and soon we were in the midst of numerous hillocks with bright yellow tops, and steam hissing and whistling as it shot out of cracks, to condense in the air into a white cloud. The whole ground seemed furrowed with channels and crevasses, beneath which one heard mysterious noises; one’s step sounded hollow, and at our side ran a dark stream, which carried the hot sulphur water to the shore. Great boulders lay about, some of them so balanced that a slight touch sent them rolling into the depths, where they broke into atoms. Sometimes we were surrounded by a thick cloud, until a breeze carried it away, and we had a clear view over the hot, dark desert, up to the mountain-top. It was uncanny in the midst of those viciously hissing hillocks, and I could not blame my boys for turning green with fear and wishing to gohome. But we went on to a place where water boiled in black pools, sometimes quietly, then with a sudden high jump; some of the water was black, some yellowish, and everything around was covered with sulphur as if with hoar-frost.INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.We followed the course of a creek whose water was so hot as to scald our feet, and the heat became most oppressive. We were glad to reach the crater, though it was a gloomy and colourless desert, in the midst of which a large grey pool boiled and bubbled. In front was a deep crevice in the crater wall, and a cloud of steam hid whatever was in it; yet we felt as though something frightful must be going on there. Above this gloomy scene stretched a sky of serenest blue, and we had a glimpse of the coast, with its little islands bathing in the sapphire sea.Next day we left for Gaua. Unhappily the captain met friends, and celebrated with them to such an extent that he was no longer to be relied on, which was all the more unpleasant as the weather was of the dirtiest, and the barometer presaged another cyclone. After two days it cleared up a little; I went ashore at the west point of Gaua, where the launch was to pick me up again two days later, as I meant to visit the interior while the others went to buy coprah. Even now the wind and the swell from the north-west were increasing suspiciously, and after I had spent a rainy night in a village off the shore, I saw the launch race eastward along the coast, evidently trying to make a safe anchorage, with the storm blowing violent squalls and the sea very high.On my way inland I still found the paths obstructed by fallen trees from the last cyclone, while nearly all the cocoa-nut palms had lost their nuts. And again the storm raged in the forest, and the rain fell in torrents.I was anxious to buy statues of tree-fern wood; they are frequently to be seen here, standing along a terrace or wall near the gamal, and seem not so much images of ancestors, as signs of rank and wealth. The caste may be recognized by the number of pigs’ jaws carved on the statues. Often the artist first makes a drawing of the statue in red, white and black paint on a board; and these same designs are used as patterns for tattooing, as well as on ear-sticks and other objects. Female statues are common, which is an unusual thing.I obtained a good number of skulls, which were thrown into the roots of a fig tree, where I was allowed to pick them up as I pleased.The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an earlier population that has entirely disappeared.When I returned from my excursion I lookeddown on a wild foam-flecked sea, over which the storm was raging as it did during the previous cyclones. I realized that I should have to stay here for some time, and ate my last provisions somewhat pensively. I only hoped that the launch had found an anchorage, else she must inevitably have been wrecked, and I should be left at the mercy of the natives for an indefinite time. The hut in which I camped did not keep off the rain, and I was wet and uncomfortable; thus I spent the first of a series of miserable nights. I was anxious to know the fate of the launch, and this in itself was enough to worry me; then I was without reading or writing materials, and my days were spent near a smoky fire, watching the weather, trying to find a dry spot, sleeping and whistling. Sometimes a few natives came to keep me company; and once I got hold of a man who spoke a little biche la mar, and was willing to tell me about some old-time customs. However, like most natives, he soon wearied of thinking, so that our conversations did not last long.The natives kept me supplied with food in the most hospitable manner: yam, taro, cabbage, delicately prepared, were at my disposal; but, unaccustomed as I was to this purely vegetable diet, I soon felt such a craving for meat that I began to dream about tinned-meat, surely not a normal state of things. To add to my annoyance, rumours got afloat to the effect that the launch was wrecked; and if this was true, my situation was bad indeed.On the fifth day I decided to try and find theanchorage where I supposed the launch to be. The wind had dropped a little, but it was still pouring, and the walk through the slippery, devastated forest, up and down steep hills and gullies, across fallen trees, in a thick, oppressive fog, was strenuous enough. In the afternoon, hearing that the launch was somewhere near, we descended to the coast, where we came upon the captain and the crew. They had managed to anchor the launch at the outbreak of the storm, and had camped in an old hut on the beach; but the huge waves, breaking over the reef, had created such a current along the beach that the launch had dragged her anchors, and was now caught in the worst of the waves and would surely go down shortly. Unfortunately the captain had sent the dinghey ashore some time before coming to this bay, so that there was no means whatever of reaching the launch. The rising sea had threatened to wash away the hut, and the captain, leaving the boat to her fate, had gone camping inland.I went down to the beach to see for myself how things stood, and was forced to admit that the man had not exaggerated. In the midst of the raging surf the launch rocked to and fro, and threatening waves rose on every side and often seemed to cover her. Still she was holding her own, and had evidently not struck a rock as yet; and if her cables held out, hope was not lost. I watched her fight for life for some time, and she defended herself more gallantly than I should ever have expected from so clumsy a craft; but I had little hope. We spent a miserablenight in the village, in a heavy atmosphere, amid vermin and filth, on an uneven stone floor. The rain rattled on the roof, the storm roared in the forest like a passing express train, the sea thundered from afar, and a river echoed in a gorge near by; to complete the gloomy scene, a violent earthquake shook the hills.In the morning the launch was still afloat on the same spot; the wind had abated, and the sky no longer looked quite so stormy. During the night things improved still more, and we ventured to camp on the shore. The boys went for the dinghey, and although they had hard work, half dragging, half carrying it along the shore over the cliffs, they succeeded in bringing it to our beach, and then made an attempt to row to the launch, but were almost carried out beyond the reef. Encouraged by a faintly rosy sunset and a few stars, we waited another day; then the current along the coast had nearly ceased, only outside the reef huge mountains of water rolled silently and incessantly past, and broke thundering against the cliffs. The second attempt to reach the launch was successful, and, wonderful to relate, she had suffered no damage, only she had shipped so much water that everything was soaked and rusty. The engineer began to repair her engines, and by evening she steamed back to her anchorage, where we welcomed her as if she had been a human being.The wind had quite fallen when we steamed out next day. It was dull weather, and we were rockedby an enormous swell; yet the water was like a mirror, and the giant waves rose and disappeared without a sound. It all seemed unnatural and uncanny, and this may have produced the frightened feeling that held us all that morning. While we were crossing over to Port Patterson a sharp wind rose from the north, and the barometer fell, so that we feared another edition of the storm. If our engines had broken down, which happened often enough, we should have been lost, for we were in a region where the swell came from two directions, and the waves were even higher than in the morning. Fortunately the wind increased but slowly; presently we were protected by the coast, and at night we arrived at Port Patterson. The men had given us up, and welcomed us with something akin to tenderness. Here, too, the cyclone had been terrible, the worst of the three that had passed in four weeks.Soon afterwards the steamer arrived, bringing news of many wrecks and accidents. A dozen ships had been smashed at their anchorages, four had disappeared, and three were known to have foundered; in addition, news came of the wreck of a steamer. Hardly ever had so many fallen victims to a cyclone.Painfully and slowly our steamer ploughed her way south through the abnormally high swell. None of the anchorages on the west coast could be touched, and everywhere we saw brown woods, leafless as in winter, and damaged plantations; and all the way down to Vila we heard of new casualties.

Having traversed the western part of the island, I sailed to Loloway, near the eastern point, one of the loveliest spots in the archipelago. Lofty cliffs flank two sides of a round bay; at the entrance a barrier-reef breaks the swell, which glides in a soft undulation over the quiet water, splashing up on the sandy beach. All around is the forest, hanging in shadowy bowers over the water, and hardly a breeze is astir. The white whale-boat of the Anglican missionary floats motionless on the green mirror; sometimes a fish leaps up, or a pigeon calls from the woods. In the curve of the bay the shore rises in two terraces; on the lower lies the Anglican missionary’s house, just opposite the entrance. In the evening the sun sets between the cliffs, and pours a stream of the purest gold through the narrow gap. It is a pity this fairy spot is so rarely inhabited; Melanesian missionaries are not often at home, being constantly on the road, or at work in the native villages. Mr. G., too, was on the point of departure, and agreed to take me with him on his trip.

In his alarmingly leaky boat we sailed westward, two boys baling all the time. We ran into a small anchorage, pulled the boat ashore, and marched offinland. The people I found here were similar to those in the west, except that they had developed certain arts to a greater degree of perfection, particularly mat-braiding and tattooing. The braiding is done by a method verysimilarto that in vogue on Pentecoste. The tattooing is mostly done by women and on women; but the men, especially the high castes, often have a beautifully designed sicca leaf running from the chest towards one shoulder, which probably has some religious significance. The women often have their whole body, arms and legs, covered with tattooing, as if with fine lace. The operation is done bit by bit, some one part being treated every few days. The colour used is the rosin of a nut-tree precipitated on a cool stone and mixed with the juice of a plant; the pattern is drawn on the skin with a stick, and then traced with the tattooing-needle. This consists of three orange thorns, tied at right angles to a stick. The needles are guided along the design with the left hand, while the right keeps striking the handle softly with a light stick, to drive the needles into the skin. This is kept up until a distinct outline is produced; the operation is not very painful. The skin is then washed and rubbed with a certain juice, which evidently acts as a disinfectant; at least I never saw any inflammation consequent on tattooing. During the next few days some of the dye works out and falls off with the dry crust that forms on the wound, leaving the tattooing a little paler. The patterns are rather complicated, and at the present day there areno recognizable representations of real objects; yet there seems no doubt that at one time all the designs represented some real thing. They are carefully adapted to the body, and accentuate its structure. The women who do the tattooing are well paid, so that only the wealthy can afford to have their wives and daughters tattooed all over; and naturally a tattooed woman brings a higher price in the matrimonial market than a “plain” one.

TATTOOING ON AOBA.TATTOOING ON AOBA.

TATTOOING ON AOBA.

In this same place I had occasion to observe an interesting zoological phenomenon, the appearance of the palolo-worm, which occurs almost all over the Pacific once a year, at a certain date after the October full moon. The natives know the date exactly, which proves the accuracy of their chronology. The palolo is a favourite delicacy, and they never fail to fish for it. We went down to the shore on the first night; there were not many worms as yet, but the next evening the water was full of the greenish and brownish threads, wriggling about helplessly. Each village had its traditional fishing-ground, and we could see the different fires all along the coast. The worms were gathered by hand and thrown into baskets, and after midnight we went home with a rich harvest. The palolo is mixed with pudding, and said to taste like fish; I am not in a position to pronounce an opinion.

I returned to Nabutriki, and thence to Malo, where Mr. W. informed me that the Burns-Philp steamer had already passed, and asked me to stay with him and his kind family until I should find an opportunityto cross. I accepted all the more gladly, as this part of Malo was still quite unknown to me. The population I found here is probably identical with that which formerly inhabited the south shore of Santo. This was interesting to me because of certain scientific details, though on the whole the life was much the same as elsewhere in Melanesia, with the Suque, etc. I collected a number of charms and amulets, which the people sold willingly, as they no longer believed in their power. Formerly, they were supposed to be useful for poisoning, as love-charms, or for help in collecting many tusked pigs.

I also visited the neighbouring islands, and heard the gruesome story of how the last village on Aoré disappeared. The Aoré people were for ever at war with those of South Santo, across the Segond Channel. The men of Aoré were about sixty strong, and one day they attacked a Santo village. Everyone fled except one man, who was helpless from disease. He was killed and eaten up, and in consequence of this meal thirty out of the sixty men from Aoré died. The others dispersed among the villages of Malo. In Aoré, I had the rare sensation of witnessing an earthquake below the surface. I was exploring a deep cave in the coral banks when I heard the well-known rumbling, felt the shock, and heard some great stalactites fall from the ceiling. This accumulation of effects seemed then to me a little theatrical and exaggerated.

The next steamer took me to the Banks Islands, and I went ashore at Port Patterson on Venua Lava.Here were the headquarters of a rubber planting company; but the rubber trees had not grown well, and the company had started cocoa-nuts. I had met Mr. Ch., the director, before, and he took me in. The company owned a motor-launch, which cruised all through the Banks Islands, visiting the different plantations; this gave me a good opportunity to see nearly all the islands. The sea is much more dangerous here than in the New Hebrides, being open everywhere; and the strong currents cause heavy tide rips at the points of the jagged coasts.

An excursion to Gaua was a failure, owing to bad weather. After having shivered in a wet hut for four days, we returned to Port Patterson only just in time; for in the evening the barometer fell, a bad sign at that season, and the wind set in afresh. The launch was anchored in a sheltered corner of the bay, near an old yacht and a schooner belonging to Mr. W., a planter on a neighbouring islet. All the signs pointed to a coming cyclone, and suddenly it shot from the mountains, furrowed the sea, and ruled supreme for two days. From the director’s house I watched the whirling squalls gliding over the water, lifting great lumps of spray, that shot like snow over the surface and disappeared in the misty distance. Rain rattled in showers on the roof; everywhere was a hissing, rushing, thundering; the surf broke in violent, irregular shocks like the trampling of an excited horse; the wind roared in the forest till the strongest trees trembled and the palms bent over with inverted crowns. In a moment the creeksswelled to torrents, and in every gully there ran rivers, which collected to a deep lake in the plain. In the house the rain penetrated everywhere, leaked through the roof, dripped on the beds, and made puddles on the floor.

DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.

DWELLING-HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PAINTINGS AND CARVED POLES.

Meanwhile the captain and engineer of the launch had passed an unpleasant time; they had stayed aboard till the rolling of the boat drove them to the larger yacht; but seeing the schooner break her two chains and drift on to the reef, they became frightened and went ashore in the dinghey, and home along the beach. Later they arrived at the station and reported “all well,” and were amazed when I told them that the launch had stranded. I had just been looking from the veranda through the glass at the boats, when a huge wave picked up the launch and threw her on the beach. There she had rolled about a little, and then dug herself into the sand, while the tide fell and the wind changed. Next day the cyclone had passed, but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke over her decks and gurgled in the hold. The rigging was torn, the cabin washed away, and the shore strewn with herdoors, planks, beams and trade goods. It was a pitiful sight to see the handsome ship bending over like a fallen warrior, while the company’s old yacht had weathered the cyclone quite safely.

During the work of refloating the boat, Mr. Ch. was taken very ill with fever, and I nursed him for some days; he was somewhat better by Christmas Eve, and we had the satisfaction of bringing the saved launch back to the station. He was visibly relieved, and his good humour was agreeably felt by his boys as well as by his employés, to whom he sent a goodly quantity of liquor to celebrate the occasion. We sat down to a festive dinner and tried to realize that this was Christmas; but it was so different from Christmas at home, that it was rather hard. At our feet lay the wide bay, turquoise blue, edged with white surf; in the distance rose the wonderful silhouette of Mota Lava Island; white clouds travelled across the sky, and a gentle breeze rustled in the palms of the forest. The peaceful picture showed no trace of the fury with which the elements had fought so few days ago.

Tired with his exertions, Mr. Ch. withdrew early, and I soon followed; but we were both aroused by the barking of the dogs, followed by the pad of bare feet on the veranda, whispering and coughing, and then by a song from rough and untrained throats. The singers were natives of a Christian village some miles away, who came to sing Christmas hymns in a strange, rough language, discordant and yet impressive. When they had finished the director went outto them; he was a man whom one would not have believed capable of any feeling, but he had tears in his eyes; words failed him, and he thanked the singers by gestures. We all went down to the store, where they sang to the employés, and received presents; after which they spent the rest of the night with the hands, singing, eating and chatting. On Christmas Day the natives roasted a fat pig, the employés spent the day over their bottles, and I was nurse once more, my patient being delirious and suffering very much.

Before New Year’s Day the launch was sent to all the different stations to fetch the employés, an interesting crowd of more or less ruined individuals. There was a former gendarme from New Caledonia, a cavalry captain, an officer who had been in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year’s Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director’s house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one by one. Thus the new year was begun miserably, and the next few days were just as bad. The natives looked on at the fights with round-eyed astonishment; and the director was in despair, for a second cyclone was threatening,and there was hardly anyone in a fit condition to help him secure the launch.

ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.

ANCESTOR HOUSE ON GAUA, WITH PICTURES AND CARVED STATUES.

All one morning it rained, and at noon the cyclone broke, coming from the south-west, as it had done the first time, but with threefold violence. We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn. The blasts grew ever more violent and frequent, and if the house had not been protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and a little iron shed went rolling along the ground like a die. Down in the plain the storm tore the leaves off the palms, and uprooted trees and blew down houses. The cyclone reached its climax at sunset, then the barometer rose steadily, and suddenly both wind and rain ceased. The stillness lasted for about half an hour and then the storm set in again, this time from the north, striking the house with all its strength; fortunately it was not so violent as at first. With the rising barometer the storm decreased and changed its direction to the east. All next day it rained and blew; but on the third morning the storm died out in a faint breeze from the south-east, and when we came to reckon up our damages, we found that it might have been worse. Meanwhile the employés had had time to recover from their orgy. A brilliant day dried the damp house, and soon everything resumeda normal aspect except the forest, which looked brown and ragged, like autumn woods at home.

I made use of the first calm day to visit the lonely little islet of Meralava. As it has no anchorage, no one can land there except in quiet weather, and so it had come about that the company’s employé had had no communication with the outside world for four months. The island is an extinct volcano, a regular cone, with the crater as a deep cavity in the top. There is hardly a level square mètre on the whole island, and the shores rise steeply out of the sea; only a few huge lava blocks form a base, on which the swell breaks and foams. When we reached the island, this swell was so heavy as to render landing almost impossible. All we could do was to take the employé aboard and return home. I was very sorry to have to give up my visit to Meralava, as the natives, though all christianized, have preserved more of their old ways than those of other islands, owing to their infrequent intercourse with civilization. For the same reason, the population is quite large; but every time a ship has landed an epidemic goes through the island, the germs of which appear to be brought by the vessels, and the natives evidently have very small powers of resistance. We may here observe on a small scale what has taken place all over the archipelago in the degeneration and decimation of the aborigines.

The people of Meralava live on taro, which they grow in terraced fields, the water being obtainedfrom holes in the rocks, and on cocoa-nuts, of which the island yields a fair supply.

The following day we started for Ureparapara, also a volcanic island, with an enormous crater, one side of which has fallen in; because, as the natives say, a great fish knocked against it. The sea has penetrated into the interior of the crater, forming a lovely bay, so that ships now lie at anchor where formerly the lava boiled and roared.

In consequence of the frequent intercourse with whites, the population is scanty. There is hardly a level patch, except the small strip at the base of the slope and the great reef outside. Here, too, we had difficulty in landing, but in the evening we found an ideal anchorage inside the bay. The water was scarcely ruffled, and little wavelets splashed on the shore, where mangrove thickets spread their bright foliage. Huge trees bent over the water, protecting the straw roofs of a little village. In the deep shade some natives were squatting round fires, and close by some large outrigger-canoes lay on the beach. On three sides the steep wooded slopes of the former crater’s walls rise up to a sharply dented ridge, and it all looks like a quiet Alpine lake, so that one involuntarily listens for the sound of cow-bells. Instead, there is the call of pigeons, and the dull thunder of the breakers outside.

We took a holiday in this charming bay; and though the joys of picnicking were not new to us, the roasting of some pigeons gave us a festive sensation and a hearty appetite. The night underthe bright, starlit sky, on board the softly rocking launch, wrapped me in a feeling of safety and coziness I had not enjoyed for a long time.

DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.

DRUM CONCERT ON UREPARAPARA.

Along the steepest path imaginable I climbed next morning to the mountain’s edge. The path often led along smooth rocks, where lianas served as ropes and roots as a foothold; and I was greatly surprised to find many fields on top, to which the women have to climb every day and carry the food down afterwards, which implies acrobatic feats of no mean order.

Ureparapara was the northernmost point I had reached so far, and the neighbourhood of the art-loving Solomon Islands already made itself felt. Whereas in the New Hebrides every form of art, except mat-braiding, is at once primitive and decadent, here any number of pretty things are made, such as daintily designed ear-sticks, bracelets, necklaces, etc.; I also found a new type of drum, a regular skin-drum, with the skin stretched across one end, while the other is stuck into the ground. The skin is made of banana leaves. These and other points mark the difference between this people and that of the New Hebrides. As elsewhere all over the Banks group, the people have long faces, high foreheads, narrow, often hooked, noses, and a light skin. Accordingly, it would seem that they are on a higher mental plane than those of the New Hebrides, and cannibalism is said never to have existed here.

My collections were not greatly enriched, as aBritish man-of-war had anchored here for a few days a short time before; and anyone who knows the blue-jackets’ rage for collecting will understand that they are quite capable of stripping a small island of its treasures. A great deal of scientifically valuable material is lost in this way, though fortunately these collectors go in for size chiefly, leaving small objects behind, so that I was able to procure several valuable pieces.

After our return to Port Patterson the launch took me to a plantation from which I ascended the volcano of Venua Lava. Its activity shows principally in sulphur springs, and there are large sulphur deposits, which were worked fifteen years ago by a French company. A large amount of capital had been collected for the purpose, and for a few weeks or months the sulphur was carried down to the shore by natives and exported. Then it was found that the deposits were not inexhaustible, that the employés were not over-conscientious, that the consumption of alcohol was enormous, and finally the whole affair was given up, after large quantities of machinery had been brought out, which I saw rusting away near the shore. In this way numerous enterprises have been started and abandoned of late years, especially in Nouméa. It is probably due to this mining scheme that the natives here have practically disappeared; I found one man who had once carried sulphur from the mine, and he was willing to guide me up the volcano.

There are always clouds hanging round the topof the mountain, and the forest is swampy; but on the old road we advanced quite rapidly, and soon found ourselves on the edge of a plateau, from which two streams fell down in grand cascades, close together, their silver ribbons gleaming brightly in the dark woods. One river was milk-white with sulphur precipitate, the other had red water, probably owing to iron deposits. The water was warm, and grew still warmer the farther up we followed the river. Suddenly we came upon a bare slope, over certain spots of which steam-clouds hung, while penetrating fumes irritated one’s eyes and nose. We had come to the lower margin of the sulphur springs, and the path led directly across the sulphur rocks. Mounting higher, we heard the hissing of steam more distinctly, and soon we were in the midst of numerous hillocks with bright yellow tops, and steam hissing and whistling as it shot out of cracks, to condense in the air into a white cloud. The whole ground seemed furrowed with channels and crevasses, beneath which one heard mysterious noises; one’s step sounded hollow, and at our side ran a dark stream, which carried the hot sulphur water to the shore. Great boulders lay about, some of them so balanced that a slight touch sent them rolling into the depths, where they broke into atoms. Sometimes we were surrounded by a thick cloud, until a breeze carried it away, and we had a clear view over the hot, dark desert, up to the mountain-top. It was uncanny in the midst of those viciously hissing hillocks, and I could not blame my boys for turning green with fear and wishing to gohome. But we went on to a place where water boiled in black pools, sometimes quietly, then with a sudden high jump; some of the water was black, some yellowish, and everything around was covered with sulphur as if with hoar-frost.

INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.

INTERIOR OF A GAMAL ON GAUA.

We followed the course of a creek whose water was so hot as to scald our feet, and the heat became most oppressive. We were glad to reach the crater, though it was a gloomy and colourless desert, in the midst of which a large grey pool boiled and bubbled. In front was a deep crevice in the crater wall, and a cloud of steam hid whatever was in it; yet we felt as though something frightful must be going on there. Above this gloomy scene stretched a sky of serenest blue, and we had a glimpse of the coast, with its little islands bathing in the sapphire sea.

Next day we left for Gaua. Unhappily the captain met friends, and celebrated with them to such an extent that he was no longer to be relied on, which was all the more unpleasant as the weather was of the dirtiest, and the barometer presaged another cyclone. After two days it cleared up a little; I went ashore at the west point of Gaua, where the launch was to pick me up again two days later, as I meant to visit the interior while the others went to buy coprah. Even now the wind and the swell from the north-west were increasing suspiciously, and after I had spent a rainy night in a village off the shore, I saw the launch race eastward along the coast, evidently trying to make a safe anchorage, with the storm blowing violent squalls and the sea very high.

On my way inland I still found the paths obstructed by fallen trees from the last cyclone, while nearly all the cocoa-nut palms had lost their nuts. And again the storm raged in the forest, and the rain fell in torrents.

I was anxious to buy statues of tree-fern wood; they are frequently to be seen here, standing along a terrace or wall near the gamal, and seem not so much images of ancestors, as signs of rank and wealth. The caste may be recognized by the number of pigs’ jaws carved on the statues. Often the artist first makes a drawing of the statue in red, white and black paint on a board; and these same designs are used as patterns for tattooing, as well as on ear-sticks and other objects. Female statues are common, which is an unusual thing.

I obtained a good number of skulls, which were thrown into the roots of a fig tree, where I was allowed to pick them up as I pleased.

The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an earlier population that has entirely disappeared.

When I returned from my excursion I lookeddown on a wild foam-flecked sea, over which the storm was raging as it did during the previous cyclones. I realized that I should have to stay here for some time, and ate my last provisions somewhat pensively. I only hoped that the launch had found an anchorage, else she must inevitably have been wrecked, and I should be left at the mercy of the natives for an indefinite time. The hut in which I camped did not keep off the rain, and I was wet and uncomfortable; thus I spent the first of a series of miserable nights. I was anxious to know the fate of the launch, and this in itself was enough to worry me; then I was without reading or writing materials, and my days were spent near a smoky fire, watching the weather, trying to find a dry spot, sleeping and whistling. Sometimes a few natives came to keep me company; and once I got hold of a man who spoke a little biche la mar, and was willing to tell me about some old-time customs. However, like most natives, he soon wearied of thinking, so that our conversations did not last long.

The natives kept me supplied with food in the most hospitable manner: yam, taro, cabbage, delicately prepared, were at my disposal; but, unaccustomed as I was to this purely vegetable diet, I soon felt such a craving for meat that I began to dream about tinned-meat, surely not a normal state of things. To add to my annoyance, rumours got afloat to the effect that the launch was wrecked; and if this was true, my situation was bad indeed.

On the fifth day I decided to try and find theanchorage where I supposed the launch to be. The wind had dropped a little, but it was still pouring, and the walk through the slippery, devastated forest, up and down steep hills and gullies, across fallen trees, in a thick, oppressive fog, was strenuous enough. In the afternoon, hearing that the launch was somewhere near, we descended to the coast, where we came upon the captain and the crew. They had managed to anchor the launch at the outbreak of the storm, and had camped in an old hut on the beach; but the huge waves, breaking over the reef, had created such a current along the beach that the launch had dragged her anchors, and was now caught in the worst of the waves and would surely go down shortly. Unfortunately the captain had sent the dinghey ashore some time before coming to this bay, so that there was no means whatever of reaching the launch. The rising sea had threatened to wash away the hut, and the captain, leaving the boat to her fate, had gone camping inland.

I went down to the beach to see for myself how things stood, and was forced to admit that the man had not exaggerated. In the midst of the raging surf the launch rocked to and fro, and threatening waves rose on every side and often seemed to cover her. Still she was holding her own, and had evidently not struck a rock as yet; and if her cables held out, hope was not lost. I watched her fight for life for some time, and she defended herself more gallantly than I should ever have expected from so clumsy a craft; but I had little hope. We spent a miserablenight in the village, in a heavy atmosphere, amid vermin and filth, on an uneven stone floor. The rain rattled on the roof, the storm roared in the forest like a passing express train, the sea thundered from afar, and a river echoed in a gorge near by; to complete the gloomy scene, a violent earthquake shook the hills.

In the morning the launch was still afloat on the same spot; the wind had abated, and the sky no longer looked quite so stormy. During the night things improved still more, and we ventured to camp on the shore. The boys went for the dinghey, and although they had hard work, half dragging, half carrying it along the shore over the cliffs, they succeeded in bringing it to our beach, and then made an attempt to row to the launch, but were almost carried out beyond the reef. Encouraged by a faintly rosy sunset and a few stars, we waited another day; then the current along the coast had nearly ceased, only outside the reef huge mountains of water rolled silently and incessantly past, and broke thundering against the cliffs. The second attempt to reach the launch was successful, and, wonderful to relate, she had suffered no damage, only she had shipped so much water that everything was soaked and rusty. The engineer began to repair her engines, and by evening she steamed back to her anchorage, where we welcomed her as if she had been a human being.

The wind had quite fallen when we steamed out next day. It was dull weather, and we were rockedby an enormous swell; yet the water was like a mirror, and the giant waves rose and disappeared without a sound. It all seemed unnatural and uncanny, and this may have produced the frightened feeling that held us all that morning. While we were crossing over to Port Patterson a sharp wind rose from the north, and the barometer fell, so that we feared another edition of the storm. If our engines had broken down, which happened often enough, we should have been lost, for we were in a region where the swell came from two directions, and the waves were even higher than in the morning. Fortunately the wind increased but slowly; presently we were protected by the coast, and at night we arrived at Port Patterson. The men had given us up, and welcomed us with something akin to tenderness. Here, too, the cyclone had been terrible, the worst of the three that had passed in four weeks.

Soon afterwards the steamer arrived, bringing news of many wrecks and accidents. A dozen ships had been smashed at their anchorages, four had disappeared, and three were known to have foundered; in addition, news came of the wreck of a steamer. Hardly ever had so many fallen victims to a cyclone.

Painfully and slowly our steamer ploughed her way south through the abnormally high swell. None of the anchorages on the west coast could be touched, and everywhere we saw brown woods, leafless as in winter, and damaged plantations; and all the way down to Vila we heard of new casualties.

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