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Title: The Savage South Seas

Author: Ernest Way Elkington

Illustrator: Norman H. Hardy

Release Date: August 14, 2018 [EBook #57695]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS by Ernest Way Elkington




AGENTS

 America    The Macmillan Company
            64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York

 Canada     The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd.
            27 Richmond Street West, Toronto

 India      Macmillan & Company, Ltd.
            Macmillan Building, Bombay
            309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta




 [Illustration 1: OFF TO THE DUBU DANCE, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]




 THE SAVAGE
 SOUTH SEAS

 PAINTED BY NORMAN H. HARDY
 DESCRIBED BY E. WAY ELKINGTON
 PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK
 SOHO SQUARE · LONDON · MCMVII

[Illustration]




NOTE


There are various ways of spelling some of the place-names of the South
Sea Islands, _e.g._ Samari, Tupusuli, and Elevera are so spelt in this
book, but the forms Samarai, Tupuselei, and Ela-Vara are commonly met
with. Ambryn, however, is a misprint for Ambrym.




CONTENTS


 PART I

 BRITISH NEW GUINEA


 I • Chiefly historical—Concerning certain discoverers,
 their aims and ambitions—The story of New Guinea, the
 Solomons and New Hebrides, and some things that might be
 altered • 3


 II • New Guinea natives—Port Moresby and its two native
 villages—Huts on poles and trees—Native superstition and
 its result on two tribes • 13


 III • Natives who grow crops of hair—A word or two about
 the women—Duties of married women—How they carry their
 babes, and the philosophy of childhood • 25


 IV • Concerning love and grief—How love is made in New
 Guinea, and some of the charms used to ensure love and
 constancy—The grief of a New Guinea widow • 37


 V • Some native dances and queer costumes—Novel
 blackmailing methods—Woman’s vanity and a censured
 dance • 48


 VI • Outrigger Canoes, their appearance and
 construction—The famous Lakatois—How the natives catch
 their fish; and a few words about fish that climb trees—A
 trip down the coast, and an unpleasant experience • 57


 PART II

 THE SOLOMON ISLANDS


 VII • South Sea traders good and bad; their ups and
 downs—Nicolas the Greek—The Mambare river massacre—Some
 queer creatures with queerer ways—“A fitting end to a
 wasted life” • 71


 VIII • Natives who have had no chance; their villages
 without streets and their curious huts—The tambu and
 canoe houses—An unlucky trader • 84


 IX • Solomon Islands—Ingova’s head-hunters—How whole
 tribes were wiped out—Savage invasions and clever
 tactics • 94


 X • Clothes and the men—Love of adornment—Natives
 who are not keen on eating—Methods of cooking their
 food—Betel-nut chewing • 104


 XI • Some clever ways of catching fish—How the bonito is
 landed—Native nets—Pig-hunting—The sly opossum and the
 crocodile • 113


 XII • A curious religion—Burying the dead, and some
 graveyards—Dances and music—Native artists and how fire
 is made • 124


 XIII • What “hope” is to the Solomon islander—The use of
 the evil eye • 134


 PART III

 THE NEW HEBRIDES


 XIV • Islands that are advancing rapidly—Native houses
 with modern improvements—A horrible method of getting rid
 of the old men, and other burial ceremonies • 143


 XV • Ancestor worship the religion of the New
 Hebrides—Temples and strange figures, and some sacred
 dances • 153


 XVI • Concerning witchcraft—More about burials—The
 gentle art of making love—The rain-makers • 163


 XVII • Native clothing and ornaments—Their arts and
 industries, their canoes and weapons, and their way of
 fishing • 172


 XVIII • The cultivation of copra—The labour traffic when
 slavery really existed, and the traffic in natives of
 to-day • 183


 XIX • A short sketch of the missionary work in the South
 Seas—Concerning John Williams, James Chalmers, and
 others • 193


 SKETCH MAP OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS • 204


 INDEX • 205




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


 1. Off to the Dubu Dance—British New
 Guinea • _Frontispiece_

 2. By Reef and Palm • 6

 3. Off to Market, British New Guinea • 14

 4. Motu Village from the Sea • 18

 5. The Island of Elevera from the Mission Station, Port
 Moresby, British New Guinea • 20

 6. Tree House in British New Guinea • 22

 7. Motu Village, Port Moresby, British New Guinea • 24

 8. In the Pile Dwellings at Hanuabada, Port Moresby,
 British New Guinea • 26

 9. Native of British New Guinea, showing the manner of
 wearing the hair • 30

 10. A New Guinea Dandy • 32

 11. Woman with Baby in bag. Fairfax Island, British New
 Guinea • 34

 12. Dinner Time at Kwato, British New Guinea • 36

 13. A Kaivakuku, Roro Tribe, Central Division, British New
 Guinea • 48

 14. Harvest Dance, New Guinea • 50

 15. Ready for the Dubu Dance • 52

 16. The Dubu at Rigo, British New Guinea • 54

 17. Tattooing, British New Guinea. • 56

 18. Large Trading Canoes, British New Guinea • 58

 19. Old Women making Pottery, British New Guinea • 60

 20. Spearing Fish, British New Guinea • 62

 21. Marine Village, Tupusuli, British New Guinea • 64

 22. Natives of the New Hebrides having a drink • 66

 23. Gold Miners leaving a trading ship, British New
 Guinea • 72

 24. Johnnie Pratt with his Ivory Nuts at Simbo, Solomon
 Islands • 74

 25. Solomon Island Boy climbing after green cocoa-nuts,
 near Gavutu, New Florida • 80

 26. Solomon Island Village, near Marau Sound, New
 Florida • 84

 27. Early Morning, Gavutu, Solomon Islands • 86

 28. Old Ingova’s War Canoe House, Rubiana Lagoon, New
 Georgia, Solomon Islands • 90

 29. On the Fringe of a primæval Forest, Solomon
 Islands • 92

 30. Portrait of a Solomon Island Cannibal • 94

 31. Sacred Skull Shrines, British Solomon Islands • 96

 32. Ingova’s Head-hunters, British Solomon Islands • 98

 33. A Canoe showing the “Totoishu,” New Georgia, Solomon
 Islands • 100

 34. A Lagoon in New Florida, Solomon Islands • 102

 35. Native of New Georgia wearing Sunshade; a sort of
 crownless hat made of grasses: it can be worn at any
 angle • 104

 36. A Rubiana Native, Solomon Islands • 106

 37. A Stormy Day in Rubiana Lagoon, Solomon Islands • 108

 38. Cooking the Meal, British New Guinea • 110

 39. The Reef near Simbo, Solomon Islands • 114

 40. Native Archer shooting Fish, British Solomon
 Islands • 116

 41. Searching for small Octopi on the Reef at low tide,
 Samari, British New Guinea • 118

 42. The Home of the Crocodile, British Solomon
 Islands • 122

 43. A Shrine or Tomb of a Chief at Simbo, Solomon
 Islands • 126

 44. Solomon Islander playing the “Ivivu” or Flute • 130

 45. A Tapu Virgin, British Solomon Islands • 136

 46. Beneath a Banyan Tree, Malekula Island, New
 Hebrides • 142

 47. The Rapids, Williams River, Island of Eromanga, New
 Hebrides • 144

 48. Mount Marion, the active Volcano, Island of Ambryn,
 New Hebrides • 146

 49. A Village in Santo, New Hebrides • 148

 50. Chief’s House, Ambryn, New Hebrides • 150

 51. The “M’aki” Ground and the Jaws of the sacred Pigs,
 New Hebrides • 154

 52. A Memorial Effigy, Malekula, New Hebrides • 156

 53. Drum Grove at Mele, New Hebrides • 158

 54. Leaving Santo, a View of the Mountains, New
 Hebrides • 162

 55. A Sacred Man, Aoba, New Hebrides • 164

 56. The Stone “Demits,” or the Souls, with their attendant
 wooden figures, Malekula Island, New Hebrides • 168

 57. Old Cannibal Chief whom the Artist met on the Island
 of Aoba, New Hebrides • 172

 58. Type of Man from the Island of Tanna, New
 Hebrides • 174

 59. Finishing off a Canoe, British New Guinea • 176

 60. Old War Canoes, near Malekula, New Hebrides • 178

 61. Havannah Harbour, Rathmoy, New Hebrides • 180

 62. Passing the Reef, Aoba, New Hebrides • 182

 63. The Island of Samari, British New Guinea • 184

 64. A Trader receiving Cocoa-nuts, Aoba, New Hebrides • 186

 65. Copra Boys off to the Shore, New Hebrides • 188

 66. The “Blackbirders” in the Solomon Islands • 190

 67. A Yam Shed on the Island of Tierra Espiritu Santo, New
 Hebrides • 192

 68. The Artist’s Guide on Malekula, New Hebrides • 196

{1}




PART I

BRITISH NEW GUINEA


{3}




CHAPTER I


 Chiefly historical—Concerning certain discoverers, their aims and
 ambitions—The story of New Guinea, the Solomons, and New Hebrides, and
 some things that might be altered.

In these days when distance hardly counts, when the cry is heard
that new outlets are wanted for capital, when there are thousands of
unemployed crowded in London, and people are anxious to find adventure,
eager to see new things, to conquer new lands, exploit new industries
and gain more knowledge, it is worth while turning our attention to the
South Sea Islands.

It is strange that so little is known of them, and that so few people
have bothered themselves to visit them. A few missionaries, explorers,
and adventurers have written about and spent a few months on them,
but what is this when there are miles and miles of the most beautiful
country crying out for people; there is wealth, both mineral and
vegetable, waiting for the industry and enterprise {4} of good men
to reap, and, above all, there is a delightful climate and a race of
savages who in themselves repay the inconveniences of the journey.

The chief island is New Guinea, which is the largest in the world
and contains some 340,700 square miles, much of which has never been
trodden by white men. There are no sandy, dried-up districts in New
Guinea or the Solomon Islands, and no long droughts; but rather a
full fall of rain which makes the ground bring forth its produce in
abundance.

There is land out there which some day will surprise people, and when
one considers the difficulty Australia had to persuade the British
Government to annex it, one cannot help laughing at the ignorance
and short-sightedness of the men of those times. It was not until
1884 that the Government sent Commodore Erskine to the south-eastern
portion of New Guinea to proclaim a protectorate over it, and then
only after receiving a guarantee from the Queensland Government that
they would undertake to find £15,000 per annum towards the cost of its
administration.

The Queensland Government had, a year before this, already annexed it.
They knew its value, and had it not been for their prompt action these
{5} valuable islands would now all have been in the possession of the
Dutch and Germans.

Accounts of the islands date back to 1512, but many things go to
suggest that both the Malays and Chinese knew of their existence and
had visited them long before that date. The first Europeans we hear
of who sighted them were the Spanish sailor, Alvaro de Sacedra, and a
Portuguese whose name is not known.

Prior to the arrival of Captain Cook, in 1770, there were numerous
adventurers who gave accounts of these islands. Luis Vaez de Torres,
after whom the Torres Straits were named, passed them in 1660 and
sent to the world a full account of his voyage, but little notice was
taken of it. We next hear of De Bougainville, the French navigator
who arrived there in 1768; then came Captain Cook, and after him many
others sighted the shores of New Guinea.

It was, however, the Dutch who first made any movements to attempt
to find out its geographic and scientific value. They began in a
neat business-like way by annexing that section west of the 141st
meridian of east longitude, and despatching the _Dourga_, commanded by
Lieutenant Kolff, to examine and report on it. He was a zealous man
and, like many other enthusiastic sailors who have visited {6} new
lands, found many things there which no one else has been able to find,
and which have since been proved never to have existed. But some excuse
for him can be found, owing to the disadvantages he was under and the
savageness of the natives. He probably thought that no one in his time,
if they followed him, would live to tell the tale, so he wrote what he
thought “might have been.” Then came the Postillion Expedition in 1853,
followed by the Trinton Expedition and the Scientific Expedition of Van
der Crab in 1871. Dr. Meyers followed in 1873, and many other Dutch
enthusiasts came after him during the next few years.

During this time, however, England was not quite asleep. In 1842 H.M.S.
_Fly_ was sent on a survey expedition and remained there till 1846,
attention being devoted to that part of the island now known as British
New Guinea. The Expedition also discovered and named the rivers Fly and
Aird, in districts where later on many brave and good men lost their
lives at the hands of the natives.

 [Illustration 2: BY REEF AND PALM]

Following this ship, in 1846, came H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_, and good work
was the result of her stay. Captain Moresby visited the island in 1871,
and thoroughly explored many parts of it which were {7} unknown
before his time. He landed at the harbour now known as Port Moresby,
and gave such glowing accounts of the island that it was visited by
many eminent naturalists immediately afterwards; and then the work of
the pioneer missionaries, who had been busy there for some time, began
to be talked about, and considerable interest in these islands was
aroused.

Queensland, acting under the advice of Mr. Chester, a prominent man
well up in the value of New Guinea, sent out Sir Thomas M‘Ilwraith
to take possession of it in the name of the Queen. But the British
Government refused to acknowledge this act, and thereby aroused the
indignation of the Australians. A conference was held in Sydney and the
British Government communicated with, with the result stated, that they
saw their mistake and Sir Peter Scratchley was sent to New Guinea to
act as High Commissioner.

His term of office was short, as he contracted malaria in 1885 and
died. The man who took his place was a Queenslander, the Hon. John
Douglas, who understood the position, and did valuable service to his
country by making a study of the natives and the possibilities of the
country.

In 1888 Sir William MacGregor, M.D., {8} K.C.M.G., was finally
appointed Governor, and during his ten years of office showed that
he was the right man in the right place. He was succeeded by George
Ruthven Le Hunte, Esq., C.M.G.

To-day the affairs of British New Guinea are on an excellent basis. An
Administrator is appointed by the Crown, whose duty it is to consult
with the Governor of Queensland and report to that Government on all
matters of importance. The Administrator is supported by two State
Councils, the Executive and the Legislative, the first being composed
of the Administrator, the Chief Judicial Officer, the Government
Secretary, and a Resident Magistrate. The second is composed of the
Executive Council, together with any officers they may appoint.

Petty Sessions Courts are also established and presided over by a
Resident Magistrate, who has the same powers as a Police Magistrate in
the Colonies. Europeans and natives have equal rights in the courts,
and an appeal is allowed under certain circumstances. Native police
preserve order in the towns. An amusing thing about them is that they
are chiefly ex-convicts, and are given the appointment as a reward for
good behaviour whilst in gaol. {9}

The discovery of the Solomon Islands is credited to Don Alvaro Mendana
de Meyer, who went out there in the hope of discovering from whence
King Solomon’s wealth came—the supposition was that the islands of the
Pacific supplied much of it. That supposition no longer exists.

On sighting the Solomon Islands, and believing them to be the islands
he was seeking, he named them Islas de Salomon. This was in the year
1567. After this he thoroughly explored many of them and gave them the
names they now bear—Guadalcanar, San Christoval, and Isabel. Whilst
thus engaged he decided to found a colony, and with that end in view
he returned home and gathered together a number of men anxious to make
their fortunes. He returned with them, landed at a place he thought was
part of the Solomon Islands, and called it Santa Cruz. The colony was
not a success, as most of the immigrants, including the discoverer,
died, and the survivors returned to South America.

One of these survivors was De Quiros, who subsequently discovered the
New Hebrides.

Bougainville and others, many years afterwards, again came across these
islands, and later they were identified as those Mendana de Meyer had
{10} discovered and thought were part of the Solomon Islands.

In 1873 the Solomon Islands came into notice through the labour
traffic. There was at this time a demand in Queensland for black
labour, and traders who visited the islands found that they could
kidnap strong, sturdy natives and sell them for good prices to the
Queensland and Fiji planters, with the result that, unknown to the
Powers, a big and scandalous trade was carried on.

The group consists of seven large islands and no end of small ones,
which are dotted about over some 600 miles of sea at a distance of
about 400 miles south-east of New Guinea.

Great Britain and Germany shared the islands nearly equally until
England ceded Samoa to Germany in exchange for territory in the
Solomons. Now Great Britain owns the whole group with the exception of
Bougainville and Buka.

The story of the discovery of the New Hebrides is also interesting.
It was first sighted by Spanish explorers, De Quiros and Luis Vaez de
Torres, who set sail from Peru in two ships to seek the Great Southern
Continent, which tradition told them was somewhere in the South
Pacific. De Quiros, as before stated, came across the New Hebrides
group, {11} striking first one of the largest islands in the northern
part of it. This he named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo, thinking
possibly it was an enormous tract of land instead of a small island.
Fired with ambition and the example of his late _confrère_, Mendana de
Meyer, he also attempted to found a colony there, but, like de Meyer,
he had to return with his few survivors and write “failure” across his
enterprise.

Luis de Torres left De Quiros at the New Hebrides, and it was then that
he sailed through the Torres Straits, which he named and reported on in
1606.

For over a hundred years after the departure of De Quiros from Santo
nothing more was heard of the New Hebrides.

De Bougainville then came across them, and opened the way for the
ubiquitous Captain Cook, who sighted, made charts of, and named the
principal islands and headlands. The Spaniards, though the first to
settle there, never laid claim to them, and they are now conjointly
owned by Great Britain and France.

Owing to their proximity to Australia they have received more attention
than the other islands, and the Commonwealth of Australia has shown
{12} considerable interest in them and inaugurated an emigration
scheme to endeavour to wrest from them some of their enormous mineral
and vegetable wealth. The results of the past few years show great
promise of future prosperity. In fact, in these islands, in particular,
there are resources which will repay the labour and capital of any
enterprising men, and, according to those who are most fitted to judge
and advise, the New Hebrides is a veritable Eldorado. But, until the
natives are more civilised and certain taxes are altered, men prefer to
give them a wide berth and seek their fortunes in lands less dangerous.

Another trouble that has lately arisen, is that France, seeing the
great possibilities in this new colony, has inaugurated a preferential
tariff for French subjects. Had the same been done in England and
Australia no bother would have arisen, but it was not, and, in order to
compete successfully with the French traders, the English and Americans
applied for naturalisation papers which were granted, and though the
Englishmen by birth far exceed the Frenchmen, by naturalisation the
French, if not now, will soon be in greater force.

This is a matter of vital importance, and should have the earnest
attention of those who are interested in the welfare of British
subjects in our Colonies.

{13}




CHAPTER II


 New Guinea natives—Port Moresby and its two native villages—Huts on
 poles and trees—Native superstition and its result on two tribes.

There no islands in the new world which have been the scene of greater
adventures, more daring exploits, and more exciting times than those
in the South Seas. From the earliest days New Guinea, New Britain,
Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides have been inhabited by a race of
savages, on whom neither the efforts of missionaries nor the oaths of
traders have been able to make much impression. For years the white man
has tried in vain to break the spirit of these cannibals; with fire
and sword whole villages have been swept away, but neither by fear nor
by kindness have the natives been weaned from their worst customs, and
it will take many years and much education, and perhaps the complete
extinction of the old generation, before they cease to be savages. For
over sixty years {14} the missionaries have been working amongst them
and have taught many to read, and sent them out amongst their brethren
armed with Bibles and tracts in their native languages, but all this
has been of little avail; every day we hear of massacres and risings,
and missionaries and traders are pounced on and murdered, and there is
no accounting for these outrages which make the problem more difficult
to solve. For months or even years men may live on the friendliest
terms with a tribe, and then suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the
natives will rise up and slay them. The whim of a chief, an angry word,
a bad bargain, a superstitious fear, any of these trivialities may be
the cause of a rising, and may mean the death of dozens of innocent
people.

But with all their disadvantages these islands have a fascination for
the traveller that no others have, and when once the taste of the free
and adventurous life of the South Seas has been acquired, there is
always a longing to return to them which nothing will suppress. Neither
stiff joints nor old age make one iota of difference, the yearning will
not be satisfied by anything short of a speedy return.

 [Illustration 3: OFF TO MARKET, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

The deep blue of the sea, the clear bracing air, {15} the screech
of the wild sea-birds, and the roar of the surf, as it breaks on the
reefs, are sounds that echo in the memory. To awaken and hear all these
things is the longing that clings to one. To feel a good ship gliding
through the still waters on the way to the islands; to rise from one’s
bunk and through the port-hole to catch a glimpse of the rugged shores
and the dark, shining skins of the natives as they paddle out in
swarms from the villages to the ship’s side; to hear them calling to
one another and yelling their greetings to the crew, are things which,
when once experienced, can never be forgotten, and will ever haunt the
memory.

But come, let us see these islands where the sun pours down on bright
yellow sands through the long, waving, rustling leaves of the palm
trees, and glistens on the skins of the crocodiles basking in the
rivers, and on the strong, brown arms and tanned faces of the traders,
who have braved all dangers for a life of adventure. Let us look into
the quaint lives of the natives—the last relics of barbarism; let us
see their huts and join in their weird ceremonies and listen to their
songs and learn their superstitions, for in a few years these things
will be gone, and the cyclist and the tripper will be crowding these
savage islands, whilst the sturdy {16} head-hunters will be dead, and
their sons will be cadging pennies, whilst the dark, shy girls will be
bold and talk with nasal accents.

Civilisation is coming, coming quickly. Even here, back in the dense
bush on a still night when the insects are too lazy to fly and the
silence almost speaks, if you listen you can hear the steady tramp of
the ghostly army coming nearer and nearer, crushing through everything,
sparing nothing—the army of civilisation.

The capital of New Guinea is Port Moresby, a quaintly picturesque
village facing a large bay with a natural harbour. In the vicinity are
densely wooded hills, which stretch up and disappear in the distance—a
dark-green and black mass. But when the sun is on them they dance with
colour, and the tints of marvellous brilliancy turn them into a lovely
fairyland, full of romance and adventure. It is wonderful what strange
tales flit across the mind when looking at these hills; what scenes
have been enacted there in times gone by, and now, how calm they seem!

Granville, the small business part of Port Moresby, consists of a few
corrugated iron-roofed houses, the head store of Messrs. Burns Philp,
the great Australasian Trading Company, and the {17} homes of a few
Government officials, and Government House, which lies back a little
and looks solitary and out of place in this weird land of pile-built
huts.

There is the Mission House also, a low, white wood house with a big
verandah running round it and a garden of palms and beautiful flowers.

Hanuabada and Elevera are the names of the two native settlements near
Port Moresby. At certain tides Elevera is an island, at other tides it
is a peninsula, but at all tides and all times it teems with interest.
Quaint huts built on long poles line the shore and look like nothing
one has ever seen before. When the tide is high the water washes right
under them, swishing merrily against the stout poles, and if you want
to inspect one at these times a canoe is necessary, but even then it is
a hazardous job unless you are used to it.

No one knows exactly why the natives went to such trouble in building
their huts, unless it was with a view to protecting themselves against
the attack of an enemy from the land. There were no wild animals for
them to fear.

A regular street divides these rows of huts, all exactly alike, but the
inhabitants seem to know where their friends live, though I am sure
the most {18} experienced London postman would suffer from continual
confusion if his services were required in these parts. In the distance
these villages look very much like rows of haystacks built on stakes,
but on closer inspection they are particularly interesting and have a
very imposing appearance. On reaching the piles one clambers up a rude
ladder and arrives on a platform made of ordinary poles with gaps of a
foot or two between each. Here it is that the natives squat all day and
do what work they have, or, more generally, idle the hours away. Above
the platform is a kind of porch built on a slant and projecting from
the roof, which acts as a protection against the sun or rain. Under
this is an open doorway which leads into the house.

From a sanitary point of view, no habitation could be better than these
pile dwellings, but for comfort give me a modern hotel.

 [Illustration 4: MOTU VILLAGE FROM THE SEA]

No furniture or mats are to be seen in these dwellings to catch the
dust, and you can squat on the floor and see through the planks the
waves washing and swelling a few yards below. The floor consists of
the same kind of piles, only flatter and broader than those used for
supporting the house. The platforms are arranged like big steps, and
many of the boards are beautifully carved. {19} Some of them are
immense pieces of timber, which must have required a deal more energy
to cut than the Papuan of to-day is capable of exerting—much less would
he put them into position.

The wood used for the flooring is the hardest obtainable, and seems to
be of a material which takes no heed of wear and tear; the planks are
sometimes heirlooms, and have been handed down from father to son for
many generations. One log tougher than the rest is placed in position
by the door, and on this a fire will probably be burning and a woman
squatting by it cooking her lord and master’s evening meal.

The rank yellow smoke which curls round her does not inconvenience her
in the least. She takes no heed of it, but blows away at the embers,
regardless of smarting eyes and choking throat, probably because she
feels neither. She never fears that the fire will spread and burn down
her home, but just goes on cooking. If you speak to her she may stop
blowing for a second and glance up at you, but never a word passes her
lips, and soon she will be blowing again as if it was quite an ordinary
thing to have a white man staring at her. But though the smoke does not
trouble her a bit, it blinds you, and you soon hurry on to the {20}
next hut, and there confine your attention to its outside.

The roofs are thatched with palm leaves which, though scant, keep out
the rain and sun. The sides and back are also composed of a kind of
thatch on a framework of bamboo or thin wood.

Unlike the habitations of many other branches of this race, these huts
show very little artistic work inside. They are quite bare. A few
cooking-pots may be seen lying about, and these are the only things
which lead one to suppose that the huts are inhabited. The resemblance
of the interiors of all of them is only equal to the sameness of the
exteriors, which makes it impossible to know which one you have been
in and which you have not. This, added to the extreme difficulty a new
chum experiences in getting from one house to another, does not add to
the equability of his temper. It needs a steady head and good balancing
powers to keep footing on these planks, many of which are quite loose
and wobble when you are treading on them. After half an hour of such
walking a giddiness seizes you, and a strong desire comes over you to
kneel down and scramble along on hands and knees to the next hut. But
with practice, and a certain amount of patience and indifference to the
{21} nasty fall one would get by slipping, walking can eventually
be accomplished with ease.

 [Illustration 5: THE ISLAND OF ELEVERA FROM THE MISSION STATION, PORT
 MORESBY, BRITISH NEW GUINEA.]

The natives themselves run along the poles as quickly as if they were
on paved streets, whilst the little kiddies scramble, and slip, and
tumble about as if they were on an ordinary floor. A fall through the
piles is almost an unknown calamity to them.

Under the houses, when the tide is out, the natives can be seen cutting
out their canoes, making their pottery, repairing their fishing gear
and attending to other duties; but they much prefer to loll about
on the verandahs of their huts, looking out at the sea, thinking of
nothing.

The whole of Elevera only covers about ten acres, but in that space the
huts are crowded together, and give cover to hundreds of healthy and
prosperous-looking inhabitants. On the mainland the houses are built on
small pile platforms, only three or four feet from the ground, whilst
others in the back country are built in trees and look like gigantic
birds’-nests. This last custom, however, has quite died out, for with
the introduction of the axe the protection of a house in a tree would
be of little use, for one blow would fetch the whole construction down.
Also the introduction of the police and the work of the Government
have so diminished the {22} chances of tribal wars that the native no
longer goes to such trouble. In the old days the inmates of these nests
kept a supply of stones and spears on their verandahs, and were able to
use them with great effect on their troublesome neighbours below. Now
such a position would only make them good marks for a rifle shot.

The bush men, or “men belong bush,” to speak in native parlance, are
far more industrious than the “men belong sea,” they who live by the
shore. For besides cultivating the land, growing yams, bananas, and
taro, they make a fair living by hunting.

Two distinct tribes inhabit the villages in Port Moresby, the Koitapus
and Motus. They live amicably enough together now, but seldom
intermarry. The Koitapus were undoubtedly the original inhabitants, and
in colour are somewhat darker than their friends, and have narrower
heads, otherwise it is very hard to distinguish one from the other; but
in their manners, customs, and language there is a marked difference.
The Motu tribe consider themselves the superior of the two, though they
live in great fear of the mysterious powers the Koitapus are said to
possess, and were it not for this superstition the Motus would soon
overrule and probably vanquish the other tribe.

 [Illustration 6: TREE HOUSE IN BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

{23}

So strong is their superstitious belief in the powers of the Koitapus,
that directly one of them falls ill, presents are immediately
despatched to a Koitapu man or woman with instructions to remove the
evil influence that has brought the sickness or calamity. The weather
also is supposed to be in the hands of the Koitapus, and be it wet or
fine the Motus have to pay up, that is if they want it changed.

As a tribe the Motus undoubtedly are superior, especially in such
things as cleanliness, cooking, and eating. The Koitapu natives will
devour almost anything with a relish unknown in civilised countries,
but the Motu is careful and particular both about the cooking of his
food and the article cooked. Most of the Motus have their eatables
boiled in earthenware jars, whilst the Koitapu cooks his in an earth
oven.

The Motus gain their living chiefly by fishing and making pottery, and
they exchange both fish and pots with the Koitapu for animal food,
vegetables, and the results of their agricultural pursuits.

The position of the two tribes is summed up thus:—

“Yours is the sea, the canoes, the nets,” says the Koitapu man, “ours
the land and the wallaby. {24} Give us fish for our flesh, and pottery
for our yarns and bananas.”

It is on this understanding that the two tribes live amicably together
in Hanuabada and Elevera.

Altogether Port Moresby is as quaint and picturesque a spot as ever
was seen. A bright blue sky and a sea the colour of which is for ever
changing, a stillness only broken by the roaring surf, the hum of
insects, the occasional cries of the sea-birds, and the chatter of the
natives, make up this delightful haven of rest. No roaring train or
smoking chimney is there to distract the wayfarer; no newspaper boy
yelling out his “disasters” to cause one a sleepless night. A spot in
which to rest and dream, ay, and study the curious customs of one of
the most interesting savage races in the world, if you like that sort
of employment.

 [Illustration 7: MOTU VILLAGE, PORT MORESBY, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

{25}




CHAPTER III


 Natives who grow crops of hair—A word or two about the women—Duties
 of married women—How they carry their babes, and the philosophy of
 childhood.

The natives of New Guinea are fine specimens of human nature, but taken
as a race they cannot be compared to the Maoris of New Zealand or even
to the Fijians. The men are infinitely better-looking than the women,
and their splendid stock of hair, which they wear bunched up all over
their head, sets off their appearance in a remarkable manner. The young
women are bright and cheerful-looking, and amongst them there are some
striking creatures; but there are many sad-looking specimens, some of
the old women are veritable hags, and many fine young girls are quite
spoilt by the quaint habit they have of shaving their heads, whilst
some of the best specimens of men are disfigured by their yellow,
bloodshot eyes, so noticeable in contrast to their dark skins. {26}

As workers the New Guinea natives are probably in advance of many
natives of the adjoining islands. They are, of course, better than the
aboriginal of Australia, who would as lief die as do an honest day’s
work, but that does not say much for them. There is no doubt about it,
they do not love work, though they get through a certain amount.

In Port Moresby the natives of Hanuabada and Elevera live chiefly by
fishing, canoe-building, and pottery-making. The men do the fishing
and canoe-building, whilst the women and children loiter over the
pottery-making. There is a complete absence of hurry; all the natives
work as if they had a lifetime to complete their job; there is a
calmness in them that is only rivalled by the sky over their heads and
the air that blows over this island, and perhaps it is from nature they
have learnt that calm and stolid indifference to just those things over
which we believe it is necessary to hustle.

 [Illustration 8: IN THE PILE DWELLINGS AT HANUABADA, PORT MORESBY,
 BRITISH NEW GUINEA.]

One extremely peculiar trait in the character of the natives of British
New Guinea is their dislike to inquisitiveness. You can implore a
native to tell you his name, and even offer him coin to pay him for
that information, but it has no effect. He {27} will tell you
some name, if you press him hard enough, but it won’t be his, as you
will discover if you try to find him again. As an instance of this
peculiarity, Mr. Norman Hardy was particularly struck by a canoe he saw
lying on the sand in the main street of Elevera, and seeing a native
standing by, he asked him if the canoe belonged to him, as he would
like to buy it. The native smiled blandly and shook his head.

“Don’t you know whose it is?” asked Mr. Hardy.

“Don’t know; man over there, p’r’aps,” said the native.

“What’s his name?” Mr. Hardy pursued.

“No name.” The native shook his bushy head.

“Well, show me which is the hut he lives in.”

At this question the man began to fidget, and then, glancing carelessly
at the row of huts, all as like each other as peas, he swept his hand
past the whole lot and said:

“That one.”

And that was all the information concerning the name and possessor of
the canoe that Mr. Hardy obtained. Subsequently he learned that the
owner of it was the very man he had been questioning.

The same kind of reticence has been found by {28} all travellers
who have been anxious to find out the ways, the customs, and secret
rites of the natives; but, luckily, now and then a man who will talk
has been found, and then, by using the knowledge gained from him and
showing the others that you know a certain amount about the matter,
it is possible to get a fund of information; though it is always
necessary to corroborate everything you hear, as the art of lying has
been brought to a perfect science in these islands—probably by the
march of civilisation and the example the natives have been set by the
traders—nearly all natives become liars when they are civilised.

Throughout the island the bulk of the work is done by the women-folk,
the men being little less than pampered loafers. There is some sort of
an excuse for this, which, it is only fair to state, is the result of
altered circumstances. In the early days the men were ever on the watch
for enemies, and lived in constant preparedness for a surprise attack.
By day they carried their spears and clubs about with them, and by
night they slept alongside them. There were very few organised fights
compared with those of other islands, except when a big head-hunting
expedition was on, but at these times the natives would get wind of
it; what they had to {29} guard against were small surprise attacks,
and of these they could not obtain information, as they were generally
planned on the spur of the moment. Most of these stalking excursions
were undertaken to supply a sacrifice for a feast, and a native would
be singled out in some adjoining village to fill the want, or else some
chief would require the wife of some other chief, and she would have to
be stolen, or a child had to be kidnapped to spite its parents, and so
the men in every village had to be constantly on the watch, which, of
course, hindered them from working, and left the bulk of the labour to
the women; but now that civilisation has altered the relationship of
the tribes and lessened the chances of these attacks, the occupation
of the men has practically ceased; under the new régime they have
gradually become loafers, and the women still continue the duties they
have performed for generations.

Organised labour is almost unknown, but certain yam patches are owned
by certain natives, and the women work them as they do the banana and
the cocoa-nut groves. In Port Moresby Messrs. Burns Philp employ a
number of men and women for their stores, and for loading and unloading
the trading vessels, but even the heavy work of carrying {30} the
timber is sometimes done by the women, whilst the men loiter about
doing as little as they possibly can. The police, who are clothed
in blue with white facings, are perhaps the busiest natives in the
township; what is more, they are extremely proud of their clothes and
their work, and their exalted position as Government officials makes
them scorn their less fortunate brethren. Their duties, beyond keeping
law and order, are very slight, and amount to an occasional job of
rowing Government men about and mounting guard over stray prisoners.

The native costume of British New Guinea is meagre. With the men, when
they are not absolutely nude, a narrow girdle round their waist is
considered sufficient, whilst a bunch of dogs’ teeth hung from their
ears, a pointed, carved bone run through their noses, and armlets of
vegetable fibre, would comprise a big outfit and make its owner as
proud as a peacock. At festivals, dances, and funerals their clothing
is more elaborate, and they are more highly decorated with masks, mats,
and feathers. And when in mourning, they are so over-dressed that it is
impossible to recognise that the bundle before you is really a human
being. The state or ceremonial costumes of New Guinea vary considerably
in the different parts of the {31} island, and each tribe has its
own particular fancy as to what ought really to be worn, and what ought
not; the only consistency concerning clothes throughout the island is
found when the men are either loafing about or working, and then they
wear as little as possible.

 [Illustration 9: NATIVE OF BRITISH NEW GUINEA, SHOWING THE MANNER OF
 WEARING THE HAIR.]

The women and young girls usually wear fibre aprons hanging from their
waists to a distance of about eighteen inches, whilst for dancing and
religious ceremonies more luxurious and more lengthy ones, dyed in
different colours, are worn. When dancing the aprons of the unmarried
women are left open at the right side, so that the tattooing on their
hips and thighs can be seen. This bit of coyness is to show that they
are ready to be married, and that they are still heart-whole, for
directly a girl reaches the marriageable age, and wants all the men to
know it, she is carefully tattooed. Another mark of distinction between
the married and unmarried women is in the hair: the married ones wear
it very closely cut, while the single ones pride themselves, like the
men, on their enormous bushy crops. This custom, however, varies in
different tribes, and the hair is arranged in numerous ways, according
to the fashion of the part of the island in which the native is born.
{32}

The Papuan dandy takes no end of care over his hair, which grows to a
great length and is frizzled and bunched up all round his head, and
some of them, farther up the gulf, arrange their hair in this fashion
purely for sale, and when a full crop is ready they shave it off and
sell it up country.

What “the man belong bush” uses it for I don’t know, though some kind
of string is seen in different places which is probably made from it.
As in Fiji and Samoa and Honolulu, it is common to see bleached hair.
It is done for sanitary reasons primarily, and fashion has helped the
custom. Tattooing, however, is not fashionable amongst the men.

The children, like those of other savage races, are completely nude.
They are bright and happy little beggars, and as a rule are free from
nervousness in the presence of strangers and whites. They will stand
round you in groups, with wide-open mouths and eyes, but they have a
tendency to catch hold of each other, and those who are shyest keep
slightly behind the bolder ones. They are born swimmers and divers, and
seem to spend half their days in the water, prancing, splashing about,
and diving, utterly regardless of time or season, and I don’t think
they ever catch cold.

 [Illustration 10: A NEW GUINEA DANDY]

{33}

Amongst the children’s games there are two at least that look familiar
to Europeans—a kind of leap-frog and pig-a-back. The former is played
in all the varying ways of the English schoolboy, single leaping and
leaping whole rows; whilst pig-a-back riding is quite the same game
that our children indulge in. Another game which is interesting to
watch is that known as _evanena_: in this two rows of players stand
facing each other at a distance of about a foot apart, and when they
are thus arranged each boy catches hold of the arm of the one facing,
and grips it below the elbow with one hand, and with the other he takes
a firm hold of his own arm with his disengaged hand, thus forming a
platform of human arms. A boy then gets up on to this platform and
runs forward. Immediately he has passed over the first pair they let
go of each other and run forward, and place themselves in front of
the others at the end of the row, thus making a continuous passage,
enabling a constant race to be kept up with the boy on the platform and
those forming it. Roars of laughter greet the youth who is fast enough
to reach the end of the platform before another lap is ready for him,
and if he succeeds in doing this he is a proud winner, but if, on the
{34} other hand, he stumbles and falls he is anything but a hero, and
becomes one of the figures of the platform, taking the place of one of
the end boys.

Many of the other games are rough, boyish imitations of the sacred
ceremonies which their elders conduct with such decorum. Of course they
are not true imitations, because many of these ceremonies are secret
and none but authorised natives are allowed to take part in them.

The girls have a few games of their own, but very seldom join in with
the boys. From their earliest days they are trained to work, and
playing is considered frivolous and unwomanly. One sees many more young
women paddling canoes than young men; the men prefer to play and watch
their sisters work. Chivalry is not a forte of theirs.

 [Illustration 11: WOMAN WITH BABY IN BAG, FAIRFAX ISLAND, BRITISH NEW
 GUINEA]

As soon as the girls are old enough they are initiated into the art of
pottery-making, cooking, and other domestic duties, but what they all
take most pleasure in is dancing. Their sole ambition in life seems to
be to excel in this art—and become wives; though the latter occupation
has few benefits, and, to the outsider who has studied the life of the
married women, marriage would seem a grievous calamity to be avoided
at all {35} costs—at least a Papuan one. The work of the married
women is most arduous, and their whole existence seems to be taken up
in waiting hand and foot on their loafing lords, bearing children, and
bringing them up. All the cares and worries of the precarious lives of
these natives seem to be thrown on to the shoulders of wives, who bear
it with a stolid philosophy that defies imitation.

One of the most remarkable things about the mother is her unique way
of carrying her child, a method totally different from that of any
other savage or civilised race. From its infancy the baby is put into
a sort of miniature hammock made of vegetable fibre, with a very fine
mesh, through which the little bundle of humanity can be seen kicking
merrily. When carrying the child, the ends of this hammock, which are
woven together and make a circle of the net, are placed over, and rest
on the mother’s head. Thus the baby hangs suspended in this arrangement
just below the woman’s breasts or over her back. It is a convenient
arrangement, for the mother is perfectly free to walk about and, if
necessary, work a little with her hands. As a rule, however, when she
is working she hangs her child up on one of the cross-beams of her
hut, and many can be seen thus suspended under the {36} verandah-like
shades of the roofs, when they look very much like cocoons.

This form of carrying a weight, however, is not peculiar to the Papuan,
as instances of it can be seen in Egypt. A native porter will often
suspend a heavy portmanteau by straps from the top of his head and jog
along serenely with it. Child-carrying in this way is, however, quite
original and is, I believe, only seen in New Guinea. The Maori method
of carrying them on their backs, wrapped in a shawl which the woman
crosses over her chest, is infinitely better in some respects, as it
enables her to do hard labour without any inconvenience.

One trait that is particularly noticeable among all the children of
savage races is their silent philosophy. No matter what happens these
babes remain serenely calm; they may be left for hours without food
or drink, they may be hung upside down, dropped, trodden on,—in fact,
any calamity may befall them,—but still they are silent. The only
difference that is evident is when they have been uncomfortable for
hours and are suddenly put right, when they resume their kicking, but
very soon even this form of exuberance subsides, and silence, unmoved
silence, is restored.

 [Illustration 12: DINNER TIME AT KWATO, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

{37}




CHAPTER IV


 Concerning love and grief—How love is made in New Guinea, and some of
 the charms used to ensure love and constancy—The grief of a New Guinea
 widow.

To the marriageable young lady in civilised countries, leap year, and
with it her chance of proposing, comes but a few times before she
is “on the shelf,” but in some parts of New Guinea the proposal of
marriage always comes from the girl.

Some may think that this sort of love-making and marriage lacks
romance, but to the Papuan it is the event of his or her life. It is
in the hope of receiving a proposal that a man will go through endless
adventures; it is to win the admiration of some good buxom girl that
he risks his life head-hunting, and it is with pride and glory that he
glances at his string of skulls which hangs from the poles of his hut,
because he knows how brave the women will think him. {38}

It is for this same object that he studies the art of dancing, that he
cultivates his bushy hair (after he is married he often sells it) and
the fine, healthy glow of his skin. His lithe limbs also come in for a
deal of attention, and, as he struts proudly about, it is always with
the hope that his superior charms and manhood may bring him the love
and admiration of a young maiden.

When a Papuan boy comes of age an interesting ceremony takes place. At
about twelve years old, if he is of good stature, healthy and generally
fit, his parents think it is time to prepare him for marriage, or,
in their own language, make him _ibitoe_. The initial stage of this
ceremony is merely a form of introduction to youths of his own age
who are also _ibitoe_. In England more or less the same thing happens
when a girl “comes out.” She is then supposed to be on a footing with
“grown-ups,” and this is practically what happens to the youth of
British New Guinea. From the day of his “coming out” he occupies his
hours in pleasure-seeking and has a good time generally; this goes on
for a certain period and then he sallies forth alone into the bush to
make his drum. This drum-making is the most serious part of his “coming
out,” and is conducted with a deal of {39} formality and ceremony
which is quaintly mixed with superstition.

Drums seem to be the most important possession a young Papuan has; in
shape they are not unlike a golf bag on a somewhat larger scale. One
end is covered with lizard skin drawn taut and bound round the end
of the drum with fibre, leaving a frill below the binding; the other
end is open, and at about the centre the instrument narrows off and a
handle carved out of the wood protrudes. By this the drum is held when
being beaten.

The making of this musical instrument is an arduous task; it is hewn
out from a solid block of wood by means of the crudest instruments, the
hollow centre is made by burning it out with cinders of red-hot wood.

In order to manufacture one of these the young native retires into the
bush, cutting himself off from all intercourse with human beings. His
food is brought to him by his friends and left in some secret places
which are decided on before he takes his departure. This is done so
that the young man can secure it without catching sight of those who
bring it, for it is believed by the Papuan that if any human being sees
him, or is seen by him, during this period of _ibitoe_ that his drum
will {40} be spoiled, or that when it is completed it will sound as
if it were cracked. Many other curious superstitions relating to the
eating of certain foods are attached to this operation; for instance,
if a man who is _ibitoe_ eats food cooked in the wrong way, he will
grow fat and be a laughing-stock to the girls; whilst if he drinks
fresh water it will quench the fire with which he is trying to hollow
out his drum, and other things too numerous to mention will happen if
equally trifling details are not adhered to; but provided he comes
through this important time without any calamities, and completes his
drum to his own satisfaction, he steps forth from his seclusion to
conquer the heart of a maiden.

In the different tribes and parts of the country the customs relating
to love and matrimony vary. In some the young men waylay the girls
they admire, and endeavour, by force or persuasion, or the offering of
presents, to obtain their consent. This method often leads to amusing
incidents, as the girls have the privilege of scratching and fighting
their would-be lovers to any extent, and the lover may not retaliate,
or he would bring down upon his woolly head the anger of the girl’s
parents. {41}

Sweet music of a sensuous nature is often resorted to by the lovesick
swain, and, leaning against a tree, he will stand and play all day
long, hoping to attract the attention of his inamorata and bring from
her a proposal of marriage.

Tight-lacing and other forms of personal adornment are also indulged
in by these amorous youths, and a more ridiculous sight could not be
seen than a young native with his waist so strapped in as to form
an enormous, ugly bulge above and below his belt, but it is greatly
admired by the girls and shows he wants a wife badly.

In those parts of the western islands, already alluded to, where the
women propose, directly a girl falls in love with a man she makes him
a string armlet, which, according to Professor Haddon, she presents
to his sister or to one of his confidential friends. The confidential
friend bides her time, and when an opportunity arises she goes to the
man and says:

“I’ve got something for you.”

“Show it to me,” replies the young man if he is anxious.

This the friend does.

After learning the girl’s name, and being satisfied that he is not
throwing himself away, the youth {42} will accept the armlet and in
return make a present of two leglets to his fiancée.

Another custom in vogue is for the girl to send food for the young
man. At first on receiving it he is generally obstinate and refuses to
eat it, as he has no desire to be caught—or pretends he has none—but
really he is very proud that at last he has been noticed. The woman
understands all this and does not despair, but steadily pursues her
course, and day after day sends food to her lover, until her constancy
makes the parents of the young man feel satisfied that he is not being
led astray or fooled by a changeable woman. As soon as the parents feel
sure of this, they go to their son and command him to eat the food.

This is the signal which the girl’s friend has been wanting, and she
hurries to bear the news to the waiting girl, who immediately prepares
more food which she sends him. Now the critical time is past, and she
knows he will be allowed to see her.

All arrangements for the meeting are conducted by the go-between, and
when the young man is presented to her, she hands him fresh food which
he takes from her and eats. At this act of condescension great joy is
shown on both sides, and {43} the two lovers retire to the seclusion
of their hut, and without any further ceremony they become man and wife.

The divorce laws of New Guinea are similar to those of America, and a
man or woman can get a divorce on the slightest provocation—the general
cause is incompatibility of temper. Plurality of wives is allowed if a
man be rich enough to support more than one. The first one, however,
is chief amongst them all and her word is law; the last one acts as a
go-between; she carries the messages of number one to the others and
sees that they are properly attended to. If any of the wives refuse
to obey her, she and her husband are laughed at, as it is generally
considered that he has undertaken more than he can manage.

The following is an interesting sample of a missionary-taught, native
girl’s love-letter, or form of proposal. It was shown to Professor
Haddon when he was studying in those islands. The letter was written to
one Peter by name, whose own translation of it reads thus:—

“Peta, what do you say? I try you. My heart he like very bad for you.
You send me back a letter. Yes this talk belong me. Pita you Good-bye.
Me Magena.” {44}

Peter’s affirmative reply was:

“Magena I make you know. Me just the same, I want very bad for you. My
talk there. If you true like me, all right just the same; good for you,
good for me. Yes all right. Finish. You, Magena. Good-bye. Me Pita.”

The natives of New Guinea, like all other savage races, still have
their love charms, and when a man or maid fails to win the heart of the
one they love by ordinary methods, they try the sorcerer and, then, if
that love they are seeking for cannot be so obtained, their affection
turns to hate and a desire for revenge fills them, and they seek the
other’s death by resort to magic. There is a wonderful similarity in
human beings all over the world, be they white or black, savage or
civilised. But the extraordinary part of the magic in savage lands
is that it always works, and if men or women are properly cursed and
their death prophesied by the magician, they die, and in the way their
death has been foretold. The same strange superstition is noticeable
amongst the Maoris. I once was at the death-bed of an old chief, who
was supposed to be dying of typhoid, but the real cause of his death
was fear. In some way he had offended another chief, and that man had
him cursed by a Tohunga {45} or priest. I was unable to ascertain
exactly what he had done, but the result of it was that an image made
of clay, which was supposed to represent him, was placed in a creek,
and as the water washed away the figure, so the chief gradually sank;
and, when the last particle was softened by the slowly trickling water
and vanished down the stream, so that moment the soul of the old chief
passed over the border.

So strong is the superstition regarding these things that a man who is
cursed never dreams of attempting to overcome the disaster foretold
him; he simply goes home and dies, and it is in this way that this
particular superstition, and others like it, live. No one has the pluck
or the common sense to try and oppose their influence. In New Zealand
this kind of witchcraft is termed Tohunganism, and in spite of the
civilised condition of the Maoris of to-day, there are still cases of
death recorded and put down to it.

In the same certain way that death is brought about by a mental
process—cursing—so miraculous cures are effected, and Urio Moquru is
one of the most useful gods in New Guinea for this sort of thing. When
a person of importance falls sick, food is placed before this grotesque
image, and the friends {46} and relations beseech Urio to remove the
evil spirit from their beloved one. But should the god fail and the
sick one die, the natives do not lose faith in their god, but decide
that the patient was either too good to live, or so bad he had to die.

When death does visit a village there is a terrible time of mourning,
the women sit and cry round the death-bed all day, and in the streets
they can be seen squatting in corners moaning. You can meet women all
huddled up giving vent to the most despairing groans, and they look as
if they were literally wrapped up in grief; yet they may have never
cared a snap of the fingers for the dear departed. But it is the custom
for the women to mourn; and a more awful sight and sound than this
moaning cannot be heard. The men show very few signs of grief, and
evidently trust to their women-folk to do a double share.

When a woman loses her husband she goes into mourning and will on no
account be disturbed; for this rite her dress varies; certainly she
looks a terrible fright, and I’m not surprised at her shrinking from
public gaze. There is a special dress and general attire for this state
of grief. They shave their heads completely, cover themselves all over
with charcoal, and then put on long petticoats with {47} tassels of
seeds. They also cover their necks with necklaces and their arms with
trinkets. Having done all this they retire into a corner of their hut
and remain there, away from the gaze of the public, until their sorrow
is worn out or they are tired of being alone.

One thing noticeable is that, however loud their moaning is, however
hard they are crying, they will always stop to answer any question you
like to put to them about their “late lamented,” if you have courage
enough to beard them and refuse to go away. Then, as soon as you have
gained all the information you require, they will quickly resume
their tears as if nothing had happened to interrupt them. But this
is not unique to the savage of New Guinea. I have met with the same
extraordinary species of grief amongst the women of Great Britain,—it
is world-wide, this interruptable grief.

{48}




CHAPTER V


 Some native dances and queer costumes—Novel blackmailing
 methods—Woman’s vanity and a censured dance.

For some reason, unknown to the ordinary layman, the Church has taken a
dislike to nearly all forms of savage dancing, and many missionaries,
brave and good fellows though they be, have seen evil in these
performances where other less cultivated men have seen nothing that
suggests immorality. But often what appears immoral to the Western mind
is quite free from any such suggestion to the mind of the savage. I do
not say that these natives are paragons of virtue and morality, but in
deference to them it is only fair to say that they stick to their code
of morals, though it is not ours and may seem rather lax to us.

 [Illustration 13: A KAIVAKUKU, RORO TRIBE, CENTRAL DIVISION, BRITISH
 NEW GUINEA]

Owing no doubt to the missionaries disliking certain dances, the
natives are now very shy about permitting a white man to witness
them; some, however, can still be seen, and these I will try {49}
to describe. There are several different dances in New Guinea,
all distinct in their movements, in the costumes worn at them, and the
music accompanying them; there are the war dances, the marriage dances,
the fishing, festival and agricultural dances, and for all these the
costumes vary, some of them being unique, for there is no island in the
world which can rival its assortment of ceremonial regalia. In some of
the dances the women are most strangely attired, whilst in others the
grotesque costumes of the men are startling.

When the fish dance, or any other semi-religious dance is to be held
the men wear masks, for the making of which they are famous, and then
the performance is indeed weird. In the Mekko district, south-east of
Port Moresby, most elaborate masks of hideous design cover the heads
of the dancers, whilst their bodies are concealed by capes which are
nearly two feet thick and cover the wearer completely, leaving only
the lower part of the legs visible, and these, in contrast to the bulk
above, look strangely thin and out of place. The heat and weight of
these costumes must be enormous, but the natives would undergo any
discomfort rather than be without them.

The masks, which vary in shape and size, are {50} generally not
shorter than three or four feet, and occasionally they run to six or
seven. They are held in position on the man’s head by a cross-bar
which he grips between his teeth, and they are constructed on canework
frames, and shaped like an enormous hock bottle. A thin bark covering
is stretched over the frame, which is then completely smeared with
white lime, and a hideous face is generally worked or painted on the
front of it, with the mouth and eyes enormously big and distorted. When
one considers that these masks and their attendant costumes are also
used for blackmailing dances their thorough ugliness is warranted.

Blackmailing is a favourite pastime, and when they are intent on it
they don their ugliest masks and steal round to the hut of the man or
woman from whom they wish to extort money, or frighten, and in the dim
moonlight begin a weird and unearthly dance accompanied by horrible
noises, which they continue until the desired effect has been obtained,
and the man is frightened out of his wits and ready to agree to his
assailant’s proposals. This dance is closely allied to the dook-dook
dance of New Britain. In New Guinea when the mask and cape are worn
the steps of the dance are slow, and the movements are supposed to be
majestic and {51} awe-inspiring, making the performances more
like stately processions than dances. One of the most interesting of
these is the festival dance for a successful agricultural season. It
is considered a kind of prayer to the gods of agriculture, and it
generally takes place once a year and is conducted by different tribes
on each anniversary.

 [Illustration 14: HARVEST DANCE, NEW GUINEA

 When the yams and bananas are ripe, the natives hold a celebration,
 in which as a rule men dance in close formation with the girls on the
 flanks. Occasionally a girl edges her way in and takes the arm of a
 man, as is seen in the illustration, where the red head-dresses are
 those of women. The white plumes of the men denote that they have
 slain an enemy in single combat. The streamers down the back of the
 man on the left are those of his head fillet. Behind the dancers are
 the bananas suspended on a scaffold. The celebration takes place in
 the summer.]

The dancing ground having been picked, the villagers squat by their
huts, or form a large ring on the ground, and then when all is ready a
troop of men strangely dressed, each carrying his drum, comes prancing
on to the ground.

From the back of their heads long waving strings, made of leaves, are
hung, flying out behind them and touching the ground. Their woolly hair
is gaily festooned with bright-coloured feathers, white and red, pure
white, pure red, and reddish brown and green; and above these there is
often a brilliant red cockade which stands straight up.

Armlets adorn their arms, and a narrow belt with a scanty attachment
suffices for the covering of the lower part of their bodies. Long
streamers of palm leaves hang, in some cases, from both armlets
and leglets. Their drums are also gaily decorated with strings and
streamers.

On arrival on the ground they form up in rows {52} and begin a
peculiar crouching movement by bending their knees and rising on toe
and heel, to the accompaniment of a monotonous dull thumping on the
drums. Every now and then a different beat is sounded, and instantly
the men change their positions. Whilst this peculiar shuffling
movement is going on a crowd of girls appears and begin to dance in
and out among the men, and then vanish again almost as quickly as they
appeared. Their costumes are equally quaint, the chief adornment being
a mat hung round their waists and open on one side. The remaining
portions of their bodies are nude, with the exception of necklaces and
curious feather adornments on their heads.

Fine creatures some of them are, and as they prance about in striking
attitudes, dodging in and out of the rows of men, swaying their skirts
backwards and forwards, they present a fascinating picture and, as
they warm to the dance, the continued shuffling movements of the men,
the swirling of the women’s skirts, their swaying bodies, and glimpses
of elaborately tattooed legs, and the measured beating of the drums,
the only sound that breaks the silence, a giddiness steals over the
spectators and a weird feeling of monotony takes hold of them.

 [Illustration 15: READY FOR THE DUBU DANCE]

{53}

Then suddenly the whole scene will change, the girls, who a few seconds
before were swirling round the men, vanish, the drumming ceases, the
long rows are broken up, and the men too disappear, leaving only the
crowd of eager spectators who remain gazing at nothing.

A wonder comes into one’s mind if it is all a dream, for throughout the
whole dance no sound has escaped the performers, and the silence and
the half-darkness produce a scene of peculiar uncanniness. But soon
all is movement again and other performances have to be gone through.
New figures are introduced as in our round dances, but there seem to
be no set places for the girls; they appear and dance independently in
and out of the rows of men as if to show off their fine figures, their
beautiful skins, and bewitching ways, some dancing and acting more or
less demurely, whilst others throw themselves about with an abandonment
and coyness that it would take a most practised Western flirt to excel.

Every attitude and every movement seem to be accompanied by an action
of the apron or skirt, which is swerving with a perfect rhythm
backwards and forwards, or from side to side. But this is not the
women’s dance, they are merely adjuncts to the performance and use
their admission to it more for {54} love-making than anything else.
Their real dance comes later when they mount the Dubu, and this is
the dance so strongly objected to by the missionaries, but, strange
to say, the natives themselves seem to take very little interest in
it; they call it “the dance belong women”; and were it such an immoral
proceeding, surely the men would crowd to see it.

The ordinary Dubu is a rough platform about four feet high and built
upon stout piles. More elaborate ones are to be seen in some districts,
and these are decorated with weird designs and strange carvings, with
flanges reaching out right and left and long beams carved like gigantic
bullocks’ horns and decorated with gaudy tassels that add a quaintness
to them; they stand some ten feet off the ground, whilst others have
posts rising fifteen feet above the ground and ending in a half-moon
design, but these bigger ones are not used for the girls to dance on,
but are kept for ceremonial purposes.

 [Illustration 16: THE DUBU AT RIGO, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

A score of girls, dressed up to the nines in their twine skirts
(reaching about as far down as a Parisian ballet girl’s dancing
costume) and completely tattooed, suddenly begin prancing through the
village, swinging in their hands a long string at the end of which is a
ball. By practised movements {55} they make it curve in grotesque
shapes around their bodies, and all the time this is going on they are
swinging their skirts backwards and forwards by a peculiar movement
of their bodies, from their waists. This extraordinary performance
of pirouetting maidens goes on for some time to the accompaniment of
drums. Then, at a given signal, they mount the Dubu and discard their
skirts, and stand unadorned before the spectators who, as I said
before, are nearly all women. Then married women anoint them, whilst
others bring them baskets of areca nuts and yams. The yams they cut
up in pieces, and whilst doing so go through graceful movements which
display their figures to the best advantage. Then suddenly, at another
given signal, they start pelting the onlookers with the nuts, which are
scrambled for by the women amid laughter and screams of delight; they
are like children at a fair, and almost as simple. When all the nuts
are finished the girls slip on their skirts and jump down, and so ends
this, the most terrible dance of the modest maids of Papua. There is
another famous dance which takes place on the departure of the Lakatois
for the annual trading expedition up the Gulf.

Professor Haddon, in his book the _Head Hunters_, relates an amusing
thing he saw at Veifaa, {56} of which this dress incident reminds me.
He says that though the natives in this place are never seen in any but
native costume, the missionaries have insisted on the women wearing
calico gowns whilst attending divine service, and it was an amusing
sight, he continues, to see the girls and women arriving at the church,
for—on entering the courtyard—they pulled these European costumes over
their half-nude bodies; but it was still more comic to see the way they
pulled themselves out of them directly the service was over. He adds,
that in spite of their scant clothes and the above peculiarity, the
women are extremely modest.

Tattooing cannot be said to be as general in New Guinea as in many
other places, but in some districts the women are particularly well
tattooed, the whole of the upper part of their bodies being completely
covered with intricate designs. The methods of making the patterns
vary, but as a rule, the woman lies on the ground whilst two others
work them out with a stick dipped in burnt resin. When the whole
is finished it is pricked in by means of a sharp thorn attached to
a stick and bound tightly to it with fibre. Most of the women have
extraordinary designs on their thighs, which they make a point of
showing when they are dancing.

 [Illustration 17: TATTOOING, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

{57}




CHAPTER VI


 Outrigger canoes, their appearance and construction—The famous
 Lakatois—How the natives catch their fish; and a few words about fish
 that climb trees—A trip down the coast, and an unpleasant experience.

If you can imagine a cloudless sky of a deep blue colour, a sea so
smooth that not a ripple is visible, and so clear that you can look
down into it and see the dark rocks and the sandy bottom and strangely
shaped fish swimming idly about amongst bushes of seaweed, which wave
and curl with the ebb of the tide; and floating masses of jelly which
occasionally double themselves into balls and then become floating
masses again. If you can picture all this you will have an idea how
clear the waters of the South Seas are when the sky is cloudless. The
hot sun is overhead, and the still air is full of a sweet fragrance.
Just above you you will see a frigate bird sailing lazily about, and by
the sea shore just a faint ripple and a line of white show {58} you
quaint and picturesque canoes—not the ordinary mere dug-out things
which are so narrow in body that there is only room for a medium-sized
man to sit, but long curiously shaped ones with poles stretching across
and extended far out over the side; they are slightly arched, and at
the end there is a log which rests in the water and lies parallel to
the boat.

These outriggers are queer constructions, but no sea can upset a boat
possessing them, and with the light shining full on the bright skins of
their half-naked occupants, they look still more eccentric. To see a
dozen of these queer craft being swiftly paddled through the water by
men with bushy heads and fine massive bodies, and women more nude than
dressed, but with their hair cropped close to their skulls, is not a
sight to be seen everywhere, and well repays all the thousand little
disadvantages that journeying to these parts entails.

 [Illustration 18: LARGE TRADING CANOES, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

There is a safety in an outrigger canoe that one cannot feel in
ordinary native boats. There is not the same swift movement that one
experiences when skimming through the water rowed by a half-dozen
muscular Maoris in their light-built canoes, or flying down rapids
in a Canadian canoe, but in {59} place of it there is the calm
repose of absolute security, and at times this latter condition is not
to be scorned, especially when every moment you can see the fin of a
shark rise out of the water. Clumsy looking as these boats are, it is
wonderful what complete control the natives have over them, how swiftly
they swing them round or skim them between dangerous rocks, and dash
over the surf through waves that would swamp and capsize an average
lifeboat. These irresponsible creatures paddle on through the worst of
waters, laughing at the spray as it breaks over them, and shouting with
glee as they mount the great waves, which carry them high and dry on to
the shore.

Then the stately Lakatois with their queer-shaped sails, looking as
unlike sails as the body of a boat is unlike a canoe. They resemble an
elongated kite with a semicircle cut out of the top, and if you saw one
for the first time coming towards you on a dark night, it would give
you a fright, so grotesque and weird is it. In daylight, however, its
horrors disappear and the ingeniousness of its construction appeals to
you; after watching it sailing placidly out to sea, steered as easily
as any yacht, a feeling of admiration for the savage inventor of it
comes over you. {60}

To explain its construction would be a task too difficult for me, but,
roughly, it consists of two or three large canoes lashed together and
boarded over. On these boards is a kind of barn cut down and spread out
considerably. This is used both for shelter and for carrying the pots
and articles of barter. From the centre of this raft-like barge the two
enormous sails project straight into the air; the two horn-like points
of the top are decorated with long streamers; whilst others ornament
the sails, making it look like a carnival barge. How the wind is caught
or how the boats are moved about is a mystery to any but those who
work them; if you ask a native he will explain it all to you: “He good
fellow belong salt water, go easy.” And that is as much information as
I can give. So with this vivid, though somewhat technical description
of how the boat travels, you too must be satisfied, and look rather at
its beauty than its ways of working.

 [Illustration 19: OLD WOMEN MAKING POTTERY, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

The method of building canoes in these parts is interesting. A log of
soft wood is obtained from an up-country tribe in exchange for fish or
some other produce, and its outside is shaped by means of an ordinary
English axe, while the inside is hewn out with the native stone adzes.
These {61} they still prefer for delicate work, though they often
attach the head of them to an ordinary axe handle. When a sufficiently
deep hollow is made, the native lights a fire in it and works it about
until the rough edges are smoothed down and other faults are rectified.

Firing is also used to finish the outside, and if the fire goes out, or
anything but a perfect result is finally obtained, they put the cause
of it down to some accident, or wrong action which they have done in
their youth. Nearly all their calamities are thus explained.

The small canoes when finished often have the outriggers completely
boarded over, thus turning them into big rafts, and making them capable
of carrying enormous quantities of barter; for it is by boat they carry
their goods from village to village along the coast. The Lakatois are
always used for long trips, and carry big crews, being often loaded
to their full carrying capacity. When leaving Port Moresby for these
periodical trips they carry pottery and exchange it for sago and other
food.

The pottery industry flourishes at Port Moresby, and at most times
it is possible to see the women at work. Men never assist them in
this industry; generally very thin old hags seem {62} to superintend
all the most difficult part of the work. The clay used for it is, I
believe, a natural clay brought down from the interior and exchanged
for some other article. Instead of using a pottery wheel, each pot
is literally built up from the inside and rounded with a stick or by
hand—the sphere getting larger and larger, whilst the inside, towards
the top, gets smaller. When finished a fire is lit and stones built up
over it, and directly the right heat is obtained, the newly made pot is
placed on them and baked.

Nearly all the cooking is done in these contrivances, and they seem
capable of standing any heat as well as a good deal of rough usage.

Sago, yams, bananas, sweet potatoes, cocoa-nuts, and fish are the
staple foods which the New Guinea natives fatten on. The fish is often
smoked and cooked in the earthenware pots or eaten raw. The method of
smoking it varies, but generally it is roughly done in a hut.

Owing to the extensive coral reefs all round these islands, fishing by
means of nets is a difficult task, and one that does not often pay, as
they get torn to pieces on the reefs. Line fishing suffers from the
same disadvantage, so that when a big haul of ground fish is wanted
a method introduced by the {63} traders is adopted—fishing with
dynamite. This sounds somewhat peculiar, but it is most effective.

 [Illustration 20: SPEARING FISH, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

Directly a shoal of fish is seen a charge of dynamite is exploded in
the water, which has a most disastrous effect on the fish, as it stuns
all within a tremendous distance of the discharge. Boats are then run
out, and with the aid of the natives the unconscious fish are picked up
and thrown into them.

The Papuans thoroughly enjoy the sport, and dive and swim after the
floating things with great glee, laughing, and the shouting and
splashing as they swim through the water with a fish in their mouth and
one in each hand, is tremendous. On reaching the boat they throw them
in and are away again as quick as lightning after more.

Spearing is another method the natives have, for which purpose they
erect platforms in the water. The fisher will stand on this platform
with a long spear in his hand attached to which is a long thin cord.
Holding the spear in the air, ready to throw, he waits like a statue
till his eyes catch sight of a big fish in the clear waters beneath.
Then suddenly you see the spear fly from his hand, and the next minute
he is yelling {64} with delight and hauling in a struggling fish at
the end of his spear.

The young natives are also fond of shooting fish, and go off in parties
armed with bows and arrows, seldom returning without a good bag.

One often hears extraordinary tales of fishermen, and perhaps there is
none better than the one told by Jerome K. Jerome of the plaster cast
that every one claimed to have caught, but even this has to take a back
seat when you are first told that a man has seen fish climbing trees.
But in spite of the apparent tallness of such a yarn it is nevertheless
true. In New Guinea these piscatorical gymnasts can be seen, and Mr.
Hardy, when visiting Tupusuli (one of the most unique marine villages
in New Guinea, lying a few hours’ sail south of Port Moresby), had the
pleasure of seeing these fish at their exercises.

 [Illustration 21: MARINE VILLAGE, TUPUSULI, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

The trip was an interesting one and worth relating. At the invitation
of the Rev. Dr. Brown, whose missionary work in these parts is well
known, Mr. Hardy accompanied him on a trip down the coast to Tupusuli.
Among the doctor’s guests were Dr. Wyllie who was out there on
scientific work, Prof. von Yost, a German journalist who at certain
times claimed direct relationship to {65} Bismarck, and a few
others who also can verify the following, as they too were among the
party. It was a jolly expedition, and the yacht, which belonged to Dr.
Chalmers the head of the missionaries in New Guinea, was captained by a
Raratongan chief who was noted for his enormous strength. The scenery
along the coast is wild and broken; here and there little villages
backed by palm groves can be seen, and natives running about on the
shore add to the beauty of the scene.

Tupusuli lies in a little bay, and is protected from intrusion by coral
reefs and mud-banks, but the yacht safely manœuvred these, and then the
village came in sight. At low tide it looks extremely weird, as some
of the huts are built on very high piles a considerable distance from
the shore, right out in the mud. The village proper is also completely
surrounded by water at high tide; behind it is a row of splendid palms,
and a broad street dividing some huts where the men are generally seen
canoe-making. As the tide was out when the yacht anchored, the party
had to be taken off in the gig and landed on the nearest mud-bank, from
which they waded into the village.

On the way they passed a clump of mangroves, partly surrounded by
water, and it was here these {66} quaint little fishes were seen
climbing up the bark of the mangoes. In appearance they look like a
very small mackerel, though the head is rounder and more nobby, and
from the breast two little legs, like those of a caterpillar, protrude.
The tail and fins are exactly the same as those of other small fish.
They seemed very shy, and on the approach of the strangers they
scuttled down the trunk and sprang back into a pool of water at the
foot of the tree, and nothing would induce them to show up again. Here
at Tupusuli are the ruins of an old Dubu house, which looks as if it
had been an exceedingly large one.

 [Illustration 22: NATIVES OF THE NEW HEBRIDES HAVING A DRINK]

After examining the canoes and many of the houses the party made their
way back to the gig, and as the tide was now in they had not far to
walk. On reaching the yacht, however, it was found that the anchor
had got jammed, and as the wind was blowing pretty hard and the tide
running in, the captain feared that they would go aground on a very
nasty reef unless they got away quickly. All hands were brought to
bear on the chain, but to their horror they found that their pulling
was of no avail; all the time the yacht was swinging round and getting
dangerously near the reef. Suddenly from the shore a dozen canoes were
seen coming out {67} full pelt. The natives had guessed what
was wrong and were rowing out to help. Soon the water was black with
canoes, and the shouts of the natives were almost deafening. At last
they were alongside, and one standing in the bow of his boat looked
up at our captain. “Me fix him, captain, you get anchor all right,”
he shouted, and the next instant he had dived head foremost under the
yacht. No sooner was he out of sight than another followed, and so on
till the water was in a regular foam with diving and swimming natives,
there must have been dozens of them, whilst crowds of others hung round
in their canoes anxiously watching for their comrades to come up and
report progress. As each woolly pate shot out of the water the watchers
called out questions, but without answering they dived again—they had
only come up for breath—and neither the party nor the natives were able
to find out what was wrong. After nearly ten minutes’ work they all
came up, and their disappointed faces told the tale. It was no good,
the anchor was completely jammed, and in spite of all their efforts
these good fellows could do nothing.

To save the yacht from grounding the chain had to be cut, and shortly
after that the yacht rode out {68} of the bay clear of the rocks, amid
the cheers of the natives.

Jamming of anchors in these parts is not an uncommon experience, and
to avoid losing them many skippers carry a charge of dynamite about
with them, which they slide down the anchor chain at the end of a piece
of slack rope. If the charge is timed properly and all goes well, the
coral, between which the anchor is fixed, is blown to smithereens.
Some skippers, however, have had any but pleasant results from this
experiment, and have not only lost their anchor but considerably
damaged their boats.

{69}




PART II

THE SOLOMON ISLANDS


{71}




CHAPTER VII


 South Sea traders good and bad; their ups and downs—Nicolas the
 Greek—The Mambare river massacre—Some queer creatures with queerer
 ways—A fitting end to a wasted life.

There is a grim uncertainty about the life of a South Sea trader.
To-day he is alive and the centre of a crowd of cringing natives who
bow down before him, offering their goods in exchange for others,
obeying his every word, for he is their lord and they are his slaves.
But to-morrow may alter everything, and find that all that is left of
the once boastful trader is a mangled corpse.

He may curse the Papuan, he may cheat him and rob him of his wives
up to a certain point, then the worm turns, and one dark night, when
the trader is lying unsuspectingly in his lonely hut, murder steals
through the jungle in the shape of a naked savage whose eyes gleam with
revenge. Yes, there are no half-measures with these savages, {72} no
gentle stabbing, no single shot, but absolute mangling in a ghastly
form.

Sooner or later death has come to nine-tenths of the traders; sometimes
it has been unjust, but more often richly deserved. The remaining one
in ten lives free from all trouble and in harmony with his men, and he
prospers and enjoys his life.

The majority of the men who trade out there are rough, uncouth beggars,
but they have a jovial, devil-may-care way with them, taking both life
and death as they come; they rise in the morning, not knowing if they
will ever see their beds again in this world, but they don’t mind that.
Some of them are as plucky as they are coarse, and as jolly as they are
muscular; but it is deplorable to think that they are the men who are
civilising and forming the future of the natives, and with such guides
it is not surprising that they steal and murder, and that in some
parts no trader dare leave his store for a night lest it be sacked by
daybreak. A trader’s existence is no life for a peaceful white man; it
means, as Louis Beck so aptly puts it, “a pistol in one hand and your
life in the other.” Yet there is room for the honest man and plenty of
money to be made, for these islands abound in untouched wealth, as the
success of Messrs. Burns Philp {73} shows. They have made money,
and their advancement shows that with honesty and enterprise there is
plenty of room for good men. A few more such firms and the place would
soon change and become a prosperous colony, where decent folks could
live with some certainty of dying a natural death.

 [Illustration 23: GOLD MINERS LEAVING A TRADING SHIP, BRITISH NEW
 GUINEA]

There are tales galore, all filled with a grim humour, of the small
traders in these islands; many of them are characters in their way,
who have drifted over the whole world and finally settled, or become
stranded, on these shores.

Perhaps one of the best known about New Guinea was Nicolas the Greek,
whom Mr. Hardy met at Samarai and describes as a man of medium height
and burly build, with a dark complexion and a clean-shaven, Yankee-cut
face. He dealt chiefly in pearls, and had come on board the _Titus_
(the boat on which Mr. Hardy was) to sell some. That day he wore a pair
of canvas trousers, soiled and very much damaged, a soft hat that had
at one time been black, and a dirty white jersey, which was tucked up
in a roll at his waist. In this roll he kept his valuable pearls, and
to get at them he would unroll a little of the jersey, and then having
got hold of his pearl box he would work it up his chest and bring it
out below his chin. His life {74} was not a rosy one, as he was wanted
in all quarters by white and black men, and several attempts had been
made to kill him, but he generally managed to get the first shot home,
and so lived on. He was quite used to wrecks, for it almost seems that
the sea required his life too, but that also went disappointed, for
nothing seemed to be able to kill Nicolas. He was a dangerous man to
chaff, even when he was well filled with wine, and most men kept clear
of him, or when they did have dealings with him they were very civil
and never gave him a chance of picking a quarrel.

Old Harry Hutten, who blew his arm off with a charge of dynamite whilst
fishing, was a man with a history as long as your arm, but he fell foul
of the natives, and was, I believe, found dead one morning. Johnnie
Pratt, one of the most decent men out there, married a native bush
girl, and by doing so offended the shore natives, who eventually killed
him and carried her off, to show how hurt they were at his not choosing
a wife from the “Women belong Sea.”

 [Illustration 24: JOHNNIE PRATT WITH HIS IVORY NUTS, AT SIMBO, SOLOMON
 ISLANDS

 At the time when I did the original sketch from which this picture was
 made, Johnnie Pratt, a French trader, was in health and prosperity.
 He had his small house with the copra and boat sheds down on a narrow
 beach under the shelter of a tropical forest that spread upwards over
 the hills round a lovely little bay. He was a jolly chap, and when
 last I saw him was singing among his “boys” at work. He had married
 a native girl, daughter of a local chief, and at the birth of their
 child this chief gave him the fore-shore round the bay. He seemed to
 have had a happy time as times go in these parts, though his life
 had been attempted more than once on a neighbouring island. I do not
 remember now when it happened, but not far from his place he was
 murdered, and so came to the end many traders do in the wild Solomons.

 The drawing shows Pratt taking tally of the weight of the sacks of
 ivory nuts which the “boys” are bringing from the sheds to be put into
 boats. The native in the foreground is wearing a sunshade.]

But Dick Eade is one of the straightest traders there, and will
tell you, if ever you meet him, more tales of the ups and downs of
a trader’s life in half an hour than you will hear elsewhere in a
lifetime. {75} A few years back he decided to take a trip home to the
Old Country, as he had made enough money for a good holiday, so he left
his partner in charge of his store and sailed away. But directly he
reached Melbourne a letter was sent to him to say that his partner had
been killed, and that his boat was high and dry on the rocks with a
perforated bottom. So instead of going home he had to return and make a
fresh start.

There is plenty of excitement in the South Seas, and a glorious
uncertainty in the life, and none know it better than the traders and
miners. The most surprising thing is that often no cause can be found
to account for the natives rising. The Mambare river massacre was one
of these strange risings, and when the survivors came to Port Moresby
the story they told of that mining venture was grim indeed.

It appears that a party of miners, under the leadership of a man named
George Clark, went up the river on a prospecting tour. They succeeded
in making friends with all the natives they came across near the mouth
of the river, and purchased several canoes from them.

For the first week or so all went well, and in every village they came
to they were well received {76} by the natives, who even assisted them
to get their canoes over the rapids which abound in the river. In spite
of these friendly demonstrations the miners noticed that several canoes
were following them and that each one contained armed natives, but as
they showed no hostility and kept some distance behind, it was decided
to take no notice of them.

They had travelled about forty miles up the river, when they reached a
point where it was found necessary for all to disembark in order to get
the boat up a particularly difficult rapid. Clark, however, remained in
the boat to steer it, whilst the other miners, assisted by the natives,
hauled the boat along with a tow-rope; the white men were at the far
end of the line whilst the natives were close to the bow of the boat,
there being in all about a dozen natives.

Suddenly, when the boat was nearly at the top of the rapid, the
tow-line snapped, and after a moment’s confusion one of the miners
sprang back and tried to seize the piece still attached to the boat,
when to his horror he saw it had been cut. He yelled to his mates, but
before they could come half-a-dozen natives had sprung into the boat
and were being carried swiftly down the stream. {77}

All thought that they had done this to assist Clark in managing the
boat, and no one suspected treachery. Even Clark appears to have been
unalarmed, as he continued to guide the boat by means of the steer oar.

From the banks the miners watched the boat drifting until it reached
the native canoes behind. Then the truth flashed upon them; in a moment
a shower of spears were sent at Clark, and the natives in the boat
rushed at him. From the banks the miners fired their revolvers, and two
of them sprang into the river and swam to rescue Clark. In the meantime
he fought like a Trojan, but several spears had struck him, and
suddenly the miners saw him leap into the river, but directly he came
to the surface one native struck him full on the head with a paddle,
and just as he was sinking another drove a spear into him.

The whole ghastly episode happened before the swimmers could reach
Clark, for the tide was strong and the men were carried helplessly
along. As soon as Clark was disposed of, the natives threw all the
firearms out of the boat; the provisions were taken to the other canoes
and the boat abandoned, whilst the perpetrators of the crime beat a
hasty retreat, but not before they had been {78} well peppered by the
miners, who by now had all come to the scene of the tragedy.

Clark’s body was never found, and the miners, having lost all their
provisions, tools, and practically all their arms, decided to return to
the mouth of the river. On the way down they were greeted with spears
and jeers, and had to clear their way every now and then with a shower
of bullets from their revolvers, and yet when they had come by these
same villages on their way up the river they had met with nothing but
friendliness.

To this day the reason of the attack is not known, in spite of the fact
that the Queensland Government sent an expedition to inquire into the
matter, and to capture the natives responsible for Clark’s death.

Besides the grim stories of the Pacific there are plenty of amusing
ones, and sometimes funny anecdotes are told of weird traders who
have taken up their quarters along the coast. No one can go round far
without meeting one, if not more, of these oddities.

Aoba, in the New Hebrides, however, stands unique in possessing the
most original, if unorthodox, trader who has visited these islands for
many a long year. Maybe the old chap is dead and {79} buried now,
for I am writing of 1894 when “Tartan Jock” lived on Aoba. He was a
wild Highlander with chest and shoulders like an ox. His face was as
rugged as the mountains of his native country, and his accent was one
you could cut with a knife. From his youth upwards he had led a life
of adventure, and had come at last to the most God-forsaken island in
the world to finish his days in peace and quietness, and to this end he
had chosen the most dangerous and cut-throat part of the New Hebrides.
Yet he seemed to have no particular desire that his death should be
a sudden one. A year or so before going to Aoba he had paid a visit
to his birthplace to see the old folks, but his stay there had been a
short one, and the only result of it was that the brogue had gotten
into his nostrils again, and judging by the sound of it would remain
there till the sharp spear of one of his black neighbours let it out.

As tough a customer as ever trod these islands was Jock, but, strange
to say, the natives rather liked him, as was proved by the fact that
his tenancy of the tumble-down trader’s house on the beach had been
longer than that of any of his predecessors.

Aoba has a reputation for being a trader’s burial {80} ground, but,
as far as I know, Jock is still above ground; he was a man, too, who
seemed to love it. If ever you managed to come across him unawares
he was stretched out at full length on the bright warm sand, with
his arms at right angles to his body, and his great legs spread out
like young logs. Jock could sleep all day like this, when there was
nothing else to do and no trading boats about where he could get a
“wee drappie”—Jock’s wee drops were bottles. But when the wine was in,
his wits were out, and then it was a case of “look out for yourself,”
for at these times Jock was dangerous, but basking on the beach he
was a picture, and a quaint one too, for he had an absolute horror of
civilisation and clothes, and a tartan shawl and a Tam o’ Shanter hat,
with more than one hole in it, constituted his complete attire.

Stretched out at full length he could often be seen on the beach, with
his shawl wrapped round his shoulders and chest, a great pair of bare,
brown, hoary legs sticking out, and his woollen hat pulled right over
his face with the nob of it where his nose ought to have been. Like
this he was a sight that would have scared the life out of his “puir
mither.” But such was Jock, and when sober a more amusing man would be
hard to find.

 [Illustration 25: SOLOMON ISLAND BOY CLIMBING AFTER GREEN COCOA-NUTS,
 NEAR GAVATU, NEW FLORIDA.

 Nothing was to me more refreshing after or during a hot day in these
 islands than a long draught of milk from the green nut. On arrival at
 a trader’s or settler’s station, if you did not care for a “tot” of
 rum or “square face,” young cocoa-nuts were brought. If there were
 none about, a boy was sent up the nearest palm to fetch some down;
 when he brought them, one end was cut off with a large knife, and then
 you could drink long and deep. A large nut will hold more than one man
 can take at once. If you felt inclined you could eat the soft inside
 with a spoon.

 In the South Seas no one thinks of eating the nut when the hard shell
 has come, it is then “Kaikai, belong pig,” and also made into copra.]


{81}

His hut lay a hundred yards back from the sea, hidden away in the
densest part of a clump of bush, and not a white man slept within miles
of him, yet Jock was happier there than he had been for years, and when
the boat called he always had plenty of copra and as good a show of
ivory nuts as any of the traders.

Fifty miles from here there was one day a curious scene enacted: James
Clark, a new trader, whom Messrs. Burns Philp were starting, had
refused to go ashore at the island for which he was destined, owing
to some ghastly reports he had heard whilst the steamer was lying
outside it. The supercargo, a splendid fellow, was puzzled to know what
to do, but at last suggested that he should try Aoba, where a trader
was waiting to give up his store. Clark jumped at the idea, though he
was warned it was, if anything, worse than the place at which he had
refused to stop: he was sure, he said, no place could be.

A more depressed man than Clark during the remaining week of his voyage
could not have been met, for bad accounts of murdered and boycotted
traders were in the air just then. However, Aoba was reached at last,
and after having supplied “Tartan Jock” with his goods and relieved him
of {82} his copra, the steamer sailed on to Clark’s landing-place.

Here a most awful picture presented itself to the unhappy man.

The retiring trader rushed to the shore as he sighted the boat and
waved frantically. He was an old worn-out man in a filthy pair of
pyjama trousers and a coat torn and ragged. He looked as if he had
neither washed nor slept for weeks, and he afterwards told the crew
he hadn’t had a decent feed for a month. His account of the place was
horrible in the extreme.

For some unknown reason the natives there had strong objections to
traders in their territory: the one before him had been killed, and
this man, I do not know his name, had been warned several times
that, unless he went, he too would share the fate of the last. The
natives had point blank refused to bring him copra, and to add to his
discomforts had stolen nearly all his food. Day and night he had had to
watch lest they killed him. His copra shed had been burnt down, and all
his clothes, except those he stood in, had been seized and distributed.

This was the place on which poor Clark was landed, and his misery was
too awful for words; {83} but there was no other station vacant, and
so the only thing he could do was to stay.

Accompanied by the supercargo and a few of the crew he was taken to his
hut, which lay a little way from the beach. It was almost in ruins, and
contained nothing but a bed, a few empty boxes, and some soiled pages
of illustrated magazines. After looking inside, he turned to one of the
crew, who had shown sympathy for him, and said in the most plaintive
tone:—

“This is a fitting end to a wasted life.”

Fifteen minutes later the steamer left the bay, and the last those on
board saw of Clark was as he stood by his boxes on the shore waving a
farewell to them.

Bad as the natives were to him they did not butcher him, and some
months after a vacancy was found at Tanna Island which Clark took. His
stay there was very short, for within a month a bullet sent him to a
better land.

Such were the lives of the majority of the traders a few years ago, but
things are better now, though there is still room for improvement, and
still plenty of opportunities for good men.

{84}




CHAPTER VIII


 Natives who have had no chance; their villages without streets, and
 their curious huts—The tambu and canoe houses—An unlucky trader.

Wild and ferocious as the natives of the Solomon group are they possess
some fine characteristics. Many of them far surpass the rough European,
in those parts, in generosity and disposition.

The more you travel, the more you find that both men and beasts
treat you in much the same way as you would treat them under similar
conditions. There is undoubtedly a silent telegraphy which tells a
savage or a wild beast, more plainly than it would a civilised human
being, the attitude you are holding towards him, and he instinctively
holds that same attitude towards you.

 [Illustration 26: SOLOMON ISLAND VILLAGE, NEAR MARAU SOUND, NEW
 FLORIDA]

The Solomon islanders have a name for being the most treacherous and
bloodthirsty race in existence, but when one remembers the way they
were treated by the first invaders of these islands, {85} the Spaniards
and French, and afterwards by the whalers and the roughest traders that
ever stepped aboard a schooner, it is really a wonder that they permit
a white-faced man to pass within coo-ee of their islands.

From the earliest days they have learned to fear the white men, and,
acknowledging their superior powers and weapons, they naturally
resorted to treachery and cunning to outwit them. If they had known the
white man only as a benefactor, their attitude towards him and their
state of civilisation would have been very different from what it is
now. The possibility is that they would have developed into as fine and
intelligent a race as the Maoris.

Had the Maori war been at the beginning of the white man’s career in
New Zealand, that country would not be the paradise it is to-day, nor
would the coloured natives be the men of knowledge and wisdom some of
them are. They would have been given such a bad start that they would
not have got over it.

From the very beginning the Maoris were treated with respect, and their
naturally fine disposition answered to the call, and thousands of them
so trusted the Englishman that had the war {86} gone on for another
thirty years their faith in him would not have been shaken.

The Solomon islanders have had no chance, they have been feared from
the beginning and shot down on the slightest provocation. It is only
now that they are beginning to discriminate between the bad and the
good white man, and I am perfectly safe in saying that a straight man
can go amongst them unarmed, and if he treats them well he will be as
safe with them in the densest bush as he would be in crowded Piccadilly.

The native villages are very different from those in New Guinea. Very
few of them are built on piles, but in some of the small interior
villages pile dwellings can still be seen. They are, however, only
some two to four feet off the ground, like many others found in the
countries of all savage races. Streets, too, are not discovered as
often in the Solomons as elsewhere, the houses being built with no
particular design. A clump of bush will be dotted with houses, with
only small paths leading from one to the other. The houses are of the
typical hut shape, built of wood and thatched. A ridge pole resting
on two uprights supports the roof which is triangular in shape, and
the sides are formed in a similar fashion. Before thatching, both the
roof {87} and sides are formed by poles lashed together on which
the thatch is worked. The door, if it can be so called, is merely an
aperture which opens from a raised platform, and to get into the hut it
is necessary to step—one generally falls—down into the room.

 [Illustration 27: EARLY MORNING, GAVUTU, SOLOMON ISLANDS]

There are no windows, and the door is the only place for letting in the
light and letting out the smoke of the fire, which is generally burning
in the centre of the hut on the floor. Most dwellings are divided into
two parts; one is used for sleeping purposes, whilst the other is
occupied in the day time. The Solomon islander is luxurious and likes
a bed to lie on, which is made very much like an ordinary miner’s bed:
two logs form the top and bottom on which rest a dozen or more long
poles lashed together. The whole is covered with mats. A pillow made of
a small round log is used by the particularly luxurious.

Beyond the actual necessities, such as these beds and a few
cooking-pots, and weapons of war and field, there is nothing else in
the huts, and the interiors are gloomy and depressing.

The platform outside is used by the owners to sit and lounge on. The
roof of the house projects over the platform and protects those sitting
on it from the sun and rain. {88}

Each house belongs to its individual owner, and not, as in many other
places, to the village. There are strict laws governing property, and
on the death of the owner it is handed down to his or her nearest
relation. The same law applies to yam patches and land plots. Each man
holds certain rights which are protected by the people, and though the
laws are unwritten, they are closely adhered to—superstition playing a
great and important part in preventing any violation of them.

The chief of the village generally inhabits a much larger house than
his subjects, and in many cases he has other houses round him for the
accommodation of his wives, relatives, and descendants.

Palavanua is the name by which the smaller houses are called, and Euro
is the name given to the larger ones. Though the Euros are of similar
construction, they are far more elaborately built and are generally
used as a shelter for war canoes or for the spare habitation of a
chief. Nearly all villages have an Euro in their centre, and they are
sometimes used on state occasions for meetings and ceremonies. The
chief’s private house is taboo, or sacred, and no one but he may enter
it; an awful calamity would befall an intruder. {89}

Some chiefs have a separate compartment in their own home where their
wives sleep, whilst others prefer to have them a little distance off.

Each house has one particular pole in front of it, holding the ridge
pole which is “Hope,” or sacred. It is grotesquely carved with figures
in threatening attitudes; and all manner of rubbish is laid at the
foot of this household god, piled up loosely, and looking very much
like an ordinary rubbish heap. Old axe-heads, tins, shells, worn-out
hats, canes, old cooking-bowls, and pipes, are amongst the most popular
articles given to this god.

There seem to be no particular laws regarding sleep, the married women
only are partitioned off, whilst every one else is at liberty to sleep
where he or she feels most inclined.

The canoe houses are very well built. Ingova’s at Rubiana was a
particularly good one, having two large doors with slits above them
running nearly to the roof to admit the long and high prows of his
canoes. The sides of the house were partitioned off into shelves where
his favoured guests were allowed, and expected, to sleep. On three
sides it is surrounded by dense scrub, or was a few years ago, and the
front looked out on to the lagoon. This place, Rubiana, is one of the
most difficult {90} places in the world to enter, and it was probably
chosen by the wily old chief for that very reason. One entrance
from the sea, termed the “back passage,” is simply a maze of small
islands, and it requires a man not only of extraordinary courage but of
consummate skill to navigate a boat through them without damaging it.
Having safely manipulated the passage all is well, and the wide expanse
of clear calm water which fronts Rubiana well repays the anxiety spent
in reaching it.

There is little wonder that in this stronghold Ingova was able to defy
his enemies, and with his army of head-hunters carry terror into the
villages of his neighbours, but of these exploits anon.

Tambu houses are also built and used as meeting-houses, and being freed
from “taboo,” in the sense that any one may enter them, they are used
by the young men of the village as a kind of rendezvous, and crowds
of natives can always be seen lounging about in them or sitting in
rows gossiping. They are also used for general meetings, councils, and
certain ceremonies. It is customary, and etiquette, to go direct to
the tambu house on arriving at a village, and there, before the crowd,
state your business. In this way you are sure to win the good opinion
of the natives. There are always {91} plenty of them waiting to hear
anything of interest.

 [Illustration 28: OLD INGOVA’S WAR CANOE HOUSE, RUBIANA LAGOON, NEW
 GEORGIA, SOLOMON ISLANDS.

 Fifteen years or more ago, old Ingova, the notorious head-hunting
 chief of Rubiana lagoon, was about at the height of his power, and
 his raids of slaughter to neighbouring islands were of dreadful
 frequency. It was to this canoe house that he returned after a
 successful expedition in his great TOMAKO (war canoes) laden with
 ghastly trophies, but ever since Rear-Admiral Davis, then of H.M.S.
 _Royalist_, sacked this place in 1891, all has been comparatively
 quiet, though I did hear, while I was there, that Ingova had led a
 head-hunting raid or two.

 The old shed, for it looks very like one, stands near the margin of
 the lagoon, not far from the fringe of the thick bush and forest. All
 is fast falling into decay, and the whole place has a haunted feeling
 about it. Inside was an old war canoe and the remains of former
 splendour. Till you came to look carefully at the structure its size
 did not strike you, but I found it was about 72 feet long by 30 broad,
 and quite 30 odd feet to the top pitch of the roof; the high slots
 above the two doors were made to let out the tall fore-peaks of the
 canoes.]

The erection of a tambu house is generally an excuse for a big
festival, and at one time required a human head to be sacrificed and
eaten, and was thus the cause of many a head-hunting expedition.

Bones of human beings can still be seen hanging in these houses. The
body of the victim was always eaten at the feast, and, besides it,
pigs, fish, and other animals were devoured in large quantities.
Gorging is anything but a crime in the Solomon Islands; in fact, it is
not an uncommon sight to see a native so puffed up with over-eating
that his friends have to lay him out on the ground and then gently
knead his back—this operation they find helps to digest the food,
though personally I would not like to recommend it to a dyspeptic.

At Santa Catalina there is a very fine specimen of a tambu house, over
sixty feet in length. All the principal posts are carefully carved
with weird representations of fishing expeditions, fights, war canoes,
head-hunting expeditions, and other pictures of the daily life and
occupations of the Solomon islander. The ridge pole, which is bigger
than the usual run of these poles, is carved all over with {92}
pictures which no modern journal would care to reproduce. The roofs
of most tambu houses are more or less alike in general construction.
They are supported on four or five rows of posts, the central one being
about fourteen or fifteen feet high, whilst the outside ones do not run
to more than three or four feet high, owing to the slant of the roofs.

Throughout the group there is not one village standing out above all
others, and there is no capital town, but on every island there are
villages, and the chief in each considers his the capital.

The two largest islands of the Solomon group are Bougainville and
Guadalcana; Bougainville, the larger of these two, belongs to Germany.

Guadalcana, from the sea, is an uncanny looking place—a great dark
mountain gradually rising to a height of 8000 feet, covered with dense,
dark foliage and culminating in a volcano. The Lion’s Head near by is
a ragged cluster of grey rocks. Here and there patches of sage green
relieve the monotony of colour and show where clumps of palms are
growing. A thin line of bright yellow sand, and the white foam of the
sea as it breaks over the reefs, add colour to the island and make of
it a strange picture.

 [Illustration 29: ON THE FRINGE OF A PRIMÆVAL FOREST, SIMBO, SOLOMON
 ISLANDS

 One of the most impressive sights to be seen on some of these islands
 was the real tropical forest. This picture shows just the commencement
 of one, through which a native track wound its way. Though it was a
 brilliantly fine day, yet I remember when we were fairly into the
 forest depths it was just like twilight; while here and there long
 streaks of sunlight were streaming through the tree-tops, reminding
 us of the lights coming through the windows of a cathedral. We all
 went Indian file, and in many places the bush was so thick that we
 lost sight of each other; now and then we came upon a small native
 village.]

On the east side of Guadalcana is a little trading {93} station,
where not long ago “French Jack” resided, until at an untimely moment
the blacks swooped down on him, carried away his wife and cut him to
pieces; the crew of the little trading-boat, when it called for his
copra, found his remains and buried them. But this is an old story, one
of the many that come from these islands. A call from the Governor and
the arrest of a few of the culprits is the way in which these stories
end, and the captives eke out the rest of their existence in durance
vile at Fiji, or if proved guilty pay the proper penalty.

For his place of residence poor “French Jack” had chosen one of the
brightest spots on the island and built his hut in the most approved
style, with an uninterrupted view of the sea. Close by his hut was
a long shed where his servants, or “boys” as they are called, slept
after their work of drying the copra, husking ivory, and attending to
the other light duties of a trader’s establishment. At the back of his
house was his yam patch and banana grove; behind that the wild thick
scrub and the bush.

A lonely spot for any one to live, but such are many of the settling
places of a trader, and to those who live in the bush there is no
feeling of loneliness: in the crowded streets of a big city these same
men might be overpowered by their solitude.

{94}




CHAPTER IX


 Solomon Islands—Ingova’s head-hunters—How whole tribes were wiped
 out—Savage invasions and clever tactics.

The Solomon Islands, not being of such importance as New Guinea, have
had much less attention paid to them.

No doubt the extreme danger which has always attached to a visit to
these islands has made the white man give them as wide a berth as
possible, only going there when compelled to either for trading or
scientific purposes. It is here that cannibalism flourishes, and the
head-hunters go forth on expeditions in all their savage grandeur to
strike down the unsuspecting neighbour.

If there is uncertainty about life in New Guinea, there is precious
little in the Solomon Islands, for the chances are ten to one against
one’s living to tell the tale, unless he keep strictly to the trading
parts of the islands.

 [Illustration 30: PORTRAIT OF A SOLOMON ISLAND CANNIBAL

 This man was said to have “kaikaied-man plenty” (to have eaten plenty
 of men). He told me in island English that I was no good to eat. His
 teeth were stained red by chewing the betel-nut.]

Travellers, scientists, and traders still visit the {95} interior,
and some come out all right, but to every one that survives a dozen
succumb, simply because cannibalism is to a certain extent a religious
ceremony to these natives.

They do not kill and eat human beings for the sake of their taste,
or because they are hungry, as some writers will insist on having us
believe. The cause is farther back than this; in nearly every case
when human beings are killed and eaten, it is on occasions when such a
sacrifice is necessary, according to the natives’ religious beliefs.

Like the prophets and priests of old they believe in sacrifices; they
honestly consider that they are doing the correct thing when they
kill, cook, and eat a man or woman, and it will take many years and
many missionaries to persuade them to the contrary. Of late, however,
there are indications that in some of the islands head-hunting is
losing favour, particularly with the younger generation, which sounds
satisfactory, for if the rising generation decide against the practice
it will soon die out. Other causes sometimes arise which may help to
stop the custom. For instance, in one part of New Georgia the chief,
some years ago, gave orders that no more human flesh was to be eaten,
which to many might look as if his cannibalistic views were {96}
changing, but the cause of it was not a moral, but a physical one: the
last feast of man they had indulged in caused an epidemic of sickness
to run through the tribe, and the chief did not wish such a thing
to occur again. He felt that either the digestion of his tribe had
altered, or that the particular tribe on which he had been feasting was
no longer palatable, so he stopped it. Again, in other parts certain
chiefs boast that they do not eat human flesh, and hope is again raised
that these savages are reforming, but a little closer inquiry shows
that the particular chief deals in human flesh, trading it to other
natives, and, like the man who makes the sausage, he does not eat it.

Throughout these islands there are very few tribes who are still
actually cannibals, in the sense of the word as it is generally
accepted, but in spite of this grain of promise life is just as
uncertain, because one can never tell when a head is needed for a
religious ceremony. You may live on the most friendly terms with a
tribe for months, and go away with the idea that cannibalism is dead,
and laugh at those who have tried to make you believe otherwise, but
had you remained one day longer, or the chief’s son died one day
sooner, that laugh would never have come off, but instead your head
would {97} have, and your comely carcase would have been frizzling in
the kai-kai dish; and the very men who had made so much of you a little
before, would with equal glee have made less of you then.

 [Illustration 31: SACRED SKULL SHRINES, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS

 The skull houses are small erections supported, in this case, on
 pedestals; the length is about three feet, with an overhanging roof.
 The box is open at the back as well as in the front, and charms of
 Tredacua shell and leaves are suspended in front. The houses in the
 background are made of canes and grass; that in the foreground is of
 wood. The native is carrying a shield.]

When standing before a chief, who is smiling at you and treating you
to all the courtesies his nature can conjure up, and knowing that with
him you have trusted yourself for many an hour’s smoke or solitary
ramble in the bush, it is difficult to realise that the same chief a
week before was on the warpath, concocting the most devilish schemes,
and carrying out the most fiendish atrocities on men, women, and
children in his pursuit of heads. But such is the case, and one can
only account for the inconsistency of it by putting these acts down
to a religious mania, and thus giving these otherwise amiable and
interesting creatures a certain excuse for actions which to us would
seem inexcusable.

Tribe after tribe has been completely wiped out by certain powerful
chiefs through a continued series of head-hunting expeditions. The
methods adopted by the aggressive party are simple and generally most
effective. The Rubiana natives are perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all
the Solomon group, and, being both rich and powerful, they can descend
on a village and overpower it by sheer {98} force of numbers, even
without the use of modern weapons, which are now owned by nearly all
the important tribes. The most notorious head-hunter in later years was
Ingova of Rubiana lagoon, New Georgia, to whom I have already alluded.
He is old and wizened now, and his hand trembles as he lifts the glass
of grog he begs from you, after telling a yarn of the good old days.
Yes, Ingova’s strength and valour are gone now, and could the departed
spirits of the hundreds he has killed in days gone by see him as he
is to-day—his feeble limbs, his shaking hand, his bloodshot eyes, and
seared face—they would indeed wonder what it was they feared in him.
Where is the great spirit that once possessed him? they would ask. They
would scorn him now, and the women would laugh at him—poor, feeble,
tottering Ingova.

Years ago Ingova’s Euro was hung with skulls, hundreds of them were
strung in the cross-beams, with staring, vacant eyeholes, which looked
out of nothing and yet seemed to see everything. Their drooping lower
jaws, showing sets of white teeth which glistened in the rays of the
moon, made Ingova’s heart throb with pride as he stood and tried to
count them. White naked skulls of brave men all hung in rows—they had
all belonged to {99} men, for a woman’s head is not worthy of such an
honour.

 [Illustration 32: INGOVA’S HEAD-HUNTERS, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS]


One day, soon after one of Ingova’s rash ventures amongst white men,
Commander, now Rear-Admiral, Davis played havoc with his village,
burning and sacking it. It was no ordinary attack but a clean sweep he
made of Rubiana, and then the shore was littered with Ingova’s skulls:
skulls that he and his fathers had collected for generations were
scattered in all directions, and lay bleaching on the beach, some half
burnt and others cracked and broken.

That was an awful day for Ingova, and for months after he was a
broken-hearted man. But the savage spirit was still in him, and he was
not long in recovering from the shock, and to rectify his loss he set
out on a big head-hunting expedition.

His mode of attack was an ingenious one. He would start out with every
war canoe he possessed (some twenty or thirty, manned with a force of
five or six hundred men—swarthy, hard, muscular, dark-skinned men),
and a British built whaling-boat. Having previously decided on the
island he meant to surprise, he would send out two flanking parties
and probably land a small force lower down the {100} coast. Then,
accompanied by the whaling-boat, he would make straight for the front
of the village like an innocent trader, and having enticed the natives
to the shore he would commence his slaughter. The two arms of his force
would close in and kill all those who failed to get away, the others he
would drive back to the centre of the island where the land force would
be waiting to drive them to the shore again, killing men all the time.
Thus hustled and attacked on both sides they were trebly trapped, and
would fall like sheep before the shots and tomahawks of Ingova’s five
hundred.

But with all his efforts Ingova never regained the long rows of heads
of which he used to be so proud, and now he is too old to go out and
look for more, but not too old to forget Captain Davis’s little visit
to Rubiana.

He wears no necklace round his neck now, for Admiral Davis has it, it
having been given him by Ingova many years after that little visit as a
kind of peace offering—they are quite friendly now.

Mai was another chief whose reputation for head-hunting and absolute
brutality was a household word in the South Pacific. He was chief of
Sapuna in Santa Anna, and periodically raided {101} the adjoining
islands, killing and butchering every one who crossed his path.

 [Illustration 33: A CANOE SHOWING THE “TOTOISHU,” NEW GEORGIA, SOLOMON
 ISLANDS

 The idea of this carved wooden head on the prow is to frighten off
 the evil spirits, or kesoko, of the waters and look out for dangerous
 reefs.]

Dr. H. B. Guppy, in giving an account of his acquaintance with him,
says, that on his (Dr. Guppy’s) arrival at Santa Anna he learned that
Mai had just been out on one of his raids. He had led a war party
across to Fanarita, on the opposite coast of St. Christoval, to avenge
the death of a fugitive from a labour vessel, who, having escaped at
Santa Anna, subsequently found his way to Fanarita, where he was killed.

The excuse, although somewhat circuitous, was quite sufficient for Mai,
who really thought more of this chance of gaining new laurels than of
the untimely end of a native whose death he pretended to be so eager to
avenge. Having reached the part of the coast where this man was killed,
the war party lay in ambush and slaughtered a chief and two women
as they were returning from their yam patches, whilst they severely
wounded another woman who escaped into the bush with a spear through
her back.

Mai had a knack of keeping his followers up to the mark by working on
their superstitions and never letting old feuds die out.

The islands of Isabel and Guadalcanar were the {102} hunting grounds
for the New Georgia chiefs, whilst occasional visits to Florida Island
helped them along. From ninety to a hundred heads were often brought in
by some of these chiefs, the result of a long and successful raid, and
many travellers who visited these islands between forty and fifty years
ago state frankly that the lives of the natives in the less powerful
islands were not worth a day. They never knew when a canoe might land
with a force superior to theirs and wipe them all out; the wonder is
that there are so many still alive. It is only owing to the falling off
of these ghastly expeditions that they have had time to recover and
repopulate their villages.

With such massacres going on and the practice of infanticide always in
vogue, the present state of the natives is almost marvellous, and only
shows the hardiness and regenerating powers of these islanders.

Nowadays head-hunting, as I have already stated, is only resorted to on
certain occasions, and when a head is needed a sum of money will often
be offered for one, and the chiefs of different villages are acquainted
with the fact. A hunt round is immediately made, and any native who has
made himself objectionable to his neighbours is sold for the purpose.

 [Illustration 34: A LAGOON IN NEW FLORIDA, SOLOMON ISLANDS]

{103}

Neither the time of his death nor the fact that he is to die is
told him, so that he is relieved from all worry. He is watched most
carefully, and a certain hunter is told off to procure his head. It may
not be for weeks after the sentence has been passed that it is carried
out, but when once the decree has gone forth the man is as good as
dead. The hunter may have been ingratiating himself in his victim’s
good books, and thus waiting his opportunity for months; then one day,
when the unsuspecting victim is quite off his guard, the flash of a
spear or the dull thud of a tomahawk is all that he knows. The next day
his head is carried to the chief and the shell money paid over for it.
Then the feast or ceremony for which this ghastly object is required
takes place amid much rejoicing. White men have often fallen victims
to this custom, and many a trader has only received warning from a
friendly native just in time to escape the same fate. Money has often
been paid down for the head of a white man, and if he has not heard of
it in time to escape, his death has followed.

The missionaries, however, have seldom suffered; they are tolerated,
and seem to go on in a quiet and peaceful way, quite secure where every
other white man’s life is in his hand.

{104}




CHAPTER X


 Clothes and the men—Love of adornment—Natives who are not keen on
 eating—Methods of cooking their food—Betel-nut chewing.

The native dress of the Solomon islanders is even more scanty than that
of their neighbours the New Guinea natives. Usually the sole clothing
of the men consists of a “T”-shaped garment encircling their waists and
passing between their legs. Unmarried women and children fail to see
any necessity for clothing at all, except those in places where the
missionaries have brought their influence to bear; then a loin cloth is
worn similar to that used by the natives of Fiji, Samoa, and Honolulu,
to cover their nakedness.

Though the Solomon islanders do not clothe their bodies with cloth,
they endeavour to cover as much flesh as they can with ornaments and
flowers, and a keen competition is kept up in the discovery {105}
of new ornamental shells, and in trade articles with which to adorn
themselves.

 [Illustration 35: NATIVE OF NEW GEORGIA WEARING SUNSHADE, A SORT OF
 CROWNLESS HAT MADE OF GRASSES: IT CAN BE WORN AT ANY ANGLE.]

The men are always attempting to rival each other in this respect, and
go through endless torture as a result. They wear tight armlets, heavy
ear-rings, anklets, and nose-rings, the weight and discomfort of which
would be more than most white men could stand.

Shell necklaces are among the most handsome of native ornaments, and
they are made from various kinds of shells, cut and ground down, and in
some cases beautifully polished. The Tredacua shells are most popular,
and portions of them are converted into most artistic ornaments.
Armlets are made of these shells, but it is a most tedious job and
takes the maker ages to accomplish, as the circle is generally cut out
with a rough piece of iron and then finished off by a course of rubbing
with sand. Both men and women wear armlets, and, as most of them are
placed on their arms when they are quite young, they become extremely
tight as the wearer grows up, and look as if they would destroy the use
of the limb. For some unexplained reason, these bracelets seem to have
little or no effect on the circulation of the blood, which compels one
to notice that custom is responsible for many quaint problems. {106}

The most extraordinary ornaments, however, are the grotesque ear-rings
worn by the men. When quite young, a small hole is pierced in the lobe
of the ear, generally with a stone, and the opening thus made is filled
with a piece of banana leaf wound up and twisted so that it acts as a
spring, continually enlarging the hole until it is big enough to be
filled by a piece of wood, or circular looking-glass, or any other
quaint thing the possessor of the hole can get to put in it.

Some of these holes are considerably bigger than the man’s ear.
Lieutenant Boyle T. Somerville, who made a point of studying these
particular natives, says that he measured one native’s lobe hole and
found it was four inches in diameter, and Dr. Guppy states that he has
seen natives carrying their pipes and matches in these gaps, and on
one occasion he saw Taki, the Wano chief, with a heavy bunch of native
shell money hanging from each ear. Taki said it was a sign of mourning
for a recently deceased wife—it certainly needed some explanation.

Nose-rings and other nose ornaments form another disfigurement for
which these natives have a weakness. Lately the women have taken to
making very pretty ornaments of trade beads, which they {107} work
into curious designs and arrange with peculiar mixtures of colour; some
are also ornamented with wild flowers, and present an almost artistic
appearance.

 [Illustration 36: A RUBIANA NATIVE, SOLOMON ISLANDS

 This portrait shows a native wearing large ear-rings; the lobe of
 the ear passes round the wooden ring. In travelling through dense
 forest they take the wooden rings out and tie the long ear-lobes
 under the chin. The gorget of pearl shell with a fretted-out MBELEMA
 (frigate-birds) suspended round the neck is supposed to invite the
 protection of the spirit called “PONDA.” The man’s hair is turned
 yellow by the use of lime. The armlets are of shell and hair or grass;
 the design on the ear-rings may be a frigate-bird _motive_; it is made
 of pearl shell let into the wood.]

In Rubiana strange native methods of hair doing can be seen. Some men’s
is cut in the most fantastic way and ornamented with bright plumes and
flowers, and occasionally one possessing an extra fine crop of bushy
hair will have it propped up with a piece of old hoop iron, and then if
he can get hold of a comb, as he often can, he sticks it through the
hair and the effect is weird.

Some also bleach their hair and make it the colour of straw, though
this is not met with as often as in Samoa, where I have seldom seen
a native without bleached hair, or without hair that shows signs of
having been bleached at one time.

The same custom of shaving the head when in mourning is in vogue here
as in New Guinea. Tattooing, however, is not nearly so popular, and
very few natives in New Georgia show any signs of it. In place of it
they paint their faces with lime, and look rather like clowns.

Raised cicatrices are very popular, and some quaint designs are worked
on their bodies. Lots of natives have a porpoise and a frigate bird
carved in {108} this fashion on their bodies. Most of the designs are
extremely crude, owing, no doubt, to the custom of the boys who cut
them on each other with rough shells.

Regarding their food and their ways of cooking it, and even the hours
of having it, the natives are very happy-go-lucky, and there seems to
be a free and easy sort of dropping in on each other when the smell of
cooking is in the air, and of partaking of anything that is going. Mr.
Hardy himself witnessed a peculiar incident of this kind at Simbo. A
native had been out collecting eggs laid by some bird which hides them
in the sand, and on returning the native went into an old chief’s house
near the shore, where a small fire was burning on the floor just inside
the door, and began stirring the inside of the eggs up in a piece of
cocoa-nut shell. This he placed on the fire and continued stirring for
a few minutes. Then apparently getting tired of the operation he got up
and sauntered off. His place was immediately taken by another native,
who also stirred for a while and then ate some of the mixture. Whether
the eggs were not to his taste, or the mixture was too hot is not
known, but he made a terrible face, put the shell back on the fire, and
walked out of the hut.

 [Illustration 37: A STORMY DAY IN RUBIANA LAGOON, SOLOMON ISLANDS]


{109}

Two other natives tried their hand at the concoction and left it as
he had, and presently the original owner came back and finished the
remnants. During the whole of this scene the old chief sat unconcerned,
and amused himself playing with a club for which Hardy gave him a piece
of tobacco. The chief’s heart having thus been won, he pulled down a
magnificently carved club from the eaves of the house. It was carefully
wrapped up in palm leaves, and the old man handled it with the greatest
reverence and care, but beyond the fact that it was a ceremonial club
he was unable to explain anything about it or for what special ceremony
it was used, as his English was not over strong.

No amount of tobacco, however, would tempt him to part with it—the very
idea of selling it seemed to hurt him.

After hiding it away he next produced an old musical box and requested
Hardy and Dr. Willey to “make him sing.” The instrument was sadly out
of order, but after a little manipulation they were able to get it to
grind out fragments of _Faust_, with long stops between every few bars.
This, however, did not bother the old man in the least, the delight on
his face was grand, and he was so pleased that, after hearing the noise
for about {110} ten minutes, he took the musicians all over the little
village.

It was a curious place, huts were dotted here and there in an artistic
disorder among the palms and banana trees. The chief led the way, and
behind him, following like a well-trained dog, was his slave, a man
belonging to some other tribe, and quite different in appearance and
physique from the natives in Simbo. It is customary to keep slaves for
various reasons besides that of service—if a human head is needed in a
hurry, the slave’s is handy. Crowds of little children and pigs were
running in and out amongst the scrub, and both seemed to take a great
interest in the white visitors.

After endeavouring to explain many interesting things, the chief took
his guests to his private house, which was a well-built roomy place,
after the style of an ordinary farm-barn, with low walls and a deep
slanting roof. The inside was perfectly destitute of furniture, and the
only place on which to sit was the floor, or a low shelf, which the old
man probably used for a bed when he wanted one. Close to the house, and
sheltered from the burning sun, was a very fine kai-kai dish, which the
chief showed them with much pride.

 [Illustration 38: COOKING THE MEAL, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

It was on a small platform raised some four feet {111} from the ground,
and underneath it there were signs of a recent fire. In size the trough
was considerably larger than an ordinary coffin and somewhat like one
in shape, though at each end there was a piece of carved wood. This
one, the chief explained, was not used for cooking human beings, but
for mixing and cooking food on feast days.

When explaining this fact, Mr. Hardy says, though I can only take his
word for it, as I was not there, that the chief looked at him with
a hungry eye and murmured to Dr. Willey, “He go in nicee, make good
kai-kai.”

But to return to native diet: sago, taro, sweet potato, sugar-cane,
bananas, and a very poor kind of bread fruit, constitute their chief
vegetable food; fish and occasionally a pig are their only other
eatables. The cooking of these articles is generally done in rough
bowls or in a European iron pot. When anything special is going to be
eaten it is broiled in an earth oven. Betel-nut chewing, however, seems
almost to satisfy these natives, for their meals are most erratic, and
they often only take a small piece of fish with them when they are
going out for a whole day’s tramp or work.

The method of chewing betel-nut is rather interesting. The nut is
about the size of a walnut. {112} This they place in their mouth
with a green leaf and chew it. When it is well under way they dip a
small stick into their lime gourds and add a modicum of lime or ground
coral to it. The effect of this mixture is, so some say, equal to a
glass of good grog, but, though it acts as a strong stimulant, the
natives do not seem to suffer any ill effects from it. Chewing is in
no way restricted to the males, both women and young girls favour the
practice, and relish the betel-nut as a great dainty.

{113}




CHAPTER XI


 Some clever ways of catching fish—How the bonito is landed—Native
 nets—Pig-hunting—The sly opossum and the crocodile.

Lazy as the Solomon islanders are they are excellent sportsmen, and be
it man-hunting, pig-hunting, or fishing, it is all the same, they go in
for it with a fine relish. Cunning and dexterity play an important part
in their methods, and make up for their want of up-to-date appliances.

At fishing they surpass most native races, their ingenuity in this
sport being remarkable. Where the white man will fail with all his
latest improvements in fishing tackle, these uncultivated men will
succeed with quickly improvised and crude materials.

For bonito-fishing they have a remarkable device, and entice these
large fish from the deep sea and catch them as easily as an English
boy will secure a stickleback. It is one of the most {114} exciting
of their sports to watch. A man stands on a rock, for preference, and
throws out a line some thirty or forty feet in length, attached to the
end of which is a floating bait of some fatty matter; below him and
bending double into the water is another native, who works a little
piece of bamboo cut off at the joints and having a hollowed-out groove
in it. With his thumb in the end of the hollow and his hand gripping
the stick he works this backwards and forwards in the water, giving it
a peculiar twist, which makes it send forth a weird and uncanny noise.
This sound, so they say, is in imitation of the cry of female or male,
I forget which, bonito, and so attracts to it a mate.

Whilst one man is steadily working in this manner, the other on the
rock is watching every movement of the native with an alertness and
excitement which is shown by his tense attitude. Long before the
untrained eye has noticed anything peculiar, this fisher has gradually
begun to draw in his bait, and soon the great head of the bonito is
seen rising out of the water in an endeavour to catch the bait. But
the fisher, who by now is in a perfect steam of excitement, adroitly
snatches the bait away only just quickly enough to save it. The bonito
dives, and the next instant he is up again {115} and after the
tempting morsel at full swing. From that moment a most exciting chase
begins, and the extraordinary way in which the native gradually entices
the great fish to within a few yards of the shore without frightening
it, or allowing it to seize the bait, is as fine a performance as one
could wish to see.

 [Illustration 39: THE REEF NEAR SIMBO, SOLOMON ISLANDS]

All this time the other man is working away at his bonito call. Then
suddenly the water is lashed into foam, and the man on the rock is
straining every muscle. The fish is hooked, and three or four adroit
tugs at the line bring him in to the foot of the rock, where he is
pounced on by the two men, speared, and landed. Even then the game is
not ended, for a bonito dies hard, and a struggle of no mean order is
sometimes gone through before the natives have conquered.

To see two black figures struggling with a fish nearly as big as
themselves is an extraordinary sight, and is perhaps the most
exciting part of the sport. More than one native has been injured in
the last act, but that only adds to their keenness to conquer, for
they have unlimited courage, as every one who has lived amongst them
knows—except, I may add, when superstition plays a part, then they are
the most abject cowards. {116}

Kite-fishing, though less exciting, is another popular form of fishing
and is conducted in the following manner. A large kite is sailed behind
a canoe, and attached to the tail of the kite is a line with a bait
which just touches the water. The gentle bobbing of the kite makes the
bait jump on the surface, in the same way that an ordinary angler makes
his fly play on the water. This is supposed to suggest the presence of
a small fish, and the kite is there to represent a bird hovering over
it. In this way large fish are attracted and caught.

Ordinary line and hook fishing is also used, and the hooks are
beautifully made, sometimes of mother-of-pearl and sometimes of turtle
shell.

On a moonlight night a party of natives will go out in their canoes to
fish for the makasi, a large fish which feeds round the mouth of rivers
and lagoons. This is a somewhat dangerous sport, owing to the captive
fish occasionally being attacked by a shark just as it is being landed,
which sometimes results in the canoe being upset, and its occupants,
the fish, and the shark all getting mixed up. Such an excitement and
noise is caused by the yelling fishermen that the shark is often
frightened, and clears off without even tasting either the fish or the
fishers.

 [Illustration 40: NATIVE ARCHER SHOOTING FISH, BRITISH SOLOMON
 ISLANDS]

{117}

The most ingenious devices in the way of nets are used in different
parts of the island. Some are even made of a tough spider’s web; whilst
others are almost the same in construction as the English net and,
strange to say, are knotted in a similar manner. The hand-net varies in
length to about eighteen inches and is made on different kinds of wood,
often bamboo. The mesh is small, and the handle is, as a rule, most
elaborately carved with representations of sharks, frigate birds, etc.,
and is made of wood. For ordinary purposes a two and a half inch mesh
is used, but a six inch is used on the larger nets for big fish.

A party of natives will often be seen carrying peculiar flat hand-nets
made of light bamboo, with an arched top, varying in length to some
eighteen feet. Armed with these queer-shaped things they wade out into
the shallow water, where they know a shoal of fish is at play, and by
pushing their nets before them they form a circle round the shoal and
thus have it at their mercy. They are wonderfully sharp in knowing when
a school of fish is about, and they show a surprising amount of energy
in capturing it.

Dynamite is now frequently used by the natives here as in New Guinea,
as they have learned from {118} the traders that it is an easy method
of obtaining big hauls, and anything that saves them labour they
immediately adopt, as long as it does not interfere with their old
customs.

There is another form of fishing which is pretty general all round the
coasts of the different islands. Bèche-de-mer, or the Malayan trepang.
It is a curious-looking thing like a piece of india-rubber, very tough
and flexible, and is found on coral reefs. It has no eyes, nor does it
seem to possess any means of getting about. In length it varies from
six to twelve inches and is between two and three inches thick.

The natives gather them off the rocks or catch them in very low water;
and immediately after they have got a basket full they clean and dry
them, and then boil them for about a quarter of an hour. Some are cut
open like a herring and smoked over an ordinary wood fire for about a
day. The Bèche-de-mer industry is a big one, and Chinamen are very fond
of it, as they can make good money by it without a large outlay. Great
care has to be taken in storing the fish, as the slightest damp causes
them to rot.

Spearing fish from a platform built on piles a little way out to sea
is also popular here amongst {119} the boys, and their well-trained
eyesight comes into play; having once spotted a fish they seldom miss
him with their spear.

 [Illustration 41: SEARCHING FOR SMALL OCTOPI ON THE REEF AT LOW TIDE,
 SAMARI, BRITISH NEW GUINEA.

 While sketching at Samari I remember seeing these men; they were busy
 poking under stones and coral with short sticks for octopi. These
 sticks very soon became soft and bent at the end; they then came to
 me to have them sharpened with my penknife. These small octopi form a
 part of the natives’ food. In the distance is the island of Sariba.]


In mentioning the native eyesight, personally, I don’t think any of
the savage races are better equipped in this respect than we are. What
appears to be keenness of vision is only training, and I have noticed
the same keen-sightedness amongst cattle-men in the Colonies. They will
recognise a cow miles away in the scrub, which unaccustomed eyes cannot
even see when the animal and place in which it is are pointed out. A
little practice, however, soon overcomes this, and in a very short
time the new chum is as quick as the old Colonial in spotting cattle.
I mention this experience, as I have seen a good deal of nonsense
written on the subject, and the extraordinary strength of the natives’
eyesight in these parts has been commented on. I know that, with a
little practice, any one possessing average good sight can equal these
so-called extraordinary creatures.

The same thing applies to the power shown by natives of throwing the
voice. Necessity has made these men speak to each other from long
distances, and so they have unconsciously dropped into the {120} right
method of doing it. They cannot tell you how it is done—they just do it.

To return to island sports, there is nothing from an Englishman’s
point of view to beat a good pig-hunt, and in the Solomons it can be
enjoyed better than in most places. In all parts of the bush pigs can
be found, in fact, the one thing the traveller has to look out for more
particularly than anything else, is the sudden rush of an angry boar.
There are no dangerous snakes or ferocious animals inhabiting the bush,
and you can pass a night under a tree with perfect safety, and sleep as
securely as in your own bunk, provided, of course, you are on friendly
terms with the natives. Pigs are the only things that need watching.
When a sow has a litter and you accidentally come too close to her
haunt, then there is trouble, and the nearest tree is the safest spot
to make for.

In hunting pigs the native dogs come in useful, but only for starting
and rounding them up, for it is seldom they will actually attack and
kill them. That part of the business, including the long chase over
fallen trees and through masses of vines and the thousand and one other
obstructions, is left to the hunters. The natives themselves are keen
on {121} the game, and are very smart with their spears and tomahawks.
The white men tackle them as a rule with gun or knife. One of the most
exciting pig-hunts I was ever in was when our whole party was armed
with sheath knives only. The pig was bailed up against a big tree and
we closed in on him, knives in hand, and, whilst his attention was
being attracted by one of the party, another rushed in and struck the
fatal blow.

Those bush pigs are larger than the ordinary unfattened farm pig, and
the boars have very fine curved tusks almost equal to the Indian pig.
The young ones have a delicious taste, and when properly cooked in a
native oven make very good eating; they are as tender as chickens.

The wily opossum leads its hunters a rare dance, but the natives, who
are its chief hunters, enjoy the game thoroughly. It is a sport at
which white men are no good as it necessitates remarkable agility in
tree climbing. The boys run up the trunks of the trees and give chase
to the little animal from tree to tree. They follow the opossum as
quick as lightning, until the poor creature is driven to the ground.
Then, of course, he is captured easily, as his clumsy movements prevent
him from running at any great speed—all {122} his powers of swinging
by his tail are lost when he gets on the ground.

Owing to the thickness of the undergrowth in the bush hunting is not
over enjoyable, and it generally resolves itself into a track-making
expedition, and the only way to ensure a safe return to the village is
to mark the trees as one goes. There is such a similarity in shape of
the trees and the lay of the country that it is impossible to remember
the way one has come, and as the light only penetrates dimly into the
thickest parts, one cannot get any knowledge as to the shape of the
tops of trees, a method by which one is often able to travel with
certainty in less thickly growing bush. This darkness also prevents one
from getting one’s bearings by the sun, so that tree scarring is the
only sure method of avoiding unnecessary delay in the bush.

Crocodiles are met with pretty frequently in the swampy districts and
in the rivers. They are of the usual type, ranging from six to fourteen
feet in length. They do not seem to mind salt water in the least, and
are often observed quite a distance out from the shore, in fact, when
they are chased they generally make for the sea. I do not know whether
this is common with crocodiles in other {123} lands, but those in the
South Sea islands appear to prosper and be contented in both fresh and
salt water.

 [Illustration 42: THE HOME OF THE CROCODILE, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS]


The natives seldom hunt them, and do not hold them in fear. They will
even bathe in a river known to be frequented by them. Whereas in
Queensland rivers no sensible man would dream of such a thing, his life
would not be worth more than the first two strokes. The crocodiles
there are of a far more ferocious disposition, and have been known to
chase men a considerable distance on land, while such a thing has never
been heard of in these islands.

Beyond these few forms of sport there is nothing to attract the tourist
sportsman to the Solomons, as the country is devoid of all other
animals worthy of the chase, and the fishing is such that any island
far nearer and less dangerous will supply; but being in these quarters
these few sports help to pass the time, and give one opportunities of
seeing the bush at its best. Its grandeur cannot be appreciated unless
one gets right into it, and feels its solitude and silence, then and
then only does the bush speak and show itself.

{124}




CHAPTER XII


 A curious religion—Burying the dead, and some graveyards—Dancers and
 music—Native artists, and how fire is made.

To try and discover the actual religious beliefs of a savage race is
even more difficult than attempting the same experiment on the religion
of any particular European sect. It is almost impossible to find two
people agreeing consistently on even the main principles. Exactly
the same trouble exists in savage races; if you are lucky enough
to discover a principle you will immediately get a dozen different
interpretations of it, and only where a sect follows implicitly the
ruling of one leader, and does not question or argue against his
teachings, can you gain any knowledge worth the trouble and time you
may expend on it; but in these cases I have found that neither reason
nor understanding play any part in the belief, and it therefore lacks
interest. But, strange to say, throughout the savage and civilised
races there seems to be a belief in a {125} heaven and a hell. These
two ideas, though varying in detail, are world wide, but notions of the
way to get there, however, differ considerably.

The Solomon islanders nearly all believe that when a man or woman dies
he goes to live with a good spirit (_nito drekona_) in a far off but
pleasant land, where his companions will be as good as he is, or nearly
so. The bad man, so judged by his companions, goes to a place of fire,
the abode of the Evil One (_nito paitena_), where he has anything but a
happy time. During his existence there he does his best to make things
unpleasant for the friends he has left behind him, by becoming one of
the many evil spirits who are supposed to do harm to the living.

To obtain any further information on this subject is extremely
difficult, and, as in other races, each man and woman has a different
idea of the future state, some of which are particularly quaint. The
Solomon islander’s idea of a heavenly condition would be anything but
heavenly to us, in fact some of our worst ideas of the other place
would pale before their crude notions of heaven.

Another fancy they all seem to hold is that the spirits of the departed
return to earth, some as fireflies, and some as birds, etc. They all
{126} believe that the Supreme Spirit is the embodiment of good, and
yet in the same breath they will tell you that He becomes angry and
needs that His anger should be appeased either by incantations or the
sacrifice of human beings.

On the death of a chief, a great personage, male or female, universal
mourning is adopted, accompanied by feasting, which they believe helps
the spirit on its journey to the better land—for all great people and
chiefs go there direct, a fact about which they seem to deplore, as
they will talk of the departed one as the “poor chief.” The names of
the dead are held in great reverence, and in some islands they are
never mentioned except under the breath, or in the greatest secrecy.

Funeral rites differ a good deal on the various islands, but the most
common ones constitute a feast which is celebrated when a powerful
personage dies. Directly the news of his death is announced the natives
of his tribe set about procuring a supply of food, and calling together
all the natives, and then they commence the feast, which is followed by
a dance and the last rites peculiar to these islands.

 [Illustration 43: A SHRINE OR TOMB OF A CHIEF, AT SIMBO, SOLOMON
 ISLANDS]

Most of the ceremonies take place round the house of the departed one,
who is laid out and covered with leaves; subsequently his head is cut
off {127} and prepared in the approved style, which is either by
placing it in the bush near an ant-hill until all the flesh is eaten
off, or skinning it and afterwards scraping it. This last horrible act
is enjoyed by the lucky native who is chosen to do it. After this the
skull is bleached to a perfect whiteness and adorned with rings, which
represent the chief’s worldly possessions, and are bound to the skull
by a kind of flax. Thus prepared the head is placed in a head house.

At Simbo there is a regular graveyard of these houses just above the
beach, a mile from the trader’s house. It looks horrible, but is rather
interesting. It consists of about a dozen small huts built on poles,
some three or four feet from the ground; in each of these are the heads
of important men. Those in front are elaborately decorated with rings,
whilst those at the back are bare. Most of the houses contain about a
dozen heads, but one, rather larger than the others, contains more, and
is partly built of stone, the front being barred like a rabbit hutch.
This contains the heads of the chiefs only, and is looked upon with
great reverence by the natives.

Luckily this weird cemetery is hidden by the dense bush which grows
almost to the water’s edge, {128} or visitors, unaccustomed to such
sights, might receive a ghastly shock, as a more uncanny spectacle to
come across on a moonlight night than these hutches, with white skulls
staring vacantly through the bars, cannot be realised. At the back of
them is the heavy dark bush, and before them the rocks and the sea.

The women play the part of the chief mourners, and show their grief
by plastering their faces with lime and chanting melancholy dirges.
The men in many parts shave their heads, some completely, some only
partially, but all cover their faces with lime.

The funeral dance which follows the feast in the Solomon Islands
differs considerably from the dances in the other islands for the same
occasion. A double circle of women is formed round four posts, between
which other women sit holding in their arms the possessions of the
departed one. Round these the dancers gather, and with slow, measured
steps, timed to the tune of a beating drum, they keep up an unearthly
row with their feet. Whilst these are marking time, the others and
younger ones, bearing the possessions, dance round the inner circle
and skip in and out of the posts, always keeping in time with the
beating of {129} the drum. It is not an interesting dance, nor is it
awe-inspiring like many others I have seen, whilst from an artistic
point of view it falls very short.

There are many others in which both men and women take part, but none
particularly interesting. The war dance is done in crouching movements,
and should look impressive when carried out by a well-trained crowd,
but as few travellers have witnessed it it can only be surmised that it
is grand. It is danced by the natives bearing their shield and spears
in hand, and the performers sing a peculiar droning song during the
ceremony. The words of it, and two other native songs, were given in
a paper before the Anthropological Institute by Lieutenant Boyle T.
Somerville, R.N. They run thus:—

 WAR SONG

 Peka peka turo, Peka peka turo,
        Po lo lu u asa na
 Enoria chacharveli Turu sangi.

 A FAVOURITE SONG

 Kele mai Kolo moruna Kawo Konji Kili mai
 Keli mai Kawo Tsa lu M—m—m—m—m—

 JEW’S-HARP SONG

 Koroso pe pa Koiro pipa

{130}

These Solomon Island natives appear to have fairly good ears for music,
and have many popular tunes and songs besides those quoted above.
The majority of them have only a few words and a simple air, but the
singers make the most of them by repetition, so that what appears to be
a long song or tune is often quite short, and contains only a few lines
as in the above instance.

The Jew’s-harp has become very popular on these islands, and both men
and boys become accomplished players on it. The native instrument of
the same class is made from a piece of bamboo with a narrow groove cut
out of the centre about six inches long. A string is passed over the
groove, or tongue, and the end is placed against the mouth, and the
sound is produced by jerking the string to make it vibrate.

The Pandean pipe, which is made on the same principle as the classic
pipe of that name, is of native origin, and it is composed of short,
hollow lengths of bamboo lashed together with vegetable fibre. Attached
to the ends of each pipe are streamers of the same substance.

 [Illustration 44: SOLOMON ISLANDER PLAYING THE “IVIVU,” OR FLUTE

 This instrument, when played by a native, has a very sweet tone.]

The native flute (_Ivivu_) is composed of a thick piece of bamboo
nearly three feet long, hollowed out but closed at each end. It
contains four holes. {131} The first one is about five inches
from the top and is made for the mouth of the player. At a distance of
another five inches is another hole for the first finger of the right
hand, and the remaining two holes are at the far end separated by a few
inches. The tone obtained from this peculiar instrument is not at all
unpleasant.

They possess still another instrument, known in England as the mouth
fiddle, which is roughly made of a bent stick and has two strings.
The player holds one end of it between his teeth and manipulates the
strings with his fingers after the style of a big Jew’s-harp.

Besides their musical accomplishments the natives are very fair
draughtsmen, and some of their drawings are surprisingly good. Shark
fishing, head-hunting, and scenes of murder, are amongst their
favourite pictures. The frigate birds and human heads figure in nearly
all their designs—especially the former, which are fish-hawks as large
as big seagulls, but somewhat darker in plumage. When soaring overhead
in search of prey to swoop down on, the frigate bird shows the peculiar
shape of its wings, which, roughly speaking, form the letter “M.” Like
the shark it is more or less sacred, and therefore not eaten and seldom
harmed. {132}

All the drawings are done on wood with a red-hot stick, in much the
same way as poker-work is done in England. There is no particular shape
or size or even design in the instruments used for drawing. Nowadays
the natives beg a little iron or wire, which they make red hot and go
to work with to burn out their designs.

Fire was produced in the old days, and still is in the bush, by rubbing
two pieces of wood together. One is a flat piece in which a small
groove has been made, and the other is a stick pointed at the end. The
operator holds the stick in his two hands and rubs steadily up and
down in the groove. This rubbing makes a small powder collect in the
end of the groove, and after a few minutes it begins to smoulder, and,
finally, with the aid of gentle blowing, it ignites sufficiently for
other dry wood to be lighted by it.

Wax matches and magnifying glasses have quite superseded this method in
the shore villages, and as traders get farther into the country, native
fire producing will die out, as many other customs have done and are
doing daily.

The making of war weapons is already on the wane, and old Winchesters
and modern rifles are quickly taking their places. Even for hunting
{133} purposes the natives prefer to purchase a weapon, rather than go
to the trouble of making one. The only sort of war weapon to be seen
to-day is a composition of the English axe-head, sold by the traders,
mounted on a handle of native manufacture. These are crude but useful,
and are as a rule well carved.

The bow and arrow are in pretty general use in the Solomon Islands,
though they are not seen so often in New Georgia. In Bougainville and
St. Christoval bows and arrows are used for all hunting purposes.
Spears and clubs form their other weapons; the spears are not poisoned,
only a few have barbs on them, and the majority are made with hard wood
points. Bougainville supplies most of the specimens showing barbs. The
clubs used in St. Christoval rather resemble in shape an Australian
boomerang with a straight handle. Other clubs belonging to different
islands are of the policeman’s truncheon order.

Shields are also carried, and are made generally on a bamboo frame
lashed together with native string and thatched. They are between three
and four feet long and one foot broad.

{134}




CHAPTER XIII


 What “hope” is to the Solomon islander—The use of the evil eye.

Sacred places in the Solomons are called hope, the word being used
in very much the same way as _tapu_ (taboo) is by the Maoris of New
Zealand, and other savage races, but, unlike the Maoris, the Solomon
islanders use “hope” to keep a place free from trespassers; thus if a
native has a cocoa-nut grove or a yam patch he erects a “hope,” and so
prevents any other native from going to it.

It is a strange custom and difficult to fathom, but the belief in it
is so strong that the most daring native would not dream of testing
its powers. There are various kinds of “hopes,” some will result in
the death of any one trespassing on them, whilst others will only
bring sickness upon him. A death “hope” will have a skull on it, or a
piece of shell, or part of an ant’s nest, and on seeing these signs
the intruder knows what to expect—that he will die as the man {135}
has died whose skull is there, or die as surely as the fish which once
lived in the shell has died, or as the ants which inhabited the nest.
A “hope” in which coral takes the place of the above objects announces
sickness to the trespasser.

A chief’s house and the grounds adjoining it are nearly always “hope,”
and only his wives are allowed to go into them, other intruders will
either die or fall sick. Certain animals and places are also “hope,”
and little altars are built on some of the small islands which make
them sacred. In fact, “hope” is a most extraordinary thing and can be
used in the most eccentric ways. I heard of one place which was once
“hope,” and yet had the “hope” taken away from it for no particular
reason. Then, again, crocodiles are in some parts “hope” and are not
allowed to be killed; but in one of the rivers where crocodiles abound
a youth was killed by them, and the chief took the “hope” off until the
boy’s father had slain a sufficient number to satisfy his anger, and
then back went the “hope.”

Another kind of “hope” was seen by Lieutenant B. T. Somerville, and was
made by putting a festoon of a certain creeper across the entrance to
a cocoa-nut grove, with pieces of the same material along it {136} at
regular intervals, hanging perpendicularly downwards and secured to
the ground. “I had two natives with me at the time,” he states, “and
at first they did not like to land on the islet bearing this mark as
it had been ‘hoped’ by their chief, Bera. They did land eventually,
however, and one of them went under the hope barricade, picked the
central tiny shoot of a large fern—in appearance like the English
hart’s-tongue fern—from which he nibbled a little bit, and then handed
it to the other man who did the same. They assured me that now the hope
would have no effect as long as they did not steal any nuts.”

There seem to be various methods of overcoming “hope,” the chief being
by a payment to the owner of it. He will extort what he considers a
sufficiently large sum of money to take away the ill effects which
would otherwise have followed if the “hope” had been scouted. “Hope”
altars are also built in various parts of the bush as a means of
warding off certain evil spirits. On these food and other things are
placed, such as broken pots, shells, old pipes, and worn-out musical
instruments, and the evil spirit dare not come near them.

 [Illustration 45: A TAPU VIRGIN, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS

 At the launching of a new war canoe in New Georgia, two virgins are
 taken from the tribe; one is publicly sacrificed, and the other kept
 in seclusion from four to five years. During this time an old woman
 acts as guard over her. Should she break the tabu she is put to
 death. The skulls on the sticks are a sign to all that if they molest
 her their heads will be stuck up in the same way. The object in the
 background is a skull-box; the large necklace is of dogs’ teeth, and
 the small necklet of spiral shell ground down; the ear-rings of pieces
 of Tredacua.]

In spite of the fact that the white men scorn these “hopes” and do not
suffer any bad results, {137} it has in no way brought discredit
on them; the belief is quite as strong now as it ever was, but the
natives think that the white man is guarded by a special providence and
so cling to their belief.

There are many peculiar legends relating to monsters living in certain
parts of the bush country and on certain mountains and islands. One
tells of an enormous clam-shell which lives on the summit of Vonggi, a
mountain some sixteen hundred feet high covered to the top with thick
bush. If any native ventured near it the clam-shell would kill and eat
him.

Superstition and ancient custom make up the chief characteristics of
these natives, and though civilisation has made some difference in
their mode of living, they have not marched with the times as the
natives of some of the adjoining islands have. The men still think
it their duty to be ready for attacks and leave their wives to do
the work, and though the chances of sudden attack have practically
ceased and left them without employment, they have not taken up fresh
work. Even the natives who have returned from the sugar plantations
of Queensland, after their three years’ service, do not endeavour to
instil new ideas into their fraternity by example. They simply throw
off all signs of {138} civilisation and become as the others are,
or if anything lazier, but to these men and their term of service in
Australia I will devote a portion of the next chapter. It is no doubt
owing to the old days of slave traffic, or black-birding as it was
called, that the natives here are shy and backward.

Dr. Guppy mentions a peculiar incident relating to the superstitions
of the Solomon islanders regarding the power of thinking evil of a
person and so bringing disaster upon him. He says that when the natives
cut off locks of their hair for him, which he desired for scientific
purposes, they told him that if any sickness or calamity befell them
they would put it down to him.

The fear of evil wishing is very strong amongst them, and when they
are in mourning, and so have to shave their heads, they bury the hair
in order to prevent enemies getting hold of it. Thought transference
is no speculative theory with them, and they have the most unbounded
faith in its power where evil is concerned, but very few seem to think
it can be used for good. They also imagine that certain people possess
an evil eye or can conjure it up on occasions. They often put down the
death of a chief to an evil eye having been cast on him. This sometimes
results in an {139} unfortunate creature being picked out and killed
through suspicion having fallen on him or her. At other times, when the
supposed culprit has not been found, a terrible panic has taken place
and the whole village has been deserted and a new one built. The old
village then becomes “hope,” and no amount of persuasion will induce
the tribe to go back and settle in it, unless, as in one or two cases,
the “hope” is removed by some great chief or medicine man.

Medicine men here, as in most other places, hold unique positions, and
many a smart villain prospers owing to the belief that he has power
over the unseen—to kill or cure at will. Their houses are taboo or
“hope,” the same as a chief’s, and in many villages they are held in
far greater awe than the chief himself.

{141}




PART III

NEW HEBRIDES


 [Illustration 46: BENEATH A BANYAN TREE, MALEKULA ISLAND, NEW HEBRIDES]

{143}




CHAPTER XIV


 Islands that are advancing rapidly—Native houses with modern
 improvements—A horrible method of getting rid of the old men, and
 other burial ceremonies.

There is a remarkable difference between the natives of the New
Hebrides group and any of the inhabitants of the adjoining islands. In
character, disposition, mode of living and religion, they are in many
respects far ahead of their neighbours, and, strange to say, so are
the islands. The soil is better and the climate is more to the liking
of the European, and, owing to the proximity of the islands to Sydney,
they are better served and more up-to-date. Port Vila in Sandwich
Island, the chief centre, is only five days’ sail from that city.

Settlement in the New Hebrides has been going on for some time, and
the white population has nearly doubled itself within the last few
years. In 1901, the French residents and traders far out-numbered the
English, but to-day another tale is {144} told, and British enterprise
and power of colonisation have made a difference in this group; so
much so that they are hardly recognisable, and they only need careful
legislation to enable them to overcome the obstacles mentioned earlier
in this book.

Where dense, uncleared bush grew a few years ago in tangled confusion,
blocking out even the light by its thickness, acres of cultivated
ground can now be seen, which bring to their owners results worthy of
twice the toil that has been expended on them.

The Hebrides is a veritable paradise for the pioneer settler who loves
the wild freedom of island life and is not afraid of work.

A good deal of the prosperity of these islands is undoubtedly
owing to the strenuous efforts of the missionaries, the Australian
Government, and that gigantic trading firm of Messrs. Burns Philp,
who have established a monthly service of steamers, which call at all
the important islands to deliver and take away produce. Throughout
the South Seas they have trading stations, but in New Hebrides their
success has met with better returns than elsewhere, owing to the
greater number of settlers who have gone there and made their homes in
these beautiful islands.

 [Illustration 47: THE RAPIDS, WILLIAMS RIVER, ISLAND OF EROMANGA, NEW
 HEBRIDES]

{145}

The chief industry is, as in the Solomon Islands, copra, but coffee,
maize, tobacco, bananas, pineapples, and many other tropical products,
are being cultivated successfully, and each year shows some new advance
in agriculture; it is safe to say that before long these islands will
not be far behind the West Indies.

Another feature that has assisted the prosperity of this group is
the fact that those natives who have served their three years on the
plantations in Queensland have not gone back to idleness, as the
Solomon islanders have, but, in the majority of cases, have set to work
on a patch of ground of their own, from which they have earned good
money and so have assisted the prosperity of their country.

It is needless to say that with all these changes the ancient customs
of the natives are fast dying out, which in some cases is rather sad;
but, as may be supposed, in others it is a good thing, and the sooner
their worst ceremony, that of burying the old men alive, is wiped out
the better.

Even to-day, in Malekula, this custom, which has prevailed evidently
since the beginning of the race, is only kept alive by the old men; the
younger ones show an absolute distaste for it. {146} Directly a man or
woman shows signs of decrepitude or helplessness, those who are nearest
to that stage themselves tell him that his time has come, and that his
burial will take place on such and such a date.

On the arrival of the day, the grave for the intended victim is dug,
and, in front of a large crowd, the old man is led or carried to it—if
he be too weak to get into it himself. He is then stretched out at full
length, and, whilst incantations are sung, the earth is thrown over
him, and willing hands soon have the ground level and solid above him,
and the old man is left there to die. The spectators of this ghastly
scene then adjourn to a feast, which is to many of them the most
important part of the ceremony.

 [Illustration 48: MOUNT MARION, THE ACTIVE VOLCANO, ISLAND OF AMBRYN,
 NEW HEBRIDES]

In some cases the buried man has had sufficient strength left in him to
upheave the earth and rise out of his grave, and has even attempted to
join the feast, but he has been still considered dead, and no one has
given him food. If he be strong enough and can obtain food for himself,
he is buried again and again, until at last he has to die from pure
exhaustion, if nothing else. Should, however, a very tough customer
be met with, and it is found that he refuses to die, and each time
gets out of {147} his grave, he is strangled before being buried
again; for once his death sentence has been passed it must be carried
out—he is a dead man from that hour and nothing can save him. I may
add that directly the man is buried his property is divided amongst
the villagers, so that if he were allowed to come back he would be a
homeless wanderer, and no one would have anything to do with him.

In deference to the other islands it is only fair to state that
Malekula is the most savage one of the group. From a missionary point
of view the island of Tanna is perhaps the worst, as it is stated
that, after sixty years of labour on this island, the converts to
Christianity can all be counted on the fingers of two hands.

Aoba and Sandwich Islands are both beautiful spots and more favoured
than any of the other islands, when beautiful scenery is required.
There are two fine volcanoes, which add considerably to the interest
of the New Hebrides. One of them is at Ambryn, which almost rivals
Etna, and is generally belching forth fire and fumes and now and then a
heavy stream of lava, which makes it somewhat dangerous—as was proved
not a dozen years ago by an eruption there which played havoc with the
place, absolutely destroyed a whole {148} village, and discoloured the
sea for miles round. The roar of the other one at Tanna can be heard
quite distinctly at Port Resolution. One of the peculiarities is that
an eruption occurs systematically every five minutes, though it is not
a bad one. The walk to the volcano through the dense forest from Port
Resolution is very beautiful, and if one keeps on the weather side of
it, so as to avoid the fumes, a more enjoyable half-hour’s climb cannot
be found. On reaching the top the full view of the enormous chasm is
appalling, and the rugged, torn, and blistered sides, the curling
smoke and fumes, and the great gulf, present a picture rivalling our
worst ideas of the lower regions. The explosion which shakes the whole
mountain puts a finishing touch to the scene.

In spite of their more civilised condition the New Hebrides natives
are intensely interesting, owing to the fact that they can speak
English, and like to boast about their acquaintance with Englishmen
in Queensland, and therefore think it necessary to speak the English
language to show they have been there. This enables a visitor to get
information regarding their customs and ceremonies much more easily
than in the other groups.

 [Illustration 49: A VILLAGE IN SANTO, NEW HEBRIDES

 In the foreground are seated two men, the one on the left with a bow.
 The women behind them have their heads shaved in the usual way, with
 only a mane down the top of the head. On the ground are ordinary
 native pots. The long poles in the thatch are for the purpose of
 keeping it from being blown off, and the poles in front are a defence
 against pigs and dogs, one of which is seen coming round the corner.]


The natives themselves, taking them as a whole, {149} are better built
and of a more striking appearance than those of the Solomon Islands.
They resemble more nearly the Fijian type than any of the inhabitants
of the sister islands.

A peculiarity most noticeable in the villages is that there is greater
cleanliness and order; the houses are mostly built in groups of four
or five, and are low, broad, barn-like huts in which you have to climb
up a few feet and down again in order to gain admittance to the living
rooms. They are built on the ground and not on piles, and each group is
surrounded by a coral wall on which are stuck long bamboo canes. These
take root immediately, as the wall is built when the coral is soft, and
present an interesting sight. The bamboo canes form a fine high fence,
which, unfortunately, in time totally obscures the houses.

A gap in the wall is left for the residents of these queer compounds to
pass backwards and forwards. Between the houses and the wall a large
cleared space is left where the pigs, the dogs, and the babies play.

The interiors of the houses are not quite as pleasant or artistic. The
whole place inside is blackened with smoke and soot, owing to the smoke
from the fire having no proper outlet. The {150} fire is usually lit
as near the door as possible, but as the doors are very low the smoke
has first to fill the room before it finds its way out. The thatch
being thicker than is usual there is very little room for escape in
that quarter. Bamboo is used chiefly to build the frames on which to
thatch the grass. Forked sticks of a stouter material bear the main
weight of the roof, flimsy bamboo canes are bent right over the ridge
pole about six inches apart, and secured to another stout pole near the
ground, lathes are then run across the bamboo and lashed to them with
fibre, and on this framework the outside of the house is made.

The floors are covered with mats on which the natives squat by day and
sleep at night. Screen mats also divide the interiors of the huts and
cut off the sleeping apartments. A few cooking utensils and worn-out,
soot-begrimed weapons are generally to be seen lying about, but beyond
these articles and the natives themselves, nothing else takes up any
room in these dark abodes.

Each island has its own particular way of building a house, and those
in Malekula are perhaps the best and most modern. Light is admitted to
them through a window at the back, which is boarded up at night or in
rough weather.

 [Illustration 50: CHIEF’S HOUSE, AMBRYN, NEW HEBRIDES

 Round these houses are dry-built stone or coral walls. I saw more huts
 on this island encompassed in this way than on any other. The large
 shell hanging from the pole is a sign of a tapu.]

{151}

The usual custom of natives to build near a fresh-water stream is not
carried out in the New Hebrides; they seem to object to fresh water and
seldom, if ever, drink it.

Occasionally they bathe in the sea; but here again they show a marked
difference to the other islanders, for they seldom swim except when
necessity compels them to do so, and so averse are they to water that
they will actually walk an extra half-mile to avoid having to wade or
swim through a creek.

The sanitary arrangements of the village are, of course, conspicuous
by their absence, and were it not for the crowd of dogs, pigs, and
fowls, no visitor could go near them. The work of the missionaries,
however, has done much to improve the home life of the natives, and in
many villages their influence shows itself in the better construction
of the houses and the greater neatness of the villagers; and much
as the searcher after “original conditions” might object to these
improvements, he must declare that from an artistic point of view, if
from no other, these villages surpass those where the missionaries have
not been able to make headway.

The blending of savage ideas and European {152} methods makes a
quaint and interesting picture. A thatched squat native house with a
neat coral path is infinitely better than the muddy, sloppy places of
the past, and a hut where one can see when inside it, and where one
is not blinded by the smoking fire, is surely much better than one in
its native condition, smoke-begrimed and smelling, however natural its
former condition was.

The tambu houses are more carefully constructed here, and are thatched
with banana leaves. They are of course much bigger than the living
houses, and are to be seen close to the dancing grounds in each place.
In them are kept all the accessories to the dances, for dancing
plays a more important part in the life of the New Hebridean than it
does elsewhere, and very elaborate grounds, houses, and regalias are
used. But this side of the life we will leave for another chapter,
as to understand it a further insight into their other ceremonies is
necessary.

{153}




CHAPTER XV


 Ancestor worship the religion of the New Hebrides—Temples and strange
 figures, and some sacred dances.

Ancestor worship was undoubtedly the original religion of the New
Hebrideans, and in many islands the present form of worship is based
upon it. According to Mr. Macdonald, a resident in Exate, the followers
of it believe that after death the soul passes through six stages
before it finally dies. When its earthly life is over it goes to the
gate of Hades, which is situated at Tukitaki, at the western extremity
of the island. Here it meets Seritan the cannibal executioner, and his
two assistants Vanas and Maxi. Certain questions are then put by them
to the soul, and if it does not answer them satisfactorily it is passed
on to Maseasi, who cuts out its tongue, splits its head open, and
twists it back. If the questions asked by these officials at the gate
are well answered, then the {154} soul is permitted to go on in peace
through its various stages.

Seritan in olden days was a noted cannibal chief, hence his work now in
Hades seems particularly suitable to his past experience. This idea of
the hereafter has a faint resemblance to the Maori beliefs; they hold
that there are certain stages to be gone through, and the same belief
of questions being asked is adhered to—though their final end, if they
be worthy men and true, is not annihilation, as far as I could gather
from the older chiefs, but a life of pleasure.

The trouble is, however, that they have undoubtedly got their ideas
mixed up—a fault one finds with nearly all the savage races of to-day.

In Efaté there are certain classes of people who are allowed to pass
unquestioned into Hades—those belonging to the Namtaku tribe, and
others who have certain figures carved on their bodies. Why they don’t
all go through this operation and escape the chance of having their
necks broken is a mystery, but they are not the only believers in
certain religious rites who do not bother about testing them.

 [Illustration 51: THE “M’AKI” GROUND AND THE JAWS OF THE SACRED PIGS,
 NEW HEBRIDES]

Modifications of the above belief are also held in other islands,
and in Malekula it is supposed {155} that three stages only are gone
through before the perfect spiritual condition is reached, and that the
soul then fades away into nothingness.

The sacred men of these islands will tell you that they periodically
visit the first stopping-place of the departed souls, and they say
it is a long way under the ground. In this place all the important
affairs of the world are discussed and arranged, and it is from here
that the spirits work and punish those who do not follow the dictates
of the sacred men. These priests or sacred men in this way have gained
a tremendous control over their fellow-men, for superstition is strong
and no native dare disobey a sacred man.

Sacrifices of pig and other foods have to be made to inhabitants of the
under world, and feasts are laid out for them, which they are supposed
to devour when no one is near—a spiritual feast, so spiritual, indeed,
that none but those who believe in these things can see the slightest
signs of any of the food having been touched. Such incredulity,
however, has no effect on the natives, they look at you in a pitying
way when you infer that the food has not been touched—such is belief.

In connection with their religion certain peculiarly shaped stones
are denominated sacred and {156} are said to contain the spirits of
departed relatives. In the case of a chief the stone is placed in a hut
to preserve it from rough weather, and round it are arranged effigies
of the chief, and perhaps of one or two of his nearest relations.

These images, or demits as they are called, are ghastly looking things,
and when one comes suddenly up against them their full horror is
apparent. After death the chief is decapitated and the skull is cleaned
and bleached, and then, with a preparation of clay and fibre, a face
representing his, as it was while he was alive, is modelled on the
bare skull; his peculiarities in feature are emphasised to a degree
bordering on caricature, but they are not meant as caricatures, but are
intended only to bring back to the beholders the characteristic points
of the chief’s face.

 [Illustration 52: A MEMORIAL EFFIGY, MALEKULA, NEW HEBRIDES

 This figure represents a departed chief who has gone to the under
 world and become a “Demit.”

 The figure is made on a framework of wood or bamboo, covered with clay
 and vegetable fibre. The head is the real skull of the chief covered
 in the same way as the body with real hair and beard; the arms, round
 which are pigs’ tusks, are made from a small plant, the root forming
 the hands. One of the reasons the natives have for making figures in
 this way is that the chief may still be able to look upon his friends.
 At the side of the figure is a bundle of sacred pigs’ jaws; in front
 is a priest.]

The body of the effigy is built up on a framework of wood, and covered
with the same preparation of clay and fibre and modelled in a like
manner, but, as a rule, it is seriously out of proportion. When this
imitation body is finished it is coloured in three shades, red, black,
and white (sometimes blue is found on them, but as the natives are
unable to obtain this colour naturally it is only used where the
traders can supply it). Down the trunk of the body long stripes are
made, running {157} vertically or horizontally, and round the legs
bands of these alternate colours are painted. The shoulders and knees
are decorated with grotesque faces, surmounted by tufts of fibre which
often rise to a distance of three or four inches. A bamboo cane is
stuck in each of these tufts, and on the top of it splendid specimens
of boars’ tusks are sometimes to be seen.

The hands of these idols are made from the roots of a sapling, and add
to the weirdness of the picture. Bracelets of boars’ tusks are also
found on some of these effigies.

Other sheds and places of worship contain somewhat different things.
The sacred stone is guarded by nude wooden figures of men and women,
cut in the roughest style and free from ornament. The posts holding up
the shed have also elaborate figures of strangely misshaped heads with
shapeless bodies attached.

But to the more important part of their religion. In every village
there is a “sing-sing” ground laid out—this is the slang term for
it, but it is appropriate. These grounds are kept for dancing, not
the frivolous dancing of the Europeans, but a sacred, awe-inspiring,
religious ceremony. The very idea of frivolity seems wrong in such a
place. {158} The cleared space is surrounded by a dense, dark bush,
and on the edge of the clearing high wooden posts slanting in various
directions are stuck into the ground. These drums, for such they are,
are grotesque things, standing from four to six feet high, with a dark
slit down the centre, and a fearsome face carved on the front; some are
all face and look like terrible nightmares, and each has behind it a
carved stone.

Picture yourself on one of these grounds on a warm moonlight night,
when a dance is to take place. Dense clouds are rolling over the sky
and now and then obscuring the moon or sending fitful shadows across
the bare space; beyond is black bush so thick that it looks like a
weird inferno. You wait and listen, and hear nothing but the roar of
the distant volcano. Presently a crowd of stark naked natives make
their appearance and take up their position each by the side of a drum,
and begin a dull beating noise to call the dancers. In the centre of
the ground is a circle of five or six white poles, some thirty feet
long, bent and crooked and leaning all ways.

 [Illustration 53: DRUM GROVE AT MELE, NEW HEBRIDES

 These drums are made of large tree-trunks, burnt out in the centre
 through the long slot down the middle; both the slot and the round
 openings are sound-holes. The meaning of the designs on the drums is
 unknown. A heavy round drum-stick of wood is used. Every one of the
 drum-groves I have seen appeared to be haunted by an old man or two.
 Round the drums the “M’AKI” ceremony takes place.]

When deserted these “sing-sing” grounds are uncanny enough, but on a
dance night they are worse, and when the drumming commences, which
{159} sounds as if it came from the bowels of the earth, and makes
the flesh of your back feel as if it wanted to come off, the climax
is reached. You become chock-full of the supernatural, and would not
be in the least surprised if the earth opened up and the dancers
appeared amidst flames and smoke. Nothing quite as bad does happen,
but, presently, lights are seen flashing in the bush, and dark objects
holding torches come out and calmly take up their position in the
circle, till nearly a hundred human beings, naked save for paint and
streamers, are moving about.

Suddenly the drumming noise changes to a sort of tattoo, and then a
file of men line up and begin to keep time to the drums with their
feet; slowly at first, and then faster and faster till the very earth
shakes, and the dull thudding echoes through the dark bush. Then a
savage song is heard, a low chanting, and the men begin to whirl round
and round the posts till the eye becomes glazed and the flickering
light from the torches conjures up a thousand things that never happen,
but the drumming, monotonous beating of those wooden images goes on
and the tapping of the feet. The crowd of women over by the bush stand
watching in an almost hypnotic state, their bodies swaying {160}
unconsciously to the beating of the drums and the feet—black naked
women with vermilion-coloured faces, and white, staring, rolling eyes
watching every movement of the dance. Then a sudden dying away of the
drums and the shuffling of the feet and silence. It is weird indeed.

The women step forward, it is their turn now, and a wild scene
commences. More weird and more noisy than ever. Their shrill voices,
mingling with the thumping of the drums and the gruff monotones of the
men, make the bush resound. This is kept up for a long time, and then
suddenly they all rush off and the place is left in darkness.

On the morrow a big feast is held and the chief kills the sacred pigs.
The ceremony attached to this is worth seeing, as it is one of those
customs that are so time-worn that both their significance and original
meaning are lost and only the outward ceremony remains. For this the
natives are highly decorated with flowers and paint, and their frills
and plumes are extra well attended to. After a few preliminary canters
round the dancing ring to drive away the evil spirits, the chief and
sacred men appear, carrying spears. To the accompaniment of drums these
worthies pirouette round the ground. When this exercise is finished
a band of {161} natives face them and sing a wild song. Girls next
appear before the chief, highly be-plumed and be-feathered and with
faces stained bright red. They in their turn dance and sing. Next comes
the procession composed of men only, who carry the pig, which, like
Paddy’s, has a string tied to its leg in case it tries to get away.
The procession goes round the whole circle while the drums are beaten
in a quick tattoo—the squeals of the pig do not in the least affect
these stolid drummers, who ever keep time and never smile. At last,
when the circle is complete, the pig is cast at the feet of the chief,
who spears it with much gusto and then flings the spear away. The pig
is sometimes properly killed afterwards, but it is not considered
necessary. It is then carried away to where the spear, thrown by the
chief, has fallen. This is the way the pig is sacrificed to the sacred
stone. Each stone has to have its pig, so the killing goes on until the
right number has been slain. Then comes the cooking of all the dead
and dying grunters, and the biggest feast of the season is commenced.
So fat is the feast that at least half-a-dozen of those taking part
in it have to be removed and rubbed down by their comrades, or the
women-folk, to save them from death from over-gorging. {162}

There are many other ways of performing these dance and pig ceremonies,
and each island, in fact each village, varies the performance, but
they all begin with a dance and end with a feast, which is the usual
programme for savage functions.

 [Illustration 54: LEAVING SANTO, A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAINS, NEW
 HEBRIDES]

{163}




CHAPTER XVI


 Concerning witchcraft—More about burials—The gentle art of making
 love—The rain-makers.

Superstition and witchcraft are strongly in evidence in the New
Hebrideans, and the natives have more than their share of both. Besides
those things to which I have already alluded, there is a peculiar
idea held in some of the islands that certain sacred men have the
power of killing by witchcraft. The method adopted by them is similar
in many respects to the usual custom, that of making an image of the
man or woman whose death is required, and then doing to it what it is
wished shall happen to the original. In the island of Tanna the method
differs slightly, for here, instead of an image being made, part of
the person’s property is stolen and taken to the sacred man who works
destruction to its late owner, but he must have this property in his
possession, or his maledictions will fail. {164}

The sacred men who are supposed to possess these powers are called
Narak-burners, and they hold their position through being the
possessors of certain stones known as Narak stones, which they, or
their fathers, have at some time found and buried in the vicinity of
their house. Some of these stones are in the British Museum and show no
signs of anything supernatural about them, but the natives hold them in
great dread and reverence.

When a man desires the death of any one, he visits the Narak—he may
only desire to give him a disease, but it is usually death he is after
when calling on the Narak-burner—and brings with him some hair or food
or some particle of clothing belonging to the man he wishes shall
suffer. This he presents to the Narak, who doctors it up and then wraps
it in leaves and burns it over a sacred fire, lit, it is presumed, over
or near the place where the Narak stones are hidden. As the article
begins to burn, so sickness falls upon the owner, who goes on getting
worse until the article is completely turned to ashes; then death comes.

 [Illustration 55: A SACRED MAN, AOBA, NEW HEBRIDES]

Such is the superstition, but of its power I cannot speak. A large
payment of shell-money {165} or pigs has to be made to the Narak-burner
before he starts his work, and if a man hears that his effigy is being
thus dealt with, or fancies it is because he feels sick, he will hurry
off to the “burner” and offer him a bigger price for his freedom than
his enemy has paid for his death. The result of this may be guessed,
and a keen bidding often results; if he be rich he is allowed to live,
but a poor man has no chance.

It is through the fear of Narak burning and evil wishing that the
natives bury their hair when they cut it off, and also take care never
to leave any half-finished food about. They throw all their refuse
into a stream of water, which it is believed removes the power of the
Narak-burner.

There are so many quaint ceremonies connected with the lives of these
natives that a whole volume might be devoted to them alone; and even
then to deal with them all thoroughly the volume would have to be
a big one. In this book I only intend touching on the outskirts of
those which affect their lives most closely, and even then many of the
details must be left out, partly because they can only be explained in
a scientific work, and partly because they are so intricate. The whys
and the wherefores would lead into endless paths. {166}

If a native is rich, the first way he shows it is by changing his name,
and, as in England, money has to be spent for this privilege; in the
New Hebrides it means a feast, and a big one at that. On announcing his
desire for a new name to the chief, and proving that he has the means
of paying for it, the native goes away by himself for a few weeks,
during which time he is considered “duli” and is not allowed to see a
woman, and only permitted to eat certain things, as in the case of the
New Guinea natives when they become _ibito_.

After his seclusion he is known by his new name, and attends the big
religious feast which he himself has provided.

Other ways are found for changing names, and certain natives are
rewarded for their bravery and good deeds by being given a new one, in
much the same way as a man is knighted in England.

The marriage laws are similar to those in the other islands; and pigs
are often given to the parents in exchange for their daughter. The
girl being chosen more often for her working capabilities than for her
beauty.

The burial ceremony and disposal of the corpse vary considerably in
the different islands, but since the introduction of Christianity they
are changing {167} to the ordinary Christian burial. In _Oceania_
the author says that in old days “In Efaté the body was carefully
prepared for burial and then dressed. The burial was accompanied with
much solemnity, and great wailing, and animals were slain in sacrifice
to the dead at the grave. It was supposed that the spirits or essence
of the animals slain would accompany the souls of the deceased to the
spirit-world, the entrance to which was the westermost point of Efaté,
at a place called Takituki.”

“In Malekula,” says Lieutenant Boyle T. Somerville, “a sort of mummy is
made, of which specimens were brought to his ship by a white trader,
who had procured them in exchange for a rifle at the conclusion of a
‘sing-sing.’ They are said to be the effigies of the chief, whose skull
(the only portion retained of all his remains) formed the head. This is
plastered with mud to represent a living face, a body of bamboo twigs
and mud, highly coloured in black, white and red and purple stripes,
forms the figure. On each shoulder a highly conventional face is
moulded, looking to right and left respectively, and in each hand is a
pig’s lower jaw.”

During Mr. Hardy’s travels in these islands, he came across a kind of
graveyard where chiefs were {168} supposed to be buried underground,
and a heap of stones and rocks marked the spots where they lay.

The skull-huts, already alluded to, show that this is still another
form of burial—they are innumerable.

Rain-making is almost as universal as feeding, and every race has its
rain-maker, who, for a consideration, will tap the cloudless sky and
bring torrents of water down to quench the thirst of the dry earth. In
the New Hebrides the rain-maker goes into the forest and there collects
the branches of a certain tree, which he cuts into lengths and lays a
dozen or so of them parallel to each other. He then takes another dozen
and threads them through the parallel ones, forming a kind of flat
basket-work hurdle. Over this contrivance he mutters prayers, and then
buries it in a dried-up creek where the water should be running.

More incantations follow this proceeding, and then heavy stones and
rocks are placed over the rain producer, and the inhabitants all wait
for the rain, which, strange to say, generally comes.

 [Illustration 56: THE STONE “DEMITS,” OR THE SOULS, WITH THEIR
 ATTENDANT WOODEN FIGURES, MALEKULA ISLAND, NEW HEBRIDES.]

There is no lack of faith in these natives, and when once they have
applied to the rain-maker they set to work to make preparation for
the rain, which reminds me of an amusing anecdote I heard in {169}
America. In Belmont there had been a tremendous drought, and the
farmers were in such a fright that they unanimously decided to appoint
a certain day on which rain should be prayed for. On the Sunday chosen,
the farmers, their wives, and families rose early and started off to
church. Just as one party were leaving home a little child of five or
six years old suddenly sprang down from the buggy and cried out for
them to wait a minute, as she disappeared into the house. Every one
wondered what was the matter, and presently, when the child appeared
carrying a great big carriage umbrella, they all burst into roars of
laughter. “Why,” said the father, “you silly child, there’s not a cloud
in the sky.”

For a moment the child looked perplexed. “But, daddy,” she said in a
tone of wonder, “aren’t we going to pray for rain?”

The natives of the New Hebrides are very much like this little girl,
and perhaps their faith brings about the results they desire. Who
knows? Sometimes, however, they get more than they desire.

One writer gives an amusing description of what happened in 1890, at
Ambrym, an island adjoining Malekula, when rain was asked for.

“Make us rain,” said the natives to the {170} rain-maker, “or our yams
will not grow and we shall starve.”

The wise man consented, and after the machine, described above, was
duly placed in a dry water-hole, the rain came down in torrents and
did not cease for forty-eight hours. It was so severe that the entire
surface of the harbour was fresh to the depth of three or four inches;
and the water-hole, where the machine had been placed, had ten feet of
water in it; whilst the yams in the plantation were being literally
washed out of the ground. So great was the consternation of the
natives that they were beside themselves with fear, and rushing to the
rain-maker implored him to stop the rain. This, however, was no easy
task, as the old man explained, because his machine was buried under
ten feet of rushing water. Being unable to dive he could not get it
out, and until it was fished out the rain would continue. The scene can
be better pictured than described. At last in desperation the aid of
the shore natives, who are good divers and swimmers, was sought, and
soon the machine was brought out of the creek, and the rain stopped
immediately afterwards.

The most remarkable thing about these and like superstitions is that
more often than not they come {171} off as the sages predict they
will; and when once one does there is no longer any room for doubt, in
the minds of those who wish to believe. That incident of rain-making
in 1890 will be talked about for years, and the name of the rain-maker
will be handed down to future generations.

{172}




CHAPTER XVII


 Native clothing and ornaments—Their arts and industries, their canoes
 and weapons, and their way of fishing.

In Malekula, Efaté, and Tanna the natives wear as many adornments and
cram as many ornaments on their bodies as they can, and since this
weakness of theirs has been found out, both visitors and missionaries
trade on it, when endeavouring to get on the right side of them.
Everybody going to these places nowadays takes with him a good supply
of trumpery adornments, and exchanges them for native things of ten
times their value. Ivory rings and shell rings were the most precious
ornaments the New Hebrideans originally wore, but the less wealthy
covered themselves with armlets, fibre belts, flowers, and if they
could get a comb to stick in their hair they fancied themselves
immensely superior to those who had not such a mark of distinction.
Trade beads are now added to their possessions, and they work them into
most artistic {173} patterns and wear them round their necks. A
small mirror will often be seen hanging from a native’s ear-ring, and
many other strange combinations of savagedom mixed with civilisation
are met with in these islands to-day. A native wearing a calico
loin-cloth and a top-hat poised on his woolly head and kept in position
by a string round his chin is not an uncommon sight. Another may be
seen wearing a pair of knee-breeches, a tennis shirt, with the collar
turned up, and a trader’s hat. Another, perhaps dispensing with the
breeches, will wear only the hat and shirt. Altogether they seem to do
their very best to imitate an English clown, though of course they are
not aware of the fact.

 [Illustration 57: OLD CANNIBAL CHIEF WHOM THE ARTIST MET ON THE ISLAND
 OF AOBA, NEW HEBRIDES.]

To meet a burly native with elaborate ear-rings, an ivory spike through
his nose, and his face well marked, with a collar and dickey hanging
round his neck, seems absolutely ridiculous, but the proud possessor
of such a costume will strut about as if he were the best-dressed
man in the islands. As may be supposed they look particularly coy,
some of them, and only require a banjo and a pair of trousers to make
ideal Christy Minstrels. The humour of their costumes, needless to
say, does not strike them, and their less-clothed neighbours look on
them with envy, whilst the girls bill and coo at the {174} sight of
them—such is fashion. A tappa loin-cloth, similar to the Fijian cloth,
was originally the fashion amongst the women in parts of this group of
islands, prior to the coming of the white man, and it was held round
the waist by a belt of fibre and ornamented with coloured or stained
grass. But, back in the bush, the married women were the only ones
who wore anything that could be really called a costume, the younger
women’s attire being only flimsy grass mats made of streamers, and tied
round their waists—which from a point of decency would be equal to a
piece of mosquito netting. The men were always clothed to a certain
extent, owing to a peculiar belief they hold that they must not be seen
naked.

Feathers play a prominent part in head dress on special occasions, such
as at the dance I have already mentioned. The hair is never shaved off
the men’s heads but left to grow wild, and some of them possess very
fine beards and moustaches, but all cannot boast such growth. I have
seen a good few with moustaches like boarding-house tooth-brushes.

Tattooing is not common, but cicatrices are, and most men bear curious
marks on their bodies. These are made when they are quite young by
cutting a pattern on the skin and then continually {175} removing
the scab until a deep kind of scar is formed. It takes a long time to
become perfect, but when it is they are exceedingly proud of it.

 [Illustration 58: TYPE OF MAN FROM THE ISLAND OF TANNA, NEW HEBRIDES]

Paint is sometimes used for decorating their faces and bodies in
place of tattooing, but it is very ugly and disfigures both the men
and women. Red, black, and white are the chief colours used, and no
particular design characterises the work; the painter generally puts
what his fancy suggests, and no meaning is attached to it, as is
generally the case with the native markings.

The women are the workers here as elsewhere, and at basket-making and
mat-plaiting they are splendid hands. Clothes used to be made by them
and bartered for food to villagers on the coast. The mats are made from
fibre, which in its turn is made from the pandanus leaf by cutting it
into long shreds with a piece of shell and then allowing it to dry.
Most of the mats have some sort of a pattern on them, and are now
greatly prized by collectors. In the New Hebrides they are put on the
floor of the huts, and are also used as screens to cut off the sleeping
apartments from the day room. Some more artistic than others are
fringed with feathers or tassels of discoloured grass. These, however,
are generally made to sell to the tourist. {176}

Baskets are also manufactured in some of the islands. Pottery, however,
is a forgotten art here, and a legend accounting for the number of
old and broken pieces which may still be found in the bush is worth
relating.

The natives believe that their islands at one time in the world’s
history were brought up out of the sea by a beautiful goddess, Li Maui
Tukituki; they say that when the world was quite new she was carrying
home some water in jars, but, owing to the rocky state of the land she
spilled the water, which made her so angry that she threw the jars at
the ground and in that way punished it and made it still. From that day
to this it has not moved. So tradition says, and these broken pieces of
pottery are known as the water jars of Li Maui Tukituki and are held in
great reverence by the natives.

 [Illustration 59: FINISHING OFF A CANOE, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

The tools used for hut-building and canoe-building are made of stone,
shell, and iron, but there are very few of the real stone adzes to be
found now, except in the museums, as the trade articles have taken
their place and are in use all over the islands. Exactly the same
kind of canoe is made here as in New Guinea, and the same methods of
making it are adopted. The largest canoes are made in Malekula, from
whence the natives go {177} long voyages to trade with other
islands, and, I suppose, in the old days went hunting heads; some of
the canoes are made out of the trunks of the bread-fruit trees. The
poles supporting the outrigger are run through holes in the side of the
canoe and lashed into position. There are no fine lines in the curves
of these boats, they are roughly made and have very little decoration
about them. The outrigger itself is just a heavy log of wood pointed at
each end.

The sails of the larger boats are now made of trade canvas, though they
were originally made of matting. The rowers or paddlers sit in the boat
upon the cross beams of the outrigger poles which pass through the
gunwale. The steersman sits right aft, and can swing the boat round
with marvellous rapidity.

On Rano, a little island near Malekula, are three or four very fine
specimens of large war canoes lying on the beach. I mention this, as it
has been said by many writers, who have visited these parts, that the
New Hebrides natives never possessed large canoes, whereas these are
far larger than any in the Solomons, but, judging by their appearance,
they have not been in use for ages and ages, nor can the natives
there tell anything of their history. {178} There is, of course, a
possibility that they may have been stranded there in a storm, but it
is not likely, as the stern of one of them is protected by a shed,
which looks as if it had always been its resting-place, also, the
whole construction is of the Hebridean style. The larger of the two is
considerably over thirty feet from stem to stern, and the bow rises up
to a height of over ten feet, and is made of a solid dug-out log curved
and tapering off to a point, where evidently a figure-head of some sort
has been, but now only a rudimentary bird’s head remains, and suspended
from the bird’s neck are a pair of boar’s jaws.

The boat prow is ornamented and boxed and laced with sinnet. The depth
inside allows more room than is usually found in like structures, and
to get this depth the sides have been built up by lacing planks to each
other in a curious and ingenious way. The crew to man one of them must
have consisted of thirty or forty men at the very least. The stem of
the canoe is a high peaked one, curving gently outwards and elaborately
carved.

The outrigger is an enormous log, and is attached in the ordinary way,
though, of course, owing to its great size, nearly a dozen pegs help to
keep the poles in position.

 [Illustration 60: OLD WAR CANOES, NEAR MALEKULA, NEW HEBRIDES]

{179}

Though reliable information regarding these relics cannot be obtained,
it is evident that they are highly prized, as periodically they are
covered with freshly fallen leaves to keep the sun from warping them.
They are evidently the last of their kind, and show signs of having
been occasionally used as sailing canoes with a great mat sail,
probably after the style of the smaller craft of similar construction
often seen around Pentecost Island. Rano Island, where these boats are,
is a pretty little place with a fine beach running up on one side to a
densely wooded shore. The village lies back behind a line of scrub, and
is completely hidden from the view of the sea. This method of building
villages is common in the New Hebrides, and is done to enable the
inhabitants to get the first sight of an attacking party.

The weapons of war used by these islanders differ in many respects from
those in the other groups. Here the bow and arrow play a conspicuous
part in warfare and in hunting. The bows are between six and eight feet
long on some islands, whilst at Malekula they are seldom more than five
feet; most of them are very roughly made, neither the manufacturers nor
owners seemed to mind if the curve of the bow was exact or not. {180}
But in Malekula, again, both the workmanship and artistic taste are
more advanced.

The arrows are similar all over the group, and measure about three feet
in length; they come to a sharp point at the end, which is charred to
make it harder. They are each composed of a piece of hard wood pointed
at the end, about a foot long, let into a cane shaft and bound at the
junction with grass.

On Aoba Island the points of the arrows are very long and are composed
of sharpened human bone. It was the custom in the old days to poison
the arrows before use, but what method was adopted is not known,
possibly they were dipped in rotten fish or human flesh, the favourite
method of many savages.

The arrow used for fishing is a much longer one and has three prongs,
others of different design are used for shooting birds.

 [Illustration 61: HAVANNAH HARBOUR, RATHMOY, NEW HEBRIDES]

Fish, birds, and a few small animals form the only wild diet for
which hunting is necessary. Neither lines nor hooks are used in the
New Hebrides for fishing, they scorn this method, in spite of the
demonstrations by the whites, and the greater chance they would have of
securing big catches. Sometimes, however, they use a small hand-net,
but {181} only for small fish, and they are not keen on its
use. They stick to their spears, and as a rule they choose a bright
moonlight night when the tide is going out, and armed with spears, bows
and arrows, they crowd down to the reefs with torches, and dart in and
out of the pools where fish are sure to be; then, with a sharpness that
is almost incredible, the spears are seen to dart into the water, and
come out again an instant after with fine, struggling fish on them. It
is great sport, and there is little wonder they enjoy it. Both sight
and feeling are brought into play during this pastime. The large fish
can be seen and are speared easily, but others which just skim past
the fisher’s legs are not as quickly taken, and try the skill of the
natives. Others occasionally need a deal of chasing, for once a native
has felt his prey he will not rest until he has secured it. He seems to
be untiring, and does not stop fishing until he has quite a good haul.

Turtle fishing is not gone in for much, as the natives are
superstitious about the turtle, and civilisation has not yet been
able to dispel their fears. One of the chief ones is that the eggs
are sacred and may not be eaten. But one by one their superstitions
are going, for they see how the {182} white man prospers in spite
of scorning all their sacred ideas, and that now and then makes
them courageous enough to break through the barrier, and when once
a superstition has been found untrue, they are not slow in testing
another, if by challenging it they can see any gain for themselves.

 [Illustration 62: PASSING THE REEF, AOBA, NEW HEBRIDES]

{183}




CHAPTER XVIII


 The cultivation of copra—The labour traffic; when slavery really
 existed, and the traffic in natives of to-day.

Copra is the staple industry of the New Hebrides, as they say in the
geography books, but the output of it is about as reliable as the
rainfall, for the supply depends not, as might be expected, on the
demand, but on the whim of the natives; if they feel industrious, or
are hard pressed for tobacco and provisions, they will go into the bush
and bring in a sufficient quantity to meet their needs; but as a rule
they will only collect it from their own particular trees near their
village and will not go far afield, where they could get double the
amount for half the labour.

Cocoa-nut palms grow in patches all over the islands, and particularly
along the coast, and they make a charming picture viewed from the sea,
with their swaying trunks, and the quaint cluster of leaves at the
top: storm-tossed as they are, owing to {184} being top-heavy, they
all lean in one direction, the way the wind blows strongest, and give
the islands a wild appearance. The rustle of their leaves as one walks
beneath them makes a strange noise, and the falling of the nuts on a
windy day is a thing one has to be careful to avoid, as a good-sized
nut would seriously injure, if not kill, the person on whom it fell.

I have seen a natural grove of these trees nearly a mile long; the
dark stems and sage-green leaves against a blue sky, a bright yellow
road underneath which scintillated in the sun, and at its far end was
all blurred by the heat which rose as heat does from a stove making
everything quiver, presenting a beautiful picture not easily forgotten.

All along the coast of Malekula and Tanna the cocoa-nuts grow in
abundance. At Samari, New Guinea, there is one giant tree standing by
two others and away from the rest, the height of which has been the
means of many a sovereign changing hands. For the first thing a new
chum, fresh trader, or captain is asked is to guess its height, and few
ever guess it correctly, for a more deceptive-looking tree was never
born. It grows just behind the village and towers over everything, and
is a landmark that guides many a wanderer by land and sea.

 [Illustration 63: THE ISLAND OF SAMARI, BRITISH NEW GUINEA]

{185}

The copra trade is of course carried on all over these and the
adjoining islands, but one sees more of it going on in the New Hebrides
than in the Solomons or New Guinea.

Copra is the white of the cocoa-nut and is not eaten by the natives at
all; all they do with the nuts is to drink the milk and use the fibre.
Nearly everything out there is made either of the leaves or fibre,
and even the trunks of the tree come in very handy for manufacturing
articles. When gathering copra the natives scale the trees to get at
the nuts, and having collected a good supply they sit down, break them
open, and lay them out to dry in the sun.

The oil of the cocoa-nut is chiefly made in England and America,
and the only process the nut goes through in the islands is that of
drying. When the nuts have been collected they are split in halves very
carefully with an axe, and then the halves are laid out in the sun.
Very soon the heat loosens the kernel, which comes away and is then
broken up into pieces. It is again put in the sun on mats, where it
remains until it is thoroughly dried; then it is collected in sacks and
sold by weight. Some traders, however, go in for making cocoa-nut oil,
but not many, and if they do, a different process {186} has to be gone
through. The nut, instead of being split open, has the husk cracked on
a sharp pointed stake, it is then torn off and the inside split in two.
Next the kernel is scraped out on an iron scraper, which is attached
to a stool on which the native squats during the operation, and the
white part drops from the scraper into a vessel underneath, and is then
put into a cask to rot, after which it is pounded and made into a pulp
and placed at the end of a tilted trough—a hollowed-out log or old
canoe—until all the oil runs out of it. This oil is then strained and
put into casks.

The stench of a copra boat is proverbial, and this, without the copra
bugs, is enough to make one keep clear of them as much as possible.
Each trader has his copra shed and drying ground, and when Burns
Philp’s trading boats call, the sacks of copra are taken out by the
resident trader’s “boys” and again sold, this time to be shipped home
for further handling. When the oil is extracted in England, nearly
double the quantity is obtained from the same amount of nuts, and the
refuse is made into cakes for cattle.

 [Illustration 64: A TRADER RECEIVING COCOA-NUTS, AOBA, NEW HEBRIDES]

When the trading steamers come it is quite an event in the monotonous
life of many of the small traders. Mails and provisions are sought with
an {187} eagerness that is delightful, for when a man has talked
nothing but native languages, and seen nothing but black men for weeks,
these visits are naturally the important event, and a newspaper or two,
if such luxuries can be found, no matter how old, are seized on by
traders as if they were gold.

Copra is practically the only industry that flourishes without
artificial aid. Even that is now being helped along, as the natives see
there is money in it, and some of the thrifty chiefs are making their
men plant the trees and look after them.

Traders and settlers now have plantations of coffee, bananas, and a
few other profitable products, as I have already mentioned, and this
industry is beginning to be successful. Taros and yams are cultivated
by the natives, and require a good deal of attention, and so nearly
all the work is left to the women. Yams vary from about the size of a
small marrow to a much larger affair. The “Chief’s Yam” is pale pink in
colour, and the ordinary ones are like a white mealy potato. In taste
they resemble a cross between an artichoke and a potato. Nearly all
the villages possess a yam-house, which is a sort of platform made of
bamboo with a thatched roof over it; the yams are hung from the top or
lie on the platform to dry. {188}

There is a kind of arrowroot which grows wild in the bush, besides a
few other native vegetables, but the latter are not of much account
unless they are cultivated.

The knowledge of agriculture learned by some of the natives who have
returned from Queensland comes in useful. Sometimes evidences of it are
to be seen here and there, but it is a lamentable fact that they do not
make better use of their opportunities.

Whilst in Queensland they work well, especially the women, and nowadays
there is no difficulty experienced in getting labour from these
islands. When the labour boat calls, the recruiting agent is soon able
to fill his vacancies, and the men he brings back laden with goods make
an excellent bait for others.

When engaging the natives a small quantity of money in advance is, I
believe, paid to them as an inducement to go, and then they sign on
for two, three, or more years to work at the Queensland Sugar Refining
Company’s places at Bundaberg, Mackay, and elsewhere on the Queensland
coast.

When there, they live chiefly in compounds, and seem to enjoy the
change of life. Their chief duties are to cut the sugar-cane, stack
it, and put {189} it on the trolleys, which carry it to the refinery
works.

 [Illustration 65: COPRA BOYS OFF TO THE SHORE, NEW HEBRIDES]

The tremendous heat of these fields is beyond description, owing to the
number of the canes.

Many of the natives who have gone for a term of three years become so
fond of the life that they remain on for much longer periods. Many
have been known to petition the Queensland Government to be allowed to
remain in the country altogether. They mix up with natives from all the
islands, and intermarry in quite a friendly way. If by chance a native
of Malekula happened to be left, on his return, in the Solomon islands
by mistake, he would probably be made into mincemeat: but abroad they
get on very well together.

The labour trade in New Guinea was stopped some years ago, partly by
Governor Macgregor, and partly through the natives’ objection to work.
In this trait they resemble the Fijians, and consider work is a form of
slavery and so beneath them.

There is very little real affection between the natives, they part from
one another when going to Queensland with hardly any show of regret.
Sometimes when a woman is going her companions cry, but such scenes are
exceptional.

On their return, however, things are very {190} different, for they
come laden with new and interesting goods and money.

The chief immediately appropriates all the best of these articles, and
by so doing confers a great honour on the home-comer. The returned
one’s relatives then swarm round him, and each takes what he or she
fancies; and the welcoming party, consisting of fellow-tribesmen,
receive their little lot for having welcomed the returned one home.
The remainder of the goods are taken to their owner’s shed, where they
probably remain a few days. Other claimants soon come forward, so that
in less than a week the hut is empty of all save the worker and his
three years’ experience.

In the old days the labour traffic, or “black birding” as it was
called, was one of the most disgraceful trades ever carried on by
British subjects. So bad did it finally get that the Government stepped
in, and warships were kept on the lookout for these slave-traders,
and eventually, after a lengthy period and, strange to say, much
opposition, the labour traffic was made into an honest business.

 [Illustration 66: THE “BLACKBIRDERS.” THE LABOUR TRADE IN THE SOLOMONS]

The method adopted by the early kidnappers was to fit out a schooner
in Australia in much the same way as a slave-boat, with a large hold
arranged with tiers of platforms, on which the natives slept {191}
at night. The owners would start out, having secured orders from
the Queensland sugar-planters for so many natives at so much per head,
and with these signed orders they would visit the islands. At first
some of them, according to reports, did try persuasion, and even went
so far as to barter with the chiefs for a certain number of natives,
but if this failed, as it often did, they simply went ashore and
carried off every man or woman they could lay hold of, rowed them out
to the ship, and then literally pitched them into the hold. Others they
would entice on board by offering to give them presents, and when once
on board they never saw the shore again.

During the commission of inquiry into the ways of these slave-dealers
some ghastly facts were brought to light, not only on the part of the
dealers, but also of the planters, particularly in Fiji where many of
the natives were sold. Here it came out that two Englishmen, who were
in the habit of brutally ill-treating the natives, once overstepped the
mark by tying a woman to a tree and thrashing her, and afterwards they
rubbed the juice of the Chili pepper into the wounds. This was quite an
ordinary form of punishment; but when they cut the same woman’s toes
off, the natives banded {192} themselves together, burned down the
whole plantation, and killed the planters’ children. The two planters,
sad to relate, escaped.

But those days are passed now, and the planters are very different men,
and live their lives in peace and tranquillity, and many of them treat
the natives so well that they will do anything for them.

 [Illustration 67: A YAM SHED ON THE ISLAND OF TIERRA ESPIRITU SANTO,
 NEW HEBRIDES]

{193}




CHAPTER XIX


 A short sketch of the missionary work in the South Seas—Concerning
 John Williams, James Chalmers, and others.

I can do no better than conclude this short sketch of the three most
important groups of the South Sea islands by touching on the work and
lives of those brave fellows the missionaries, who have left all the
comforts of their English homes—their best friends and everything else
that was dear to them—to teach the gospel of their Master and bring
peace and happiness to these wild savages.

It is an easy thing to sneer at these “Gospel punchers” as they are so
often called “out west.” But in spite of all the little things against
them, one cannot help asking: Is it not through the work of the best of
them that we are to-day able to go amongst these savages?

The most bigoted unbeliever if he thinks, and if he knows the sort of
lives that many of these pioneers have led, must acknowledge their
bravery, {194} even if he doubts their beneficial influence; but only
the most ignorant could do that.

Mercenary reasons have always been assigned to account for the
presence of the missionary in savage lands and all over the world,
and particularly in New Zealand, one hears tales of the way the early
missionaries piled up the gold. In Australia the same stories are told,
but there was little in these savage South Sea islands to attract the
seeker for gold at the time missionaries first began their work, for
whatever they made would be at such a risk that it would not be worth
their while.

In Australia and New Zealand, of course, there is a difference, in the
latter place particularly, for there the Maoris were owners of large
tracts of valuable land, and, undoubtedly, one or two of the lukewarm
missionaries were tempted and fell.

One story I was told by an old Maori of a certain missionary is worth
relating, as his acts rather upset the work of many honest men who were
really trying to do good to these noble savages.

“Your clergyman be all right,” said the old man, when I mentioned
missionary work. “He teach us about God, but He too greedy. He want all
the Maori got.” {195}

“Nonsense,” I said; “who told you that yarn?”

A smile went round the little crowd as the old man glanced at his
friends. “Mr. —— he told us to look to God and we looked, while we
looked Mr. —— took our land. Then one day he come to us and he say,
‘God wants more land,’ and we gave him more land. Then some time soon
he came again and he say, ‘God wants cattle to put on the land.’ And we
give him cattle. Then he say, ‘God wants sheep.’ And we give him sheep.
Then long time after he come again and he say, ‘God want money to keep
the cattle and the sheep.’ But we had no money and so we had no more
God.”

It is acts like these, committed by a few of the black sheep, that
have made the bushmen, the cattlemen, and the traders sneer at the
missionary, and in their ignorance they have condemned the whole for a
part.

The trader and the kidnapper of the South Seas have for years fought
tooth and nail against the missionaries, and it is they who have spread
wild tales of the misconduct and strange practices of these noble men.
They had an end in view, as they knew their worst foe was not the
savage but the {196} missionary; it is the missionary who has been the
means of stopping the ghastly trade in black men; it is the missionary
again who has seen that the native was dealt with fairly; and these are
the sins he has committed and can never be forgiven.

As early as 1796 the London Missionary Society, then the Missionary
Society, undertook the work of sending men to these islands in the hope
of winning their inhabitants to better lives. At that time the lives
they were living were as bad, if not worse than those of savage beasts,
and the publication of Captain Cook’s _Voyages_ in these islands
aroused men of Christian feeling, and was the means of the Society
sending out men to Tahiti; most of whom eventually died of sickness or
were butchered by the natives.

For years these men and others worked their hardest against fearful
odds, and for ten years they made little or no progress. Reports show
that in 1813 one Tahitian had become a Christian. But this was the
beginning, and during the next few years progress was as rapid as it
had been slow before. Eventually the king of the island acknowledged
the Christian belief, and set to work to destroy the heathen gods.

 [Illustration 68: THE ARTIST’S GUIDE, ON MALEKULA, NEW HEBRIDES]

The adjacent islands were next approached, and {197} the Tahitian
Missionary Society was formed with the avowed object of devoting all
its energies to the conversion of the natives of these islands. Amongst
its teachers the Society had a large body of natives, and it was not
only assisted in this way but financially also by the very men who a
few years before would have nothing to do with it.

Then came one of the greatest of the great men to these islands;
John Williams, who was not only a splendid worker but a magnificent
organiser. He soon had a boat fitted out in which he was able to visit
the adjoining islands; finally confining his labours to New Guinea and
the New Hebrides.

In 1823 Williams discovered Raratonga, an island in the Hervey group,
and he seems to have devoted more of his time to the natives of this
island than any other. It was his island, “dear Raratonga,” as he
always called it. The population of it when he landed he estimated as
about 7000, and in less than a dozen years he wrote of them in the
following way:—

“I cannot forbear drawing a contrast between the state of the
inhabitants when I first visited them, and now in 1834. In 1823 I
found them all heathens, in 1834 they were all professing Christians.
At the former period I found them with idols and {198} Maraes; these
in 1834 were destroyed, and in their stead there were three spacious
and substantial places of Christian worship, in which congregations
amounting to 6000 persons assembled every Sabbath day. I found them
without a written language, and left them reading in their own tongue
the wonderful works of God.”

And again he said—

“In reference to the island generally, it may be observed that the
blessings conveyed to them by Christianity have not been simply of a
spiritual character, but that civilisation and commerce have invariably
followed in her train.”

Succeeding this noble man in the islands were men of fine characters,
the Revs. William Gill, E. W. Krause, and Messrs. Pitman and Buzacott,
and then in 1867 came the man whose sterling good qualities will never
be forgotten—James Chalmers, or “Tamate,” the name by which he was
always known by the natives.

“Tamate” was bred and born in Scotland, and it was there he grew
muscular and learned to love open-air life. Quite as a youth he became
enthusiastic to devote his life to missionary work in savage lands; but
subsequent events, and probably his companions, who were young men keen
on {199} mischief and adventure, helped to make him forget his early
aspirations. In fact, in that splendid biography of his written by
Cuthbert Lennox, it is stated that young Chalmers’ religious ideas went
through a period of uncertainty, and it was not until 1859, when he was
eighteen years of age, that he had occasion to remember his early vow.

It was during a great religious revival, which was bringing in
thousands of converts in Scotland, that Chalmers was persuaded to
attend one of the meetings. This meeting he himself said that he and
his friends had previously determined to do all in their power to
upset. The result of it was that the true James Chalmers was roused,
and from that hour he never wavered in his determination to teach the
gospel to savages.

For years he worked steadily away at his studies, and in 1861 he
was appointed to a position in the Glasgow City Mission. His good
work brought him recognition, and finally he applied to the London
Missionary Society for a position as missionary. The application was
accepted, and Chalmers then went into training and was ordained as a
missionary in 1865. He sailed almost immediately afterwards in the
missionary boat _John Williams II._ for Raratonga island. {200}

Prior to leaving England James Chalmers married, and to his wife he
gives the credit of half the successes of his life. The passage out to
the South Seas was a terrible one, as the following extract shows:—

 Whilst still in the English Channel the vessel encountered a terrific
 storm, memorable as being that in which the _London_ was lost. Three
 passengers were thrown out of their bunks, the pilot was knocked
 insensible, the compass binnacle was damaged, the whale-boat was
 carried away, and the seamen were constrained to ask the missionaries
 to pray for a change of wind. With difficulty the _John Williams II._
 made the Portland Roads, and escaped the fate of some twenty-one
 vessels which foundered in the storm.

But this was only the beginning of the trials of that journey. Another
storm met them in the Bay of Biscay, and a third one off the Cape of
Good Hope, but they reached Adelaide eventually, and were there able to
rest.

On the 21st of August the missionary ship which was to carry them to
the islands left Sydney, and was in less than a fortnight high and dry
on a reef, but she did not become a total wreck. She was taken back
to Sydney for repair, leaving there again on the 15th of November, to
become a total wreck on the 8th of January; her passengers were landed,
minus all their belongings, on an almost unknown {201} and uninhabited
island. The notorious _Bully Hayes_, however, rescued them from this
spot and took them to Samoa. Eventually James Chalmers and his wife
reached Raratonga safely after a voyage extending over seventeen
months—the passage now takes about six weeks.

“Tamate’s” life in the South Seas was a life of sheer hard work, but
he always felt, and properly so, that he was making headway. At the
beginning of his career at Raratonga he set to work on the young men,
as he thought in them lay the future hopes of the civilisation of the
islands. When one knows the risks he ran in going back into the bush,
where white men were so dreaded that they were often shot on sight, one
cannot help feeling that a special providence was looking after him. He
took no half measures and made few concessions, but went boldly to work
at the start as he intended to go on to the end.

Many of the natives had been in the habit of fancying that the
missionaries were weak men, but in “Tamate” they met one who was their
equal in most things and could beat them at many.

As a sportsman and a man of pluck he immediately won their hearts, in
fact every one who {202} came in contact with him speaks of him as a
Man before all else.

One missionary said at the court in Sydney that, in his dealings with
the natives, he remembered before all else that he was an Englishman,
then a man, and lastly a missionary; but in “Tamate” every one
recognised the Man.

From Raratonga Chalmers worked diligently amongst all the adjacent
islands, and when later he had his yacht he was able to extend his
operations and win many of the worst savages to better ways, and
by joining in with the other missionaries some splendid work was
accomplished. Throughout he saw the need of native teachers, and it
was this branch of the work he set himself to push on, with the result
that now there are native teachers and preachers in every island in the
Pacific.

The chief trouble with which he and other missionaries had to contend
was the climate; the unhealthy districts they had to visit often laid
them up for weeks at a time. Finally Tamate’s wife, after a long and
distracting illness, died and left him broken-hearted, for through all
his difficulties she had been his mainstay. She died at sea on the 25th
of October 1900. Her end was a very sad and disappointing one, as is
shown by a letter Chalmers {203} wrote to one of his friends at the
time. “We had dreamt of a little rest together in a cottage out of
London somewhere, before we crossed the flood. We shall dream no more,
she waits on the other side, as she said ‘I shall be waiting for you
all.’”

It was not long she had to wait either, for on the 7th of April of
the following year James Chalmers was massacred in the Aird River
district, a part of the islands where he was not well known. The
following account of the massacre was written by the Rev. A. E. Hunt,
who accompanied His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony
on a punitive expedition. “The _Niue_ (Chalmers’ yacht) anchored off
Risk Point on the 7th of April, and a crowd of natives came off. As it
was near sunset Tamate gave them some presents, and made signs that
they were to go away and the next day he would visit them ashore. At
daylight the next morning a great crowd of natives came off and crowded
the vessel in every part. They refused to leave, and in order to
induce them to do so Tamate gave Bob, the Captain, orders to give them
presents. Still they refused, and then Tamate said he would go ashore
with them, and he told Tomkins (his right-hand man) to remain on board.
The latter declined and went ashore with Tamate, followed by {204}
a large number of canoes. When they got ashore the whole party were
massacred and their heads cut off. The boat was smashed up, and the
clothing, etc., distributed. All the bodies were distributed and eaten.”

Chalmers evidently felt that his end was coming, though it cannot be
supposed he knew how it would come. A few weeks before his death he
wrote to a friend: “Time shortens, and I have much to do. How grand
it would be to sit down in the midst of work and hear the Master say,
‘Your part is finished, Come.’”

Some time before Chalmers’ death Williams and many other missionaries
were massacred; in fact it is in this way most of them have died, but
their work will always remain as a memento. As Robert Louis Stevenson
said, when bunching the good and bad missionaries together:

“With all their gross blots, with all their deficiency of candour,
honour, and of common sense, the missionaries are the best and most
useful whites in the Pacific.”

 [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

 MAP ACCOMPANYING “THE SAVAGE SOUTH SEAS,” PAINTED BY NORMAN H. HARDY,
 DESCRIBED BY E. WAY ELKINGTON, F.R.G.S. (A. AND C. BLACK, LONDON).]

{205}




INDEX


 Administrator, an, 8

 Adornments, trumpery, 172

 Adventurers, 3, 15, 16

 Agricultural pursuits, 23

 Aird, river, 6

 Ancestor warship, 153

 Anchor, 66

 Anchors, jamming of, 68

 Ambryn, 147, 169

 Americans, 12

 Aoba, 78, 79, 81, 147, 180

 Armlets, 42, 51

 Arrowroot, 188

 Arrows, the, 180

 Attack, mode of, 99

 Australasian Trading Company, 16

 Australia, 11, 12
   aboriginal of, 26

 Australians, 7


 Bamboo, 20

 Bananas, 22, 24, 62, 187

 Baskets, 176

 Beck, Louis, 72

 Betel-nut, chewing of, 111

 Bibles, 14

 “Blackbirding,” 190

 Black labour, 10

 Blackmailing, 50

 Boat, the labour, 188
   prow, 178

 Bonita, call, 115
   fishing, 113

 Bougainville, de, 5, 9, 10, 11, 92, 133

 Bow and arrow, 133

 Bracelets, 157

 Bread-fruit trees, 177

 British Government, 7

 British New Guinea, 6, 8, 26, 30
   youth of, 38

 British subjects, 12

 Brown, Rev. Dr., 64

 Buka, 10

 Bundaberg, 188

 Burial ceremony, 166

 Burial ground of the traders, 79, 80

 Burns Philp, Messrs, 16, 29, 72, 81, 186

 Bush, men of the, 22, 32


 Call by bonito, 115

 Canoe, 17, 23, 27, 58
   buying of, 27
   houses, 89

 Canoes, big, 178
   building of, 26, 60, 176
   small, 61

 Cannibalism (Sol. Is.), 95

 Capes, 49

 Ceremonial purposes, 54

 Ceremonies, sacred, 34

 Ceremony, 38, 43

 Chalmers, James, 65, 198, 199, 200
   death of, 204

 Chester, Mr., 7

 Child, carrying of, 35, 36

 Children, 32, 36
   games of, 33

 Cicatrices, 174
   raised, 107

 Civilisation, 16

 Clark, George, 75, 77
   death of, 78

 Clay, 62
   for pottery making, 62

 Climate, 4

 Climbing fish, 64

 Clubs, 28

 Cocoa-nut groves, 29
   oil of the, 185
   palms, 183

 Cocoa-nuts, 62

 Coffee, 187

 “Coming out,” 38

 Compounds, 188

 Cook, Captain, 5, 11

 Cooking, 34, 111
   pots, 20

 Copra, 183, 185, 187
   boat, 186
   trade, 185

 Costumes, ceremonial, 30
   humour of, 173
   queer, 49

 Crab, van der, 6

 Crocodiles, 15, 122

 Cures effected, 45

 Custom, another, 42


 Dance costumes, 49, 52
   description of festival, 51
   dook-dook, 50
   the fish, 49
   the funeral, 128
   for love-making, 54
   the war, 129

 Dances, 30, 49
   native, 49

 Dancing, 31
   art of, 38
   ground, the, 51

 Dancing, skirt, 52

 Davis, Rear-Admiral, 99

 Death of a husband, 46
   visit of, 46

 Demits, 156

 Dook-dook dance, 50

 Douglas, Hon. John, 7

 Draughtsmen, 131

 Drawings on wood, 132

 Droughts, 4

 Drum-making, 38

 Drums, 39, 51, 158

 Drying ground, 186

 Dubu, 54
   dance for women, 54
   house, an old, 66

 Dutch, 5, 6

 Dynamite fishing, 63, 117


 Eade, Dick, 74

 Ear-rings, grotesque, 106

 Earth oven, 23

 Earthenware jars, 23

 Education, 13

 Efaté, 153, 154, 167, 172

 Effigies, 156, 157

 Elevera, 17, 21, 24, 26, 27

 Emigration scheme, 12

 Enemies, 28

 England, 12

 Equal rights, 8

 Erskine, Commodore, 4

 Euro, 88

 Evanena, 33

 Evil spirits, 46, 160
   wishing, fear of, 138

 Expedition, hunting, head, 28
   of Postillion, 6
   of Trinton, 6

 Explorers, 3


 Faces, decorating of, 175

 Faith, 168

 Fanarita, 101

 Feast, 29

 Festival dance, description of, 51

 Festivals, 30

 Fiddle played by mouth, 131

 Fiji, 10, 32

 Fijians, 25

 Fire, 19
   producing of, 132

 Fish, 62
   climbing, 64
   dance, 49
   spearing of, 63, 118

 Fishing, 26, 180
   by bonito, 113
   with dynamite, 63, 117
   by kite, 116
   by moonlight, 116
   by nets, 62
   by spears, 118
   for turtles, 181

 Florida Island, 102

 Flowers, 104

 Food, 23, 108
   eating of certain, 40

 France, 11, 12

 “French Jack,” 11, 93
   residents, 143

 Fresh water, objection to, 151

 Frigate bird, 57, 107

 Funeral rites, 126

 Funerals, 30

 Furniture, 18


 Games, 34
   rough boyish, 34

 Germans, 5

 Germany, 10

 Gill, Rev. William, 198

 Girl’s love-letter, 43

 Girls, 34

 Glasgow City Mission, 199

 Gorging, 91

 Government House, 17
   officials, 17

 Granville, 16

 Graveyard, 127

 Great Britain, 10, 11

 Great southern continent, 10

 Guadalcana, 9, 92, 101

 Guppy, Dr. H. B., 101, 138


 Habitations, 20

 Haddon, Professor, 41, 43

 Hair, 25, 31, 174
   arrangement of, 31
   bleached, 107
   bushy, 38
   sale of, 32

 Hanuabada, 17, 24, 26

 Harbour, 16

 Hardy, Mr., 27, 64, 73, 108, 109, 167

 Hayes, Bully, 201

 Head-hunter, notorious, 98
   hunters, 16
   hunting, 37, 97, 102
   hunting, big expedition, 28

 Heads, shaving of, 25
   wanted, 102

 Hebrides, 144

 Heirlooms, 19

 H.M.S. _Fly_, 6

 H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_, 6

 Honolulu, 32

 “Hope,” 89, 134
   altars, 136

 Houses, construction of (Sol. Is.), 86
   interiors of the, 149

 Human beings, cooking of, 111

 Hunting, 22

 Hunting pigs, 120

 Husband, death of, 46

 Huts, 17, 20
   building of, 176
   interiors of, 87
   of skulls, 168

 Hutten, Old Harry, 74


 Ibitoe, 38, 39, 166

 Idols, 157

 Immigrants, 9

 Industry, the chief, 145

 Infanticide, 102

 Ingova of Rubiana Lagoon, New Georgia, 90, 98

 Ingova, head-hunters of, 98

 Ingova’s Euro, 98
   house at Rubiana, 89

 Isabel, 9, 101

 Islas de Salomon, 9

 Ivivu, 130


 Jammed, 66

 Jew’s harp, 130, 131


 Kai-kai dish, 110

 Kidnapped, 10, 29

 Kite fishing, 116

 Kolff, Lieutenant, 5

 Krause, Rev. E. W., 198


 Labour, 29
   boat, the, 188
   organised, 29
   trade in New Guinea, 189

 Ladder, 18

 Lakatois, 59, 61
   construction of, 60

 Laws of marriage, 166

 Leap-frog, 33

 Legends, 137, 176

 Leglets, 42

 Le Hunte, George Ruthven, Esq., 8

 Lion’s head, the, 92

 Loafers, 29

 Loafing, 31

 Loin-cloth of tappa, 174

 London Missionary Society, 196, 199

 Love, 40, 41

 Love charms, 44

 Love-making, 37

 Lovesick swain, 41

 Lying, art of, 28


 Macdonald, Mr., 153

 Macgregor, Governor, 7, 189

 M‘Ilwraith, Sir Thomas, 7

 Mackay, 188

 Mai, 100, 101

 Malayan trepang, 118

 Malays, 5

 Malekula, 145, 147, 150, 154, 167, 169, 173, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184

 Mambare river massacre, the, 75

 Mangoes, 65, 66

 Man and wife, 43

 Maori method of carrying, 36

 Maoris of New Zealand, 25, 44, 45, 194

 Marriage, 34, 40
   laws, 166
   preparation for, 31
   proposal of, 37

 Masks, 49
   construction of, 50
   hideous design of, 49

 Massacred, 204

 Massacres, 14, 102

 Mats, 18, 150, 175

 Medicine men, 139

 Meeting, arrangements for the, 42

 Mekko district, 49

 Men, burying alive of, 145

 Meyer, Don Alvaro Mendana de, 9, 11

 Mendana de, Islands, 9

 Meyers, Dr., 6

 Mineral, 3

 Mission of the City of Glasgow, 199

 Mission House, 17

 Missionaries, 3, 7, 14, 65, 193
   tales of, 194

 Missionary Society of London, 196, 199

 Missionary Society of Tahiti, 197

 Moonlight fishing, 116

 Moresby, Captain, 6

 Mother, 35

 Motus, 22, 23

 Mourners, the chief, 128

 Mourning, 30, 46
   special dress, 46
   universal, 126

 Mouth fiddle, 131

 Music, ears for, 130


 Narak-burners, 164, 165
   stones, 164

 Native babies, 35
   costume, 30
   dances, 48
   diet, 111
   eyesight, 119
   inquisitiveness, 26
   instrument, 130
   police, 8
   police clothes and duties, 30
   villages, 86

 Natives, 15, 21, 23, 168
   of New Guinea, 25
   swimming, 67

 Naturalisation papers, 12

 Necklaces, 52

 Nets, 117
   hand, 117
   fishing, 62

 New Britain, 13

 New Georgia, 95, 107

 New Guinea, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 36, 37, 47, 49, 56, 176, 184
   divorce, laws of, 43
   labour, trade in, 189
   natives of, 25, 26, 44

 New Hebrides, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 78, 79, 143, 185
   settlement in, 143

 New Zealand, Maoris of, 25


 Nicolas the Greek, 73

 Nose-rings, 106


 Oil of the cocoa-nut, 185

 Opossum, 121

 Ornaments, 104

 Outrages, 14

 Outriggers, 58, 177

 Over-gorging, 161


 Paint, 175

 Palavanua, 88

 Pandean pipe, 130

 Papuan, 35, 36, 37, 39
   boy, coming of age, 38
   dandy, 32

 Paradise, veritable, 144

 Pentecost Island, 179

 Petty Sessions Courts, 8

 Pig-a-back, 33
   ceremonies, 162
   hunting of, 120
   sacrifices of, 155

 Pile dwellings, 86

 Pioneer settler, 144

 Pitman and Buzacott, Messrs., 198

 Planters, 10

 Platform, 18, 21

 Police, the, 21, 30
   magistrate, 8

 Port Moresby, 7, 16, 17, 22, 24, 26, 29, 61, 75
   Resolution, 148
   Vila, 143

 Postillion expedition, 6

 Pottery, 24, 61, 176
   industry, the, 61
   making, 26, 34

 Pratt, Johnnie, 74

 Preferential tariff, 12


 Queensland, 7, 188
   coast, 188
   Government, 4, 78
   sugar refining, 188

 Quiros, de, 9, 10, 11


 Rain-maker, the, 168
   making, remarkable, 170

 Rano Island, 177, 179

 Raratonga, 197, 201

 Religion, 124, 155

 Resident magistrate, 8

 Residents, French, 143

 Rubiana, in, 97, 107


 Sacedra, Alvaro de, 5

 Sacred ideas, 182
   stone, 161

 Sacrifice, 29

 Sacrifices of pig, 155

 Sago, 61, 62

 St. Christoval, 101

 Sale, 32

 Samari, 184

 Samoa, 10, 32

 San Christoval, 9

 Santa Anna, 100
   Catalina, 91
   Cruz, 9

 Sanitary arrangements, 151

 Sapuna, 100

 Savage song, 159
   lands, magic in, 44

 Savages, 13

 Scratchley, Sir Peter, 7

 Sea, men of the, 22

 Secret rites, 28

 Shaving, 107

 Shed, 186

 Shell-money, 164
   necklaces, 105

 Shields, 133

 Shooting fish, 64

 Silent philosophy, 36

 Simbo, 127

 “Sing-sing” 167
   grounds, 157, 158

 Skull-huts, 168

 Skulls, string of, 37

 Slave-dealers, 191

 Solomons or New Guinea, 185

 Solomon Islands, the, 9, 10, 13, 84, 86, 91, 94, 145
   islanders, clothing of, 104
   King, 9

 Somerville, Lieut. Boyle T., R.N., 129, 167

 Song, a savage, 159

 Sorcerer, the, 44

 South Pacific, 10
   Sea Islands, 3, 13, 14
   Seas, excitement of, 75
   trader, 71

 Spaniards, the, 11

 Spanish explorers, 10

 Spearing fish, 63, 118

 Spears, 28
   and clubs, 133

 Sports, 120

 Staple foods, 62

 State councils, 8

 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 204

 Stories, amusing, 78

 Streamers, 174

 Street, 17

 String armlet, 41

 Superstition, 22, 39, 44, 45, 88, 115, 137, 163, 170

 Superstitions, 14, 15, 23, 40

 Surprise attack, 28, 29

 Sweet potatoes, 62

 Swimmers and divers, born, 32

 Swimming natives, 67


 Taboo, 88

 Tahitian Missionary Society, 197

 Taki, 106

 “Tamate,” 198, 201

 Tambu houses, 90, 91, 92, 152

 Tanna Island, 83, 147, 148, 172, 184

 Tappa loin-cloth, 174

 Taros, 22, 187

 “Tartan Jock,” 79, 81

 Tattooing, 32, 56, 107, 174

 Thatch, 20

 Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo, 11

 Tight-lacing, 41

 Tohunga, 44

 Tohunganism, 45

 Tools, the, 176

 Torres, Luis Vaez de, 5, 10, 11
   Straits, 5, 11

 Trade beads, 172

 Traders, 14, 15, 28, 186
   burial-ground, 79, 80
   experiences of, 81
   of the South Sea, 71
   risks of, 72
   small, tales of the, 73

 Tredacua shells, the, 105

 Tree-houses, 21

 Tribal wars, 22

 Trinton expedition, 6

 Trumpery adornments, 172

 Tupusuli, 64, 65, 66

 Turtle fishing, 181

 Twine skirts, 54


 Urio Moquru, 45, 46


 Vegetable, 3

 Verandahs, 21, 22

 Veritable paradise, 144

 Villages, 149

 Volcano, 148


 Wallaby, 23

 War, weapons of, 132, 179

 Western islands, 41

 Wild animals, 17

 Wild diet, 180

 Willey, Dr., 109

 Williams, John, 197, 204

 Witchcraft, 163

 Wives, plurality of, 43

 Women, 29, 31
   folk, 28
   and girls, costumes of, 31
   labour of the, 34
   married, work of the, 35
   workers, 175
   young, 25

 Worship, places of, 157

 Wyllie, Dr., 64


 Yacht, saving of, 67

 Yams, 22, 24, 62, 187
   the chief’s, 187

 Yost, Prof. von, 64


THE END


_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.




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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with
some exceptions noted below. Original printed page numbers are shown
like this: {52}. Original small caps and original bold type are now
uppercase. Italics look _like this_. The plates have been moved
from within paragraphs to nearby locations between paragraphs. I
produced the cover image and hereby assign it to the public domain.
Original page images are available from archive.org—search for
“savagesouthseas00elki”.


Page 55. Changed "Lakalois" to "Lakatois".

Illustration 25 caption. Changed “hold more that” to “hold more than”.

Page 164. Changed “it is persumed, over” to “it is presumed, over”.

Page 206. Changed index entry “Efate” to “Efaté”.

















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