E. Way Elkington

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:—

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.

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.

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.

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.