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Everyone has heard of the wild and savage cannibals of the South Sea islands, and to the average mind, either the whole of the South Pacific is inhabited by man-eaters, or the idea that such bloodthirsty creatures exist is simply scoffed at.

Hitherto I have told of the gentle, big, brown inhabitants of the eastern islands, known as Polynesia. But now we have come into Melanesia. Let me try to describe, as modestly yet graphically as possible, the first of the Melanesians that the Snark crew came in contact with.

It is hard to tell of these savages. Yet, in writing of them, I simply state facts. These people exist. There are at this time some seventy thousand of them in the New Hebrides Islands. Very few white people have ever seen them. They can scarcely be written about in language sufficiently plain to give a definite idea of them. The hundred or more pictures I made of these cannibals cannot be printed in a volume intended for popular circulation.

Probably it is best to describe these people as one would describe animals. For they are only one degree removed from the animals. I wish I might speak plainly. But a great deal of the modesty in our ultra-civilised p269 state is a false modesty, inasmuch as it is not based upon necessity. It is this fact that constitutes the difficulty when one attempts to describe a race living in absolute savagery, unwitting of those rules of conduct we have laid down for our guidance, a race whose social relations are vastly different from ours. This much, however, I must say. Our so-called "proper" clothing is in many cases designed solely for purposes of suggestion. Men and women who go stark naked every day of their lives are oftentimes more moral and have stronger natural modesty than certain of those who bedizen themselves with fashionable silks and satins.

In my studies of various peoples as I have journeyed round this earth, I have found many queer customs and fashions. In some countries, they squeeze the foot to make it small, and a woman with a large foot is a social outcast. In other countries they cover parts of the face. An Arabian woman would expose her entire body in order to keep the lower part of her face hidden. The Chinese men, as a sign of rank and distinction, develop long finger-nails, and we can well remember when our own women wore ridiculously large bustles that looked very funny on the street. By the way, speaking of bustles, I wish to say that the habit of wearing them did not originate in any of the fashion-centres. Bustles have always been and now are the only article of apparel worn by the women of the New Hebrides. And funny as these women look with p270 only large plaited grass bustles on them, we must not consider them foolish, for they have just as much right to their fashions as the women of America, England, France, Germany, or any other civilised country, have to theirs.

Having seen all these fashions, I am willing to grant to men or women the perfect liberty to dress or adorn themselves, or go undressed, as they see fit. Having, as I believe, seen the origin of the bustle among these primitive folk, I fully expect to see some day the prettiest ladies of our land wearing enormous nose-rings, as there are places in the world where such nose-rings constitute the entire wardrobe.

Ignorance is not virtue. Virtue is knowledge coupled with self-restraint. And so let me call attention to a people who are as directly opposed to us in their views of morality as could be imagined. These people are sex worshippers, and their ideas of right and wrong lead them to call attention to the very subjects we seek to hide and dismiss from our minds.

To go back to Suva, Fiji. Captain Warren was no longer a member of the Snark's crew. As we lay alongside the wharf at Suva, the crew painted and scraped masts, decks and booms, and after loading with water and provisions, we were again ready for sea. Tehei was dressed in his first suit of clothes, of which he was as proud as a peacock. Our compasses were swung and adjusted by an expert. Our chronometer was taken aboard an Australian steamer p271 and corrected, and we were ready to try our luck with Captain Jack London. And when I think of the crew of the Snark, I always think of the crew that sailed out of Fiji, and the same crew that stuck to the trip to the end. Up to this time, I had seen come and go three captains, two engineers, several sailors and a cabin-boy. The crew that sailed from Suva included Mr. and Mrs. London, myself, and four dark-skinned persons: Nakata, the Jap cabin-boy, Wada San, the Jap cook, and the two Tahitians, Tehei and Henry.

We cleared Suva Harbor at 12:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, June 6, 1908. The harbour master, with his crew of Fiji convicts, was the last to leave; then we just slid out of the bay with a strong beam wind, and in an hour had left Suva out of sight. We passed a small cutter, and her crew of bushy-haired Fijians cried good-bye in their own language, and dipped their flag. About four o'clock we got to the entrance of a very narrow channel and between two small islands. I took the wheel, and Jack sang out the course from the bow. By six o'clock we were through and headed for the open sea, at which everyone was glad, for reefs and small islands cause much worry.

The next day I cleaned up the engine room and did small carpentering jobs about the ship. The sea was quite rough, and we had the skylights battened down; but because of the clearness of the sky we did not expect very nasty weather. We were speeding at about seven knots. All day, Jack studied navigation. For p272 the first several days out of Fiji he had no time to write. He navigated by every method known to captains, and then proved his navigating as we used to prove our arithmetic problems at school. On Wednesday morning, I took the time while he got the sight; then we corrected the two compasses, he watching one compass and I the other. Jack figured that day that we had done ten thousand miles in the Snark since leaving San Francisco.

That evening, Jack announced that at a certain point on the compass, at sunrise next morning, would be the first island in the New Hebrides, called Futuna, and next morning at five o'clock there was a call for all hands on deck. I hurried up, expecting to see a storm closing in on us, but instead the sky was clear and Jack was excitedly pointing to a rocky island at the exact place he had told us of the night before. Jack said: "I told you so," and for the rest of that day he went around with his head up in the air, with the bearing of a person who knew much more than any others on board, and we all looked at him in awe and told him he was a great navigator.

Futuna was a high, flat rock, as seen from the sea. We did not go close enough to examine it. We had a good breeze, and all that day we passed small uninhabited islands, and that night slowed down, for the island of Tanna was directly ahead, and we were afraid to go into the bay at night; but early next morning we p273 dropped anchor opposite a mission station in a long, narrow bay.

The third cylinder igniters blew out when I tried to use the engine to help us into this bay, and we had trouble in finding an entrance, for the place seemed reef-locked, but we took a chance, and finally got in. We anchored one hundred yards off a high bluff, on the top of which was a little white church, almost hidden by the dense jungle. We saw clumsy canoes coming toward us, and soon two hundred of the puniest, dirtiest, most unhealthy little thieving natives came aboard. All afternoon they kept arriving in canoe-loads. All wore remnants of white men's clothing, filthy beyond description. Some had only an undershirt; some, old trousers; and there were old hats of all kinds. One carried an umbrella. Others, again, wore red singlets, so full of holes they would scarcely hang on their backs. Their ears were pierced with holes I could have stuck my thumb through. They were all missionaries from the mission school on the top of the hill—and great missionaries they were! In the afternoon, when we three whites started ashore, we cleared the deck of the natives, and they cleared the deck of any spare ropes or marlin they could find loose. We missed nearly everything that was small enough for the natives to get away with. We went ashore and had dinner with the only missionary on the island, Rev. Watt. He p274 had been for twenty-eight years at this station, and had managed to convert the coast natives only, but in the interior the natives were as savage and primitive as the day God had made them—he sighed when he told us of the interior natives. We asked him to take us on an excursion to see these natives, but he flung up his hands in horror. "No! It was no place for a woman," and we could not persuade him to alter his decision. He told us of a lawless trader living on the island, and for us to be careful of him, he was a very bad man; he was friendly with the bush natives. And right then Jack whispered to me that we must find that bad, wicked trader and get him to take us to visit the savages that we had sailed thousands and thousands of miles to see. On going aboard that night, we found the wicked trader sitting on our deck, smoking Jack's cigarettes. He was a big, jolly-looking Scotchman. He was overjoyed to see us, for it is mighty few white people that Trader Wiley ever sees in Tanna. He had been trading here for over seven years. In order to trade among the different tribes, he had learned their languages, and to gain their friendship had doctored the sick and set broken bones. He had been the means of bringing peace between several of the tribes that before his advent had been continually at war. But the missionary considered him a bad man because he had gained such a hold on the natives, and, doctoring their ills and injuries, refused to doctor their souls. p275

Mr. Wiley stayed for supper, and told us some interesting yarns of the island. Up to one year ago, the different tribes were at war with each other. No tribe dared go outside its own boundaries, unless it wished to precipitate a rumpus. But the English warship Cambrian came and threw bombs in some of the villages, and now the natives were quiet through fear of having their homes destroyed. It had been three years, Mr. Wiley said, since a cannibalistic feast took place, and he had been there to see it. Having the confidence of the natives because he smuggled old-fashioned "Springfield" rifles in to them, he was allowed to go and come as he pleased. He had gone up into the bush after copra one day, after one tribe had been defeated by the tribe he was visiting, and was asked to stay and watch the feast that night, which he did—he found four bodies cooked and ready to eat, with the heads off and the bowels removed.

Of course he would show us the bush people; but he warned us that they were not the kind of people that we had been used to. It was agreed that on Sunday, June 22, he was to take us up to the village where he had seen the cannibal feast. On Saturday, Jack and Mrs. London went to see one of the most noted volcanoes in the New Hebrides, which is located on this island. I wandered up and down the bay, looking in the village huts and trying to find curios, but the natives seemed to have none. One little four-foot grass hut p276 and a few dirty mats is all the average man here possesses.

I gossiped with Mr. Wiley and his partner, Mr. Stanton, in their little 10-x-15 store, where they ate, slept and traded. Very little money was in circulation; they traded out of their stock for copra. One stick of cheap tobacco bought ten cocoanuts; and three sticks would hire a man for one day to take the meat from the nut and dry it into copra; so it will be seen that the remuneration of labour in the New Hebrides is nothing magnificent. One stick of tobacco is worth a cent.

Saturday night, Jack, Mrs. London and I took supper with Rev. Watt. The missionary was a fairly decent sort of man, but I don't approve of his methods. In the evening, I developed film in his dark-room.

Early Sunday morning, Tehei landed us on the beach, where we found Frank Stanton waiting for us. He explained that Mr. Wiley was sick and could not go. We four started off, and for several hours tramped over hills and through valleys, penetrating a jungle of trees and vines and ferns so dense that in places we walked through pitch-dark recesses, into which the sun had never shone. Sometimes we rested under a big banyan tree, with its hundreds of roots and its branches turning and growing back into the ground until the single tree might cover as much as a half acre. We passed several of Mr. Stanton's copra houses, where he came on certain days each week to p277 buy cocoanuts; then we struck off through a deep ravine, the walls forty and fifty feet high, with just enough room for us to walk single-file. All the time, we were gradually rising higher and higher above the sea-level. Often we had to pull Mrs. London up after us, but she was game and never lagged a bit. About one o'clock we emerged without warning into a clearing set on the side of a mountain, a clearing about a half-mile across. Many grass houses were set in a circle around this clearing. In the centre of the circle squatted about fifty men, as many children, and a few women. They were the most savage, heathenish looking folk I have ever looked upon. I had heard of and seen pictures of such savages, but I had hardly been able to convince myself that such animals existed: but here was ocular demonstration. They were smeared over their bodies with coloured juices from berries, and several of the younger men had queer white designs painted on their faces. The men wore belts around their waists—that was all; around their ankles were anklets of porpoise shell or cocoanut shell, and there were some that were carved of stone. Many wore strings of white shells around their necks. Through their enormously distended ear-lobes were thrust pieces of wood as big as one's wrist, or ear-rings of porpoise shell. But the crowning beauty was their heads. The hair, dyed red, was about a foot long. Locks of about one hundred hairs were wrapped from the roots to within one inch of the end with cocoanut p278 fibre; and the whole head was one cluster of these bunches. And every man carried a large knife. As for the women, they wore a dried palm-leaf hung on in front by a string around the waist; except for a miscellaneous collection of anklets, bracelets, and necklets, this was all they wore.

Most of these savages broke for the bush when they sighted us; all but fifteen or twenty who knew Mr. Stanton well. Stanton spoke to them; they advanced with hands outstretched; and we shook hands all around.

"How can I describe these people in my diary?" Mrs. London asked.

"'Worse than naked,' and let it go at that," Jack replied.

And so, in turn, I can describe these people at no greater length and no better than to say, as Jack said, that they were worse than naked. For several hours we sat with them in the clearing, and showed how Mrs. London's Winchester could shoot eleven times in the twinkling of an eye. I made dozens of photographs, and tried to photograph the women; but they were very shy. I got only one, as she was diving into her house.

The men who had run for the bush we could see on all sides of us, peeping around trees and through the dense brush at the edges of the jungle. They were armed with spears, so we kept our hands on our guns all the time, but Stanton assured us they were not dangerous. p279 Nevertheless, we were not going to take any risks.

Late that afternoon, we started back for the bush. For some time we could see painted faces peeking at us through the jungle. When we arrived on board the Snark late that night, I gave a big sigh of relief. I had been far from comfortable among these ferocious-looking bush people.

I desired very much to develop my film that night, but Rev. Watt refused to let me use his dark-room. "Christians should do nothing at all on the Sabbath!" he told me; and I gathered from his tones that he knew of our expedition inland, and that he was far from approving of it.

The New Hebrides are entirely of volcanic origin. There are about thirty active volcanoes in the group, of which the greatest is on the island of Tanna. At night the sky is fiery red from the reflection of the red-hot lava in its crater, and about every half hour the air is rent with a terrific explosion, and from the direction of the volcano the sky seems afire.

On the morning after we had visited the bush people, Henry, Tehei, Nakata and myself secured guides and went to the volcano, walking for miles through barren desert land, hundreds of hot springs and geysers on all sides of us. As we drew closer, the ground under our feet would tremble with each explosion. At noon we reached the edge of the crater. Just as we got there, there came a tremendous explosion, and away p280 we ran, guides and all. When we recovered our courage, we crept up to the edge, and looked down nearly half a mile into what looked like hell. Out of the bowels of the earth were thrown huge boulders, which spent their force and fell back with hideous reverberations into the pits whence they came; and away at the bottom, the farthest down I have ever seen—and I believe it is the bottom-most point to which one can see—were two boiling lakes of lava, and when an explosion came, the lava would be thrown spattering against the encrusted crater sides, nearly to the top, and then run in thousands of rivers of liquid fire back to the bottom. The rumblings and explosions were deafening. I had to leave the edge of the crater, for there was stealing over me the overwhelming desire to jump off and to the bottom of the twin lakes of molten death—a desire that everyone has experienced when looking down from a vast elevation.

We got back to the bay about two o'clock that afternoon, where we found that a whole village of bush-boys had come down to buy tobacco. There were about fifty of them, all naked, and they had brought bows and arrows and spears. I gave a shilling, a brass ring, and a red handkerchief for a bow and two arrows, then invited the crowd aboard, for I knew Jack would want some of their bows and spears, and I myself wanted to get some good photographs of these natives. I took a few of them over in the launch, and the rest came in canoes, until we could scarcely move p281 around on deck. Jack snapped twenty good exposures of them, and I, too, got busy with my cameras. Then began the trading, which lasted for over an hour. Many a bow, spear, and pack of arrows shifted hands that afternoon, in exchange for tobacco, cheap jewellery, candy and red cloth. Jack boxed up his things and sent them back to California, while I boxed mine and sent them to Independence.

We lay at Tanna a week. Then, at four o'clock on a fine Tuesday afternoon, we motored out of the harbour and slid twenty miles up the coast, until we got out from under the lee of the land and caught a light breeze. All the next day we sailed to windward of Erromango, heaving-to at night for fear of running into land in the dark, and early the next morning putting on sail and heading for land twenty miles away.

As we were cruising in a general westerly direction through the New Hebrides, a little incident occurred which throws a side-light on the man, Jack London. One day, when weather conditions were perfect and everyone was on deck enjoying himself, an animated ball of variegated colours dropped slowly down into the cockpit at the feet of Mrs. London, who was at the wheel. She eagerly picked it up, calling out, "Lookie, lookie, what I've got!" It proved to be the prettiest little bird we had ever seen. Jack got out his book on ornithology, and proceeded to study book and bird, but nowhere was such a bird described.

It was evidently a land-bird that had gotten too far p282 from shore and had fallen exhausted on the deck of the Snark. We all stood around looking at it as it lay in Mrs. London's hand, while she chirped and tried to talk bird-talk to it. At last Jack said: "If it's a land-bird you are, to the land you go," and changing the course, we sailed for the island Mallicollo, just barely visible ten miles out of our way. We sailed as close to the shore as possible, and the little multi-coloured, pigeon-like bird, having regained its strength, flew in among the cocoanut trees. Then we headed out and continued our cruise up through the score of small islands composing the Western New Hebrides.

Critics of the man, Jack London, may call him an infidel. Colonel Roosevelt may call him a "nature faker." Others have not agreed with his ideas of life, but I have little doubt that this is the only time a captain ever went twenty miles out of his way when his fuel was low (our gasolene tanks were fast emptying), just to put a poor little bird ashore to go back to its mate and its young.

On our way through these islands we lived entirely on deck, so as to miss none of the beautiful scenery. The weather continued equable. We rode the water as silently as a canoe. The islands around us sheltered the sea from any disturbances, leaving the surface of these island straits perfectly calm. We sailed a day and a night past a score of active volcanoes. One towering cone of land protruded from the water like an enormous ant-hill, smoke wreathing the top in p283 the day, and the fiery red craters acting as lighthouses by night. Once we put into Vila, anchoring between two small schooners in the bay. Vila has only a few white people, traders and some governmental officials. And here is a queer government. These islands are owned jointly by France and England; one governor will make a law, then the other governor will make a law directly opposed. It is all a joke among the traders. The schooners we saw were blackbirders, which made a practice of going to other islands and capturing natives, to be sold in the labour markets of Fiji and Samoa. When I think of this practice, I do not really wonder that the natives are so savage against the whites. As we came into this port, the French flags were at half-mast for a captain that had been killed in another island while trying to get labour.

It was now decided that the Snark must be getting on faster, in order that we might pass through the Indian Ocean before the typhoon season. We went by the last of the New Hebrides and next day cruised past the Banks Islands, but did not linger. For another day we sailed past the Santa Cruz Islands. Then for three days we slid through an open sea.

In my diary, kept during this part of the trip, I find some interesting entries.

They were discovered by Henry at daybreak this morning; and immediately Jack told me to start the engines, for it was dead calm. I did so, and No. 1 insulation plug on the igniters blew out, and I stopped to repair it; then, as soon as I had her going, No. 4 blew out; I repaired it, then started again, when the pump broke; I repaired it, and then found my cylinders were not getting oil; and so on, all day until to-night. I find my magneto "going bad"—and Lord only knows how I can repair it! and the batteries are weak, and we are just in a position to need the engines badly. With the five-horse-power out of order and the seventy-horse-power trying to get out of order, I feel pretty blue, but Jack takes it all right. I'm going to call Tehei now and go to bed in the finest bed I've had for a long time—the spinnaker sail folded up aft the cockpit. I am wearing only a lava-lava, and this faint sea-breeze blowing over me almost makes me forget the engines and their troubles. I have a good lantern and a good book, so I'll get a little reading before I go to sleep.

They had big heads of bushy hair. Half of them wore large nose-rings of tortoise shell and of wild-boar tusks. All of them were adorned with ear-rings. p288 Some ears were plugged with small logs of wood, two inches in diameter. One had the handle of an old teacup in his ear. The men of the New Hebrides looked truly civilised beside these fierce and grotesque figures. One of the islanders had the tin-wire sardine-can openers in his ears; but the strangest of all was the one who had the shell of a clock depending from the cartilage of his nose. All had anklets and armlets, and wore short lava-lavas of native cloth. And all were armed with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs. Some had immense bamboo combs in their hair; and through the noses of fully half our visitors were thrust long bamboo needles—clear through, so that the ends stuck out far beyond the cheeks; and on these ends were, in some cases, hung little rings, or pieces of shell. Their cheeks were tattooed in monstrous designs: little boys ornamented and tattooed just as fantastically as were the elders. Their teeth were filed to points, and were dead black; their lips, large and negroid, were ruby red.

Their canoes were the prettiest and most graceful of any we have yet seen. They are not mere dugouts with an outrigger, but long double-ended light-shell boats, the bows making a graceful curve several feet in the air. There is no outrigger. The canoes are paddled with long, slim, strangely carved paddles. Each boat is painted a different design, like a fine piece of tapa cloth. They glided round the Snark in the twinkling of an eye. It was all we could do to keep p289 the savages from boarding us. Not that they acted hostile, but they looked it.

Soon other canoes arrived from the other island, and there is no use denying that we were getting pretty well frightened, until, along about the middle of the afternoon, a canoe with only one occupant came alongside, and a big, naked savage, uglier than the rest, paddled round and round the Snark, trying to attract our attention. He smiled an ugly, ghastly smile that made us shudder, and finally, when he had our attention, he stood upright in his canoe, and with a bow that was meant to be graceful, said: "How-de-do," and then, losing his balance, fell into the water, his canoe turned over, and those three or four hundred cannibals laughed until their sides ached. It turned the tide for us, for the native swam to the side of the Snark and we could not refuse to let him aboard. Then he started talking English to us, real genuine English, and so far as I can remember, this is what he said:

"What name he belong you? Peter he name belong me. You no fright along people along Santa Anna, every people he stop along shore. He good people. You come along shore along me, me make 'm good time along you too much."

Being questioned, Peter told us that he had worked on a plantation for a missionary, and that the missionary had taught him English. He said that his people were good people, and asked us to go ashore with him. p290

Only one white man is on this island, a trader named Tom Butler. He had been to the other side of the island, but hearing of our arrival, he came aboard from his cutter, which, loaded with cocoanuts, was on the way home. Butler is nearly in his grave. He could scarcely get aboard, for he seems to be nearly paralysed. He was a sailor on a trading schooner until his mate was killed and kai-kai'd (eaten). He killed seven of the natives and could not get aboard again, so made his way here, and has been trading ever since. As he came over the rail, he whispered to Jack to watch out for Peter, the native who speaks English. He said he had tried to spear the manager of a big island trading concern who came here in his own schooner six months ago. These natives are all head-hunters. This village and the one across the bay are continually at war with each other, and each tribe collects the heads of the other tribe. Jack and Mrs. London went ashore with him, and brought back news that it is the most heathenish place they ever saw. The women, they say, are naked. Large carved totem poles in the centre of the village are covered with obscene figures. The natives are all armed with clubs, spears and bows. To-morrow I shall go ashore, and see for myself. In the morning the natives are coming out with weapons and other curios for us to buy. I'm very much frightened about my right foot. On the shin a large sore, big as a dollar, has started, and it is eating right into my leg. It seems that no medicine p291 aboard will cure it, and there is no doctor within thousands of miles that we know of. My ankle and leg has swollen to twice its natural size. Jack, I'm afraid, has one of these eating ulcers, too. If no doctor is on Florida Island, and if we are no better when we get there, I think we will sail for Sydney, Australia, for treatment, and that without delay.

All day canoes have come and gone, long, graceful, light, and strangely painted. Sometimes there would be fifty naked men on deck at one time, fierce-looking fellows, their ears full of rings and plugs and sticks. Some carry their pipes there. Some wore great shell nose-rings; others had porpoise teeth stuck in the ends of their noses. Their faces were tattooed and cut in strange designs. In their big bushy heads were feathers and bamboo combs. Of anklets and armlets we bought nearly all they had—two yards of calico would easily make breech-clouts for fifty of these men, so they effected rapid exchanges.

At length, we came to a log bridge, over a shallow stream of water. Mrs. London was not allowed to go over—she must wade through, as this bridge is taboo to women. Jack could not resist chaffing Mrs. London, for up to this time she has been treated like a lady by the natives we have come in contact with, but here a woman is only a woman, and has none of the rights of men. Poor Mrs. London was humiliated, but Jack enjoyed it. We came into the village. Men and women too old and feeble to walk would peep at p294 us through their grass houses. We came upon a mammoth grass house, facing the sea. This place was as large as a good-sized store-room. From the front protruded the ends of war canoes. We wanted to see them better; but Mrs. London was again stopped, and in company with Peter, Jack and I went inside and inspected two canoes large enough to hold fifty men each, and a dozen smaller ones. These were the war canoes, used only for the fighting. At the rear of the house was a large coffin-shaped grass box. We looked in, then stepped back in horror; and holding our noses, Jack and I beat a hasty retreat, for inside the box was the body of a man, looking like a pin-cushion, so full was he with sharp barbs. Peter told us that he was the best king that ever ruled them, that he had been dead a week, and that the points in his body were the arrow-points used in their envenomed arrows. Everyone knows that a dead body contains the most virulent poison in the world. By steeping their arrow-points in a chief's body, they think that the poison will be more effective. I bought one hundred and fifty of these arrows. But I shall have to be careful how I touch them.

As we passed out, we saw several old men squatted in front of the house, making hollow wooden fishes by the use of stone axes. We were told by Peter that these men were chiefs, and that after they die their bodies will be allowed to putrify. Then, after the arrow-points have been poisoned in their decaying flesh, p295 their bones will be put in one of the hollow fishes and set on a shelf in the canoe-house, where we saw about a hundred such fishes. The old men were making their own coffins.

We went through the village, which is closed in by a fence of small sticks woven together. The houses touch one another, so that the whole village covers only a few acres, with streets about ten feet wide. In a small square at the centre stand tall carved images. At the foot of the village, in a small enclosure about twenty feet square, they showed us the graveyard. Every body goes into the same hole. The pit is simply opened up, the body tossed in, and then it is covered over again. Scores of naked women and children followed us about, and large men with clubs and spears. I really did not feel any too safe. They showed us another boat house in which rested a big log-fish, filled with the bones of chiefs. I made photographs of the women and men. Jack made head studies. Then, walking back through the streets, I took pictures of houses. For Jack I made a picture of two men whom the sharks had bitten. One had his leg bitten clear off; the other had all the flesh stripped from the bone.

We then went back to the clearing in the centre of the village, where the men gave a dance for us, while half a dozen old rascals sat in the centre making dance music on hollow logs. We gave the dancers tobacco and each a handful of cheap candy; and then Peter took us to see his wives—two of them, and fine looking p296 ladies they were. They were not naked, but each wore a short fringe of grass, the smallest dresses I have ever seen, and, I believe, the smallest dresses in the world. I bought one of them from Peter's elder wife.

We went back to the trader's house, where five young girls danced a very pretty dance, making a hissing sound for music. Mrs. London gave them a string of beads each. We came back to the boat and ate supper; then for several hours on deck the Japanese boys danced, and Wada acted out some pantomime. Tehei danced the Tahitian hula-hula and Henry did the Samoan seva-seva. Nakata is a fine dancer. All the while, Mrs. London played Hawaiian hulas on her ukelele. We had a good time until so late that I did not have to stand my watch, and Tehei stood only part of his. We have to keep "anchor watch," for a little wind from the west might make us swing on the reef—and then, we can't trust the natives.

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That night, Peter, the native came aboard, and told us that if we wanted to get our washing done, his wife would do it for us; so it was settled that early next morning Nakata was to go ashore and help with it. Next morning, almost before sun-up, Nakata went ashore. A little later we white people followed; but we found no washing done. The Japanese are great practical jokers in their quiet way. We found Nakata p298 trying to show the naked women how to wear Mrs. London's clothes. He succeeded very well, until he accidentally tickled one of them, and immediately they all jumped a good arm's length away from him; and as those on whom he had succeeded in getting dresses did not know how to get them off, and for fear of being tickled would not allow him to touch them, there was no washing done.

Next morning, Jack called all hands and they heaved anchor, while I started the engine and we steamed out of the harbour. We went about two miles before I shut down; then we flew along with an eight-knot breeze up the coast of the big island of San Christoval (or Bauro), an island seventy-two miles long by twenty-five wide. A missionary lived on one end of San Christoval, and a trader on the other end, and the people were killing and eating each other right along.

At three o'clock, Jack told me to start the engine, as the breeze was dying out, and he was afraid of being caught on a bad coast with no moon to steer by and reefs all about. We decided to stop at a small island six miles off San Christoval—Ugi is its name, and it has a good harbour. When we were about five miles off, a whale-boat with a white man and half a dozen black boys came alongside, and I stopped the engine until he got aboard; then we pushed on again with his boat towing behind. He was a Mr. Drew, a member of the Melanesian Missionary Society, stationed on p299 San Christoval. He accompanied us to Ugi, and decided to go to Florida Island with us. We got in just at dark, and were met by a trader in his dingy, who piloted us to a good anchorage alongside his little ketch, a hundred yards off shore. His name was Hammond. He was an Australian who had only been here one month. The last man got frightened and left, for the natives of Malaita, a very savage island, had come down in canoes and killed nearly every trader that ever set up in business here; and he had got word from one of his boys that they were coming again. Hammond had been in the Solomons for eleven years, however, and spoke the language well. He told us that two years before he had landed at Port Mary—our last anchorage—just as the natives were coming back from San Christoval, victorious in a fight with one of the hostile tribes; and these Port Mary natives were heavily laden with war trophies, such as heads, arms and legs.

The two men stayed for supper, and we held long and interesting conversations with them, in the course of which we learned many new things of the dark islands into which we had poked the Snark's nose.

The next morning, July 3, we had the best treat we had had for ages—milk, sweet, fresh cow's milk! One glass apiece! Mr. Hammond had sent it over before we were up. I had almost forgotten that milk grew in anything except cans. Mr. and Mrs. London went ashore to see the natives, while I stayed aboard p300 to give my clothing a good overhauling, and to sew for myself some lava-lavas. Several natives came out to trade curios, but they had the same things we had gotten in Port Mary, so I did not buy.

The next day, Saturday, was the Fourth of July. In the morning we discharged a round of ammunition from each of our guns, and that was our celebration—quite different from the one the year before at Honolulu. At ten o'clock the trader came alongside in his whale-boat, manned by his Santa Cruz boys, and we went to the village. A crowd met us at the beach. The women here were clothed, each in a yard of calico. They were all Christians, so they said; but I confess that the heathens we had previously met were far more hospitable and were better looking. The old chief led us around the village, which, like the one at Port Mary, was enclosed by a low fence. The huts all faced a narrow street, and the rear of the huts was flush with the fence. The huts themselves were the dirtiest things I ever saw—of grass and sides and roof, very low, with a bamboo porch in front. On the inside was a dirty sleeping bunk of bamboo. Of other furniture there was little or none.

We returned late that afternoon, and went aboard the Snark. Jack went through the medicine chest, trying to find something that would cure the large ulcer on my shin. Every day found this growing in size and soreness; and I became seriously concerned. At Port Mary, I had asked the trader, Butler, about it, p301 and he had told me that it was a "yaw," or Solomon Island sore, to which all white men were subject. Corrosive sublimate, he further declared, was the thing to cure it. Now the result of corrosive sublimate on a large raw surface like that! It burnt like fire, but it seemed to help.

We now set out for a leisurely circuit of the larger islands. In this circuit, it was our luck to see thousands of cannibals, and also to observe the work done by the missionaries among these benighted savages. Right here, let me explain that cannibalism is not practised because of any love of human flesh, but rather because the natives believe that they acquire the fighting qualities of the men that they eat. Thus they hope to get the strength and prowess in battle of their enemies; and for his reason, they like to eat white men, whose skill and courage they admire.

We never saw a cannibal feast, but we saw plenty of evidence of the practice in the thousands of human bones on shores and reefs.

All these cannibals are head-hunters. One may see tiny mummified heads stuck up outside the huts. The more heads a man has, the stronger he imagines himself to be. A man with fifteen heads reckons himself as strong as fifteen men. The mummified heads are taken from enemies in battle. The bones are all drawn out, and then the head is dried until it is only the size of one's fist. To possess the head of a white man is a special honour. A village with a white man's p302 head considers that it has a wonderful talisman. Naturally, we took great care not to become luck-bringers for any of the natives among whom we sojourned.

Some years ago, a party of German scientists landed at Malaita, one of the most inaccessible islands in the group, to explore. They very much wanted to take back some of these heads as relics, and offered fifteen sticks of plug tobacco for each. The market was brisk for a few days, but soon all the posts outside the huts had been stripped, and the supply slackened. Then suddenly trade revived again—but it was noticed that the heads brought in were fresh! It turned out that the natives had been doing a little private killing in order to keep up the supply. One native had sacrificed several relatives in his desire to please the Germans and get their tobacco.

And then the missionaries. There are so many different kinds of missionaries in the South Seas that I must divide them into their classes and try to tell of these different classes as they appeared to me. Probably another person going among them would see them in a different light from what I did. Of course, I cannot pretend to know all about what the missionaries are doing in the South Seas, but I do know what some of them were doing. Some of them were engaged in excellent work—the noblest work in the world. And some were doing absolutely no work. Let me tell of both kinds, at the same time explaining that if some of the missionaries are not doing what they ought, p303 it is no reason why we should shut our eyes to the fact that there are others who toil eternally and well in their allotted paths. For that matter, it is the frauds who make it so hard for the missionary who works in good faith for the regeneration of the savages.

Missionaries in Polynesia I have never considered in these pages. For the eastern Pacific has reached such a stage of civilisation that the missionaries are now called preachers, and have their regular congregations, just as in civilised countries.

The first missionary I had met was Rev. Watt, at Tanna, New Hebrides. After twenty-eight years at this same station, he had managed to convert about two hundred mean, thieving little beggars. He made the natives, as a sign of conversion, wear the ragged and dirty clothing I have described, which clothes, once put on, were probably never removed. As I have said, these missionary boys stole everything they could get their hands on, but of the scores of bush natives that came aboard, we never caught one taking a thing; and the heathen natives had offered to give us a feast and to guide us to see their island, but the missionary boys we had not been able to hire to guide us, and for the fruit they brought aboard, they asked many times its value. For my part, I can see no actual good Rev. Watt has accomplished in all his twenty-eight years. Trader Wiley, the big, genial Scotchman, has done more towards civilising than has the missionary. Wiley brought about peace between many p304 of the tribes that before his advent were continually at war. He also adjusts their quarrels; and the natives come to him for advice and medicine, and for surgical operations.

Dr. Drew, the missionary we met at Ugi, is stationed on San Christoval. Dr. Drew, when he first landed, started learning the native language, and it was over a year before he began teaching the word of God to the natives, but in that year he won the natives' confidence. He worked on their pride by offering prizes for the best-built house and the cleanest house. He helped them lay out streets, and the dirty village, with its houses stuck anywhere they could find ground to put them, gradually took on a healthful, systematic look, and natives from other villages came in and built neat grass houses. Then Dr. Drew gave away as prizes one yard of blue calico, only the one colour, and soon the whole four hundred natives were wearing lava-lavas just alike in shape and colour. Dr. Drew went no further toward dressing them, for he realised that as soon as a native puts on white man's clothes he begins to imitate the white man, and to imitate the white man in that part of the world is bad policy. Dr. Drew did not attempt to become a native, but maintained his dignity all the time he was learning the language.

After he had mastered the language, Dr. Drew taught them to read in their own tongue, and then translated the Bible for them. When we of the Snark went among his four hundred Christian natives, we p305 were treated better than any natives in the South Seas had ever before treated us. And Dr. Drew caused this great revival by setting an example, and not by trying to beat religion into them. I doubt if any of the natives knew what was happening, so gradual was their uplifting, until they finally found themselves full-fledged Christians—and that kind of Christian will never backslide. If there were more such missionaries in the South Seas, cannibalism and heathenism would soon be a thing of the past. These natives now have their cricket and football teams, and Dr. Drew teaches them English, and cooking, and even boat-building and sailing.

Another missionary, Mr. Whittier, came up from Australia with a scheme to adopt the simple life. He lived in a grass house, ate native goods, wore no other clothing than the native lava-lava. His idea was to live like the natives and become one of them, thinking by this method that they would trust him better. But it was no use, for when the white man lowered himself to their level, they had no more respect for him.

As the little Snark poked her nose in and out of savage ports, the first thing we looked to see was the kind of lava-lavas the women wore. If they wore cloth lava-lavas, they were invariably Christians, but if they wore grass lava-lavas, or were naked, they were heathens. But we could never be sure of the men by this method, for they received the cloth lava-lavas from the traders in exchange for cocoanuts. Of p306 course, they kept all the traders gave them, and left the women to hustle for themselves. As may be imagined, it doesn't cost much to dress a woman in this part of the world.

The principal good done by the missionaries—the sincere missionaries—is that they take the natives out of their horrible, dirty state and teach them self-respect; and surely this is a big step toward civilisation.

The greatest good is being done by Church of England missionaries, who own the finest mission ship in the world, the Southern Cross. This ship, in its cruising among the islands, persuades the best and most intelligent natives to go with them to Norfolk Island. Here they are put in a mission school, and later returned to their homes to start schools of their own. A white missionary is left with the new convert until he has his church built and things are running smoothly; then the native is left to shift for himself. Some of the native missionaries have maintained good clean villages, but the Southern Cross is needed about twice a year to untangle the mismanaged affairs of most of the stations, for however sincere the native teacher may be, he seldom has any executive ability.

The native churches are generally the neatest buildings in the village, and are used for schools as well as for churches. The natives squat on the ground, and use rough log benches for desks. Their church-bell is a hollow log, and their contribution-box is always of cocoanut or shell. Their singing is wonderfully p307 pleasing, especially if a missionary has trained them.

The Christian natives and the heathen natives always seemed to be the best of friends. As a consequence, the most incongruous things sometimes occur. In one place, I saw a coffin-shaped box with a body sticking full of barbs, and within a few hundred feet stood a mission-house in charge of a native teacher. Native missionaries are always called teachers. Why it is, I do not know, but I have never heard a native Christian worker called a missionary.

The French traders ten years ago traded off about five hundred old Snyder rifles to the savages, and as soon as a white man is known to be about, these old rifles are gotten out for show. But they have no cartridges, and if they had, I don't believe the guns would shoot, for the muzzles of those I saw were stopped up with rust.

On the island of Florida, in the Solomons, a missionary made a whole village of converts by playing on their childlike love for display. This missionary had no influence with them for several months, until one day a government schooner anchored and half a dozen black police boys paraded the village, marching in time and carrying guns. As soon as the government vessel had departed, the boys of the villages were trying to imitate the drilling of the police boys, using their old Snyder rifles. The missionary was quick to take advantage of this opportunity to get into their confidence, p308 and, by drilling the boys, he was soon in their good graces; and gradually he turned their love of pomp and display into more useful channels. And now he has a well-founded mission-station and his chief asset is his teams of drilled, athletic boys. Other teachers, encouraged by his success, have taken up athletic work among their followers.

One great difficulty to be overcome by these wilderness apostles is the lack of concentration in savage minds. It is difficult to keep a native's attention long enough to teach him a lesson or to instill moral precepts.

I have noticed that doctors always make the best missionaries. Their medical treatment will give them a hold and win them confidence where nothing else could. Also, a man is a better missionary than a woman, among these savages. For a woman is not respected. A big, strong, athletic man, who can do things that the natives see with their own eyes are better than what they can do, will always have a following, but the man who relies solely upon preaching will never do any good. But to be perfectly fair, I must say that most of the missionaries whom I saw were putting skill and enthusiasm into their work, toiling by day and by night, and in most cases these simple teachers were not putting forth their time and toil in vain. p309