The term of service of my boys had now expired, and I had to look about for others. Happily, now that I was known in the region, I had less trouble, especially as I held out the prospect of a visit to NoumÉa. With six boys of my own and a few other men, I started on another journey.

I had always suspected the existence of a race of pygmies in the islands, and had often asked the natives if they had ever seen “small fellow men.” Generally they stared at me without a sign of intelligence, or else began to tell fairy-tales of dwarfs they had seen in the bush, of little men with tails and goat’s feet (probably derived from what they had heard of the devil from missionaries), all beings of whose existence they were perfectly convinced, whom they often see in the daytime and feel at night, so that it is very hard to separate truth from imagination.

I had heard stories of a colony of tailed men near Mele, and that, near Wora, north of Talamacco, tailed men lived in trees; that they were very shy and had long, straight hair. The natives pretended they had nearly caught one once. All this sounded interesting and improbable, and I was not anxious to start on a mere wild-goose chase. More exact information, however, was forthcoming. One of my servants told me that near a waterfall I could see shining out of a deep ravine far inland, there lived “small fellow men.”

It was an exceptionally stormy morning when we started, so that Mr. F. advised me to postpone my departure; but in the New Hebrides it is no use to take notice of the weather, and that day it was so bad that it could not get any worse, which was some consolation. Soon we were completely soaked, but we kept on along the coast to some huts, where we were to meet our guide. Presently he arrived, followed by a crowd of children, as they seemed to me, who joined our party. While climbing inland toward the high mountains, I asked the guide if he knew anything about the little people; he told me that one of them was walking behind me. I looked more closely at the man in question, and saw that whereas I had taken him for a half-grown youth, he was really a man of about forty, and all the others who had come with him turned out to be full-grown but small individuals. Of course I was delighted with this discovery, and should have liked to begin measuring and photographing at once, had not the torrents of rain prevented.

I may mention here that I found traces later on of this diminutive race in some other islands, but rarely in such purity as here. Everywhere else they had mingled with the taller population, while here they had kept somewhat apart, and represented an element by themselves, so that I was fortunate in having my attention drawn to them here, as elsewhere I might easily have overlooked them.

The trail by which we were travelling was one of the worst I ever saw in the islands, and the weather did not improve. The higher up we went, the thicker was the fog; we seemed to be moving in a slimy mass, breathing the air from a boiler. At noon we reached the lonely hut, where a dozen men and women squatted, shivering with cold and wet, crowded together under wretched palm-leaf mats, near a smouldering fire. There were some children wedged into the gaps between the grown-ups. Our arrival seemed to rouse these poor people from their misery a little; one man after the other got up, yawning and chattering, the women remained sitting near the fire. We made them some hot tea, and then I began to measure and take pictures, to which they submitted quite good-humouredly.

I was much struck by the fact of these men and women living together, a most unusual thing in a Melanesian district, where the separation of the sexes and the “Suque” rules are so rigorously observed.

We started off once more in the icy rain, keeping along the crest of the hill, which was just wide enough for the path. The mountain sloped steeply down on either side, the thick mist made an early twilight, we could only see the spot where we set our feet, while all the surroundings were lost in grey fog, so that we felt as though we were walking in a void, far above all the world. At nightfall we arrived at a solitary hut—the home of our companions. After having repaired the broken roof, my boys succeeded in lighting a fire, though how they did it is a mystery, as matches and everything else were soaked. Soon tea and rice were boiling, while I tried to dry my instruments, especially my camera, whose watertight case had not been able to resist the rain. Then I wrapped myself up in my blanket, sipped my tea and ate my rice, and smoked a few pipes. It certainly is a reward for the day’s work, that evening hour, lying satisfied, tired and dreamy, under the low roof of the hut, while outside the wind roars through the valley and the rain rattles on the roof, and a far-off river rushes down a gorge. The red fire paints the beams above me in warm colours, and in the dark corners the smoke curls in blue clouds. Around a second fire the natives lie in ecstatic laziness, smoking and talking softly, pigs grunt and dogs scratch busily about.

In the morning the storm had passed, and I could see that the house was set on the slope of a high mountain, much as a chalet is, and that we were at the end of a wild ravine, from every side of which fresh rivulets and cascades came pouring. Owing to the mountainous character of the country there are no villages here, but numerous huts scattered all along the mountains, two or three families at the utmost living together. The structure of the houses, too, was different from those on the coast; they had side walls and a basement of boulders, sometimes quite carefully built. Here men and women live together, and a separation of the fires does not seem to exist, nor does the “Suque” seem to have penetrated to this district.

We passed several hamlets where the mode of life was the same as in this one. The dress of the men is the same as at the coast, except that they wind strings of shell-money about their waists in manifold rows. The women wear a bunch of leaves in front and behind. The weapons are the same as elsewhere, except that here we find the feathered arrows which are such a rarity in the Pacific. It is surprising to find these here, in these secluded valleys among the pygmy race, and only here, near Talamacco, nowhere else where the same race is found. It is an open question whether these feathered arrows are an original invention in these valleys, an importation or a remnant of an earlier culture.

The population lives on the produce of the fields, mostly taro, which is grown in irrigated lands in the river bottoms.

In appearance these people do not differ much from those of central Santo, who are by no means of a uniform type. The most important feature is their size, that of the men amounting to 152 cm., that of the women to 144 cm. The smallest man I measured was 138.0 cm., others measured 146.0, 149.2, 144.2, 146.6, 140.6, 149.0, 139.6, 138.4 cm. The maximum size is hard to state, as even here the small variety has mixed with taller tribes, so that we find all the intermediate sizes, from the pygmy 139.6 cm. high, to the tall Melanesian of 178.0 cm. My object, therefore, was to find a colony of pure pygmies, and I pursued it in many subsequent wanderings, but without success. The following description is based on the type as I constructed it in the course of my travels and observations.

The hair is very curly, and seems black, but is in reality a dark, yellowish brown. Fil-fil is less frequent than among the tall variety. The forehead is straight, very slightly retreating, vaulted and rather narrow, the eyes are close together, straight, medium-sized and dark brown. The superciliar ridges are but slightly developed. The jaw-bones are large, but do not protrude, whereas the chewing muscles are well developed, which gives the face breadth, makes the chin-line round and the chin itself small and pointed. The mouth is not very large, with moderately thick lips, the nose is straight, hardly open toward the front, the nostrils not thick. As a rule, the growth of beard is not heavy, unlike that of the tall Melanesians; there is only a light moustache, a few tufts at the chin and near the jaw. Up to the age of forty this is all; in later years a heavier beard develops, but the face and the front of the chin remain free.

Thus it will be seen that these people are not at all repulsive, as all the ridges of bone and the heavy muscle attachments which make the face of ordinary Melanesians so brutal are lacking. On the contrary, they look quite agreeable and childlike. Their bodies are vigorous, but lightly built: the chest broad and deep, the arms and legs fine, with beautiful delicate joints, the legs well proportioned, with handsome calves. Their feet are short and broad, especially in front, but the great toe does not stand off from the others noticeably. Thus the pygmy has none of the proportions of a child, and shows no signs of degeneration, but is of harmonious build, only smaller than other Melanesians.

The shade of the skin varies a good deal from a dull purple, brownish-black, to coffee colour; but the majority of individuals are light, and the dark ones probably inherited their shade from the tall race.

Deformations of the body are not practised, save for an occasional perforation of the lobes of the ear. I never saw a perforation of the septum, nor women with incisors extracted.

It seems as if the small race were better preserved here in Santo than the tall one. The diseases which destroy the other tribes are less frequent here, there are more children and a good number of women. All this may be due to a great extent to their living inland and not coming into touch with the unfavourable sides of civilization as the coast tribes do, but even more to the hardy outdoor life in the mountains. In their country one cannot walk three steps on a level, and the whole population is expert in climbing, very sure-footed, thinking nothing of jumping with a heavy load from one rock to another, or racing at full speed down the steep and uneven slopes.

In character, too, they differ from the tribes near the water. They seem less malicious and more confiding, and show less of the distrust and shy reserve of the average Melanesian. They will laugh and chat in the presence of strangers, and are very hospitable. I do not know if these are accidental impressions, but I can only say that I always felt safer and more comfortable in a village where the majority of the inhabitants belonged to the small race.

With all this the pygmies are by no means helpless or even inferior, compared to their tall neighbours. Possibly, in former days, they may have been driven from their homes in the plains back into the mountains, but at present they are quite equal to the tall race, and the “salt-water men” are even a little afraid of their small neighbours inland. What they lack in size and strength they make up in speed and suppleness and temperament. The barrier between the races has disappeared, and the mixing process is hastened by the fact that the small race frequently sells its women to the tall one. It is rare for a woman from the coast to settle in the mountains, still, it occurs frequently enough to alloy the purity of the pygmy race, and in no village have I found more than about 70 per cent. of real pygmies.

In the afternoon we came to the chief’s dwelling. The old man lived there alone with his wife, quietly and happily, venerated by all the other people. It was touching to see the little couple, delicate as two dolls, who seemed to love each other sincerely, a most uncommon occurrence in Melanesia. I really had too much respect for the old people to trouble them with my measuring instruments, but I could not resist taking their pictures. After consulting her husband with a look of the greatest confidence, the old lady consented shyly, while he stood beside her as if it was an everyday event to him, and a sort of tribute I was paying to his age and position and the beauty of his wife.

From this point I had a fine view of the cascade that fell down in a wide silver ribbon through the forest. Some months later all that wild scenery was destroyed by an earthquake, which caused many land-slides and spoilt the cascade. Following the roaring river, jumping from one block of stone to another, we soon reached our camp, a large gamal. As we were nearing the coast its arrangements were adapted to the customs of the tall Melanesians. There were a few small individuals, but the tall race was predominant. The reign of the “Suque” was evident by the floor of the gamal being divided by parallel sticks into compartments corresponding to the number of fires and castes, and each man sat down in his division and cooked his own food.

Next day, after having waded through the cold water of the river, we arrived at the coast. From the last hills I sent a farewell look into the wild green tangle of forest, rocks, ravines, cascades and valleys, over which heavy rain-clouds were gathering. Before me the greyish-blue mirror of Big Bay lay in the mist, and in the Jordan valley the rain fell heavily. The high reed-grass all around us rustled dismally, and the damp cold was depressing. I hurried home and arrived there in the night, wet as when I had started on my expedition.

With regard to the pygmies I must not omit to mention the following experience. The fact that among them husband and wife live together, and that I had nowhere seen a man with two wives, made me suspect that this race was monogamous, as other pygmy races are. I made frequent inquiries, and was assured that each man was allowed but one wife. Still, I was not quite convinced, for it seemed strange to find a monogamous population in the midst of polygamous tribes. Others having given me similar information, I began to accept this theory as a fact. At last, however, I found I had been deceived, as all the people had taken me for a missionary, and had fancied I was asking them questions in order to interfere with their matrimonial customs by sending them a teacher or a “mission-police-man.” My error was cleared up, thanks to the investigations of a trader, for which I am much indebted to him.