The Solomon Islands and Their Natives Part 3

Christoval, I was accompanied by some half-a-dozen natives of both s.e.xes who were bringing down yams to sell to the traders on the beach. The men were content with carrying their tomahawks; whilst the women followed up with heavy loads of yams on their heads. When a feast is in preparation, it is the work of the women to bring in the yams and taro from the "patches," which may be one or two miles away. In my excursions, I frequently used to see at work in their "patches" these poor creatures, whom drudgery had prematurely deprived of all their comeliness.

Women are excluded from the tambu-house. They are not permitted to remain in the presence of a chief at his meal; and even the wife after preparing her husband's meal leaves her lord alone, returning to partake of what remains after he has finished his repast. In the island of Santa Catalina we found that we had temporarily received the rank of chief when a bevy of young girls, who had been following us all the morning, walked solemnly away as we began our lunch; but no sooner had we lit our pipes than back came the little troop with smiling faces. In Ugi, a man will never, if he can help it, pa.s.s under a tree that has fallen across the path, for the reason that a woman may have stepped over it before him. On one occasion, in the village of Sapuna, in Santa Anna, I saw a man, whilst lighting his pipe, throw the piece of smouldering wood contemptuously on the ground, when a woman, in order to light her own pipe, stretched out her hand to take it from him.

The custom of infanticide throws a shade over not a few of these islands. During my frequent walks over the island of Ugi, where one may pa.s.s through a village without seeing a single child in arms, I often experienced a feeling of relief in leaving behind such a village where the prattle of children is but rarely heard. In Ugi, infanticide is the prevailing custom. When a man needs a.s.sistance in his declining years, his props are not his own sons but youths obtained by purchase from the St. Christoval natives, who, as they attain to manhood, acquire a virtual independence, pa.s.sing almost beyond the control of their original owner. It is from this cause that but a small proportion of the Ugi natives have been born on the island, three-fourths of them having been brought as youths to supply the place of offspring killed in infancy. Yet some bright experiences, brighter, perhaps, in the contrast, recur to my mind. In the small island of Orika (Santa Catalina) the visitor will be followed about by a little train of children, of both s.e.xes, with smiling, intelligent faces, and clad only in the garb which nature gave them. Whilst having an evening pipe in front of the house of Haununo, the young chief, Mr. W. Macdonald and I were surrounded by a varied throng of the natives of the village, both old and young. Numerous young children, from babes in arms to those three or four years old, formed no inconsiderable proportion of the number around us. Bright-looking lads, eight or nine years of age, stood smoking their pipes as gravely as Haununo himself; and even the smallest babe in its father's arms caught hold of his pipe and began to suck instinctively. The chief's son, a little shapeless ma.s.s of flesh, a few months old, was handed about from man to man with as much care as if he had been composed of something brittle. It would have taken many s.h.i.+ploads of "trade," as Mr. Macdonald remarked to me, to have purchased the hopeful heir of the chief of Orika.

But to return to the subject of the position held by the women. When away with a recruiting party from the labour-s.h.i.+p "Redcoat," on the St.

Christoval coast, I was present at the parting on the beach of six natives, who had elected to proceed to Fiji to work for a term of three years on the plantations. But little regret was observable in the faces of those whose friends were leaving them. Son parted with father, and brother with brother with apparently as little concern as if they were merely parting for the hour. The mother or sister played no part in this scene, a characteristic negative feature of the social life of these natives. However, amongst the six natives was an elderly woman who was following her husband to Fiji; and her departure was evidently keenly felt by a small knot of female companions on the beach. One poor creature stood at the edge of the water, looking wistfully towards the boat as it was being pulled away, and crying more after the manner of a fretful child. It was the bond of a true affection that knit together the heart of these poor women. In this episode I saw, to employ those beautiful lines of Milton,

"The sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night."

In it was evinced the only sign of the tenderer feelings which was displayed in the whole of that day's proceedings.

It is necessary for me to touch lightly on a subject, which, although less pleasing, is none the less essential to the short sketch which I have presented to my readers of the domestic relations of the natives in the eastern islands. Female chast.i.ty is a virtue that would sound strangely in the ear of the native. Amongst their many customs which when narrated strike with such a discordant note on the ears of the European reader, the inhabitants of St. Christoval and the adjacent islands have a usage which sufficiently enlightens us as to the unrestrained character of their code of morality. For two or three years after a girl has become eligible for marriage, she distributes her favours amongst all the young men of the village. Should she be unwilling to accept the addresses of anyone, it is but necessary for her admirer to make her parents some present. Fathers offer their daughters to the white man in the hope of a remunerative return; and the white men, sometimes less scrupulous in their advances, provoke the hostility of the natives, and not unfrequently a lamentable ma.s.sacre results.

Conjugal fidelity is usually preserved in the limits of the same community; but the men of Santa Anna, when they exchange their wives for those of the men of the adjoining St. Christoval coast, see in such a transaction no loosening of the marriage-tie, and restore their wives to their original position on their return to their homes.

In considering the domestic relations of the inhabitants of Bougainville Straits, we enter upon a more agreeable topic. The white man on first visiting these islands is struck with the shyness of the women as compared with those of St. Christoval and its adjacent islands. The unmarried girls are rarely seen; whilst, on the other hand, in Santa Anna and Santa Catalina there appears to be no restriction placed on their movements. The following incident in the island of Faro will serve to ill.u.s.trate this shyness. Whilst following a path in the interior of the island, unattended by any companion, I suddenly surprised a woman sitting on a log with a child in her lap. She bolted away into the wood leaving the child, a little boy three or four years of age, on the ground in the middle of the path. The little urchin at once set up a terrific yell; but a present of a gilt necklace softened the tone of his distress, although it did not remove his fears. However, I pa.s.sed along and soon had the satisfaction of hearing the mother returning to her child.

This fear of the white man is soon dispelled by kindly treatment. When I first visited Treasury Island my entrance into the village was the signal for every woman to rush into her house, and I could only catch a glimpse of their retreating figures. This shyness soon wore away during the lengthened visits of the "Lark;" and in a short time when I walked through the village I was surrounded by a troop of young boys shouting out my name of "Dokus" or "Rokasy" at the top of their voices. This was the signal for all who were indoors to turn out to greet me. The old people would hobble out to the door; and the married women with their babes in their arms would walk up to me calling me by name and holding up their little ones for me to see, as if only too proud to show me the confidence the visit of the "Lark" had inspired.

The females in these islands of the Straits perform most of the work in the "patches" or plantations. Towards the evening, they may usually be seen returning in their canoes from the more distant "patches" bringing home a goodly quant.i.ty of taro, bananas, and other vegetables. There is generally a man in the stern who steers with a paddle; whilst the crew of eight or ten women, sitting in pairs, paddle briskly along with their light paddles.

The powerful chiefs of the islands of Bougainville Straits usually possess a large number of wives of whom only the few that retain their youth and comeliness enjoy much of the society of their lord. The majority, having been supplanted in the esteem of their common husband, have sunk into a condition of drudgery, finding their employment and their livelihood in toiling for the master whose affections they once possessed. I learned from Gorai, the Shortland chief, who has between eighty and a hundred wives, that the main objection he has against missionaries settling on his islands is, that they would insist on his giving up nearly all his wives, thereby depriving him of those by whose labour his plantations are cultivated and his household supplied with food. A great chief, he remarked, required a large staff of workers to cultivate his extensive lands; or, in other words, numerous women to work in his plantations and to bring the produce home. Such a plea for polygamy is in this condition of society somewhat plausible. The domestic establishment of such a chief may be compared in its internal economy to a social community of bees. The head of the society is, in this case, a male who, whilst living on the fat produce of his lands and increasing his species, performs no active office for the good of the community. The workers consist of his numerous cast-off wives, who having been supplanted in their lord's affections as their personal attractions diminished in the course of years, have at length subsided into the position of drudges to procure food for the king and his progeny.

Mule's marital establishment is on a smaller scale than that of the more powerful Shortland chief. This Treasury chief possesses between twenty-five and thirty wives, and has numerous young sons who were my frequent companions during my excursions in this island. In both establishments there is a favourite wife who exercises some authority over the others, and is known among white men as the queen. The princ.i.p.al wives are generally distinguished from the others by a more dignified deportment, a slim graceful figure, and more delicate features. The coa.r.s.er features, bigger limbs, and more ungainly persons of many of the wives at once mark the women of more common origin. The chief secures the fidelity of his wives by the summary punishment of death, suspicion being tantamount to proof, and an unwary action being held presumptive of guilt. Many of their wives are obtained by purchase from the Bougainville natives; whilst others represent the tribute owed by some of the smaller chiefs.

The majority of the Treasury men have two wives who are usually widely separated by age. They are originally obtained by making a handsome present to the parents. Each wife in working on her husband's land has her own patch allotted to her to which she confines her labours. My a.s.sociation with the natives of Treasury gave me some insight into their social life, in which, I should add, the women occupy a somewhat better position than in the islands we visited to the eastward. Men have introduced me to their wives with an air of politeness which supplied an index of the social status of their helpmates: and to show that the position of authority may be reversed--although from the absence of clothing one cannot employ the expressive phrase applied to those women who rule their husbands in more civilized lands--I may here observe that on one occasion an able-bodied man complained to me that his wife chastised him on the previous night.

I had one very pleasing experience of the domestic establishment of the Treasury chief. Having informed Mule that I was desirous to witness the manufacture of the cooking-pots employed by the natives, he despatched four of his wives into the interior of the island to get the clay; and in due time I was summoned to his house where I found myself in the midst of a dozen of his wives who were already hard at work, for the women are the potters here as in other parts of "savagedom." Mule's wives received me with much politeness, and made me sit down on a mat to watch the proceedings, being evidently much pleased with the idea of exhibiting their skill. For about five minutes there was but little work done as my curiosity led me to look more closely into the different steps of the process, a proceeding which caused much hilarity and elicited frequent exclamations of "tion drakono," often preceded by "Dokus," which implied that the doctor was a very good man. At last, after I had smiled on them to the best of my ability, and had gained their further approbation by taking on my knee a little well-scrubbed urchin that could hardly toddle, who in the most matter-of-fact manner made a vigorous onslaught on my chin and then went tooth-and-nail at my s.h.i.+rt-cuff, all in the best of humour and seemingly in an absent-minded kind of fas.h.i.+on as though its little mind was already occupied by far weightier matters--after all this, the more serious part of the entertainment became fairly under way. At its conclusion, I gave the princ.i.p.al wife a quant.i.ty of beads and a number of jews-harps to be distributed among her companions.

The marital establishment of Tomimas, one of the princ.i.p.al Faro chiefs, is small as compared with those of Gorai and Mule. He has only four wives who are named respectively, Domari, Duia, Bose, and Omakau, the first being the mother of the chief's eldest son, Kopana, an intelligent young man about twenty-two years of age.

In connection with the names of the women of Bougainville Straits, I should observe that there was always some reluctance on the part of the men to give me such names; and that when they did so, they usually uttered them in a low tone as though it was not the proper thing to speak of the women by name to others. This is especially noticeable when a man of the common cla.s.s is asked the name of one of the chief's wives.

On more than one occasion, when referring by name to the chief's princ.i.p.al wife in the course of a conversation with a native, I learned from the look of surprise, which the mention of the name elicited, that I had, unwittingly, been guilty of a breach of etiquette.

During the surveying season of 1883, which we pa.s.sed among the islands of Bougainville Straits, we were witnesses of the mourning ceremonials that were observed in connection with the death of Kaika, the princ.i.p.al wife of the Shortland chief, or the queen as Gorai was pleased to call her. It was in the beginning of July that I first made the acquaintance of Kaika, Gorai having asked me to visit her as she was suffering from some indisposition. A month pa.s.sed away before I again saw my royal patient, and on this occasion the chief accompanied me to his house.

Here I found Kaika quite recovered from her illness, a result which she attributed to some medicine which I had given her. She was reclining in a broken down easy-chair, the gift of a trader, engaged in working an armlet of beads, and clad only in the usual "sulu" or waist-handkerchief. In age Kaika was probably between 25 and 30, her general appearance being that of a woman superior in caste to most of her fellow-wives. For a native, her features were good and regular, her figure slim but well proportioned, her carriage graceful. Her clean skin and bushy head of hair, dyed a magenta hue by the use of red ochreous earth, added to the general effect of her appearance.

Whilst sitting down beside Gorai and his spouse, the latter showed me her little boy who was nearly blind. I was much struck with the tenderness displayed in the manner of both the parents towards their little son, who, seated on his mother's lap, placed his hand in that of his father, when he was directed to raise his eyes towards the light for my inspection.

The work of the s.h.i.+p took us away from Alu; and when we returned after an absence of five weeks, we learned that Kaika was dying. Landing on the ensuing day to see if I could be of any service, I was told that Kaika was dead; and as I stepped out of my Rob Roy, I received a message from Gorai to come and visit him. I found the old chief seated on the ground in front of his house, looking very dismal. Near by, there were nine or ten of his wives all well past the prime of life, withered and haggish, with heads shaven and faces plastered with lime as a token of mourning. They were squatting on the ground, and were engaged in droning out a dismal chant, reminding me of a group of witches. Accompanying Gorai into his house, I found there a numerous gathering of his wives all with their faces plastered with lime; their dead-white features, peering strangely at us through the gloom of the building, gave the whole scene quite an uncanny look. The old chief appeared to feel the loss of his favourite wife and broke down more than once when talking to me of her. He told me that the end came when we dropped our anchor in the bay, and he excused himself on account of his grief from coming off to the s.h.i.+p--"too much cry," as he remarked of himself to me. When I was leaving him, he asked me on the arrival of the s.h.i.+p at Treasury to inform Mule of his loss, Kaika being the sister of the Treasury chief, and to request that his own sister, Bita, who was Mule's princ.i.p.al wife, should come and visit him. Returning to my canoe I pa.s.sed some of Gorai's head-men who had plastered their foreheads and a part of their cheeks with lime, an observance, however, which was not followed by either the chief or his sons.

The next morning most of the men of the village were engaged in fis.h.i.+ng on the reef to obtain material for a great funeral feast that was to be held in the afternoon. When I landed with Lieutenant Leeper in the latter part of the day, we found ourselves on the beach in the midst of about a hundred men carrying their tomahawks, and a.s.sembled together on the occasion of the queen's demise. On entering the chief's grounds, which are tabooed to all the men of the village except those on the staff of the chief, we came upon about eighty women performing a funeral dance. Some of them were Gorai's wives; whilst others were the princ.i.p.al women of the neighbouring villages. With their faces white with lime they formed a large circle, in the centre of which were four posts placed erect in the ground, each about ten feet high, charred on one side and rudely carved in imitation of the human head, two of them painted red and two white. Enclosed in the ring and grouped around the posts were six women bearing in their hands the personal belongings of the deceased, such as her basket, cus.h.i.+on, &c. To the slow and measured time of the beats of a wooden drum, a hollowed log struck by a man outside the circle, the dancers of the ring adapted their movements, which consisted merely in raising the feet in turns and gently stamping on the ground. The central group of women danced around the posts, partly skipping, partly hopping, each woman holding up before her the article she bore, and regulating her steps to the beats of the drum. Now and then the man at the drum quickened his time, and the movements of the women of the ring became more spirited; whilst the central group of dancers skipped more actively around, the foremost woman sprinkling at each bound handfuls of lime over the dancers of the ring. As the weather was rainy, many of the women--all of whom wore a "sulu" reaching down to the knees--had their shoulders covered by their mats of panda.n.u.s leaves.

This dance was repeated on the following day but with a smaller number of dancers. I was anxious to ascertain the manner in which the body had been disposed; but beyond the fact that interment had taken place in the ground some distance away, I could learn but little. It is, however, very probable that the body was first burned between the charred posts, around which the dance was performed, which would have served as supports for the funeral pyre. Further reference to this custom will be found on page 51.

In making inquiries as to the obsequies paid to the dead queen, I was much struck with the reluctance of the natives to refer to the event.

They mentioned the name of the deceased in a low subdued tone as if it were wrong to utter the names of the dead. This mysterious dread which is a.s.sociated with the mention of the names of the dead is found, as Dr.

Tylor points out in his "Early History of Mankind" (3rd edit., p. 143), amongst many races of men. The example of the Australian native who _refuses_ to utter them may be here cited as an extreme instance of this superst.i.tion.

Three days after the death of Kaika, all the men of Alu, with the exception of the chief and his sons, cut off their hair close to the scalp as a symbol of mourning for the deceased, an observance which produced a surprising change in the appearance of men whom I had been familiar with as the owners of luxuriant bushy periwigs. A similar custom of either shaving the scalp or of cutting the hair close prevailed in other islands of the group which we visited, as at Simbo and Ugi. In the latter island the shaving is restricted to the posterior half of the scalp. With this digression I will continue my account of the mourning ceremonials observed at the death of Kaika.

The news of the death of the princ.i.p.al wife of the Alu chief was soon carried to the other islands of Bougainville Straits. Visits of condolence were paid to Gorai by Tomimas and Kurra-kurra, the two Faro chiefs; and parties of the women of Faro went to display in person their sympathy with the Alu chief on the occasion of his bereavement. We were the first to convey the news to Treasury; and as Mule stepped on deck shortly after the s.h.i.+p had come to an anchor in Blanche Harbour, I informed him of his sister's death and of Gorai's request that his own sister Bita should go and visit him at Alu. The news of Kaika's death was received by her brother with much composure. Several weeks pa.s.sed away before Bita could accomplish the long canoe voyage to her brother's island, as it is only practicable for a canoe in settled weather. There was a sudden demand for pairs of scissors in Treasury when the news of the death of Gorai's wife became generally known. Mule, his sons, and several of the men of the island showed their regard for the deceased by neatly tr.i.m.m.i.n.g their bushy periwigs, not cropping their hair close as in the case of the Alu natives; and in accordance with custom the wives of the chief plastered their faces with lime.

A week after our arrival at Treasury feasts were prepared as offerings to the Evil Spirit--the _nito paitena_ of the natives--to appease the wrath of that deity. For to his anger, as I was informed by an intelligent native named Erosini, the death of Kaika was attributed.

Whilst walking through the village one evening, I came upon the "remains" of one of these feasts. The essence of the viands had doubtless been extracted by this direful spirit, inasmuch as I learned on the authority of Erosini that the "devilo," as he termed him, had already satiated his appet.i.te; but to the eyes of ordinary mortals like myself, the dishes had not been touched. However, it was not long before numerous natives were helping themselves freely to the roasted opossums, boiled fish, taro, bananas, etc., which formed the feast. Although pressed to join in the banquet, I did not take to the idea of eating a vicarious meal for his infernal majesty; and I resisted the persuasion of one of my would-be hosts who, having scooped up with his hands a mixture of mashed taro and cocoa-nut sc.r.a.pings, licked his fingers well and remarked it was very good "kai-kai." On the following day an old rudely carved tambu-post that had been erected on the beach was used as a target, at which, from a distance of about fifteen paces, the natives fired their muskets and discharged their arrows. This proceeding, so we learned, was to intimidate the "devilo" in case the feasts of the previous day had not propitiated him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMORIAL OF A TREASURY CHIEF.

(_To face page 51._)]

The mode of burial employed by the natives of the islands of Bougainville Straits varies according to the position of the deceased.

The bodies of the chiefs and of any members of their families are usually burned; and the ashes are deposited together with the skull and sometimes the thigh-bones in a cairn on some sacred islet, or are placed in charge of the reigning chief. The natives were always reticent on this subject, a circ.u.mstance which prevented my ascertaining how the skull and thigh-bones were preserved from the flames. In the village of Treasury there are some memorials of departed chiefs, one of which is shown in the accompanying engraving. The one in best condition is that of the late chief, whose skull and thigh-bones were deposited on one of the islets in the harbour. They evidently mark the site of the funeral pyres. A wooden frame of the dimensions of a large coffin is placed on the ground and contains some young plants and the club of the deceased chief. Four posts charred on their inner sides and decorated on their outer sides with patterns in red, white, and black, are placed one at each corner of the frame. They are rudely carved at the top in the form of a face, and in all respects resemble those around which the funeral dance was performed at Alu, as described on page 49. A sprouting cocoa-nut is placed at one end of the frame, and a club is placed erect in the ground at the other end.

In the vicinity of Gorai's house, I noticed three small enclosures, apparently graves, two of them round and one oblong, and all fenced in by a paling of sticks. Lying on the ground within each enclosure were such articles as strings of trade-beads, clay-pipes, betel-nuts long since dried up, and dishes of palm leaves such as the natives use for serving up their food. A communicative old man informed me that a few months before a woman and a girl belonging to the chief's household had died, and that their bodies had been first burned between four posts and the ashes had been placed in the oblong enclosure. They bore, so he told me, the pretty names of evenu and Siali. On my asking the reason of placing articles such as beads and betel-nuts on the grave, he told me that in addition cocoa-nuts and other food had been placed there previously in accordance with the native custom, which the old man endeavoured to explain by pointing his fingers towards the skies. I should here mention that on the spot, where the body of Kaika had been burned some months before, there was placed a wooden framework in the form of a long box, the materials being obtained from a s.h.i.+p's fittings.

Inside it were placed some beads and coloured calico.

The custom of depositing skulls in cairns on the points of islands, which is prevalent in the eastern portion of the Solomon Group, is not generally practised amongst the islands of Bougainville Straits: and I rarely came upon them in my excursions. However, on an islet in Choiseul Bay, I found two cairns, one of which was tenanted only by hermit-crabs with their cast-off sh.e.l.ls, and the other contained two skulls that had apparently lain for years in their resting-place to which they were attached by the tendrils of creeping plants. On the summit of Oima, I came upon a heap of stones under which was supposed to be the remains of a Bougainville native killed in a fight, but I failed to find any of his bones after examining the heap.

The sea is generally chosen as the last resting-place for the natives below the rank of chief in the islands of Bougainville Straits.

Lieutenant Malan, whilst engaged in sounding at the entrance of the Alu anchorage, pa.s.sed two large canoes in one of which were being conveyed, for burial in deep water, the remains of a woman who had died during the previous night. The relatives of the deceased accompanied the corpse, but took no share in the paddling, being employed in wailing and bemoaning their loss after the conventional manner of the Chinese. A peculiar style of paddling was adopted by the funeral party; each man, pausing after every stroke, partially arrested the motion of the canoe by a backwater movement of his paddle.

In Simbo or Eddystone Island, the bodies of the dead are sometimes placed amongst the large ma.s.ses of rock which lie at the base of Middle Hill on the west coast of the island. My attention was first attracted to this custom by the stench that came from this spot as I pa.s.sed it in a canoe. Some human bones were observed on the reef which lies off the anchorage. In the eastern islands the dead are often buried at sea. In Ugi and in Florida the skulls are sometimes preserved in a cairn of stones built on the edge of a sea cliff, or at the extremity of a point, or in some remote islet. A dwarf cocoa-nut, which attains a height of from eight to twelve feet, frequently marks the grave of the chief in the island of Ugi. In one of the villages of this island I was shown the shrine of a chief, a small house in which suspended from the roof in a basket were the skulls of the chief and his wife concealed from view by a screen of palm leaves. Some articles of food, including a portion of an opossum, together with a large wooden bowl, were hung up before the screen.

The burial place for men in the village of Sapuna in Santa Anna is an oblong enclosure in the midst of the village which measures 24 by 18 feet, and is surrounded by a low wall of fragments of coral limestone.

In this s.p.a.ce all the bodies are buried at a depth of five or six feet; and after some time the skulls are exhumed and placed inside the wooden figure of a shark about three feet in length, which is deposited in the tambu-house. One of these wooden fish, which lay on the surface of the burial ground at the time of my visit, had recently been removed from the tambu-house on account of its being rotten through age, and the skull was to be re-interred. The body of a chief is placed at once in the tambu-house in a wooden shark of sufficient size. Women are buried in another ground, and the wooden sharks containing their skulls are deposited in a small house by the side of the tambu-house.

Into the subject of the superst.i.tions and religious beliefs which are held by the natives of the Solomon Islands I shall barely enter, as only those who have become familiar with the natives by long residence among them, and who have acquired an intimate knowledge of their language, can hope to avoid the numerous pitfalls into which the unwary observer is so likely to fall. I would, therefore, refer the reader for information on this subject to a paper by the Rev. R. H. Codrington, ent.i.tled "Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia," which was published in the Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute (vol. x., p. 261). Through Lieutenant Malan's knowledge of the Fijian tongue, a language understood by the men who had served their term on the Fiji plantations, I learned that the natives of Treasury and the Shortlands believe in a Good Spirit (_nito drekona_) who lives in a pleasant land whither all men who have lived good lives go after death, and that all the bad men are transported to the crater of Bagana, the burning volcano of Bougainville, which is the home of the Evil Spirit (_nito paitena_) and his companion spirits. That the natives of the Shortlands really believe in some future state is shown in the following singular superst.i.tion which came under my notice at Alu. I was returning one night in Gorai's war canoe from one of my excursions, when I noticed that the chief and his men were looking towards the coral island of Balalai which lies a few miles distant from the anchorage. They told me they were looking for a bright light which was sometimes to be seen s.h.i.+ning at night in this island in the winter months of the year. This light they believed to be the spirit of Captain Ferguson of the "Ripple," who had been killed some years before by the natives of Nouma-nouma on the Bougainville coast. I suggested that it might be the watch-fire of a party of the Faro natives who had gone there to fish, or to hunt turtle; but my suggestion was pooh-poohed. Balalai was evidently a haunted island in the minds of my companions, and I desisted from making any further remarks which would be likely to disabuse them of this idea. Often and often when we were anch.o.r.ed within sight of this island I remembered the story, but never saw the light.

The natives of Ugi believe that the souls of the dead pa.s.s into fireflies: and should one of these insects enter a house, those inside quickly leave it. The spirits of the dead in human shape are believed to frequent certain islets in Treasury Harbour, where they are occasionally seen by the women. Certain spirits, who are usually accredited with the power of sending sickness or other calamities, are said to take up their abodes in particular districts. Such a spirit haunts the picturesque glen of Tetabau on the northern slope of the summit of Treasury, if we may accept the statement of one of the islanders; and any native who is bold enough to enter this glen will, according to the general belief, provoke the anger of its invisible occupant. The party of natives who accompanied me to the summit of Tarawei Hill in the island of Faro refused to go further than the brink of the hill, because, as they said, there dwelt on the top some evil spirits who would send sickness and death on any intruder. I had therefore to walk along the crest of the hill alone. The echoes which the shouts of my men awakened as we descended the steep slopes to the west were, as I was told, but the voices of the spirits who haunted the summit of the hill.

In the island of Ugi the superst.i.tion of "ill-wis.h.i.+ng" is very prevalent. When a man cuts off his hair, as in mourning, he buries it un.o.bserved so that it may not fall into the hands of any one who may by sorcery bring sickness or some other calamity upon him; and he adopts the same precaution with reference to the husks of betel-nuts and similar refuse. Whilst I was obtaining some samples of hair from the natives of this island, I was told that if in the immediate future any sickness should befall those who had parted with their hair, they would a.s.sign the cause to me; yet, native-like, they allowed me to take a sample with their free consent, for it is their custom never to refuse to each other anything that is asked. The professions of the sorcerer and medicine-man are usually combined in the same individual. These men in the Shortlands have a great reputation in the minds of the natives, being accredited by them with a knowledge almost universal; and the precincts of their dwellings are tabooed even to the chief. One of them named Kikila, a sinister-looking individual with but one eye, had obtained much repute in the practice of his profession. When on one occasion Lieutenant Oldham complained to the chief that some of the calico had been removed by the natives from the surveying-marks, the services of Kikila were employed to bring about the death of the unknown culprit. The sorcerer was not himself aware who the man was; but we were told that for one of so much repute this was quite unnecessary. We never learned the result of his incantation; but in all probability they effected their purpose soon enough by working on the fears of the unfortunate offender. How it was to be done we could not satisfactorily ascertain; but there was no doubt as to the efficacy of the means employed in the minds of the natives.

Amongst the powers of the sorcerers are those of influencing the weather. But such powers are not confined to men of this cla.s.s alone. In Ugi, different natives are accredited with being able to bring wind and rain; and I knew one man who had earned for himself a considerable reputation as a "wind-prophet." These powers are claimed by Mule, the Treasury chief, amongst his other prerogatives.

As far as I could ascertain, these natives keep no record, even in the memory, of the lapse of years. Nor are they acquainted with their own age. More than once when trying to obtain the date of particular events, I received the wildest replies. The safest method to employ in making such inquiries is to get the native to refer a recent event to some epoch in his own life, or in the case of earlier occurrences to a.s.sociate them with his boyhood, manhood, or marriage. When he a.s.serts that a certain event occurred whilst his father was a child, he is probably to be trusted; but when he goes back to the time of his grandfather, no further reliance can be placed on his statements, except as implying an indefinite number of years. I have observed elsewhere (page 76) that a grandfather is deemed a personage of such a high antiquity that these islanders, when referring to past events, seldom care to go beyond.

The only method of reckoning that came under my notice was in the instance of a Treasury native, who, whilst serving as interpreter on board the "Lark," kept a register of the time he was away from his island by tying a knot daily on a cord and marking Sunday by a piece of paper, the knots being about an inch apart. I learned from a Faro man that this is the method of recording days which is commonly employed by the inhabitants of Bougainville Straits, the "moons" or months being alone distinguished by a piece of native tobacco tied in the knot. Such a practice, however, would appear to be followed only during the temporary absences from their islands, as when they are away on canoe expeditions. A native, captured in 1769 by Surville, whilst at Port Praslin, in Isabel, kept count of the days of absence from his country by tying knots in a "lacet."[18] It is scarcely necessary for me to point out that in the "knotted cord" of the Solomon Islanders we have the elementary form of the "quipu" of the Incas.

[18] From an extract of this voyage given in "Voyage de Marion."

Paris, 1783: p. 274, _circa_.

Amongst the constellations, the Pleiades and Orion's Belt seem to be those which are most familiar to the natives of Bougainville Straits.

The former, which they speak of as possessing six stars, they name "Vuhu;" the latter, "Matatala." They have also names for a few other stars. As in the case of many other savage races, the Pleiades is a constellation of great significance with the inhabitants of these straits. The Treasury Islanders hold a great feast towards the end of October, to celebrate, as far as I could learn, the approaching appearance of this constellation above the eastern horizon soon after sunset. Probably, as in many of the Pacific Islands, this event marks the beginning of their year. I learned from Mr. Stephens that, in Ugi, where of all the constellations the Pleiades alone receives a name, the natives are guided by it in selecting the times for planting and taking up their yams.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLAGE OF SUENNA IN UGI.

(_To face page 57._)]