Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific Part 12

I also visited the neighbouring islands, and heard the gruesome story of how the last village on Aore disappeared. The Aore people were for ever at war with those of South Santo, across the Segond Channel. The men of Aore were about sixty strong, and one day they attacked a Santo village. Everyone fled except one man, who was helpless from disease. He was killed and eaten up, and in consequence of this meal thirty out of the sixty men from Aore died. The others dispersed among the villages of Malo. In Aore, I had the rare sensation of witnessing an earthquake below the surface. I was exploring a deep cave in the coral banks when I heard the well-known rumbling, felt the shock, and heard some great stalact.i.tes fall from the ceiling. This acc.u.mulation of effects seemed then to me a little theatrical and exaggerated.

The next steamer took me to the Banks Islands, and I went ash.o.r.e at Port Patterson on Venua Lava. Here were the headquarters of a rubber planting company; but the rubber trees had not grown well, and the company had started cocoa-nuts. I had met Mr. Ch., the director, before, and he took me in. The company owned a motor-launch, which cruised all through the Banks Islands, visiting the different plantations; this gave me a good opportunity to see nearly all the islands. The sea is much more dangerous here than in the New Hebrides, being open everywhere; and the strong currents cause heavy tide rips at the points of the jagged coasts.

An excursion to Gaua was a failure, owing to bad weather. After having s.h.i.+vered in a wet hut for four days, we returned to Port Patterson only just in time; for in the evening the barometer fell, a bad sign at that season, and the wind set in afresh. The launch was anch.o.r.ed in a sheltered corner of the bay, near an old yacht and a schooner belonging to Mr. W., a planter on a neighbouring islet. All the signs pointed to a coming cyclone, and suddenly it shot from the mountains, furrowed the sea, and ruled supreme for two days. From the director's house I watched the whirling squalls gliding over the water, lifting great lumps of spray, that shot like snow over the surface and disappeared in the misty distance. Rain rattled in showers on the roof; everywhere was a hissing, rus.h.i.+ng, thundering; the surf broke in violent, irregular shocks like the trampling of an excited horse; the wind roared in the forest till the strongest trees trembled and the palms bent over with inverted crowns. In a moment the creeks swelled to torrents, and in every gully there ran rivers, which collected to a deep lake in the plain. In the house the rain penetrated everywhere, leaked through the roof, dripped on the beds, and made puddles on the floor.

Meanwhile the captain and engineer of the launch had pa.s.sed an unpleasant time; they had stayed aboard till the rolling of the boat drove them to the larger yacht; but seeing the schooner break her two chains and drift on to the reef, they became frightened and went ash.o.r.e in the dinghey, and home along the beach. Later they arrived at the station and reported "all well," and were amazed when I told them that the launch had stranded. I had just been looking from the veranda through the gla.s.s at the boats, when a huge wave picked up the launch and threw her on the beach. There she had rolled about a little, and then dug herself into the sand, while the tide fell and the wind changed. Next day the cyclone had pa.s.sed, but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke over her decks and gurgled in the hold. The rigging was torn, the cabin washed away, and the sh.o.r.e strewn with her doors, planks, beams and trade goods. It was a pitiful sight to see the handsome s.h.i.+p bending over like a fallen warrior, while the company's old yacht had weathered the cyclone quite safely.

During the work of refloating the boat, Mr. Ch. was taken very ill with fever, and I nursed him for some days; he was somewhat better by Christmas Eve, and we had the satisfaction of bringing the saved launch back to the station. He was visibly relieved, and his good humour was agreeably felt by his boys as well as by his employes, to whom he sent a goodly quant.i.ty of liquor to celebrate the occasion. We sat down to a festive dinner and tried to realize that this was Christmas; but it was so different from Christmas at home, that it was rather hard. At our feet lay the wide bay, turquoise blue, edged with white surf; in the distance rose the wonderful silhouette of Mota Lava Island; white clouds travelled across the sky, and a gentle breeze rustled in the palms of the forest. The peaceful picture showed no trace of the fury with which the elements had fought so few days ago.

Tired with his exertions, Mr. Ch. withdrew early, and I soon followed; but we were both aroused by the barking of the dogs, followed by the pad of bare feet on the veranda, whispering and coughing, and then by a song from rough and untrained throats. The singers were natives of a Christian village some miles away, who came to sing Christmas hymns in a strange, rough language, discordant and yet impressive. When they had finished the director went out to them; he was a man whom one would not have believed capable of any feeling, but he had tears in his eyes; words failed him, and he thanked the singers by gestures. We all went down to the store, where they sang to the employes, and received presents; after which they spent the rest of the night with the hands, singing, eating and chatting. On Christmas Day the natives roasted a fat pig, the employes spent the day over their bottles, and I was nurse once more, my patient being delirious and suffering very much.

Before New Year's Day the launch was sent to all the different stations to fetch the employes, an interesting crowd of more or less ruined individuals. There was a former gendarme from New Caledonia, a cavalry captain, an officer who had been in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year's Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director's house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one by one. Thus the new year was begun miserably, and the next few days were just as bad. The natives looked on at the fights with round-eyed astonishment; and the director was in despair, for a second cyclone was threatening, and there was hardly anyone in a fit condition to help him secure the launch.

All one morning it rained, and at noon the cyclone broke, coming from the south-west, as it had done the first time, but with threefold violence. We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn. The blasts grew ever more violent and frequent, and if the house had not been protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and a little iron shed went rolling along the ground like a die. Down in the plain the storm tore the leaves off the palms, and uprooted trees and blew down houses. The cyclone reached its climax at sunset, then the barometer rose steadily, and suddenly both wind and rain ceased. The stillness lasted for about half an hour and then the storm set in again, this time from the north, striking the house with all its strength; fortunately it was not so violent as at first. With the rising barometer the storm decreased and changed its direction to the east. All next day it rained and blew; but on the third morning the storm died out in a faint breeze from the south-east, and when we came to reckon up our damages, we found that it might have been worse. Meanwhile the employes had had time to recover from their orgy. A brilliant day dried the damp house, and soon everything resumed a normal aspect except the forest, which looked brown and ragged, like autumn woods at home.

I made use of the first calm day to visit the lonely little islet of Meralava. As it has no anchorage, no one can land there except in quiet weather, and so it had come about that the company's employe had had no communication with the outside world for four months. The island is an extinct volcano, a regular cone, with the crater as a deep cavity in the top. There is hardly a level square metre on the whole island, and the sh.o.r.es rise steeply out of the sea; only a few huge lava blocks form a base, on which the swell breaks and foams. When we reached the island, this swell was so heavy as to render landing almost impossible. All we could do was to take the employe aboard and return home. I was very sorry to have to give up my visit to Meralava, as the natives, though all christianized, have preserved more of their old ways than those of other islands, owing to their infrequent intercourse with civilization. For the same reason, the population is quite large; but every time a s.h.i.+p has landed an epidemic goes through the island, the germs of which appear to be brought by the vessels, and the natives evidently have very small powers of resistance. We may here observe on a small scale what has taken place all over the archipelago in the degeneration and decimation of the aborigines.

The people of Meralava live on taro, which they grow in terraced fields, the water being obtained from holes in the rocks, and on cocoa-nuts, of which the island yields a fair supply.

The following day we started for Ureparapara, also a volcanic island, with an enormous crater, one side of which has fallen in; because, as the natives say, a great fish knocked against it. The sea has penetrated into the interior of the crater, forming a lovely bay, so that s.h.i.+ps now lie at anchor where formerly the lava boiled and roared.

In consequence of the frequent intercourse with whites, the population is scanty. There is hardly a level patch, except the small strip at the base of the slope and the great reef outside. Here, too, we had difficulty in landing, but in the evening we found an ideal anchorage inside the bay. The water was scarcely ruffled, and little wavelets splashed on the sh.o.r.e, where mangrove thickets spread their bright foliage. Huge trees bent over the water, protecting the straw roofs of a little village. In the deep shade some natives were squatting round fires, and close by some large outrigger-canoes lay on the beach. On three sides the steep wooded slopes of the former crater's walls rise up to a sharply dented ridge, and it all looks like a quiet Alpine lake, so that one involuntarily listens for the sound of cow-bells. Instead, there is the call of pigeons, and the dull thunder of the breakers outside.

We took a holiday in this charming bay; and though the joys of picnicking were not new to us, the roasting of some pigeons gave us a festive sensation and a hearty appet.i.te. The night under the bright, starlit sky, on board the softly rocking launch, wrapped me in a feeling of safety and coziness I had not enjoyed for a long time.

Along the steepest path imaginable I climbed next morning to the mountain's edge. The path often led along smooth rocks, where lianas served as ropes and roots as a foothold; and I was greatly surprised to find many fields on top, to which the women have to climb every day and carry the food down afterwards, which implies acrobatic feats of no mean order.

Ureparapara was the northernmost point I had reached so far, and the neighbourhood of the art-loving Solomon Islands already made itself felt. Whereas in the New Hebrides every form of art, except mat-braiding, is at once primitive and decadent, here any number of pretty things are made, such as daintily designed ear-sticks, bracelets, necklaces, etc.; I also found a new type of drum, a regular skin-drum, with the skin stretched across one end, while the other is stuck into the ground. The skin is made of banana leaves. These and other points mark the difference between this people and that of the New Hebrides. As elsewhere all over the Banks group, the people have long faces, high foreheads, narrow, often hooked, noses, and a light skin. Accordingly, it would seem that they are on a higher mental plane than those of the New Hebrides, and cannibalism is said never to have existed here.

My collections were not greatly enriched, as a British man-of-war had anch.o.r.ed here for a few days a short time before; and anyone who knows the blue-jackets' rage for collecting will understand that they are quite capable of stripping a small island of its treasures. A great deal of scientifically valuable material is lost in this way, though fortunately these collectors go in for size chiefly, leaving small objects behind, so that I was able to procure several valuable pieces.

After our return to Port Patterson the launch took me to a plantation from which I ascended the volcano of Venua Lava. Its activity shows princ.i.p.ally in sulphur springs, and there are large sulphur deposits, which were worked fifteen years ago by a French company. A large amount of capital had been collected for the purpose, and for a few weeks or months the sulphur was carried down to the sh.o.r.e by natives and exported. Then it was found that the deposits were not inexhaustible, that the employes were not over-conscientious, that the consumption of alcohol was enormous, and finally the whole affair was given up, after large quant.i.ties of machinery had been brought out, which I saw rusting away near the sh.o.r.e. In this way numerous enterprises have been started and abandoned of late years, especially in Noumea. It is probably due to this mining scheme that the natives here have practically disappeared; I found one man who had once carried sulphur from the mine, and he was willing to guide me up the volcano.

There are always clouds hanging round the top of the mountain, and the forest is swampy; but on the old road we advanced quite rapidly, and soon found ourselves on the edge of a plateau, from which two streams fell down in grand cascades, close together, their silver ribbons gleaming brightly in the dark woods. One river was milk-white with sulphur precipitate, the other had red water, probably owing to iron deposits. The water was warm, and grew still warmer the farther up we followed the river. Suddenly we came upon a bare slope, over certain spots of which steam-clouds hung, while penetrating fumes irritated one's eyes and nose. We had come to the lower margin of the sulphur springs, and the path led directly across the sulphur rocks. Mounting higher, we heard the hissing of steam more distinctly, and soon we were in the midst of numerous hillocks with bright yellow tops, and steam hissing and whistling as it shot out of cracks, to condense in the air into a white cloud. The whole ground seemed furrowed with channels and creva.s.ses, beneath which one heard mysterious noises; one's step sounded hollow, and at our side ran a dark stream, which carried the hot sulphur water to the sh.o.r.e. Great boulders lay about, some of them so balanced that a slight touch sent them rolling into the depths, where they broke into atoms. Sometimes we were surrounded by a thick cloud, until a breeze carried it away, and we had a clear view over the hot, dark desert, up to the mountain-top. It was uncanny in the midst of those viciously hissing hillocks, and I could not blame my boys for turning green with fear and wis.h.i.+ng to go home. But we went on to a place where water boiled in black pools, sometimes quietly, then with a sudden high jump; some of the water was black, some yellowish, and everything around was covered with sulphur as if with h.o.a.r-frost.

We followed the course of a creek whose water was so hot as to scald our feet, and the heat became most oppressive. We were glad to reach the crater, though it was a gloomy and colourless desert, in the midst of which a large grey pool boiled and bubbled. In front was a deep crevice in the crater wall, and a cloud of steam hid whatever was in it; yet we felt as though something frightful must be going on there. Above this gloomy scene stretched a sky of serenest blue, and we had a glimpse of the coast, with its little islands bathing in the sapphire sea.

Next day we left for Gaua. Unhappily the captain met friends, and celebrated with them to such an extent that he was no longer to be relied on, which was all the more unpleasant as the weather was of the dirtiest, and the barometer presaged another cyclone. After two days it cleared up a little; I went ash.o.r.e at the west point of Gaua, where the launch was to pick me up again two days later, as I meant to visit the interior while the others went to buy coprah. Even now the wind and the swell from the north-west were increasing suspiciously, and after I had spent a rainy night in a village off the sh.o.r.e, I saw the launch race eastward along the coast, evidently trying to make a safe anchorage, with the storm blowing violent squalls and the sea very high.

On my way inland I still found the paths obstructed by fallen trees from the last cyclone, while nearly all the cocoa-nut palms had lost their nuts. And again the storm raged in the forest, and the rain fell in torrents.

I was anxious to buy statues of tree-fern wood; they are frequently to be seen here, standing along a terrace or wall near the gamal, and seem not so much images of ancestors, as signs of rank and wealth. The caste may be recognized by the number of pigs' jaws carved on the statues. Often the artist first makes a drawing of the statue in red, white and black paint on a board; and these same designs are used as patterns for tattooing, as well as on ear-sticks and other objects. Female statues are common, which is an unusual thing.

I obtained a good number of skulls, which were thrown into the roots of a fig tree, where I was allowed to pick them up as I pleased.

The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an earlier population that has entirely disappeared.

When I returned from my excursion I looked down on a wild foam-flecked sea, over which the storm was raging as it did during the previous cyclones. I realized that I should have to stay here for some time, and ate my last provisions somewhat pensively. I only hoped that the launch had found an anchorage, else she must inevitably have been wrecked, and I should be left at the mercy of the natives for an indefinite time. The hut in which I camped did not keep off the rain, and I was wet and uncomfortable; thus I spent the first of a series of miserable nights. I was anxious to know the fate of the launch, and this in itself was enough to worry me; then I was without reading or writing materials, and my days were spent near a smoky fire, watching the weather, trying to find a dry spot, sleeping and whistling. Sometimes a few natives came to keep me company; and once I got hold of a man who spoke a little b.i.+.c.he la mar, and was willing to tell me about some old-time customs. However, like most natives, he soon wearied of thinking, so that our conversations did not last long.

The natives kept me supplied with food in the most hospitable manner: yam, taro, cabbage, delicately prepared, were at my disposal; but, unaccustomed as I was to this purely vegetable diet, I soon felt such a craving for meat that I began to dream about tinned-meat, surely not a normal state of things. To add to my annoyance, rumours got afloat to the effect that the launch was wrecked; and if this was true, my situation was bad indeed.

On the fifth day I decided to try and find the anchorage where I supposed the launch to be. The wind had dropped a little, but it was still pouring, and the walk through the slippery, devastated forest, up and down steep hills and gullies, across fallen trees, in a thick, oppressive fog, was strenuous enough. In the afternoon, hearing that the launch was somewhere near, we descended to the coast, where we came upon the captain and the crew. They had managed to anchor the launch at the outbreak of the storm, and had camped in an old hut on the beach; but the huge waves, breaking over the reef, had created such a current along the beach that the launch had dragged her anchors, and was now caught in the worst of the waves and would surely go down shortly. Unfortunately the captain had sent the dinghey ash.o.r.e some time before coming to this bay, so that there was no means whatever of reaching the launch. The rising sea had threatened to wash away the hut, and the captain, leaving the boat to her fate, had gone camping inland.

I went down to the beach to see for myself how things stood, and was forced to admit that the man had not exaggerated. In the midst of the raging surf the launch rocked to and fro, and threatening waves rose on every side and often seemed to cover her. Still she was holding her own, and had evidently not struck a rock as yet; and if her cables held out, hope was not lost. I watched her fight for life for some time, and she defended herself more gallantly than I should ever have expected from so clumsy a craft; but I had little hope. We spent a miserable night in the village, in a heavy atmosphere, amid vermin and filth, on an uneven stone floor. The rain rattled on the roof, the storm roared in the forest like a pa.s.sing express train, the sea thundered from afar, and a river echoed in a gorge near by; to complete the gloomy scene, a violent earthquake shook the hills.

In the morning the launch was still afloat on the same spot; the wind had abated, and the sky no longer looked quite so stormy. During the night things improved still more, and we ventured to camp on the sh.o.r.e. The boys went for the dinghey, and although they had hard work, half dragging, half carrying it along the sh.o.r.e over the cliffs, they succeeded in bringing it to our beach, and then made an attempt to row to the launch, but were almost carried out beyond the reef. Encouraged by a faintly rosy sunset and a few stars, we waited another day; then the current along the coast had nearly ceased, only outside the reef huge mountains of water rolled silently and incessantly past, and broke thundering against the cliffs. The second attempt to reach the launch was successful, and, wonderful to relate, she had suffered no damage, only she had s.h.i.+pped so much water that everything was soaked and rusty. The engineer began to repair her engines, and by evening she steamed back to her anchorage, where we welcomed her as if she had been a human being.

The wind had quite fallen when we steamed out next day. It was dull weather, and we were rocked by an enormous swell; yet the water was like a mirror, and the giant waves rose and disappeared without a sound. It all seemed unnatural and uncanny, and this may have produced the frightened feeling that held us all that morning. While we were crossing over to Port Patterson a sharp wind rose from the north, and the barometer fell, so that we feared another edition of the storm. If our engines had broken down, which happened often enough, we should have been lost, for we were in a region where the swell came from two directions, and the waves were even higher than in the morning. Fortunately the wind increased but slowly; presently we were protected by the coast, and at night we arrived at Port Patterson. The men had given us up, and welcomed us with something akin to tenderness. Here, too, the cyclone had been terrible, the worst of the three that had pa.s.sed in four weeks.

Soon afterwards the steamer arrived, bringing news of many wrecks and accidents. A dozen s.h.i.+ps had been smashed at their anchorages, four had disappeared, and three were known to have foundered; in addition, news came of the wreck of a steamer. Hardly ever had so many fallen victims to a cyclone.

Painfully and slowly our steamer ploughed her way south through the abnormally high swell. None of the anchorages on the west coast could be touched, and everywhere we saw brown woods, leafless as in winter, and damaged plantations; and all the way down to Vila we heard of new casualties.

CHAPTER XV

TANNA

Of the larger inhabited islands of the New Hebrides, only Tanna remained to be visited. Instead of stopping at Vila, I went on to White Sands, Tanna, where the Rev. M. was stationed. The large island of Erromanga has but little native population, and that is all christianized; the same is true of the smaller islands of Aneityum, Aniwa and Futuna. I preferred to study Tanna, as it is characteristic of all the southern part of the archipelago. The population is quite different from that in the north, and one would call it Polynesian, were it not for the curly hair which shows Melanesian admixture. Light-coloured, tall, strong, with the fleshy body that is often a feature of the Polynesian, the people have, not infrequently, fine open features, small noses and intelligent faces of oval outline. They are more energetic, warlike and independent than those up north, and their mode of life is different, the Suque and everything connected with it being entirely absent. Instead, we find hereditary chieftains.h.i.+p, as in all Polynesia, and the chiefs are held in the highest veneration by their subjects. This state of things was greatly to the advantage of the missions, as the chiefs, even if converted, retained their authority, whereas in the north the high castes, on their conversion, lost all influence and position, as these only depended on the Suque. The brilliant results of the missions in Tanna are due, apart from the splendid work of the two Presbyterian missionaries, chiefly to this fact. If the missionaries and the authorities would join forces for the preservation of the native race, great good might be done. Intelligent efforts along this line ought to comprise the following features: revival of the wish to live and the belief in a future for the race, increase in the birth-rate, rational distribution of the women, abolition of the present recruiting system, compulsory medical treatment, creation of law and order, and restoration of old customs as to daily life and food.

The houses on Tanna are poor huts of reed-gra.s.s, probably because the perpetual wars discouraged the people from building good dwellings. The princ.i.p.al weapons are the spear and club, the arrow, as elsewhere in Polynesia, playing a subordinate part. A weapon which is probably peculiar to Tanna are throwing-stones, carefully made stone cylinders, which were hurled in battle. If a man had not time to procure one of these granite cylinders, a branch of coral or a slab of stone, hewn into serviceable shape, would serve his turn; and these instruments are not very different from our oldest prehistoric stone implements.

Quite a Polynesian art is the manufacture of tapa: bark cloth. The Tannese do not know how to make large pieces, but are satisfied with narrow strips, used as belts by the men, and prettily painted in black and red.

The dress of the men is similar to that of Malekula, that of the women consists of an ap.r.o.n of gra.s.s and straw; and they often wear a hat of banana leaves, while the men affect a very complicated coiffure. The hair is divided into strands, each of which is wound with a fibre from the head out. A man may have several hundred of these ropes on his head all tied together behind, giving a somewhat womanish appearance. It takes a long time to dress the hair thus, and the custom is falling into disuse.

On the whole, the culture of the Tannese is low; there is no braiding or carving, and the ornaments worn consist only of a few bracelets and necklaces, with an occasional nose-stick; the only conspicuous feature are ear-rings of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, of which as many as a dozen may hang in one ear.

On the other side of Tanna is Lenakel, where the Rev. W. was working with admirable devotion and success in a hospital. I crossed the island several times, and enjoyed the delightful rides through the shady forest, on very good bridle-paths the natives had made.

Tanna's most striking sight is its volcano; there is hardly another in the world so easily accessible; for in half an hour from the sh.o.r.e its foot may be reached, and in another half-hour one is at the top. It is about 260 m. high, a miniature volcano, with all its accessories complete, hot springs, lake, desert, etc., always active, rarely destructive, looking like an overgrown molehill. A wide plain stretches inland, utterly deserted owing to the poisonous vapours always carried across it by the south-east trade-wind, and in the centre of the plain is a sweet-water lake.

I climbed the volcano for the first time on a rainy day. On top, I suddenly found myself at the end of the world; it was the edge of the crater, completely filled with steam. As I walked along the precipice, such an infernal thundering began just under my feet as it seemed, that I thought best to retire. My next ascent took place on a clear, bright day; but the wind drove sand and ashes along the desert, and dimmed the suns.h.i.+ne to a yellowish gloomy light. I traversed the desert to the foot of the crater, where the cone rose gradually out of brownish sand, in a beautiful curve, to an angle of 45. The lack of all vegetation or other point of comparison made it impossible to judge whether the mountain was 100 or 1000 m. high. The silence was oppressive, and sand columns danced and whirled up and down, to and fro, like goblins. A smell of sulphur was in the air, the heat was torturing, the ground burnt one's feet, and the climb in the loose sand was trying. But farther up the sea-breeze cooled the air deliciously, and stone blocks afforded a foothold. Soon I was on top, and the sight I saw seemed one that only the fancy of a morbid, melancholy genius could have invented, an ugly fever dream turned real, and no description could do it justice.

In front of me the ground fell down steeply, and the torn sides of the crater formed a funnel-shaped cavity, a dark, yawning depth. There were jagged rocks, fantastic, wild ridges, crevices, fearful depths, from which issued steam and smoke. Poisonous vapour poured out of the rocks in white and brownish clouds that waved to and fro, slowly rising, until a breeze caught and carried them away. The sight alone would suffice to inspire terror, without the oppressive smoke and the uncanny noise far down in the depths. Dull and regular, it sounded like the piston of an engine or a great drum, heard through the noises of a factory. Presently there was silence, and then, without any warning, came a tearing crack, the thunder as of 100 heavy guns, a metallic din, and a cloud of smoke rose; and while we forced ourselves to stay and watch, the inferno below thundered a roaring echo, the walls shook, and a thousand dark specks flew up like a swarm of frightened birds. They were lava blocks, and they fell back from the height of the crater, rattling on the rocks, or were swallowed up by the invisible gorge. Then a thick cloud surrounded everything, and we realized that our post at the mouth of the crater, on an overhanging ridge, was dangerous; indeed, a part of the edge, not far off, broke down and was lost in the depths. Another and another explosion followed; but when we turned, we overlooked a peaceful landscape, green forests, palms bending over the bright blue water, and far off the islands of Erromanga, Futuna and Aniwa.

A visit to the volcano at night was a unique experience. Across the desert the darkness glided, and as we climbed upward, we felt and heard the metallic explosions through the flanks of the mountain, and the cloud over the crater shone in dull red. Cautiously we approached the edge, just near enough to look down. The bottom of the crater seemed lifted, the walls were almost invisible, and the uncertain glare played lightly over some theatrical-looking rocks. We could see three orifices; steam poured out of one, in the other the liquid lava boiled and bubbled, of the third there was nothing to be seen but a glow; but underneath this some force was at work. Did we hear or feel it? We were not sure; sometimes it sounded like shrill cries of despair, sometimes all was still, and the rocks seemed to shake. Then suddenly it boiled up, hissing as if a thousand steam-pipes had burst, something unspeakable seemed preparing, yet nothing happened. Some lava lumps were thrown out, to fall back or stick to the rocks, where they slowly died out. All at once a sheaf of fire shot up, tall and glowing, an explosion of incredible fury followed; the sheaf dispersed and fell down in marvellous fireworks and thousands of sparks. Slowly, in a fiery stream the lava flowed back to the bottom. Then another explosion and another, the thumping increased, one of the other openings worked, spitting viciously in all directions, the noise became unbearable. All one's senses were affected, for the din was too violent to touch one's hearing only. Then there was silence; the cloud rose, and beside it we saw the stars in the pure sky, and heard the surf beat peacefully, consolingly, as if there were no volcano and no glowing lava anywhere near.

While we were standing on the brink as if fascinated, the silver moon rose behind us, spread a broad road of light on the quiet sea, played round us with her cool light, shone on the opposite wall of the crater, and caressed the sulphurous cloud. It was a magical sight, the contrast of the pure moonlight and the dirty glare of the volcano; an effect indescribably grand and peculiar, a gala performance of nature, the elements of heaven and h.e.l.l side by side.

At last we left. Behind and above us thundered the volcano, below us lay the desert, silvery in the moonlight, in quiet, simple lines; far away rolled the sea, and in the silence the moon rose higher and higher, and our shadows followed us as we traversed the plain and gained the friendly shade of the palm grove.