Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific Part 5

My observations led me to the following results: according to native belief, the soul leaves the body after death, and wanders about near by. Apparently the idea is that it remains in connection with the body for a certain time, for in some districts the corpse is fed for five days or longer; in Vao a bamboo tube is used, which leads from the surface of the earth to the mouth of the buried body. The souls of low-caste people soon disappear, but the higher the caste, the longer the soul stays on earth. Still, the natives have some conception of a paradise in which the soul of the high-caste finds all bliss and delight, and which the soul ultimately enters. This idea may have come up since the arrival of Christianity. It is customary to hold a death-feast for a man of no caste after five days, for a low-caste after one hundred, and for a high-caste after three hundred or even one thousand days. The soul remains in contact with the world of the living, and may be perceived as a good or bad spirit of as much power as the man had when alive. To obtain the favour and a.s.sistance of these spirits seems to be the fundamental idea, the main object of religion in the New Hebrides. The spirit of an ancestor will naturally favour his descendants, unless they have offended him deeply; and the more powerful the dead ancestor was, the stronger and safer do his descendants feel under the protection of his spirit. If a man has no powerful ancestral ghost, he joins some strong clan, and strives for the favour of its tutelary spirit by means of rich sacrifices. The spirits admit those who bring many sacrifices to their special favour and intimacy; these people are supposed to have gone half-way to the spirit-world, and even in this life they are dreaded and enormously influential; for the spirits will help him in every way, the elements are his servants, and he can perform the most terrible sorceries. Thus he terrorizes the country, becomes chief, and after death he joins the other ghosts as a powerful member of their company.

The "Suque" transferred the hierarchy of the spirit-world into this world, and regulated the number of castes and the method of rising in caste; it also originated the rules for entering into connection with the other world. Its origin probably goes back to one of those secret societies so highly developed in Melanesia, of which I shall speak later.

Caste is obtained by sacrificing tusked pigs; it is possible that this has taken the place of former human sacrifices. The "Suque" is the community of all the men who have sacrificed tusked pigs. It is an international society, divided into numerous groups composed of the men of different islands, districts, villages or clans. It is the only means to a.s.sure oneself of bliss hereafter, and to obtain power and wealth on earth, and whoever fails to join the "Suque" is an outcast, a man of no importance, without friends and without protectors, whether living men or spirits, and therefore exposed to every ill-treatment and utter contempt. This explains the all-important position of the "Suque" in the life of the natives, being the expression both of religion and of ambition.

Frequently a young boy will join the "Suque," an uncle on the mother's side donating pigs to be sacrificed in his name after he has touched them with his hand. The boy is then free of the gamal, the "Suque"

club-house. Later he works his way up in the society by attending numberless feasts and ceremonies, by having endless discussions on tusked pigs, by borrowing, buying and lending pigs, by plotting and sacrificing.

The number of castes varies on different islands: in Ambrym there are fourteen, in Venua Lava twenty, in Aoba ten. On some islands, Santo, for example, the caste-system is connected with a severe separation of the fires; each caste cooks over its own fire, and loses its degree on eating food cooked on the fire of a lower caste. In these districts the floor of the gamal is frequently marked by bamboo rods or sticks in as many divisions as there are castes each containing one fireplace. The highest castes sit at the front end of the gamal, the lower at the back; these are forbidden to enter the gamal from the front, in order not to touch or step over the fireplaces of their superiors. At each rise in caste the novice receives the new fire, rubbed on a special stick and decorated with flowers; certain ceremonies attend the cooking of the first food with this new fire. It is then carefully tended in the fireplace, and if it goes out it has to be rubbed afresh with the stick. The number of pigs necessary to a rise in caste also varies on the different islands. Generally, only tusked pigs are counted, and there are feasts at which as many as forty of these valuable animals are killed. Naturally, the high-castes cannot keep all the animals themselves, but they lend them, like money, to those who do not possess the number needed to rise in caste; in this way a complicated credit-system has developed, by which the so-called chiefs support and strengthen their influence and tyrannize the country.

A young man, as a rule, owns no tusked pigs. If he wishes to raise his caste, he has to borrow from the rich high-castes, who are very willing to help him, but only at exorbitant rates of interest. First he has to win their favour by presents, and then he has to promise to return a more valuable pig later. The bargain made, the transaction takes place publicly with some ceremony. The population of the district a.s.sembles, and all the transactions are ratified which have been negotiated in private. The owner holds the pig, the borrower dances around him and then takes the animal away. All the spectators serve as witnesses, and there is no need of a written bill. In this way nearly all the men of lower rank are in debt to the high-castes, and dependent on their goodwill, and these can obtain anything they like, simply by pressing their debtors to pay for their pigs.

As a rule, the highest castes of a district work together; they are the high priests, who arrange everything connected with the "Suque,"

set the dates for the feasts, and decide whether a man shall be permitted to raise his caste. They are practically omnipotent, until one of them rises by still larger sacrifices to a still higher caste, and becomes sole master. If there are no more degrees to reach, the whole scale is run through again an octave higher, so to speak. The jaws of the killed pigs are hung up in the gamal in bundles or rows, as a sign of the wealth and power of the proprietor. These chiefs are in connection with the mightiest spirits, have supernatural power and are as much hated as they are feared.

There is another independent witchcraft beside the "Suque," for weather-making, charms and poisoning, which is known to private men. They take expensive "lessons" from old sorcerers, and transmit their art to the young men they consider clever enough, for good wages. These are the real mischief-makers, for they will lend their murderous a.s.sistance to anyone for adequate payment.

In some islands there is also a "Suque" for the women, but it is quite independent of that of the men, and its degrees are easier to reach. Still, women of high rank enjoy a certain consideration from the men.

Real chiefs do not exist in the northern part of the New Hebrides, but the chiefs are the high-castes, who, according to their rank and the strength of their personality, have more or less influence. They cannot give direct orders, but rule indirectly through pressure, threats and encouragement. Officially, all decisions are taken in a meeting of the whole "Suque." The chieftains.h.i.+p is not hereditary, but the sons and especially the nephews of high-castes generally reach high degrees themselves, being pushed by their relatives, who are naturally anxious to be surrounded by faithful and influential friends. Thus there have risen aristocratic families, who think themselves better than the others, and do not like to mix with common people. Daughters of these families command high prices, and are therefore accessible only to rich men, that is, men of high caste. Young men of less good family are naturally poor, and since a woman, as a rule, costs five pigs, it is almost impossible for them to marry, whereas old men can buy up all the young, pretty girls; the social consequences of this system are obvious. In Vao conditions are not quite so bad, because there is considerable wealth, and women are numerous, so that even young men are enabled to have a family; in consequence, the race here is healthier than elsewhere.

In Vao I had occasion to attend a death-feast. The hero of the day was still alive and in excellent health; but he did not quite trust his family, and wis.h.i.+ng to make sure that his death-feast would not be forgotten, he held it during his lifetime. His anxiety about the feast is explained by the following facts. According to Vao beliefs, the souls of the dead travel to the island of Ambrym, and after five days climb a narrow trail up to the volcano. In order that the soul may not starve on the way, the survivors often make a small canoe, load it with food and push it off into the sea, thinking it will drift after the soul. It is generally stranded behind the nearest point, bringing the neighbours a welcome addition to the day's rations. This custom is in contradiction to the feeding of the body through a tube, and proves that quite contradictory customs can exist simultaneously, without the natives noticing it. Half-way up the volcano sits a monster with two immense shears, like a crab. If no pigs have been sacrificed for the soul by the fifth day, the poor soul is alone and the monster swallows it; but if the sacrifice has been performed, the souls of the sacrificed pigs follow after the human soul, and as the monster prefers pig, the human has time to escape and to reach the entrance to paradise on top of the volcano, where there are pigs, women, dancing and feasting in plenty.

The feast I was to attend had been in preparation for some time. On all the dancing-grounds long bamboos were in readiness, loaded with yams and flowers, as presents to the host. Everything was brought to his gamal, and the whole morning pa.s.sed in distributing the gifts, each family receiving a few yams, a little pig, some sprouted cocoa-nuts and a few rolls of money. This money consists of long, narrow, fringed mats, neatly rolled up; in this case they were supposed to be the mats in which the dead are buried, and which are taken out of the grave after a while. These mats formerly served as small coin, as similar mats are still used on other islands, and they still represent a value of about one s.h.i.+lling; but in daily life they have been quite replaced by European coin, and only appear on such ceremonial occasions.

All the gifts were piled up, and when the host was convinced that every guest had received his just dues, he took a stick and smashed the heads of all the pigs that were tied up in readiness for this ceremony. They struggled for a moment, the dogs came and licked the blood, and then each guest took away his portion, to have a private feast at home. The whole performance made a desperately business-like impression, and everything was done most prosaically; as for me, having no better dinner than usual to look forward to, I quite missed the slightly excited holiday feeling that ought to go with a great feast. Formerly, the braining of the pigs was done with skilfully carved clubs, instead of mere sticks, and this alone must have given the action something of solemnity; but these clubs have long since been sold to collectors and never replaced.

In spite of their frequent intercourse with whites, the people of Vao are still confirmed cannibals, only they have not many opportunities for gratifying their taste in this direction. Still, not many years ago, they had killed and eaten an enemy, and each individual, even the little children, had received a small morsel of the body to eat, either with the idea of destroying the enemy entirely, or as the greatest insult that could be offered to him.

These same people can be so gay, childlike, kind and obliging, tactful and generous, that one can hardly believe the accounts one often hears of sudden outbreaks of brutal savagery, devilish wickedness, ingrat.i.tude and falsehood, until one has experienced them himself. The flattering and confiding child will turn suddenly and without apparent reason into a man full of gloom and hatred. All those repressing influences which lead the dwellers in civilized lands to some consistency of action are lacking here, and the morals of the natives run along other lines than ours. Faith and truth are no virtues, constancy and perseverance do not exist. The same man who can torture his wife to death from wanton cruelty, holding her limbs over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or a finger-joint of the dead as a valuable relic round his neck; and the same man who is capable of preparing a murder in cold blood for days, may, in some propitious evening hour, relate the most charming and poetic fairy-tales. A priest whom I met knew quite a number of such stories from a man whom he had digged alive out of the grave, where his relatives had buried him, thinking him old enough to die. This is not a rare occurrence; sometimes the old people themselves are tired of life and ask to be killed.

What has preserved the old customs so well on Vao is the aversion of the natives to plantation work. But one day, while I was there, a s.h.i.+p rode at anchor off the coast, and a member of the French survey party landed, collected all the men on the beach, and told them that unless there were thirty men on board that evening, the whole tribe would be driven out of the island, as the island belonged to the French company. This was, to say the least, extremely doubtful; moreover, it would never have been feasible to expropriate the natives in this summary way. They were furious, but, unprotected as they were, they had to obey, and in the evening nearly all the young men a.s.sembled on the beach and were taken away in whale-boats, disappearing in the mist and darkness of the night. The old men and the women remained behind, crying loudly, so that the terrible wailing sounded sadly over the sea. Even to the mere spectator it was a tragic moment when the tribe was thus orphaned of its best men, and one could not help being revolted by the whole proceeding. It was not womanish pity for the men who were taken off to work, but regret for the consequent disappearance of immemorial forms of tribal life. Next day the beach was empty. Old men and women crossed over to the yam-fields, the little children played as usual, but the gay shouts were silent, the beautiful, brown, supple-bodied young men were gone, and I no longer felt the joy of living which had been Vao's greatest charm. The old men were sulky and sad, and spoke of leaving Vao for good and settling somewhere far inland. It is not surprising that the whole race has lost the will to live, and that children are considered an undesirable gift, of which one would rather be rid. What hopelessness lies in the words I once heard a woman of Vao say: "Why should we have any more children? Since the white man came they all die." And die they certainly do. Regions that once swarmed with people are now lonely; where, ten years ago, there were large villages, we find the desert bush, and in some districts the population has decreased by one-third in the last seven years. In fifteen years the native race will have practically disappeared.

CHAPTER VI

PORT OLRY AND A "SING-SING"

The event just described reduced my chance of finding servants in Vao to a minimum, as all the able-bodied young men had been taken away. I therefore sailed with the missionary for his station at Port Olry. Our route lay along the east coast of Santo. Grey rain-clouds hung on the high mountains in the interior, the sun shone faintly through the misty atmosphere, the greyish-blue sea and the greyish-green sh.o.r.e, with the brown boulders on the beach, formed a study in grey, whose hypnotic effect was increased by a warm, weary wind. Whoever was not on duty at the tiller lay down on deck, and as in a dream we floated slowly along the coast past lonely islands and bays; whenever we looked up we saw the same picture, only the outlines seemed to have s.h.i.+fted a little. We anch.o.r.ed near a lonely isle, to find out whether its only inhabitant, an old Frenchman, was still alive. He had arrived there a year ago, full of the most brilliant hopes, which, however, had not materialized. He had no boat, hardly ever saw a human being, and lived on wild fruits. Hardly anyone knows him or visits him, but he had not lost courage, and asked for nothing but a little salt, which we gave him, and then sailed on.

In Hog Harbour we spent the night and enjoyed a hearty English breakfast with the planters, the Messrs. Th., who have a large and beautiful plantation; then we continued our cruise. The country had changed somewhat; mighty banks of coral formed high tablelands that fell vertically down to the sea, and the living reef stretched seaward under the water. These tablelands were intersected by flat valleys, in the centre of which rose steep hills, like huge bastions dominating the country round. The islands off the coast were covered with thick vegetation, with white chalk cliffs gleaming through them at intervals. A thin mist filled the valleys with violet hues, the sea was bright and a fresh breeze carried us gaily along. The aspect of the country displayed the energies of elemental powers: nowhere can the origin of chalk mountains be more plainly seen than here, where we have the process before us in all its stages, from the living reef, s.h.i.+ning purple through the sea, to the sandy beach strewn with bits of coral, to the high table mountain. We anch.o.r.ed at a headland near a small river, and were cordially welcomed by the missionary's dogs, cats, pigs and native teacher. There was also a young girl whom the father had once dug out of her grave, where a hard-hearted mother had buried her.

I had an extremely interesting time at Port Olry. The population here is somewhat different from that of the rest of Santo: very dark-skinned, tall and different in physiognomy. It may be called typically Melanesian, while many other races show Polynesian admixture. The race here is very strong, coa.r.s.e-featured and lives in the simplest way, without any industries, and is the primitive population in the New Hebrides.

A few details as to personal appearance may be of interest. Among the ornaments used are very large combs, decorated with pigs' tails. Pigs'

tails also are stuck into the hair and ears. The hair is worn very long, rolled into little curls and plentifully oiled. A most peculiar deformation is applied to the nose and results in extreme ugliness: the septum is perforated, and instead of merely inserting a stick, a springy spiral is used, which presses the nose upward and forward, so that in time it develops into an immense, shapeless lump, as if numberless wasps had stung it. It takes a long time to get used to this sight, especially as the nose is made still more conspicuous by being painted with a bright red stripe on its point, and two black ones on each side. A more attractive ornament are flowers, which the men stick into their hair, where they are very effective on the dark background. In the lobes of the ears they wear spirals of tortoise-sh.e.l.l or thin ornaments of bone; the men often paint their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, generally the upper half of the forehead, the lower part of the cheeks and the back of the nose. The women and children prefer the red juice of a fruit, with which they paint their faces in all sorts of mysterious designs.

The dress of the men consists of a large belt, purposely worn very low so as to show the beautiful curve of the loins. About six small mats hang down in front. Formerly, and even at the present day on festival occasions, they wore on the back an ovoid of wood; the purpose is quite unknown, but may originally have been a portable seat, as the Melanesian does not like to sit on the bare ground. Provided with this article of dress the wearer did not need to look about for a seat.

If the appearance of the men, while not beautiful, is at least impressive, the women are so very much disfigured that it takes quite some time to grow accustomed to their style of beauty. They are not allowed to wear many ornaments, have to shave their heads, and generally rub them with lime, so that they look rather like white-headed vultures, all the more so as the deformed nose protrudes like a beak and the mouth is large. The two upper incisors are broken out as a sign of matrimony.

Their figures, except in young girls, are generally wasted, yet one occasionally meets with a woman of fine and symmetrical build. The dress is restricted to a small leaf, attached to a thin loin-string. Both men and women generally wear at the back a bundle of leaves; women and boys have strongly scented herbs, the men coloured croton, the shade depending on the caste of the wearer. The highest castes wear the darkest, nearly black, varieties. These croton bushes are planted along the sides of the gamals, so as to furnish the men's ornaments; and they lend the sombre places some brightness and colour.

Half for ornament and half for purposes of healing are the large scars which may frequently be seen on the shoulders or b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the natives. The cuts are supposed to cure internal pains; the scabs are frequently scratched off, until the scar is large and high, and may be considered ornamental. Apropos of this medical detail I may mention another remedy, for rheumatism: with a tiny bow and arrow a great number of small cuts are shot into the skin of the part affected; the scars from these wounds form a network of fine, hardly noticeable designs on the skin.

The life and cult of the natives are as simple as their dress. The houses are scattered and hidden in the bush, grouped vaguely around the gamal, which stands alone on a bare square. No statues stand there, nor tall, upright drums; only a few small drums lie in a puddle around the gamal.

The dwelling-houses are simply gable-roofs, always without side-walls and often without any walls at all. They are divided into a pig-stable and a living-room, unless the owners prefer to have their pigs living in the same s.p.a.ce with themselves.

A few flat wooden dishes are the only implements the native does not find ready-made in nature. Cooking is done with heated stones heaped around the food, which has been previously wrapped up in banana leaves. Lime-stones naturally cannot be used for that purpose, and volcanic stones have often to be brought from quite a distance, so that these cooking-stones are treated with some care. In place of knives the natives use sh.e.l.ls or inland bamboo-splinters, but both are rapidly being replaced by European knives.

On approaching a village we are first frightened by a few pigs, which run away grunting and scolding into the thicket. Then a pack of dogs announce our arrival, threatening us with hypocritical zeal. A few children, playing in the dirt among the pigs, jump up and run away, then slowly return, take us by the hand and stare into our faces. At noon we will generally find all the men a.s.sembled in the gamal making "lap-lap." Lap-lap is the national dish of the natives of the New Hebrides; quite one-fifth part of their lives is spent in making and eating lap-lap. The work is not strenuous. The cook sits on the ground and rubs the fruit, yam or taro, on a piece of rough coral or a palm-sheath, thus making a thick paste, which is wrapped up in banana leaves and cooked between stones. After a few hours' cooking it looks like a thick pudding and does not taste at all bad. For flavouring, cocoa-nut milk is poured over it, or it is mixed with cabbage, grease, nuts, roasted and ground, or occasionally with maggots. Besides this princ.i.p.al dish, sweet potatoes, manioc, bread-fruit, pineapples, bananas, etc., are eaten in season, and if the natives were less careless, they would never need to starve, as frequently happens.

The men are not much disturbed by our arrival. They offer us a log to sit on, and continue to rub their yam, talking us over the while. They seem to be a very peaceful and friendly crowd, yet in this district they are particularly cruel and treacherous, and only a few days after my departure war broke out. The gamal is bare, except for a few wooden dishes hanging in the roof, and weapons of all kinds, not in full sight, but ready at any moment. We can see rifles, arrows and clubs. The clubs are very simple, either straight or curved sticks. Old pieces are highly valued, and carry marks indicating how many victims have been killed with them: I saw one club with sixty-seven of these marks. In former years the spear with about two hundred and fifty points of human bones was much used, but is now quite replaced by the rifle. The bones for spear-points and arrow-heads are taken from the bodies of dead relatives and high-castes. The corpse is buried in the house, and when it is decayed the bones of the limbs are dug out, split, polished and used for weapons. The idea is that the courage and skill of the dead man may be transmitted to the owner of the weapon, also, that the dead man may take revenge on his murderer, as every death is considered to have been caused by some enemy. These bones are naturally full of the poisons of the corpse, and may cause teta.n.u.s at the slightest scratch. On the arrows they are extremely sharp and only slightly attached to the wood, so that they stick in the flesh and increase the inflammation. Besides, they are often dipped in some special poison.

All over the archipelago the arrows are very carefully made, and almost every island has its own type, although they all resemble each other. Many are covered at the point with a fine spiral binding, and the small triangles thus formed are painted in rows--red, green and white. Much less care is bestowed on the fish- and bird-arrows, which are three-pointed as a rule, and often have no point at all, but only a k.n.o.b, so as to stun the bird and not to stick in the branches of the trees.

s.h.i.+elds are unknown. It would seem that the arrow was not, as elsewhere, the princ.i.p.al weapon, but rather the spear and club, and the wars were not very deadly, as the natives' skill in handling their weapons was equalled by their skill in dodging them.

Having inspected the gamal, we received from the highest caste present a gift of some yam, or taro, which we requited with some sticks of tobacco. The length of the gamal depends on the caste of the chief who builds it. I saw a gamal 60 metres long, and while this length seems senseless to-day, because of the scanty population, it was necessary in former days, when the number of a man's followers rose with his rank. Not many years ago these houses were filled at night with sleeping warriors, each with his weapons at hand, ready for a fight. To-day these long, dark, deserted houses are too dismal for the few remaining men, so that they generally build a small gamal beside the big one.

To have killed a man, no matter in what way, is a great honour, and gives the right to wear a special plume of white and black feathers. Such plumes are not rare in Port Olry.

Each man has his own fire, and cooks his own food; for, as I have said, it would mean the loss of caste to eat food cooked on the fire of a lower caste. Women are considered unworthy to cook a man's meal; in fact, their standing here is probably the lowest in all the archipelago. Still, they do not lack amus.e.m.e.nt; they gather like the men for social carousals, and are giggling and chattering all day long. Their princ.i.p.al occupation is the cultivation of the fields, but where Nature is so open-handed this is not such a task as we might think when we see them coming home in the afternoon, panting under an immense load of fruit, with a pile of firewood on top, a child on their back and possibly dragging another by the hand. Port Olry is the only place in the New Hebrides where the women carry loads on their heads. Everywhere else they carry them on their backs in baskets of cocoa-nut leaves. In consequence the women here are remarkable for their erect and supple carriage.

The work in the fields consists merely of digging out the yam and picking other fruit, and it is a sociable affair, with much talking and laughter. There is always something to eat, such as an unripe cocoa-nut or a banana. Serious work is not necessary except at the planting season, when the bush has to be cleared. Then a whole clan usually works together, the men helping quite energetically, until the fields are fenced in and ready for planting; then they hold a feast, a big "kai-kai," and leave the rest of the work to the women. The fences are made to keep out the pigs, and are built in the simplest way: sticks of the wild cotton-wood tree, which grows rankly everywhere, are stuck into the ground at short intervals; they immediately begin to sprout, and after a short time form a living and impenetrable hedge. But they last much longer than is necessary, so that everywhere the fences of old gardens bar the road and force the traveller to make endless detours, all the more so as the natives have a way of making their fields right across the paths whenever it suits them.

The number of women here amounts only to about one-fourth of that of the men. One reason for this is the custom of killing all the widows of a chief, a custom which was all the more pernicious as the chiefs, as a rule, owned most of the young females, while the young men could barely afford to buy an old widow. Happily this custom is dying out, owing to the influence of the planters and missionaries; they appealed, not unwisely, to the sensuality of the young men, who were thus depriving themselves of the women. Strange to say, the women were not altogether pleased with this change, many desiring to die, for fear they might be haunted by the offended spirit of their husband.

When a chief died, the execution did not take place at once. The body was exposed in a special little hut in the thicket, and left to decay, which process was hastened by the climate and the flies. Then a death-feast was prepared, and the widows, half frantic with mad dancing and howling, were strangled.

Ordinary people are buried in their own houses, which generally decay afterwards. Often the widow had to sleep beside the decaying body for one hundred days.

Being short of boys, I could not visit many of the villages inland, and I stayed on at the mission station, where there was generally something for me to do, as the natives frequently came loitering about the station. I made use of their presence as much as possible for anthropological measurements, but I could not always find willing subjects. Everything depends on the humour of the crowd; if they make fun of the first victim, the case is lost, as no second man is willing to be the b.u.t.t of the innumerable gibes showered on the person under the instruments. Things are more favourable if it is only fear of some dangerous enchantment that holds them back, for then persuasion and liberal gifts of tobacco generally overcome their fears. The best subjects are those who pretend to understand the scientific meaning of the operation, or the utterly indifferent, who never think about it at all, are quite surprised to be suddenly presented with tobacco, and go home, shaking their heads over the many queer madnesses of white men. I took as many photographs as possible, and my pictures made quite a sensation. Once, when I showed his portrait to one of the dandies with the oiled and curled wig, he ran away with a cry of terror at his undreamt-of ugliness, and returned after a short while with his hair cut. His deformed nose, however, resisted all attempts at restoration.

The natives showed great reluctance in bringing me skulls and skeletons. As the bones decay very quickly in the tropics, only skulls of people recently deceased can be had. The demon, or soul, of the dead is supposed to be too lively as yet to be wantonly offended; in any case, one dislikes to disturb one's own relatives, while there is less delicacy about those of others. Still, in course of time, I gathered quite a good collection of skulls at the station. They were brought carefully wrapped up in leaves, fastened with lianas, and tied to long sticks, with which the bearer held the disgusting object as far from him as possible. The bundles were laid down, and the people watched with admiring disgust as I untied the ropes and handled the bones as one would any other object. Everything that had touched the bones became to the natives an object of the greatest awe; still they enjoyed pus.h.i.+ng the leaves that had wrapped them up under the feet of an unsuspecting friend, who presently, warned of the danger, escaped with a terrified shriek and a wild jump. It would seem that physical disgust had as much to do with all this as religious fear, although the natives show none of this disgust at handling the remains of pigs. Naturally, the old men were the most superst.i.tious; the young ones were more emanc.i.p.ated, some of them even going the length of picking up a bone with their toes.

Most of them had quite a similar dread of snakes, but some men handled them without much fear, and brought me large specimens, which they had caught in a sling and then wrapped up in leaves. While I killed and skinned a big snake, a large crowd always surrounded me, ever ready for flight, and later my boys chased them with the empty skin, a performance which always ended in great laughing and dancing.

I had been in Port Olry for three weeks, waiting anxiously every day for the Marie-Henry, which was to bring the luggage I had left behind at the Segond Channel. My outfit began to be insufficient; what I needed most was chemicals for the preservation of my zoological specimens, which I had plenty of time and occasion to collect here. One day the Marie-Henry, a large schooner, arrived, but my luggage had been forgotten. I was much disappointed, as I saw no means of recovering it in the near future. The Marie-Henry was bound for Talamacco, in Big Bay, and took the Rev. Father and myself along.

One of the pa.s.sengers was Mr. F., a planter and trader in Talamacco, and we soon became good friends with him and some of the others. Mr. F. was very kind, and promised to use all his influence to help me find boys. The weather was bad, and we had to tack about all night; happily, we were more comfortable on the big schooner than on the little cutters. At Talamacco Mr. F. offered us his hospitality, and as it rained continually, we were very glad to stay in his house, spending the time in sipping gin and winding up a hoa.r.s.e gramophone. Thus two lazy days pa.s.sed, during which our host was constantly working for me, sending his foreman, the "moli," to all the neighbouring villages, with such good results that at last I was able to engage four boys for two months. I took them on board at once, well pleased to have the means, at last, of moving about independently.

We sailed in the evening, and when, next morning, we rounded Cape Quiros, we found a heavy sea, so that the big s.h.i.+p pitched and ploughed with dull hissing through the foaming waves. She lay aslant under the pressure of the wind that whistled in the rigging, and the full curve of the great sails was a fine sight; but it was evident that the sails and ropes were in a very rotten condition, and soon, with anxious looks, we followed the growth of a tear in the mainsail, wondering whether the mast would stand the strain. A heavy sea broke the rudder, and altogether it was high time to land when we entered Port Olry in the late afternoon.