[inside front cover] Islands Visited.

New Hebrides

Ambrym
Aragh (Pentecost)
Maiwo (Aurora)
Opa (Leper's Island)
Santa Maria (2 places)
Sandwich (Vaté)

Banks

Vanua Lava (2 places)
Mota - Ara
Merilava

Solomon

(5 places) St Christoval or Bauro
(4 places) Florida or Anudha
(2 places) St Isabel
(2 places) Savo
(2 places) Malanta
(2 places) Guadalcanar or Gera
Ulawa
Ugi

[first page, unnumbered:]

Melanesia

1877 [corrected from 1876]
___

Summary of Dates
_______

April 5. Left Nelson (in Wellington with En)
" 7 reached Auckland
" 9 left for Bay in Iona
" 10 reached Bay
" 12 left Bay in Southern Cross.
E. went to Simcoxes
" 15 Sunday reached N. I. early
" 25 Wdy left Nof. Island
May 6 Passed Fotuna
May 9 Touched at Ambrym
" 10 Aragh. Maiwo (anchor)
" 11 Opa (anchor) Left Bice
" 12 Lakona (anchor) (Santa Maria)
" 13 Do. (left Stephen)
" 14 Mota
" 15 Ara
" 16 Gaua (Santa Maria)
" 17 Pek (Vanua Lava)
[page 1] May 18 -- at sea
" 20 -- Wango (St Christo anchor)
" 21 -- Do St Christo
" 22 -- Ubuna St Christ
" 23 -- Miuata St Christo
" 24 -- at sea
" 25 -- Mboli (Florida anchor)
" 26 -- Ravo Florida
" 27 -- Bugotu Isabel
" 28 -- Do
" 29 -- at sea
" 30 -- Savo
" 31 -- Savo; and at sea

June 1, 2, 3, 4 -- Isabel (Cockatoo)
" 5 -- Mboli; Ravo (Florida)
" 6 -- Aliti in Malanta

[2] (Calendar)

June 7 -- Gaiata (Florida)
" 8 -- Ruavatu (Guadalcanar)
" 9, 10, 11, 12 -- at anchor Mboli (Florida) "Curaçoa Harbour"
" 13, 14, 15 at sea [for 15 Ulawa-Saa crossed out]
" 16 Ulawa -- Saa
" 17, 18 Anchored at Wango
" 19 touched at Ugi
" 20, 21 Beating South
" 22 Put back to Wango; anchored
" 23, 24 at Anchor. Repairs on tops- l yard
" 25 Sail for South Beating
July 12 Opa [Beating]
" 13 at anchor Opa. sailed for Gaua 6 p.m.
" 14 Gaua - anchored Lakona, Sa Maa
" 15 Lakona at anchor Sunday

[3] 1877

July 16. sailed - anchored at Pek
" 17. Ara - anchored at Port Patteson
" 18 Touched at Mota.
" 19 Merilava; anchored Maiwo.
" 20 Watering at Maiwo ("Waterwitch")
" 21. Touched at Aragh (Aurora)
" 22. Sunday. At Sea. the "Pool"
" 23 At sea - passed Mai
" 24 Anchored Port Havannah, Vaté; sailed to
Aug 6 At Sea - reachd Norf. Island.
Aug 8 sailed in Waiwera [inserted: 40 ton schooner] for Noumea
Aug 12 landed Noumea
Aug 20 Sailed Sydney [added in pencil:] in "Noumea" brigantine
Sept 10. Landed Sydney.
Sept 19. Sailed Auckland. Hero steamer
Sept

[4] [blank page]

[5] Ambrym

May 7. Touched at Ambrym, one month exactly from Auckland, one fortnight from Norfolk Island. That last is a long passage due to head winds, light airs and calms. For eleven days running we were always by the wind, and often breaking off "at that"! But though contrary the weather has been fine, and mostly pleasant, excepting two dull muggy days culminating, in a thunder-squall with thorough "tropical rain" ushering in a wet day & night. The rain water swished too & fro' on deck all night in the most dreary style! And it was on this day of all others we sighted our first tropical island! Verily a contrast between fancy & fact comical in its very lugubriousness! Fancy: A burning blue sky, a soft blue sea, a dazzling white beach, rich cocoanut groves, jungle & forest, rolling hills, shady ravines, high central ridges; [5/6] Fact: A leaden sea, a gray sky, a scrap of bare precipice looming high through the rain, suggesting only as the ship rolls past on the long weltering billows "What an awful place to be wrecked on"! Such was Matthew's Island, a mere rock between 400 & 500 ft high, far to the East of the usual track. We sighted also before reaching Ambrym, Aneiteum, Tanna, Erromango, Niua, Two Hills, Vate, Mai, Lopeir and others, but all at such uninteresting distances that they seemed mere bits of darker shade at the base of the clouds overhanging their ridges. Tanna however was so far interesting, though certainly never nearer than 30 miles we heard for half the day the rumble of its volcanic explosions like distant thunder!

Erroman or Fotuna was the only one we coasted near enough to discern trees &c; but from the way [6/7] light fell it looked little better than the silhouette, in cross-section, of a great railway-embankment, taken by a shaky pencil!

We sighted only one sail, hull down.

Anchored off Ambrym about 9 this morning. It is high, volcanic, but, this soft trade-wind morning, was deeply capped with grey misty cloud. As we coasted along its rock-bound woody shores, I thought "how like N.Zd! and what a lot of fine Nikau's"! These, of course, were cocoa-nut trees. They are rather shabby; not to be compared to those of Ceylon.

A great clumsy (out-rigger) Canoe came off and a few Natives, all men, came aboard, very friendly and jolly. Bishop took me ashore with him, to return a scholar, and to buy yams and cocoa-nuts. Penny & Bice (Revs) went to another bay to buy yams.[7/8] We went to a village and bought a few yams with tobacco & curios but the market was bad as they had had a hurricane. All very friendly, much noise. The men, small, dark brown and very dirty, wear a belt from which descends in front a tiny socket, some 3 or 5 inches long! The ladies, very small, filthy and hideous wear a petticoat round them as low as anything can possibly be made to hang, about a foot deep of stuff like flax-tow. Children naked. Some men had bows & arrows. Two of them had guns.

Village wretched on volcanic sand. Cocoa-nut & bread-fruit trees looked battered and wretched after the storm.

One boy took a great fancy to me apparently and slipping his hand into mine walked about with me; I believe he would have gone with me! One old [8/9] greybeard took an immense interest in my white shirt. (I had no coat or waistcoat on) Bice told me afterwards that they all took me for Codrington on account of my specs. How astonished they must have been at my having grown dumb! In the middle of the village was stuck up a huge drum - a trunk of a tree, slit down the middle, hollowed out, and surmounted by a fantastic head. They dance around it.

Amongst this filthy people poor young Penny spent part of a winter alone, and dragged through a sharp fit of measles!

Life on board. Breakfast at 8, dinner 1 -- tea 5 1/2 (exactly sunset!!!) I do not go down to dinner. Mota prayers at 10 -- and 6 1/2; English at 7 1/2; in the cabin. Heat, so far simply delicious! It is sometimes oppressive at night though in the cabin where we sleep, [9/10] 8. Bishop, self, Revs Penny & Bice, and 4 natives, two of them, sick, one (Stephen) in great danger from relapse of low fever, diahorea &c. He is a Christian. Bishop nurses him with great devotion.

We have 55 black fellows, & 10 women & girls. We are in all about 80, and it is "Liberty hall" with a vengeance! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! No sacred quarter deck, cabin or anything else. Just the least bit overdone, I think, but as a mere visitor I look on, & "Keep a calm rough"!

Luckily no one cares to walk the deck but Penny & myself, so we don't get much into each other's way.

Sailed for Aragh (or Aurora) Lay-to at night.

May 10. Landed on Aragh, early this morning to return 2 boys, to land 2 native teachers and to trade for yams. Mr. Penny lay-off in his boat [10/11] at the edge of the fringing reef, Bishop, Bice & I in the other boat pulled in till she grounded, then waded ashore calf-deep. The boats on these occasions are always manned by crews of native scholars. Lots of Natives bringing yams, some ashore, some wading, some coming off in very small clumsy canoes with one out-rigger. All very jolly & friendly. Women keep together, a little apart from the men. This is general in the Islands. Men wear a belt with a little strip of dirty calico, or matting, women a short mat petticoat, for all the world as though they had wrapped old gunny-bags round their hips.

We climbed up some way thro' the bush to a village on a little shelf; track like a baddish Maori bush-track. General effect of scenery wonderfully like general effect of wooded N.Z. coast scenery putting cocoa-nut palms [11/12] for tree-ferns and nikaus, screw-pine for cabbage-tree, high reeds for toe-toe and so forth. Unhappily it was a very dull day, sky heavily overcast with dark grey woolly clouds, for all the world like a dark July day in England. I felt so injured!

We went up the hill partly to choose a place for a Mission-house, near this village. Found a lovely little plateau, on the cliff or brow overlooking the beach. Through the trees we spied poor Penny in his boat on the edge of the reef surrounded by a great buzzing crowd of men & women standing some in the boat, some in the water, and reminding one of a swarm of flies surrounding a bit of carrion.

I was most struck at Ambrym yesterday by the apathy shown on the return of the two boys from school. We know what joyful commotion there would be with [12/13] us at such a time; what hongi's and tangi's it would call forth from among the Maoris! At Ambrym I actually couldn't tell who were the poor boy's relations, while they themselves sat forlorn, neglected, and looking quite miserable!

Here too small boys have placed a hand in mine and followed me about grinning and chattering! But then here too I am told that they have taken me for Codrington! Poor little beggars! I thought some of them looked far nicer than any boys I have seen at Norfolk Island, spite of dirt and nakedness! They are all astonishingly dirty for tropical natives with the sea close by! And I don't think they fear sharks! At least during the calms on the voyage, and at anchor our natives bathed, men & boys, off the bows & bowsprit, women & girls (in their dresses) off the stern. The men are fast swimmers ("dolphins") [13/14] but hardly faster than ten of our sailors who beat them hollow in taking headers. I think only two of the Natives would take headers but they take splendid 'footers' even off the fore-topsail-yard, coming down all in a ball and straightening out just before touching water!

When we returned to the boat she was full of yams and had to lie out a long way, we got wet to our hips, & my watch stopped! bother!

Sailed across to Maiwo; anchored for night. Coast reminded one much of coast of N.Z., say near East Cape. Went ashore about 2 p.m. to water, & to wash clothes, & to land 2 black boys. Blowing half-a-gale, very cloudy with flirts of rain, but calm being under lee of the island.

[15] A beautiful white cascade shewed through the trees. We pulled into the mouth of the creek, landed the women & some of the sailors to wash, and while the Bishop & Penny & a lot of the black-fellows attended to watering the ship, Bice & I and 3 natives started off for a celebrated banyan tree on the heights above the cascade. We followed a tiny track by the creek, now passing through the taro-grounds, now cutting through a bay, of the creek. These taro-grounds are most carefully irrigated by artificial channels from the Cascade-creek, sometimes cut out of the soil, sometimes built up of coral-stones, Very slimy, nasty, dangerous walking it made! But when we reached the Cascade I was surprised to see the boys go skipping up the face of the rock right through the white water! Of course we followed. The rock was rough, the water [15/16] shallow, and it was not so difficult as it looked -- luckily!

From the top, perhaps 150 ft. high, the lookout to sea was most lovely, and just then a sickly gleam of sunshine struggled thru' the clouds and gave a little more light & shade to the scene. We looked down a hollow through cocoa-nut palms to the sea, & the white ship. This hollow, like a 'corrie', was walled in by cliffs, but by cliffs profusely draped by creepers and climbers with large dark-green leaves; every spot not water was dark green foliage, and from our very feet roared away the white cascade into its dark pool. For the first time I found my idea of a "Scene in the South sea Islands" realized!

1/2 a mile more back-track brought us to the Big tree.

[17] And what a Tree!! A regular "forest-tree" according to our notions, with smallish dark-green leaves, and immense spreading limbs, covering, I should say, quite twice the spread of the very largest European forest-tree I ever saw. As for the trunk, it was very hard to make out where it was, not that it was not a large trunk, but that such immense congeries of branch-roots came down to the ground from several parts of the long undulating limbs, that the original trunk was quite lost to sight within this immense irregular network of props. I never saw such an extraordinary sight in the vegetable world. I returned to look at it again and again. How I should have like to have a photograph of it.

Came back by another native track, thru' two pretty little villages, each on its cleared red-earth plateau on [17/18] the steep bush-track and consisting merely of its big "bachelor hall, and two or three married huts.

The men here wear literally a 'fig leaf,' i.e. a bit of twine round the hips and one green leaf whose stem is thrust upward through the twine girdle! Women stark naked, yet do not look indecent, partly perhaps from the dark skin, partly doubtless from looking quite unconscious!

May 11. Ran across from [Opa crossed out] Maiwo to Opa (or Leper's Island) early this morning, anchoring close inshore about 10 a.m. Dismal day, dark grey low clouds! Under such circumstances Island scarcely to be distinguished from Maiwo!

One or two natives came off, each in his outrigger, the tiniest I ever saw! I am confident that an Englishman of average [18/19] size could not have sat in one of them! After early dinner we went off with Bice & all his luggage, light rain falling, sequel to a tremendous tropical shower which feel this forenoon while Bishop was ashore.

A good many men & lads had come down to the beach to meet us, but I saw only one woman sitting apart wrapped from head to foot in a large mat like a Maori. The men wear a piece of twine, wrapped once, or 3 or 4 times very [double underlined] tightly round their waists, from whence hangs a slip of matting or dirty calico brought round again to the belt behind. They are much more elegantly built here than the other Melanesians having actually got waists, and do not present that peculiar Melanesian appearance of having had trunk & head put into a vice and screwed together till 3 or 4 inches shorter!

[20] It is said however in "life of Bishop Patteson" that this elegance is gained at the cost of wearing these very tight belts night and day!

They are the colour of an old saddle, and don't in the least suggest nakedness! Heads of hair comparatively small. Seem very friendly -- though this was once a great shooting place. One boy came off in shirt & trowsers, and proved of course to be an old N. Islander. Lovely groups of cocoa-nut palms, though individual trees not fine.

Found two large houses on the beach, one about 40 x 14, little but a roof, the side-walls of loose stone being only about 18 inches high, open at both ends, facing the sea. This was for Bice and his following. No furniture but a frame of sticks for a bed, no floor but the dirt. [20/21] It did look dreary, that rainy afternoon! The other was a very large cooking hut of similar style. No fresh water for miles!!! Bice will have to depend on the natives bringing him water in joints of Bamboo!

By the way Bice tells me that these Natives though very undemonstrative over their returned boys, in public, do make a fuss over them afterward in private! So that is not unlike us English!

Bice shewed me with pride his "garden" behind his hut: a dreary little yard! with here a young banana, there a young bread-fruit or orange sapling in a corner, a couple of pine-apples. No vegetables, or flowers!

Three white men are settled on the island since last year, trading for "Copra" (dried cocoa-nut); live about 3 miles from Bice; said to have been meddling with the native women.

[22] Bid goodbye to Bice and sailed about 6 p. m. Lovely starlight night. We now see the Great Bear, which I haven't seen for nearly 20 years.

Afterwards such a black and "dirty" night that the Capt. lay-to for 3 or 4 hours!! Weather as changeable & disagreeable as in gloomy England itself, except for the deliciously constant soft air!

May 12. Calm morning. Got up steam; steamed slowly all day; anchored off Santa Maria just after dark. Day cleared up about 2 p.m., sun came out and we actually saw the top of the Island, about 2000 ft. high! Like the others it slopes very steeply down to H.W.M. and is densely wooded; at a short distance exactly like a steep bit of N.Z. wooded coast. In fact these islands are very [22/23] much less surprising to a N.Zr. than they would be to any one fresh out from England.

Tonight for the only time had both evening services on deck. Delightful.

Read "Fleurange" again; the third time. I do think the denouement the noblest and best told of any I ever read!

Sighted a sail today, hull-down.

May 13. Sunday. A lovely calm day and really "hot". At anchor all day; bottom clearly visible at 14 fathoms! Landed 7 black fellows and one woman, wife of one of them who is a teacher.

Bishop & I went off before breakfast to land Stephen, the sick black, who was carried up by two men in an "amo" to his village, about a mile from the beach, by a steep bush-track. The Natives carried him remarkably well, and Stephen bore it better than we [23/24] could have expected. For he was indeed a pitiable object, mere skin & bone, except his two huge lips, which did not seem to have shrunk a hair's breadth, and as it were positively stared at you out of his drum-tight face! I am very glad indeed that he is safe landed for his own [underlined in pencil] sake, as his last chance of recovery; for ours, [underlined in pencil] as relieving the cabin of a sea-sick & very diarrhetic patient so weak that every-thing must be done for him, is indeed no slight relief! The Bishop & a black boy did all for him. Bishop was most devoted.

In the afternoon went ashore again, with all who were going to stop, and marched up to the same village with them and their things -- boxes & bags, pots & pans, axes, saw, umbrellas &c &c! Stephen being out under a tree, [24/25] and pronouncing himself already better. By the way there has been a great deal of mild sickness, headache, fever &c among the boys on board.

After a long stay talking went on to another village about 1/2 mile off, through bush. More talk, all of course absolutely unintelligible to me. Returned to ship just as it was getting dark.

The crowd who met us on the beach on this island, very like the last crowd, yet struck me as rather wilder, yet not very noisy, certainly less so than Maoris or Arabs would have been under similar circumstances. The men generally wore a dirty little calico petticoat about the size of a towel -- a few stark naked. Two or three looked very queer, with this calico twisted up into a narrow belt round the naval! Wonder if that is the meaning of [25/26] "girding up the loins"! The women either wore a similar calico or else, more commonly a bead-belt round the hips with a small bunch of fibres hanging down from it, like a little sporran. I only saw 2 or 3 with a baby, carried astradle on the hip. It really was remarkable to see "Mary Maroos", a very "sober"-faced, Sunday-school teacher looking woman, sitting demurely by the side of one of these nine-tenth's naked creatures! Most of the men carried bows and arrows.

Bishop does not [know inserted in pencil] know this lingo and makes use as an interpreter either of one of the Mota-speaking boys, or of some native who has picked up a scanty smattering of English on a Fiji or Queensland plantation. Of these we have found some at every Island! [26/27] Then it became a rare jabber of "pigeon-English" at which the Bishop is good. He also talks Mota with great valour and rapidity, but bad accent, as even I can observe.

Natives here annoyed by, and inclined to blame the Mission for, the presence on the Island now of a white "trader" who is offering irritatingly little barter for cocoa-nuts! They were strenuous about this at the second village, and refused to build a house there for Maroos (the teacher). The Bishop tried hard to set things in their true light, and to cheer them on to refuse to trade on such terms at all; but he doesn't seem to know very well how far he has succeeded!

I strongly suspect that the Pakeha's meddling with their women has something to say to this irritation.

[28] The bush was very beautiful when for a moment at some tiny clearing at some turn of the track one emerged from the green tunnel which these tracks mostly are! The large leaves of most of the plants, the fresh green, the luxuriant creepers, & the lovely cocoa-nuts, singly or in groups, springing out of the general banks of green give great richness without sameness.

Yet I think I can understand why these villages are unhealthy; each stands on a patch of bare rich mould, walled in by perfect cliffs of foliage, and even after a day of such broiling sunshine as this, smells dank; nothing nasty -- but dank. I daresay if they were in the hands of Europeans who would make large clearings they would become far healthier.

[29] At one meeting of tracks fell in with 'quite a number" of women and boys carrying water in joints of bamboo.

Saw far the first time a turtle, at sea -- first the back of his shell, and his head lifted lazily up, from time to time.

It was "rich" today to see a sick Native sup Castor-oil with a tea-spoon and a pleased countenance!

Riddle . . In my first my second sat, my third and fourth I ate! [Transcriber's note: Insatiate.]

May 14. Monday. When I came on deck early this morning found one little ship steaming slowly along the land on a dead calm, glossing satiny sea, oh so beautiful! Let other "pens celebrate" the delightful "freshness" of morn, be it mine to "celebrate" the delicious softness of the tropical morn!

[30] Reached Mota early in the afternoon & landed. Its' outline is peculiar something like this:

a low overhanging rock of (raised) coral all round the beach, a broad almost level plateau much cut by steep gullies all round the central hill -- the whole most densely wooded. It is about 12 miles round. As we steamed slowly along admiring the magnificent woods which cover rock & soil alike, it was really difficult to believe there only a few years ago three hostile tribes of differing dialects peopled this scrap of an islet! Now they live at peace, and no longer carry [30/31] arms. There being no anchorage here, as soon as we were landed the ship went off to Port Patteson in Vanua Lava, almost 7 miles off, there to anchor for the night.

A crowd of natives met us on the fringing reef; amongst them several, whom from the ship we had mistaken for white people, but who turned out to be albinos -- dreadful objects, nearly as fair-skinned as white men but of a sickly blotched horrid-looking fairness with Native features, and eyes screwed up into a permanent frown; poor wretches!

A short walk though bush and a steep climb up the 70 or 80 ft high scarp of the surrounding terrace brought us to the mission house, an ordinary & rather dirty & shabby looking weather-board hut (perhaps 40 x 16) with a wide verandah. One large central room occupied the greater part of this area; very dark, dirty, untidy [31/32] and dismal. This is where George Sarawia and his wife live, and where Mr. Palmer lives when he comes to Mota. George met us at the ship.

A large bamboo chapel is being built which will also be extremely dark.

After some palaver the Bishop walked off to two or three villages to doctor the sick of whom it seems there are a good many; and I went with him. These villages contain but 4 or 5 huts each. There has been a good deal of low fever about.

So the Bishop physicked & talked and I stared about and grinned at the Natives in a generally friendly way. Here the Natives wear a dirty rag of calico, about as big as a towel, some as an apron, some as a kilt. [32/33] It is worn pinched very tight round the very bottom of the belly, a fashion by no means advantageous to fat men, or to "interesting" ladies!

We got back just at dark to a supper of bread, tea, & tinned meat brought by ourselves, & of roast yam & greens brought by the Natives, who don't seem to put themselves at all out of the way in the catering line to do honour to their missionaries! Indeed their want of hospitality in this way has stuck me much, & is in marked contrast to Maori custom! Not that they have nothing, for we saw many pigs & fouls running about, & they get fish on the reefs.

At Mota we landed 7 men & two women wives of two of the men.

There was a pretty good muster for Evening service considering the short notice, say 60 or 70, and the Bishop gave a short address. [33/34] People quiet and seemed attentive, but as it was all but dark (bad lamp) I could not see very well.

Slept on the bare floor, another piece of Native disrespect -- no mats or palm-leaves provided!

May 17, Tuesday, opened with heavy flying showers, but sunshine between. Steamy hot so that one perspired sitting still although ther. only shewed 84°.

Breakfast same as supper.

Larger muster to morning service, perhaps 120 to 140, bishop preached standing in doorway so as to command both those in the room, and those in the verandah. Very attentive. Bishop guesses 400 or 500 Native Christians on the island. After service Bishop went off to see his patients again. I got a guide to walk [34/35] with me in the opposite direction as far as time would allow. He had been for two years on a plantation in New Caledonia and spoke a few words of English and of French. Had not liked it; "too much work"! They all say that. Walked to two or three small villages -- great family likeness. A very few large low dismally dark thatched huts round a small "Place" of very neatly swept bare red earth; around, a wall of forest -- jungle with beautiful tufts of cocoa-nut trees. Forest beautiful, so full, so rich, so green; such new vigorous grotesque, beautiful shapes, such large leaves, such exuberance! I delight in it and do not mind the heat.

Very bad walking on narrow, very narrow hollow tracks of [35/36] of damp, slippery red earth, (like hard damp soap) varied by still more slippery roots, or by exquisitely unexpected lumps of rough coral rock!

I should not like to live in such a green prison though! So jammed in! so hard to move!

Got aboard by noon, & sailed for Ara distant 7 miles.

At Mota saw a vine specimen of a variety of Banyan, differing from that I admired so much at Maiwo. This sort sends down no aerial roots from the outer part of the limbs, but only from the limbs near where they branch out from the trunk; but from there in such profusion that the parent trunk is all but hidden behind a network of vertical & diagonal root-stems from the size of a man's wrist to that of his waist -- while outside these yet more roots are dangling [36/37] in air, feeling for the ground, as it were. The diameter of this cage [underlined in pencil] I found by pacing to be almost 25 feet!

Well! we reached Ara in about 2 hours. It is a curious patch of dead-level low land, densely wooded of course, connected by a reef nearly "à fleur d'eau" to similar low land forming part of the island of Motlav, which is for the most part high and bold, and of varied outline; might be a bit of Dartmoor. Landed on the fringing reef with a boatload of luggage and stores, as here we left 10 or 12 men and women including Revd. Henry Tagalana, native Deacon who is to take charge of the church & school here, of the district in fact. The boat then returned to the Southern Cross and Mr Penny who had landed with me, took me ashore for a stroll. We found just inside of H. W. M. on sandy flat [37/38] amongst trees and cocoa-nut palms a very nice village of the usual type and some yam-gardens near bye. Then Mr Penny took me, say, 1/2 mile farther into the bush to shew me the Natives water-supply, "as a curiosity". It was a curiosity with a vengeance! A big hog-wallow, half full of very dirty brown water, quite stagnant is the nearest I can come to describing it! No wonder they get fever and ague if they drink much water from such places as that! But then the missionaries often tell me by way of explanation "Oh these fellows drink no water"! meaning that living on boiled vegetables and drinking cocoa-nut milk they need no water! But I should doubt whether such puddle-water as that is even safe for cooking with! Fancy tea made of it!

[39] Returning to the beach found that our Natives had returned and were landing themselves, and odds & ends of luggage. Close by was a native canoe with 2 men in it, rigged with mat sail, the first I had seen. Like all the canoes I have seen here yet, it was very small with outrigger as long as itself. Sail shaped thus:

Mr Penny then went off to the ship, to "fetch the Bishop" and I, expecting him immediately, chose to remain waiting on the reef, amid a crowd of the Ara natives! But I had to wait for more than an hour, and should certainly have got tired of merely [39/40] watching them, had not one or two of them who had been to Queensld tried to talk. But they knew very little; and that too began to flag.

"Sing"! said one of them; so sitting down on the rock, I sang away to an admiring crowd scraps of every song I could remember for near half an hour, & very good fun it was! How we did laugh!

At last the Bishop landed bent on an interview with a white copra trader living on Motlav just across the reef. So [we crossed out] off we went, wading the reef about calf deep, and about 1/2 mile long. Water so deliciously warm! A host of Natives accompanying. We found our man established just at the edge of the tide, he and his ten native boys from other islands, in some very wretched palm-leaf huts. This man buys cocoa-nuts & makes [40/41] the "copra" or kernel dried by smoking over fires, on low table-like staves. Sometimes the trader buys his 'copra' ready-smoked, from the natives. This was a tolerably decent-looking young fellow but did not make a good defence I thought, against the native charges of fighting, and meddling with their women.

By this time it was dark and raining & tide rising fast, and the reef was deep enough as we waded back again; & then waited under a tree for the Bishop as he went off to see some natives somewhere. Reached the ship at dark.

From what I hear about these traders, who are so fast increasing in number, the more do I regret that the Bishop has hitherto been unable to carry out his idea of inducing himself some traders of known good character to come to settle, as it were [41/42] with the approval of the Mission. Trade evidently must set in; the question is how to get the best traders. [? added in pencil]

May 16. Wednesday. Dark dreary showery morning; light wind. Beating back to Gaua on W. or windward side of Santa Maria. This beat wd. have been avoided by taking Gaua first in the natural course of things, but the Bishop was anxious to get the sick man, Stephen, landed, and so visited Lakona, on the leeward side of Santa Maria, first.

This rainy steamy Banks Island weather is most disagreeable -- one's clothes are always damp with rain or perspiration, and one gets no chance of drying them!

Gaua is defended from the open sea by a small barrier reef, outside of which is no anchorage; so the ship had to stand off and on while [42/43] the Bishop went ashore. It was a dark dismal afternoon, roughish for boating; I felt in no humour for landing; & may have a better chance on the return/voyage, when we are bound to touch here again; so I did not go with him.

He took away 4 black scholars to be left there; and returned at dusk with two old scholars, whom he is going to take round the Solomon's by way of a treat. Yesterday in like manner he took off two from Ara.

He brings back a good report of the state of things ashore, and thinks that Batatru, the native teacher, has done very well: this is the "B------" whose backslidings in the Life of Bishop Patteson are spoken of so mysteriously and pitifully. This morning we passed almost within hail of a small schooner beating down the coast line like ourselves. [43/44] The knowing ones pronounced her to be a "labour-vessel", and it seems she is so, and has had her boat inshore trying to get hands, but without success. She went off again an hour or two before we did.

The Bishop found in the lagoon an unfortunate schooner of some 60 tonnes; on board her white mate, crew of black boys and Captain's daughter, a girl of 16 or 17. She had been in the lagoon for months. The Capt (Fuller) and his son, a boy, had died of fever -- the poor girl had been ill too and looked wretched. They were waiting for one Capt. Macleod they were expecting to come to take the schooner away.

What a miserable position for the poor girl! The Bishop offered her passage, but she preferred her other chance of getting back [44/45] Bishop forgot to ask name of schooner. [Added in pencil: "Jennie Duncan" alias ("Espérance"! of Noumea) references later.]

Ship very bad with cockroaches, spite of Steward's trapping hundreds daily, & of Bishop's & Penny's frantic efforts to keep them down by flapping, a greater nuisance than the cockroaches themselves!

A great blessing on the other hand that there are neither mosquitoes, sandflies, nor blue-bottles in these regions -- and, on board, no houseflies either! Very few birds and insects, flowers & fruit on these islands. But one very pretty thing one does see again in these lands are the swallows wheeling about aloft! But I never hear their pleasant shrill cry. They seem quite silent.

May 17. Wednesday. When I came on deck this morning early we were at anchor under the lee of [45/46] Vanua Lava, close in, very calm. In the forenoon we rowed off to Pek, a village about 2 miles farther up the coast, two boatloads of us, taking back some natives who had come off to visit us, and our two remaining women to have a grand wash of clothes. Among the visitors who had come off (in a boat sent in very early this morning for them,) were Edwin and his wife. Edwin is an excellent teacher, soon probably to be ordained Deacon. He has lately baptized 16 Natives here.

The coast was very picturesque, extremely gorgy, densely wooded and the beautiful spreading, curving, elm-like heads of the Banyan and the graceful plumes of the cocoa-nuts often stood out saliently just were a Gully might have invented them, had they not been there.

[47] 'Pek' is a nice little village in the bush close to H.W.M.; it has a new schoolhouse on a steep brow 70 or 80 ft high above the beach-flat, and this of course we went up to see. It is provided with funny little wooden forms fixed into the ground at such more than European altitude that the poor scholars must sit with their feet dangling like very small children; two or three funny little tables were similarly set in the ground in positions quite irrespective of the forms; but then I am told that the scholars kneel at these to write!

We saw Edwin's house too, a very good one of the usual bamboo and palm-leaf construction, and provided with a bamboo bedstead for him & his wife; but, seeing a lot of the ordinary sleeping palm-leafs laid along the side of the house, I inquired about them and was told that [47/48] some of the schoolgirls also slept in this one-roomed house!! The Bishop took exception to that and recommended a partition!

People here in feature & dress are very like those of the last island.

Returned to the ship about 2 p. m. and after the others had dined started again, we three Bishop, Penny & I) in the boat to go down the coast to Sassara a village some 6 miles South. The ship to weigh anchor presently and beat down the coast after us. We had to land a native teacher and two boys, and rowed this time, the wind being contrary.

As it was getting very late we only landed these people on the beach and left them to make their own way to their village a short distance inland; landing just North of the second cascade. We then visited two [48/49] cascades. The first was really pretty; the coast here was like the green-draperied tree-fringed sea-cliffs below Hokitika; through a chink in the edge of the cliff sprang a little stream about 150 ft at one bound into a black tree-surrounded, rainbow-arched pool. By hard scrambling we got just in front of this rainbow till as it seemed we might have touched it!

By the time we pulled down to the second cascade it was drizzling, and getting dusk -- even in sunshine it cannot be much to see -- a double spout (thru' cascade) of about 50 or 60 ft into a pool on the very beach. Here, late as it was, dusk & drizzling the Bishop & Penny would bathe; so by the time we got off in the boat again it was all but dark and we could not see the ship. However the boat was headed for [49/50] about the direction in which she was last seen, and we sailed out hoping to see her as we got farther from shore. After a bit it got so dark we hung up a light to the mast that we might be seen -- fresh breeze off shore -- after rowing out 2 or 3 miles in a freshening sea the Bishop had just announced "Well! if we don't sight her in ten minutes I shall up helm for Pek -- when one of our boys cried out "O aka" (the ship!) and in a few minutes more she lighted up and we all saw her.

Curious how suddenly as one nears a ship under these circumstances, the light apparently having got scarce any nearer for the last quarter of an hour, she comes all at once as it were, out of the darkness & proves to be quite close!

We none of us said much in the [50/51] boat but by the exuberant way in which the Bishop narrated it all to the Captain after we got on board, I thought I perceived that he was in reality much relieved at hitting off the ship in the nick of time.

We are now fairly off for the Solomon's with a fair wind and a 500 mile run before us.

I am glad to be off for the promised finer weather, and grander scenery of the Solomon group! Much as I have admired some of the tropical sights of these Islands, I have been far too often thinking, "Oh for sunshine [double underlined] to show them in its glory! and, that is not exactly the kind of sentiment one expects to experience in the tropics in the "dry" (!!) season"!

May 18. Lovely trade-wind weather! All oppressiveness gone out of it. Ship getting quieter and more like other ships, now only some 20 blacks left.

[52] Wango -- Solomons Islands

May 20. Sunday. When I came on deck early this morning we were slipping quietly along the coast of San Christoval (or Bauro) the Southernmost of the Solomon Islands. Smooth sea and fine morning, but alas! it would really seem as if the approach to land, in these seas, were the signal for gloomy weather. So at least has it been this season! The sky soon grew gloomy and by noon it was raining!

[This crossed out] Of this island I must once more say "it is the very moral of" the N. Zealand coast (say e.g. between Riwaka and Separation Point) Indeed when I came on deck about 2 p.m. after sheltering from the rain for a while, my first fancy was "Have the last 6 weeks been all a dream and am I back in Massacre bay"?

[53] However, when we did come to anchor half an hour later the people coming off in their canoes effectively dispelled this fancy. The first was a lovely little canoe, without outrigger, high curved stem and stern, paddled by two men using light pointed paddles. One of them, Taki, by name, came on board, and began freely talking "pigeon English." He is a well-known chief of mark here, a fighting man of old, and has long been a friend of the Mission. He is a little dark-brown strongly built man, naked all but little calico kilt [breech-rag crossed out] but with such a singularly English face, & expression of face, that could he be suddenly bleached & clothed, & his tortoise-shell nose-ring taken out, I believe he would pass muster very well for an Englishman. He wears very massive white shell armlets one on each arm. These are worked out of large clam-shells and highly prized. [53/54] Soon more canoes came out as we worked up to the anchorage in a tiny bay of the coast, & the men came on board, while the ship still moved on. No women.

The men seem generally blackish-brown, muscularly built, but more graceful than the Banks Islanders; generally wear a red-died grass belt, or strip of calico round the loins with the possible pendent; with white armlet, and a white shell circular, or pearl-shell crescentic gorget on the breast. For fuller acct of ornaments see pages 182--188.

They all chew betel, which blackens their teeth, & these black teeth not shewing in their dark faces has a most singular effect! Each man carries on [each crossed out] one shoulder a sort of netted twine wallet with his betel, pepper-leaf, lime-bottle &c &c.

[55] May 21. Monday. By Breakfast-time some 20 canoes had mustered round the ship, two of these lovely little things a sort of Solomon Island "moki" made of 5 or 6 bamboos lashed to cross-pieces and tapering in front to a sharp point ornamented with a long curved, tasseled slip of bamboo by way of prow. Some had this at stern too.

The paddler sits (of course, not dry) with his legs stretched straight out in front of him.

[56] "Taki" tells us there is a schooner somewhere at this island too, trading for copra.

In course of the day landed at 2 villages; saw many more men & women; men such as I saw yesterday; women fat generally & very ugly; the married women wear a twine belt round their hips, with a little scanty fringe pendent in the centre in front, and in the centre behind. Girls, even biggish, naked.

Odd contrast between this apology for dress and the abundant white jewellery (vide pages 182-188) which however shews out well on their chocolate-brown skins. Perhaps the most grotesque contrast is to see a naked old fellow with great white nose-ring and an old hat!

Old Taki came back tonight ready to sail with us, round the Solomon Group, his preparation [56/57] consisting in dropping his kilt and adding a small kit of betel! and an old naval sword without scabbard!

Taki and many more of these natives, men women and children, have a curious appearance on their dark skins which I at first took to be damp grey sand from lying down on the beach, but which I afterwards found to be skin-disease, the skin peeling off dry & scaly, as one's nose might peel after sun-burn. It is commonest on the back, looks disagreeable & seems to itch; but appears to be quite irrespective of age or condition. It is very common. Perhaps 1 in 20 have it. A good many, but a much smaller proportion shew boils, ulcers & sores.

After breakfast Bishop took me back some 4 miles down the coast to a small village called "Hani;" very friendly welcome. At this [57/58] place, only last year, Mr Still saw unmistakable signs of cannibalism.

At one spot they were carrying posts for a new canoe-house, putting human figures to them of even more than Maori indecency! They have fine big canoes here, as well as the lovely little ones, sewn together in 5 streaks and the seams well paid with a sort of pink nut-kernel which turns black & very hard.

In afternoon went ashore at this place Wango -- saw "Still's house" built for him by the natives; it is of open bamboo-and-palm-leaf work, walls about to 5 ft high, and has got a glass window! A native teacher, a lad who had been at Norfolk Island was giving a reading-lesson to a few boys. We then all went up a small freshwater creek in the bush and had a [58/59] swim. It was a very poor waterhole, but a lovely spot, and I much regretted the absolute lack of sunshine to see it by. This incessant disappointment about sunshine makes me feel quite melancholy and despondent, as if it were really of no use trying to see beauty any more in this cloudy rainy world! As though one might as well stop at home for ever!

I have now thrice seen a live "flying-fox", each time as a woman's pet, hanging on to her hair by its hind feet upside-down, and looking so funny! The poor beast let itself be taken down and handled and its huge membranous wing pulled out, and made no attempt to bite, though it looked agitated. Neither of them looked so large as the one I saw flying high over the tress in broad sunshine (though a bat) at the [59/60] Banks Islands, and which looked to me as large as the largest N.Zd. carrion hawk.

May 22nd Tuesday. Weighed at 6 this morning, & slipped quietly along the coast with light airs. Moderate hills and long tapering points, densely wooded. About 9 a.m. the Bishop and I went off in the boat and visited 3 villages along the coast, the ship following up in the offing. Nothing very remarkable in these villages. The two first we visited partly as a sort of morning-call, just to keep up a friendly footing, partly to buy a pig for fresh meat. A miserable lean little beast was got, as is generally the case in these islands! Still fresh meat is fresh meat when you have been living for weeks trying in vain to make up your mind whether tough hard salt beef or greasy tin-tasting preserved beef [60/61] the [most crossed out, added in pencil:] least objectionable! I certainly cannot compliment the M. Mission on its skill in catering whether on shore or sea! It was fun to see the native, coaxing poor piggy to his capture with bits of cocoa-nut! At each of these 3 villages we found men with a smattering of English -- returned "labour"!

The third village we visited because we had been told that two white men had settled there to buy "copra". Sure enough we found them and two rather gentlemanly-looking young fellows they were, & have a tolerable house. They are buying on Commission for Mcarthur (or for Mcarthur & Co.) and left Auckland in the Mary Anderson schooner in March, with 17 men most or all to be established in these islands. So the Bishop will soon have a white as well as a black charge! The Bishop brought off these young fellows to dine aboard, [61/62] gave them some advice and took them ashore. They may have a good deal in their hands in the way of conduct! Their names are Krübner and Howland. They report a gold-prospector in the next bay to them who is said to have found gold! I hope it is not true! All these changes give the Bishop de quoi penser; and he has nearly decided to stay ashore, between voyages, at Wango, instead of Mai as he first intended.

In afternoon beat round North end of island and stood off & on waiting for daylight to visit Haddo or some such named village.

I noticed one of the women at one of the villages we visited today with a pet swallow in her hand; very much like an English swallow but with a bigger head.

May 23. Wednesday. This has been an overcast oppressive day with one or two drizzling showers, [62/63] and a gleam or two of faint sunshine. Cloudy as it was the coast looked very pretty as we slowly approached it in the early morning, wavy coast-hills magnificently wooded with forest-trees & palms, and [added in pencil: beyond them] mountains inland, maybe 4000 ft high. Anchored near noon close inshore abreast of Mwata; a score or so of canoes came off and natives came aboard, being very keen for "sambiri" or barter. We bought a few yams, cocoa-nuts, shells & curios for tobacco, pipes, tomahawk heads &c &c. I was much amused at observing an umbrella in the bow of one canoe paddled by naked savages, and one article of 'traffic' offered us was a pair of trowsers! found to be "really . . . you know . . ter . . . eh . . . civilized, eh"?

I think that in the tropics a short kilt only would be the dress to recommend to savages -- light, cheap, convenient, easily kept clean.

[64] Here two men who can jabber a little English -- one [underlined in pencil] has been to "Sydney" for five years, another [underlined in pencil] to Kohimarama N.Zd. and so on. And then whalers used to touch at these islands and now they have several copra-traders coming here. Three young women came on board as we left to go the cruise and could hardly be expelled. The whalers have left their usual dreadful legacy to this island; and, the Captain tells me that that two of the Melanesian scholars have died at Norf Island of this dreadful complaint!

Somehow or other we did not land till about 2 p.m. The little village is prettily situated, like an illustration to a Tract! Thatched huts under the cocoa-nut-trees just at H. W. M., backed by forest and flanked by a forest-covered bluff of raised coral-rock. But they don't keep their village squares so [64/65] exquisitely clean as in the Banks I though nothing worse than sticks, stones & leaves lie about; nothing smells bad but the very persons of the villagers.

Over this rocky bluff the Bishop & I and several of the boys and 2 or 3 villagers went by a very rocky & rooty bush-track to a single hut in the forest under some cocoa-nut trees, to return to the bosom of their families a couple of the N. I. scholars.

These were very steady decent-looking lads in shirts & trowsers and certainly did look in strange contrast with their stark naked little sister of 9 or 10 I should think; naked but highly ornamented with white shell armlets from elbow to armpit, a bunch of white rings hanging under her throat, a bead waist-belt, and her head shaved, [but crossed out] all but two funny tufts on top, and a little fringe at the nape of the neck! [65/66] Some had bleached their hair with lime to an unnatural flaxen hue, and one youngster with perfectly straight flaxen hair & his natural dark features looked more monkey than man! The Mission rather approves of this practice as killing lice, but I cannot make out whether that, or admiration for light hair, is the Native reason.

One of the boys had a very small ring tailed opossum for a pet. There is a small breed of them on these islands.

At this place I saw for the first time fire produced by two sticks -- one rubbed to & fro' in a groove in another -- till the dust caught fire. The first attempt failed. The next two did not take very long -- perhaps 2 minutes, but motion very fast at last. Sailed in the evening with light breeze for Florida.

[67] About 10 p. m. felt a shock exactly like lightly dragging over rocky bottom. "Earthquake"? said everybody. About the middle of the night I was roused up by something & found myself thinking sleepily to myself "Why! she's at it again"! Those on watch said it was another earthquake shock, much more decided.

May 24. Thursday. Very gloomy with sheet lightening. Sailing up the Indispensible Straits between [St Christoval & crossed out] Malanta and Guadalcanar, the latter the finest island of the group with mountains reaching at the N. end 8000 ft in height. We might have been in the English Channel for ought there was to see. It makes me quite melancholy, this continual disappointment!

May 25. Friday. This has been a fine day, although mist increasing then white clouds, till the sun was shorn of his rays.

[68] At sunrise we were slipping fast along the coast of Florida, and anchored at Mboli (or more correctly in Curaçoa harbour) about 8 o'clock. The island presented a long ridge of undulating hills, & small peaks, where natural clearings alternated with forest rather prettily -- sometimes the effect was a shade too spotty, especially where individual trees standing up against the sky broke the outlines -- but on the whole it was a relief to the universal forest of the other islands. The hills reach maybe 1500 ft. This is really a small harbour (the first we have been to!) although the Eastern side is secured only by a reef. These poor missionaries seem to me as a rule to have to effect their landings just where the coast is most exposed! But I suppose they must go where they can but get an opening in a friendly way!

[69] After breakfast went off, two boat-loads, to Mboli (people) a village on the open coast 3 miles North of the harbour, where Mr. Penny is to stay after we have visited the rest of this group, and where we left a lot of things for him. It is a tiny village, but has a very big Canoe house, though now in tumble-down condition. It is 180 ft long, 40 ft broad, and 140 ft high, with low sidewalls, but extremely high steep roof; of the usual bamboo & palm leaf.

There were 5 canoes, two of which were war-canoes, & one of these a really noble canoe between 50 and 60 ft long, about 4 ft beam and with an immense curved prow & stern rising up about 15 ft, ornamented with a row of great white cowrie shells sewn on.

The ordinary canoes here have very ugly bows; instead of the high curved prow of the Bauro canoes they have flat weatherboards sewn on to the [69/70] bows thus:

They have built an elegant new house for Mr Penny on piles about 5 ft above the ground -- it is built of bamboo & palm leaf, with a nice clean, elastic floor of plaited bamboo. It is about 30 ft x 11. Mr Penny desiring to have a partition made, some natives set about it immediately,

Mr Penny had about 60 scholars here at the time of his visit here last winter. But the Christian lad he left here to keep up school has failed him; the lad's father, we hear, has taken him away to Savo, another island of the group. So school has been dropped for two months.

[71] The schoolhouse too is a creditable building about 55 x 15 of similar style with small fixed table & forms.

All these buildings seem to me wonderfully dark.

People very like those of the last Island; have (or wear) much less hair than the Banks or Hebrides men; & some are partly bald, which has the oddest effect, the intense respectability of baldness contrasting so queerly with the savage nakedness!

The ladies here have a very decent brief little petticoat of cocoa-nut-leaf strips (just like thatch) about 18 inches deep, worn as low as it is possible to sling it on! Very funny to see a group of these sitting down on the sand together, each in the centre of her bunch of thatch, like some queer brown bird on its nest!

Got back to early dinner on board, & found ship swarming with natives [71/72] and a brisk truck going on between the natives and our crew and remaining black boys for shells, ornaments, nets, &c.

About 3 1/2 Bishop, Penny self, a couple of sailors and a crew of black boys left the ship again, to row up a saltwater creek which enters (or leaves) the head of this little harbour, and divides the island in two; our first excursion of sheer pleasure this cruise.

It was nearly high tide and the scenery of the creek like a full brimming river was really lovely. Sometimes we pulled up noble reaches 100 or 200 yards broad, sometimes across lake-like openings -- sometimes the steep hills, superbly wooded, sank sheer to the water; sometimes a broad fringe of mangroves intervened. It was not on a grand scale but rich & lovely & called forth comparison with the Thames at Clifden, Henleyside. [72/73] And the forest had rather a European effect, scarce any palms, creepers, bamboos & being visible. For had it the glitter of our N. Zd bush, though the general effects reminded me here & there, of Coromandel.

A young sailor said in one of the prettiest reaches: "Well! if a man were thinking of committing suicide he ought to come here the day before"!

May 26. Saturday. We have had a tolerably fine day again, although closing with a long shower & a rainbow instead of a sunset! Have been slipping along Florida all day, till near eveg when we crossed to the coast of Isabel.

Florida still in its general characteristics as seen from the sea, reminded me strongly of Coromandel. We called at two villages, both close to the beach. I am getting [?] the least thing tired of these plunges ashore at villages close to H. W. M.! It is so [73/74] tantalizing not to be able to get away inland or up a hill!

However I never have gone ashore without feeling glad that I went! For one thing that even if coasting along within half a mile of the shore (and we are very seldom so close in) yet going ashore effects a wonderful change in the proportion of things, in the vividly foreign effect of the foliage, people &c. And one is pretty sure to see or hear something strange, or to pick up for a stick of tobacco or so, some curios, or other which cost its late native owner a week's or perhaps even a months labour! At this place natives are very fond of offering for sale little hanks of twine of their own making! Not that that is a particularly interesting curiosity, but it is in curious contrast with the fact that at one or more of the islands farther South the Natives [74/75] asked for fishing lines in exchange for their things! The natives of this group are much keener for barter than those South, & come trooping down to the boat, or canoeing out to the ship, eagerly, and a great row they make over it! They are "de si braves sauvages" that I delight (for awhile) in watching & listening to them.

Here too I saw a new & striking illustration of "Il faut touffrir pour être beau"! namely savages who had stuck pegs into each wing of the nostrils, and a long straight pin or horn into the tip of the nose. Sometimes they take these out (as a lady might her earrings) leaving to view three undesirable pits in poor Noses!

An old chief took me in quite a solemn and mysterious way to see his great canoe -- it was indeed a noble canoe, perhaps 50 ft long, and prow richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl. [75/76] Then he suggested that I ought to give him some tobacco for such a sight, and I really thought so too & gave him a plug. This old chief [inserted in pencil: "Aliti"] had come over from the island of Malanta; he now offers us some boys for N. Island from his place, and is to go on with us in the Southern Cross to introduce us to his village. And so the work spreads, for is place a Malanta will be new ground. The Bishop stopped all the time in the boat at the water's-edge surrounded by a clattering crowd of Natives while Mr Penny and I went up to the hut, and canoe-sheds. Old Aliti's Canoe had been so carefully covered up with green boughs that I don't suppose I should have seen it at all, unless he had shewn it to me.

[77] [added in pencil: On board S. Cross] They try to keep "Saturday-night at sea", and drink "Sweethearts & wives" here; but it is a miserable parody, and I really wish they wd. drop it! After prayers the grog, Rum & brandy, is got out, each takes a glass & drinks "Sweethearts & wives" & the Bishop cuts some sickly jokes -- but the whole thing is forced & wretched, no one sings, no one ventures on a second glass (the grog is indeed too bad for that) and after a little miserable clerical jocosity the whole thing dies down in about ten minutes!

May 28. Monday. Anchored early yesterday, stealing in on a fine calm morning. It is the prettiest anchorage we have been to yet, with its steep wooded hills and islets and reminds me somewhat of Port Chalmers as I first saw it when all bush! [77/78] This is the first place where we have heard the woods resonant with birds, & ringing with cicadae. The lively clatter of the Cockatoos, the harsh croak of the Toucan, & some fine whistlers.

A great many natives came off at once; being Sunday "Sambiri" (barter) was of course not allowed but they were allowed on board & rare guys many of them were! It is the fashion here to wear the hair very short and limed; sometimes very curly, but sometimes all-but shaved & then of course it must be straight. You see a chocolate-brown all-but naked fellow with very curly light flaxen hair and so much lime rubbed into it, into his eye-brows and scanty whiskers, that he looks as if he had got ready for a universal shave, and had also in exuberant playfulness sketched out on his face and chest some artless [78/79] curves and rings of the same white soapsuds. But then these very fellows would look so unconscious of playfulness, so important! Ah it was hard to look at them without grinning!

Sometimes when the hair is all-but shaved, the lime gives exactly the effect of desperately-short grey hair which topping up the buxom curves of a plump young woman has the queerest effect!

Women mostly wear a little calico kilt -- men a calico girdle & rag, sometimes lightly adorned with red white & blue beads, to which gay edging to his girdle, one fellow had added a row of brass trowsers buttons.

The old chief came aboard a big & very fat man with an aquiline nose! and with a general air of Bison so was his dark face hung over by the long pendants of a flaxen wig [79/80] yes! literally wig; for as I was expressing amazement at his really wonderful head of hair to a European pearl-diver (the "Mary Anderson" man who had come on board us) "Oh said he that's a wig! and afterwards down in the cabin, the Bishop got him to take it off and shew it to us. It was really very neatly made on a basis of fine net. The old fellow was quite bald underneath and looked so wonderfully transmogrified without it!

A boat was sent off very early for the Revd Wadrogal, living at a village 2 or perhaps 3 miles down the coast, and in due time he came aboard, a short, black, sensible looking man of 40 or so; looking quite the parson! He has been re-instated, got away from New Caledonia (I think it was) and settled here. His wife 'Carry' [80/81] came with him, a nice looking little woman, light brown with almost European features; she reminded me a little of Mrs. Nihill! Her daughter Jemima who came with us from N.Id. being handed over to her mother turned out to the be taller of the two though only about 14 I suppose, & many shades darker -- like her father. These also met very quietly & coolly, but did contrive to look pleased!

After the black service, the white service and dinner, the Bishop & a boat-load of us started for Wadrogal's place. It had been really a hot morning, perspiration running off the church-goers faces as we sat in the Cabin at 88°, & very damp.

It looked very black as we started and rained as we landed about 1 1/2 short of Wadrogal's place -- however after sheltering in a shed a good bit, the shower passed & we all went on [81/82] along heavy beach & over rocky points to Wadrogal's house, which is just above H. W. M. under the trees & looking out on the sea -- a few natives had sprinkled along the edge of the beach nearby. Here the Bishop & Mr Penny remained, teaching & singing. I got a Native as guide & pushed on along the beach to a steep rocky point, partially cleared, and on which stood a curious little "pa", or fortified village, up to which we climbed. It is defended partly with stone terraces, partly by palisades, partly by its position, but after all is nothing to a Maori pa. Very few huts.

After I got back and just as we were all ready to start, Mrs. Wadrogal offered tea, & we staid to the first meal offered us in Melanesia! She brought us tea, biscuit & yam. [82/83] Then came the pearl-diver to look after one of his crew a Nengone lad, who being sick is staying with the Wadrogals, & is indeed, I was told, Mrs W's brother. The diver (a sturdy little Dane who has served in the English Navy, and in the Northern army in the American War) suspected his man of malingering and thereon followed a rather stormy discussion between him & the Bishop. Ultimately the Bishop got him to forgo his intention of dragging his boy back with him to his camp on "Pigeon Island" (some 4 miles off) and to accept a black substitute the Bishop found him.

The Dane has got a regular establishment on Pigeon Island, a boat, white man & 5 black and is about to diver for pearl shell with the diving dress -- first experiment in this part of the world.

[84] This happily settled at last (as we supposed) we returned to the ship, through rain and darkness getting on board about ten o'clock.

Monday, May 28

Some natives brought some fish on board this morning which Mr Penny told me had been killed by a "fish-torpedo", a sort of cartridge of dynamite! How oddly civilization & savagery sometimes hit on point of contact! They get these things from Fiji.

Watering ships. Bishop [& I with crossed out] proposed that I should go to see a tree-house and got me a native guide, & then (of course) another Native went with him! Just like Maori ways, that! It was a steep climb up a long bush-covered spur, by a very faint overgrown track. Found the house or fort, which is sadly [dilapidated crossed out] ruinous & deserted, perched in the fork of a big tree [84/85] some 80 ft from the ground, and as there were no lower branches, no vestige of a ladder and the tree-trunk very large, there was no possibility of getting up. This was disappointing! I had not expected to see only a deserted tree-house! However it is something to have seen the kind of thing meant. This one may have been 20 ft long & it stands alone -- the view from it must be very fine, but we although on the hilltop -- had only scrappy peeps here & there, hardly to be called a view.

Bishop went off to Wadrogals' again in the afternoon, to stay all night.

Picked up from "our fat friend" the bewigged chief, a pair of crocodile tusks, which seem to have come from a good large Crocodile.

One Native brought on board a little sky-blue fish for sale, and a lot of hideous little fishes! How mystified [85/86] these poor fellows must be about Pakeha tastes! Nobody bought any of these monstrosities -- had he chanced on a man-of-war with a naturalistic surgeon on board, he would probably have sold them all!

Revd. Wadrogal's house is such an oddity! Fairly large, raised on pile, with a very low dark verandah in front, and bamboo-floored with a floor sloping slightly seawards, as though the whole house had got a slight "list to port". A partition breadthways cut off a room at the back, and this room is subdivided into two stories [double-underlined], the lower of course a mere cellarette barely 4 ft high -- the upper a garret in the roof without sidewalls at all! The front of the house, as it were, is one story high, the back [86/87] two stories high, though under the same roof! The oddest contrivance for making space! I was amused at the Bishop's praising it highly; an odd instance of the pride these missionaries continue to take in their people! I thought it a very nasty invention!

May 29 Tuesday. Bishop returned early this morning pretty well satisfied with Wadrogal, and his season's work, though he thinks Wadrogal rails over much at the faulty. We went straight on in the boat to see the pearl-diver whose boat hove in sight sailing out to the day's work. We met him a mile or two from the ship. It seems that the sick Nengone lad harboured by the Wadrogals' has struck work after [inserted: v. page 83] all, & the Bishop has persuaded him to return to his duty as soon as well, & now wanted to persuade [87/88] the Dane [inserted: Sorensen] to receive him. This he found to be hard work, as the Dane professed supreme indifference, & took up the tone of the injured party. It was very amazing to hear him enlarge on the hardship of being treated so by a black-fellow after exposing his life fighting for the blacks in the American War! However the Bishop brought him round at last. Indeed I thought the Dane a much better fellow than the Bishop did -- but then I think the Bishop almost as much prejudiced in favour of his darling blacks as he thinks [Englishmen crossed out] white men in general prejudiced against "niggers"! [full stop converted to exclamation point by insertion of a pencil stroke]

After this we went on with the Dane to see him make his first descent alongside an islet-rock a mile or two off. He found [88/89] nothing however. What a queer figure he did look in his panoply as he clambered over his boat's side to descend. He had one white man to attend to the air-tube and line, and 4 blacks to work the air-pump (by a double-winch handle) which seemed rather hard work in a blazing sun, and of course incessant.

Afterwards the Bishop got him to examine our ship's bottom, on a suspicion (which turned out to be wrong) that some coppering might be loose.

One of his men had a long peg driven into the tip of his nose, & threaded with bright blue beads! It did look so absurd!

Left our anchorage about 2 p m in a dead calm under steam; steamed slowly along the coast to one of Wadrogal's (beyond his own house) where we landed taking him with us. He is [89/90] going on with us to Savo (an island about 30 miles off) and then to be brought back again to his own place.

This village is much like the others hereabout -- here we began to notice "tappa" skirts, but it is not so much worn as calico. It is ugly stuff looks poor & weak and is generally died of ugly dim blueish or greenish [colours crossed out, added in pencil:] patterns on a dirty white ground. There are no Christians at this village.

While the Bishop was talking to the Natives I got a lad to take me up to a little new "pa" on a rocky point 1/2 a mile off farther along the beach. It was a very steep climb but the little pa of 6 or 8 huts was rather feebly fortified with palisades and a little stone wall, and more horizontal palisading laid on the top of the wall and projecting just over; and a pile of stones was [90/91] stored up on the top ready to bombard any storming party. The view however up the hilly wooded coast, and into the depths of "Thousand ships bay" lying between Isabel and St George Island was very beautiful, and (for a wonder) I had a really beautiful afternoon to see it by.

May 30th. Made so little way last night (lovely moonlight but too calm) that steam was got up this morning. We coasted slowly along Savo before reaching our anchorage. It reminds me of pictures I have seen of Rarotonga, but on a smaller scale. Undulating hills, gradually rearing up from either end of the island to a higher central mass -- only in Savo this may be 1500 or 1600 ft and Rarotonga, I believe, is 2000 ft high. Very pretty, lots of cocoa-nut groves, and sea-side hamlets, and 2 "copra" establishments [91/92] a few miles apart. General effect pretty, rich & cheery.

This has been the first place where the missionaries shewed any uncertainty, as to their reception. The natives however were very friendly. I landed with Mr Penny and Wadrogal. Mr Penny's object was to claim his Native teacher, the lad Perceval from Mboli. The lad was waiting for us, a fine made youngster of noble carriage, & truly British pug-nose, [double-underlined] like a young Englishman turned black! He was quite ready to come back and his old rip of a father (who deserted his wife to try to get a Savo woman, in which he has failed) has promised to come too; and we are to return tomorrow to pick them up.

We then visited another village where the chief thing of note we [92/93] saw was a boiling sulphurous spring about 1/2 a mile from the beach up a beautiful tropical gully. The Bishop & I walked there with a Native guide, and a local chief. It is a curious place, a large hole worked out by a furious muddy boiling spring in the course of a naturally-narrow chink of a gully, and closed very nearly across by a very curious, dam-like wall of hot moist pinkish-yellow sulphurous clay; it was very Rotomahana-ish, but more beautiful, from the lovely cocoa-nut palms, & other tropical foliage. The natives had a small "kongi" a little lower down the gully, for cooking by steam.

We visited a third village to land one of our Norfolk Island boys to see his relations, but we are to drop him finally for the winter on our return to Isabel. The Bishop intended to [93/94] anchor in this Bay, but after steaming in till within 50 yards of the beach it proved to be too deep, so we came out again, and stood off & on, waiting for morning to return, to pick up Perceval.

We had a very pretty glimpse of the lower slopes of Guadalcanar, the crest, as usual being deeply capped with clouds. I do hope it will be clear tomorrow-morning, as this is the only place in Melanesia where the mountains tower up to 8000 ft. These lower slopes faintly seem apparently 25 or 30 miles off under the clouds look to be most beautifully diversified with bright green natural clearings and belts, and patches, and lines of dark green bush.

Host of canoes came out today to barter with us but brought little but cocoa-nuts. One man brought a couple of pine-apples, [94/95] some very bad bananas and some noble hen's eggs (about as big as a N.Z. turkey-hen's eggs!) laid I am told by a small breed of hens; excellent they were at tea!

Dress much as usual perhaps rather more jewellery. I noticed two men with tobacco pipes thrust through their noses, the bran new white pipe sprit-sail-yarded through the dark brown nose and seen in relief against the dark brown face had the oddest effect!

A good many of the canoes that came off today carried a white cockatoo in the bows, looking so ridiculously wise as though thinking thoughts much too wise to be wasted in speech to us mortals, reminding me rather, though, of the unspeakable wisdom of a drunken man!

May 31 (June 1, Friday crossed out) Again baffling winds at night, & calm in the morning [95/96] compelled us to steam back to Perceval's village This time we took the East side of the island so that we have now passed quite round Savo. And a very pretty little island it is, the east side somewhat rougher, and apparently much less inhabited than the other.

Got a pretty good view of the mountains at North end of Guadalcanar, which, in rugged boldness, are very like indeed to some of our N.Z. coast scenery -- say a slice of the second-rate part of the Kaikoura coast -- nothing as good as the "Lookers-on".

Mr Penny went ashore and brought off Perceval and his father, & another little boy, a nice little "chappie", making two we have got from Savo. Strange how they trust themselves! He was [96/97] nesting up to Bishop Selwyn from the very first! Mr Penny brought off a great "present" of a pig, yams &c but it was politely intimated that a "present" in return would be acceptable, and an axe hinted at! so an axe of course was given to them.

We then steamed on to the village where yesterday we had left another boy "Cosi" to visit his relation. "Cosi" was on the beach waiting, and we take him and his father too to Isabel. But first we went up to the village and had a long palaver. These palavers are tantalizing times to me, understanding nothing at the time, knowing that I shall get a most meagre account afterwards, and afraid to go away, not knowing the moment it may be over! Here the Bishop himself does [97/98] not understand the lingo, and has to use one of his boys as interpreter. One subject of the palaver at this place was the substitution of another boy for the one taken on board yesterday to go to [N.Id. crossed out] Mboli to school, & if he turned out well to go on to Norf. Isd.; his father too was to go. It seemed the people don't like the arrangement on second thought, & want another boy to go. The Bishop gave in, though sorry to disappoint the boy, as he says he always lets them settle these things themselves.

On the beach, as we were starting, a hideous young woman was thrust to the front of the crowd of Natives where she began to whimper; presently amidst much jabber an old woman came forward took hold of the whimpering wench and hustled her away again! [98/99] She wore a long spine in the top of her nose, which got sadly in the way when she wanted to rub her tearful eyes. This, it was explained to me was an unsuccessful attempt to provide a "fiancée" for Cosi to be trained up at N. I. for him. I thought Cosi had rather an escape! Bishop remained perfectly quiet during the scene.

Well then we had another much more harrowing scene when we got aboard! The boy who had come to go with us, on being told to go ashore again, silently declined and on being seized by his friends clung frantically to table-legs or anything he could catch hold of, till being forced away, & dropped over into a canoe, he broke into a heart-broken whimper! Poor boy! I was so sorry for him! but of course we couldn't interfere.

Sailed for Isabel. All but made our anchorage; too dark -- had to lie off.

[100] It was a very dreary dark grey afternoon, as we ran back along the Isabel coast, & it was hard to believe that the dull dark clumsy 'silhouette' we had in sight was the brilliant lovely island of a few days ago! So much depends on sunshine!

June 1. Friday. Anchored under "Cockatoo Island", a snug little harbour. It was blowing too hard to anchor at the old place; this is 2 or 3 miles farther north.

June 1. Friday. Anchored under Cockatoo. Mr Penny went off in the boat with a load of boys & their luggage for Wadrogal's place.

Such [underlined in pencil] a native "bumboat" came alongside this morning! Just a few poles lashed together, floating a few cocoa-nuts. An upright branch in the centre had slung to it the shields of the crew, [100/101] and bore aloft a white cockatoo! The gallant crew of 3 brought her off, by swimming alongside! About 1/2 a mile.

After dinner the Bishop & I went off in a boat with a black-boy crew to a pretty wooded bay about a mile from the ship. Pulling to the head of this we grounded among mangroves, & the Bishop sent back the boat to return for us at 5. Rather an imprudent arrangement, I suggested, as it was then about 3, and natives carry no watches! But the Bishop said he had promised the crew a half-holiday & they must have it. So he & I, a local chief and 3 or 4 Natives started on our walk. First up a little run of water among mangroves, (but on gravelly bottom) then up the same little fresh water creek sometimes in its bed, sometimes [101/102] crossing wet bush flats, sometimes up a bit of rocky creek-bed. Then we left the creek and took to a steep hill side by a tolerable bush-track, leading first to some fine taro & kumara gardens in a little valley high up; then up again by a steep spur till we had gained a height of perhaps 1000 feet. Then we came out all at once to a sharp crest of broken limestone crags, partially cleared from bush. The rocks were jagged and chinked to the uttermost and it was hard to conceive how the trees left standing found nourishment or even foot-hold. Yet on these sharp rocks, or on piles driven in amongst stones, stood the very queerest unimaginable little congeries of rough thatched huts; inhabited too! [102/103] It was hard to say whether they looked most romantically picturesque or dreadfully uncomfortable! The people at any rate looked most squalid & dirty! A little stone walling completed the fort.

The Bishop began giving beads to two or three women who appeared, which soon brought out more and more, till fully 20 must have turned up! Such tiny hideous creatures! And fancy babies growing up, & learning to walk amongst such jags and chinks! What a place to live in! name Takau.

The views of course were fine; right across the island from sea to sea, down into wooded vales -- all hill & dale, sunny & hazy. Saw a great black & yellow Toucan wing his way heavily across a valley.

When we got back to the landing place the boat, of course, [103/104] was not there -- Bishop & a couple of Natives pushed through the bush by a native track towards the entrance of the bay to try to get sight of the ship, and [inserted in pencil: to] signal. I waited with the other natives at the rendezvous. In about half-an-hour the boat came bringing back the Bishop, & we got on board by dark.

June 2. Saturday. Mr Penny who was expected to return from Wadrogal's last night, did not come, nor did he his morning; but just after breakfast (by which time we had begun to again sail) came a Native with a message that the boat was broken. So the Bishop & I set out to see what was the matter, and found poor Mr Penny near the boat very disconsolate. It seemed he had started last night, but it came on to blow ahead, it [104/105] was quite dark, he found his boat could make no headway by pulling, and he turned back, beached the boat, pulled her up as he supposed far enough, and walked round to Wadrogal's where he & his boys slept. On coming to the boat early this morning to start for the ship he found that the tide had risen in the night higher than he had expected, bumped the boat and slip very badly the port garboard strake. On examination she was evidently quite unfit to float. The Bishop decided to take all hands back to the ship, take counsel with the Captain & carpenter and return in the afternoon. I profited by this decision to propose doing alone, what the Bishop & I had proposed to do together, only in a much more comfortable way, namely by sailing down to coast to the point where the track to some tree-houses [105/106] inland. Now I proposed, if the Bishop could get me a guide, to start alone to walk the whole way; and the thing was so arranged, I to be back at the broken boat about 5. My guide spoke a very little English having been 5 years in Fiji.

I can't say how far it may be, but my walk took me the rest of the day (luckily a glorious day -- bright, never mind the heat) except a short spell at Wadrogal's house on my return. I had first several miles along the beach mostly horrible walking, either loose sand, or shelves or rock full of waterholes, or points of steep sharp slaps of coral-rock piled up at the steepest angles, full of all sorts of unexpected chinks and holes and obstructed by branches & roots from the forest above. Over these steep sidling slabs my bare-footed guide [106/107] strode with a speed and certainty which I, shod in nailed boots, found it hard to emulate. I was not sorry -- as each successive point seemed to get worse and worse -- to find him turn up into the bush; welcome even slippery clay-track veined by roots, & steep as "the roof of a house", for a change! It is very tantalizing, though, to be scrambling & slipping along through a forest full of new & beautiful tropical forms and scarcely dare to lift one's eyes to see them, under penalty of slipping over some sloping root, or tripping on some hidden stone, & perhaps be sent staggering against a tree truck & bark one's shins or knuckles, & have them fester for a week as mine have been doing lately!

Great was my disappointment when my friend indicated that we [107/108] had arrived at our destination and I saw before me no group of tree [underlined in pencil] houses, but another rock-fort, [underlined in pencil] strange enough, but less so than the one the Bishop & visited together! Of course I climbed up to the huts; there was no one in them.

In vain I insisted, in broken English and most eloquent signs, that tree-houses were what I was led to see, that tree-houses these must be, & that to tree-houses my friend must take me [to crossed out]! He persisted that there were none thereabouts; & I had to give in! The view however, on a gloriously bright clear day was most beautiful, and greatly soothed my wounded feelings! The fort commanded the curves of the wooded coast way past Cockatoo Island, into the very depths of Thousand ships Bay and to blue peaks away beyond that. [108/109] The finest view I have seen in these Islands yet!

On my return stopped to rest for 1/2 hour or so at Wadrogal's, & they gave me a cup of tea, biscuit, & yam pudding. Then some of them came on with me to go off to the ship, & just as we approached the boat, we saw the Bishop coming. Got aboard at dark.

June 3d. Sunday A quiet day at anchor. Most lovely calm, very hot, clear as N.Z., [double underlined] and bright!

Bishop preached a beautiful sermon on "God is love. Herein is love &c 1 John IV. In evening Bishop went to sleep at Wadrogal's house.

June 4. Monday. Steamed off early this morning to abreast the stove boat, & sent in a boat & crew to tow her off. Bishop meanwhile with [109/110] his men, had been rigging her out with bamboo so as to make her float & was ready for us. By breakfast-time she was swinging to her davits again.

We then landed a couple of scholars and fetched off a man (an old scholar) his wife & child to be taken back to Norfolk Island.

Sailed about 10 o'clock for the South, Ravo the first place of call, one of the places we visited in Florida. Fine bright weather. What a blessing! Oh, that it may last! I believe that the beginning of June is early enough to come into these latitudes.

Go on to page 149 for continuation of Diary.

[149] June 5. Brought to off Ravo (Florida) early this morning. Revd Mr Penny went ashore, taking back the Native of this place to whom the Bishop had given a trip with us to Isabel & Savo. He returned in about an hour or so, bringing off one "Dikea" said to be a great chief here, & certainly an old one, to go with us to see Norfolk Isld. Meantime a lot of canoes had come out & a lively barter been going on. I did not land having found Ravo rather an uninteresting place last time. Mr Penny reports that the Natives were greatly excited at our prolonged absence (almost 10 days instead of one week as expected) and talked of going over to Savo tomorrow to see what was the matter & take revenge if we had been killed! How much of this is true? How much friendly bounce?

[150] Beat up to Mboli against a light steady trade; lovely day. Brought to about 3 p.m. & Mr Penny landed with a lot of luggage, his teacher "Perceval" & Perceval's father, two boys from Savo, and a man of Mboli. Fleet of canoes came out to barter but ship did not delay above 1/4 hour, leaving Mr Penny to follow on to the anchorage in the boat. Beat on to Curaçoa Harbour (also loosely called Mboli) against strong trade, anchoring before 5. Almost 20 canoes came off & very noisy "Sambiri" (truck) followed; yams & curios, for tobacco, pipes, talais and parapara's (Tomahawk heads). Towards dark, deck nearly full and every man's tongue going like a Watchman's rattle! Terrible lingo to make a clatter in!

Mr Penny rejoined ship about [150/151] 8 p.m. bringing "Aliti" a "great gun" in the way of Malanta chiefs, who being on a visit here (as mentioned on our first visit here) has waited for us, to accompany us to Malanta to his place. He also brought Takua, a great local of Mboli -- so we have now 4 "great" Solomon Island chiefs on board, including Taki of Wango (St Christoval or Bauro)

Great difficulty in clearing ship of Natives at dark, but perfect good-humour preserved. Natives brought off several kits of oysters evidently from a tree -- mangrove, I suppose.

Tasted Mammee Apple for the first time, being the first I have seen ripe. It is rather like melon; but grows on a pretty small tree with single straight stem of 20 to 40 ft high, with symmetrical horizontal [151/152] crown of dark green leaves, from amongst the stems of which the fruit hangs in clusters, in much the same plan as cocoa-nuts. It is yellow, soft rinded, as large as a small melon, but shaped rather more like a pear.

June 6. Tuesday. Weighted anchor very early, and, with the help of one "board", ran across to Aliti's place (Lau-rassi, Navea, and Botalla) on Malanta. It blew fresh, very gloomy, our nice clear weather gone again already! However it brightened a little about noon (though still without sun) but the sunset was very pretty, one of the pale delicate much-varied sort -- the first really very pretty tropical sunset this cruise! And I watched it from the fore-top gallant yard to great advantage!

None of us had been here before except the old chief Aliti, but we [152/153] made a capital entrance, sailing up to the anchorage by the lead. It is a very pretty harbour; indeed in spite of the disadvantage of a cruelly dim day, I thought it the prettiest place we have yet seen. It is about the centre of a long rather shallow bay, the chord of which is nearly filled in by very low wooded overlapping islets -- inland a considerable breadth of wooded flat and undulating foothills intervene between the shore-line and the view of the highest range, which may in one hill attain perhaps 4000 ft, and is much varied though not of very peaked or picturesque outline. The entrance lies between the points of two of these islets near the middle of the bay, and is perhaps 1/2 mile wide. When well in the islets begin to overlap, [153/154] and the effect is that of a long narrow like with islets, low on the West shore, with high forest coast to the East. In general effect it reminded me much of some of the coast lagoons about Hokihika, or Okarito, without the many mountains, & with lots of cocoa-nut-palms instead of cabbage-trees. Anchored in 16 fathoms. As we sailed in under easy sail and with a breeze fallen light we saw the canoes beginning to muster, and spied a queer-looking village on either point, at the very water's edge, surrounded with blackish-looking walls.

I went up aloft to watch the working of Cunningham's patent reefing apparatus, which I had never before watched work, from close to it. A great treat [154/155] it was to watch its most ingenious details! From this vantage height I counted 50 canoes gather round us. They are generally quite-plain, no stern or stern boards, generally not painted black, and broader-built than those at Florida or Isabel -- some I saw with two paddlers abreast, & some I saw afterwards on shore were built for 3 paddlers abreast.

It was dinner-time and all the host were ordered to wait, before coming on board to barter. They proved very docile to this, and when allowed on board made less noise than half the same number at Mboli, although pertinacious traffickers and some of them beggars too. They brought no produce, but shells, arms & ornaments in great variety. I secured here a native pipe made out of a shell and a bit [155/156(a)] of bamboo for stem; also two fine nose pegs or horns! Shell armlet, shell trumpet, spear, bows & arrows, gorget, &c &c.

Soon after dinner Mr Penny went ashore to land Aliti (the chief we had brought home from Malanta) and to get if possible a boy or two for the school. We landed first at Lau-Lassie the village about a mile back from the North head of the harbour. The thatched huts were built at H. W. M. on made terraces supported by rude rubble-walls. The huts stood about without apparent order, amongst cocoa-nut & breadfruit trees. Some of the former had their trunks dressed in dead palm-leaves tied to them -- this we were told was in order that any thief attempting to steal cocoa-nuts in the [156(a)/156(b)] night might be heard climbing the tree! The chief took us to his house, a large dirty gloomy place as usual. A queer sort of stumpy post stood in the ground near the middle of it. Penny went up to examine it, and was about to touch it when stopped by the cry of "tapu"! It seem to be (he said after talking with the natives) some sort of idol; and near the entrance door we saw a small circular ring of stones enclosing a small sphere "as an altar". All this I should say "requires confirmation". Hitherto we had been let alone; we all had strolled out into the narrow village lanes, and in a very narrow place, met a lot of women & children to whom Mr Penny began giving beads, which raised a frantic clamour, & crush.

[157] At last the chief's presence barely kept them back and then a man made a lurch at them & belaboured the nearest with a big stick, causing a great fall-back, tumbling & crushing, like sheep in a drafting lane alarmed by a dog! They soon came up to the barrier again (a plank of an old canoe laid across) & made nearly as dreadful a row as even while the old chief (for Mr Penny) distributed some little fish-hooks to the children.

At first I thought all this scene a mere accidental meeting but I was told afterwards that in fact this place was the boundary of the space round the chief's dwelling tapu-ed to women.

Afterwards we had quieter talks both in this village [157/158] and in the next, Navea at the point, to which we rowed, and Mr Penny thought he had as good as secured two more boys (besides Aliti's son, & another) to be ready this evening.

Both these villages are most curiously defended with rubble walls, with winding lanes in the interior of the village, and loop-holes to shoot through.

The people are very dark small, hideous, extremely dirty. I saw more stark naked men than anywhere else. Some of the women wore only a bit of twine, and a rag the size of a leaf of this book, in front; some wore [the crossed out] a short skirt all round, of yarn fringe about 9 inches deep.

Returned to the ship about 4 p.m. Bishop & Mr Penny went ashore [158/159] about 5 to try to get the boys Mr Penny had heard of, but came back about 6 unsuccessful. About 8 a canoe came alongside to say that if we would wait till noon tomorrow, 3 boys should be forthcoming, to go to school.

It was decided however not to wait for them; I suppose the natives word was distrusted, for the order stands to sail at dawn.

About 9 a canoe came off with old Takua (chief of Mboli) who had been left ashore this afternoon, visiting, and a biggish boy to go to Mboli school accompanied him.

These natives on the islets are generally hostile with the natives of the main island across the harbour!

[160] Lovely mild, night, dimmish starlight; calm; cries of night-birds from forest; strange effect of bright dancing lights of natives fishing on the reef by torchlight; like "fantoccini" dancing!

Even here natives turned up who could jabber a little pigeon-English, having been to Fiji, or Brisbane. The labour-vessels have been before us!

The best looking girl I saw today, (light-brown & plump) had thought to enhance her beauty by a small white ring hanging from the cartilage of the nose, and a black peg stuck into the wing of each nostril!

June 7. Thursday. Reached Gaiata Southern end (or S.W.) of Florida about 11; ship lay to -- Bishop, Penny & I, a N.I. scholar (to be landed there) [160/161] and a crew of 5 black boys went off. Morning had been very dark & gloomy, and was quite dim; blowing fresh with confused sea. Got very wet, having shipped a crispish [?] sea. No village at the landing place, only one shed under some cocoa-nuts, in a pretty little bay, with a couple of rocky islets off its North shore. There was a Native there, & before long 50 or 60 men, women, & boys made their appearance. Distributed a few small presents, bought a few kits of yams, and invited the chief to sail to Norf. Isd., an invitation which pleased him much. Nothing special to remark on these people. (To call for chief on Saturday.) One N.I. scholar's luggage looked quite civilized -- a trunk, a carpet bag, and a mat!

Beat off to the ship in [161/162] a stiff breeze, & breaking sea, one sea taking me full between the shoulders as I sat in the stern-sheets, holding the sheet, so 'peu s'en faut' [?] that it knocked me out-of the boat! All hands pretty well drenched -- a set off against (actually) 4 days without wet feet.

We had left Malanta at daylight this morning under steam. First alarm, steam stopped, piggy overboard again! walked overboard through the forward door -- board lowered & piggy picked up. We had got out about four miles when steam stopped again! What now? Canoe paddling hard to overtake us; thinking it might bring us one of the talked-of boys, waited for him to come up; no such thing! 5 men had paddled out all that way, in a good deal of sea for a small canoe, in hopes of [162/163] "sambiri"; and all I could see to 'sambiri' was a few spears & arrows laid in the bow! We were obdurate and turned them back. Four men paddled, the fifth bailed. Canoe very buoyant but so low in water that a little lapped in at almost every sea.

It is most amusing to listen to our engine thumping & the screws' muffled vapours when we are steaming! By choosing one's position aloft one can so plainly hear with one ear the engine saying "Keep it up", Keep it up", Keep it up" and with the other ear catch the screw softly gurgling from underwater "Keep her quiet, Keep her quiet, Keep her quiet! Ship's head laid for Ruavat on East shore Guadalcanar but obliged to beat against strong breeze. Shower.

[164] Yesterday Bishop picked up a complete specimen of Malanta money-making tools, raw material, and money. Aliti Bay is a main manufacturing place. Women the workers. They break a strong little bivalve (like a cockleshell) into small bits; then rub it flat, & hammer it round with a hard stone; then put each little bit separately into a piece of cocoa-nut shell, and drill a round hole through it with a bone drill of their own invention, tipped with flint. Then polish these little rings. And they will sell you a bunch of strings of this shell money for a tomahawk head! A bunch of strings of rings which must contain many hundreds if not thousands & mean months of work! The Aliti people, having little room to grow crops, make this money and buy 'produce' of other natives.

[165] June 8. Friday. Owing to baffling winds in the night and partly perhaps to our Captain's great caution not to over-run his distance in the night, it was nearly 10 a.m. before we anchored off Ruavata. The approach to Guadalcanar was rather striking -- a large island, wide levels & foothills, then a high range of mountains [with crossed out] of dwarfing outlines, here & there a peak; this we partly saw, partly guessed for much cloud hung about & soon settled down lower, showing some very pretty cloud-play, white against purple mountain-flanks.

Rowed ashore, Bp, P & I. lost the mountain immediately behind the coast-fringe of small she-oaks & cocoa-nuts. Landed in the mouth of a small river. Party divided. Bishop with a [165/166] couple of natives from the crowd assembled to see us land, rowed up the river, to its delta point and come down the other branch, and meet us at its mouth. So Penny & I and a lot of natives walked about 1 1/2 mile up the sands to a village on the North bank of the other branch of the river, which Penny waded hips deep refusing an offer to be carried across; I, getting a similar offer, accepted and was very politely carried across.

A large village of maybe 20 large huts; "Kings" or chiefs a very large new hut maybe 70 x 15. Very dark; large fire in one end drying "copra". Found a white man here trading for Copra; been here 2 months & had got 9 tons copra. Came in Zephyr schooner, Capn Schwartz. Been 3 weeks ill, & looked miserable, [166/167] the wreck of a very strong man. Brought him off to dine on board. Very uninteresting village. Two canoes came off in the morning for news & went ashore, directly; more afterwards to "Sambiri". Rather rough for them.

Bishop went ashore again with medicine for the chief's abscessed leg, and to shoot ducks, but I said on board. Bishop's crew saw an alligator, but he did not. They shot 3 ducks, and a "pukeko" (N.Z. swamp hen.

Schooner "Saxon" of Auckland sailed close past us today, Southward, as we lay at anchor.

The people here are taller and better made than those of Aliti's place, yet still smallish specimens of humanity. They are not quite so [167/168] dark, a full chocolate brown, a prettier colour, I am coming to think, for naked humans, than white. Dress, men the breech-rag; women the short full "thatch" skirt. Very little ornament. The women in this thatch, looking very branchy about the hips, and standing as they mostly do, with knees slightly bent and toes very much turned in, often reminded me of the pictures of clown in the Pantomimes!

June 9 Saturday.

Turned in early last night, having had a very broken night on [Thursday crossed out] Friday.

Surprised to see when I woke early this morning, and heard it raining fast, to hear the Bishop asking Mr Penny "how about our going ashore"? seeing that the programme last night was to sail at 6 this morning!

But our object in calling [168/169] here had been partly to see one Buha, scholar N.I., left here on last year's trip, partly to get new boys. We were disappointed of seeing Buha yesterday by his having been at a village 2 or 3 miles down the coast, & though sent for, he did not come, at least not before night. And at the villages we visited Mr Penny was disappointed as to boys, seeing none he though promising. However it seems that last night Buha came aboard, and reported two boys ready to go.

Well, the rain ceased about 7 & the Bishop & Mr Penny went away in the boat to this place Buha reported. Ship got under weigh and followed down the coast. I did not go in the boat having found this place yesterday so uninteresting.

[170] The coast abreast of here is thickly fringed with small "che-oak", which look at a distance very like a very close plantation of young wattle, run up tall, 30 or 40 ft or more, quite high enough to shut out all inland, from the beach or even from our anchorage.

The little turtle, hitherto kept in a tin of saltwater was let go this morning in the sea, and seemed all right.

Three canoes came off this morning to 'sambiri' with a few yams. Slow lot here!

The Bishop came alongside 'gain about 11 a.m. in a tremendous rain-squall the hardest we have had this cruise; bought 3 boys for Mboli School (winter) with prospect of going on to N. Island if found sufficiently promising scholars.

[171] Reported having had to go almost 5 miles down coast, where they found a small river, & a good sized village (Tasimboco) and plenty of boys willing to go. Buha was not brought off again. They also found a white "copra: trader, lately established, one of the Mary Anderson lot, and who seemed to them satisfactory. Wonderful how these copra traders have been spreading their gear!

We then sailed straight for Mboli, (Curaçoa harbour) the idea of calling in at Gaiata today being abandoned, I am happy to say, for on such a squally day it would I think, have been a foolhardy piece of boating; and also it would have made us too late to anchor in Curaçoa harbour tonight. And as it [171/172] is blowing hard tonight in squalls of wind & rain, we are all glad to be here. We anchored here about 3 p.m. Soon after about a dozen canoes came off to trade but brought very little (except yams) and amongst that little I recognized several articles they had failed to "Sambiri" when we were last here. They brought one welcome article, a turtle of about 60 lbs (live weight) which fetched 2 tomahawk heads, 5 sticks of tobacco and 3 pipes -- almost 2/8 cash.

One canoe was swamped coming off -- a neighbouring canoe paddled up & took her cargo, and then the crew swam ashore pushing the empty water-logged canoe along with them.

[173] June 10. Sunday. "Regular wet day". Heavy rain in squalls with sheet-lightening last night, thunder early this morning. At anchor Curaçoa Harbour. Quiet day. Only 5 or 6 canoes came off, nothing to what we should have had, had it been fine. Of course no Sambiri allowed.

I am sorry to say all the Services here are sadly spoilt for nearly excessive rapidity and especially by that most odious fault, the minister "cutting in" again with his part before the congregation have finished their response! I have spoken of this to the Bishop & to Mr Penny, who took it in very good part, repudiated any such intention and do it still as recent as Even! It seems to me [173/174] a very common fault nowadays; is it considered "hearty" or is it an inevitable consequence of daily services? I have paid some attention to see how it is that they do read so fast, that when I am pushing on to get done as fast as [I crossed out] ever I can consistently with retaining a scrap of reverence, yet the clergyman (non-officiating) gets through the response several words ahead of me! I observe that it is by utterly ignoring punctuation and emphasis and by occasionally running two [or three crossed out] syllables, or two little words together! I wish to be charitable yet I cannot in my own mind reconcile that with Reverence, though it may be Ritualism.

[175] I have just heard a capital anecdote of Mrs (Sarah Ashwell) Palmer, in the days when her knowledge of Mota was imperfect.

Having a letter to write she copied carefully the ending of one of the Native girl's letters, written from one of the islands, thinking thereby to wind up correctly. She was writing from Norfolk Island. The words she copied being translated meant "Pity me living here among those dwelling in darkness!

June 11. Monday. St Barnabas day. This may be called the Melanesian Saint day. Early Communion. Bishop, Mr Penny, self, and one black boy (NI) who followed the service in the [175/176] English Prayerbook, but recd the blessings in Mota.

Squally morning, clearing after breakfast, but blowing hard in puffs. As it was a hopeless day for boat-landing at Gaiata, a message was sent to the Gaiata chief to come to us here overland; and we remained at anchor. The day was considered practicable however for Mboli landing, and about 11 a.m. the Bishop took off Mr Penny & his boys (4), and a lot of luggage & stores.

Mr Penny was to have been landed yesterday, but the weather was voted too bad.

Three of the old chiefs leave us here. Takua, who only came for the trip -- Aliti, the Malanta chief, who crossed with us from Ravo to introduce us to his people at Aliti Bay Malanta, and now [176/177] rejoins here his canoe & crew, who have paddled round from Ravo to meet him; and old Dikea, who had meant to go with us to N.I. but falling sick (as they nearly all do this trip!) and thinking his Tindaro* [footnote: *Tindaro Bishop has from this point spoke to him of the True God.] (or God or Spirit) angry with him, has changed his mind & put off his cruise for next year.

Mr Penny however does not leave us finally today, as it is too rough yet to sail for Saa, our next point, which is an exposed boat-landing.

It is well for me just now that I am not one of those very sociable gossipy men, who always want to know exactly what is going on! For the changes in our plans, and in our party (at least in the Native part of it) are incessant and inscrutable, for the most part to me; for [177/178] all plans being talked over and decisions made for the most part in a barbarous foreign-tongue, at the top of the voice with great rapidity, and neither the Bishop nor Mr Penny thinking of telling me, and I myself being deeply impressed with the wisdom of not making myself a nuisance by asking questions, it generally comes about that [changes taken crossed out] I first know of changes by their having taken place!

The only plan in this dirty noisy slovenly, most uncomfortable life, is just to take things as they come!

As the morning cleared many canoes came off, decks swarmed again & rang with the clatter of "Sambiri". Not that they had much to "Sambiri" beyond a few dozen kits of yams --, but they made up for [178/179] the smallness of the traffic by the bigness of the noise! As to curios, shells &c that languished, as they bring off little that is new now -- but a splendid shell-belt was brought off this morning, wh the Bishop brought for a "3/4" axe. It must have cost months of work!

I find that the unspeakable state of disorder & confusion in the ship's cabin which when I first came on board I naturally set down to the confusion of starting is here chronic -- things are never put in real order though now & then a spasmodic effort to "tidy up" is made, ending in things being just as bad as ever next day! Certainly the difficulties in the way of tidyness are great in a ship where (after reaching the islands) fresh stores [179/180] have to be got out for some purpose or other every day, & personal luggage of some body or other got together ----- yet a chief (with any faculty for order) would certainly contrive to avoid the sickening confusion and daily topsy-turvy-ing in which we live! But one chief is evidently deficient in "order" and "time". Well! one can't have everything in the best of men! But it seems to me that a sort of lay supercargo is needed to "serve tables" take all this bother [off crossed out] (or most of it -- for some from the nature of it must rest upon the Bishop, or upon a missionary) off the Bishop and missionaries hands and to leave them more at leisure for study.

A stifling afternoon & evening with many showers and some thunder [180/181] thunder [sic] and lightning.

Bishop & Mr Penny returned to tea. Mr Penny had intended, I believe, to walk back to his station along the beach tonight. But meanwhile we had recd a message on board that Calicona (the Gaiata Chief) could not be here before tomorrow on account of the distance to go. So as we do not sail till tomorrow Mr Penny sleeps on board.

This afternoon sailors and black boys shooting with Native bows and arrows at a cocoa-nut slung to the mainyard end. It was hit by several, and at one time 4 arrows were sticking in it. Then a couple of sailors jumped overboard and fetched aboard the floating arrows.

I have mentioned the native dress at each place, but I have [181/182] said little or nothing about their ornaments. I will now take a well-be-jewelled man from top to toe.

In his fuzzy wig he will have stuck in horizontally, a native wooden comb, its handle ornamented with plaited dyed grass, or inlaid with mother-of-pearl. From the lip of the handle there descends perhaps a streamer of red-dyed grass or of "Turkey-red" twill. From his nose may hang a ring, black, brown or white, touching the upper, or reaching below his lower lip. This is not very common.

In the Northern islands, as Isabel and Malanta, it is common to see the tip of the nose adorned with a long spine, black or white, straight or curved, dug into a hole in the tip!

[183] Sometimes but less commonly (and oftener I think with the women than with the men) a couple of pegs black or brown, are thrust into the "wings" of the nose, or nostrils. From the ears (whose lobes are distended by holes of enormous size) hang earrings of pearl, or of plain white, shell, or of coloured beads in some pretty jadey shape; or perhaps plain-white sticks are thrust through the holes. These latter, simple as they look, cost an immensity of labour, being rubbed out of huge white shells!

Round the neck hangs a necklace perhaps of fish teeth worked into a sort of bristling collar, perhaps of betel-stained human teeth strung together; perhaps of what may be called "native [183/184] beads" i.e. tiny rings of shell, hammered round out of fragments of shell, drilled through and strung in chains; but most frequently of small English glass beads white red & blue, often in great perfusion, very prettily arranged and shewing out well on their dark brown skins.

If no necklace be worn (sometimes in addition to a necklace) will be worn a "gorget"; a ring of white shell suspended by a plaited sling of red grass; or a large brilliant crescent of pearl-shell; or a little fancy ornament worked out of plain white shell, or out of mother-of-pearl; and I have seen a bit of a "willow-pattern" plate forced into this service!

If no gorget, then perhaps a sling (like a ribbon of the garter) [184/185] of bright glass beads, or of human teeth and beads.

Round the waist (estimated by them at the lower hip bones) in addition to the scanty breech-cloth now generally of calico, blue , red, or originally white) a string of beads, or a broad string of bead-work, with elaborate tassels of beads, sometimes all but slipping off the man's trunk altogether!

On the arms generally at top a red, or red and yellow plaited grass bracelet, very neatly made and so tight that the flesh bulges out an inch high, round each edge of it! In this is often stuck the (English) tobacco-pipe but sometimes that is stuck into the hair. [inserted: It is also sometimes of bead-work.] Below this grass [185/186] bracelet are worn 4, 6, 8 or 12 plain white circlets, made of shell. If so many as 8 or 10 probably no upper grass bracelet is worn.

At the knee garters very gay and pretty of English glass beads, or (less frequently) of a single white-shell (Venus) fixed in front by a garter of twine.

At the ancles red grass, or white shell circlets, or strings of human teeth.

In speaking of the head I forgot to say that sometimes a brow-band of white (Venus) shells is worn; sometimes a white circle, plain, engraved, or adorned with filigree tortoise-shell work, is lashed on to the hair just above the forehead, [186/187] (It is I believe the centre bone of a cuttle fish) or to the hair a little on one side giving the same effect as a rakish cock to a European hat.

[Inserted vertically across the top of pages 187-188:] It is hardly fair to class mourning with ornaments, but I have seen several men & women with faces or faces and bodies blackened with [187/188] soot & grease apparently! this natural suit of black is hideously effective but must have the drawback of still farther increasing their reluctance to wash!

[resuming regularly on page 187:] It will thus be seen that they have no small variety of ornaments; nor have I exhausted the list, but mentioned those that are commonest.

The women wear most of these ornaments, though I do not remember to have seen the gorget, or the brow-ornament worn by a woman. But generally with these creatures, as with birds, the cock-bird has the gayest plumage.

Nor do I mean that one man will wear all these ornaments at once, although [he crossed out] one may be seen here and there with every one, or very nearly every one, [187/188] of them on him at once.

Some are pretty -- some intensely grotesque. The ornaments they string together with glass beads are almost always very pretty.

The fashions vary a little from island to island of the Solomon's, but not much. I do not think I have seen the nose-spine worn in the Southern Islands of the Solomons.

I don't think they wear nearly so much jewellery in the "Banks" or "Hebrides."

At English prayer this evening the Bishop said a few well-put and animated words about St Barnabas, and about the beginnings of the Melanesian work, and about "with purpose of heart cleaving to the Lord" and about rejoicing when others receive the Truth, [188/189] first taking care to hold it oneself, and then trying to do something to get others receive it too.

It was very plain, good, spirited and to the point.

June 12. Friday. Another soaking wet day. Lying at anchor in Curaçoa harbour. Mr. Penny left in the afternoon.

One of the native boys brought aboard some specimens of a most curious white worm said to be common in the beach sand. It is about 8 or 9 inches long, soft, shiny, of the thickness of a cane quill, with a small flat tail -- but through the centre of its body runs longitudinally a slender straight white bone and by getting hold of the tip or point of this bone [189/190] one can pull it right out of the creature's body, exactly like pulling a finger out of a glove -- there appears to be no sort of adhesion, no more than in a bone of a piece of boiled fish. The bone is almost as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead at the butt end and tapers symmetrically down to a very sharp point!

June 13. Wednesday. Sailed for Saa; beating through Indispensable straits, against fresh S.E. trade. Very gloomy day.

Put into a bay next below Curaçoa Harbour, & Bishop went off to fetch Calicona, met him coming out with two canoes, turned back and brought him on board. Bishop himself does not seem quite clear why Master Calicona did not join yesterday, so certainly [190/191] I shall not try to explain. I suspect the rain has much to say to it. He came on board, as a Solomon Island chief usually does, accompanied by his squire --who in this instance has a double claim for the trip as being brother of one of the N.I. scholars.

The first thing when a Native comes aboard to sail with us is to give him a "malo" of calico, instead of his native "malo". Caricona has got a white one, which does not look nearly so well on dark-brown skin, as dark blue. There is a certain convenience in going about naked after all! Instead of two or 3 portmanteaus, a native gentleman come aboard for a cruise with a kit of [191/192] betel-nut for all luggage!

It was amusing during our stay in Curaçoa Harbour to notice the veering of public opinion! First day all congratulatory! "Jolly good thing to be snug in here, instead of boxhauling about outside" &c &c &c next day not quite so clear about it! Third day, open lamentation!

However with such a landing-place as Saa is said to be we cannot really have lost any time.

June 14. Thursday. Beating up for Saa -- light airs; muggy, showery -- little way made. Toucan dead; poor beggar, he never had much chance! He was fed on boiled yam, 3 or 4 times a day; the very way of his feeding I heard it ought to have been 30 or 40 times, and who but a parent [192/193] could undertake that! He took down each bit of yam put into his huge bill just like a pill! but having swallowed 3 such would take no more! He seemed never to nest in his great cage, not to make any noise, and was a dismal pet!

June 15 Friday. Having made hardly [any inserted in pencil] way all yesterday through want of wind it was rather provoking to find oneself off Saa this morning but with so much wind & sea as to forbid all idea of landing! So the ship was kept at it, all a weary day of strong head-wind & heavy rain, and at night-fall we were off Ulawa but too late to go ashore [193/194] or the Bishop would like to have slept ashore there. We certainly have had a most vexatious amount of dreary ugly weather!

June 16. Saturday Landed at Ulawa (village of Mato) about 8 a.m. This is one of the smaller islands, the chief of the Group called also Les Contrarétés. It is a long piece of hill, steep & thickly-wooded, perhaps 1400 or 1500 ft high, but of tame outline. Yet I thought the scene on our approach to it, the prettiest landing we had had, at any rate of places where no high back-ground of mountain was visible above the trees.

It was a calm grey morning yet with a gleam of sunshine as we landed. The shore was [194/195] composed entirely of rough blocks and low walls (as it were) and ins and outs of rough dark grey or drab coral-rock much perforated (like slag). The bush and scrub full of cocoa-nut palms came down to the very edge of these rocks. Scattered about on the edge of these rocks, or knee-deep in the tiny caves, stood some scores of the natives, in ones and twos and in groups their dark chocolate brown skins and gleaming white and red ornaments contrasting beautifully with the full green foliage! How poor a lot of naked white men would have looked in the same place!

Hearty but quiet reception. Went up to a rather nice village under the cocoa-nut-palms about 1/4 mile [195/196] inland, where the Bishop paid the balance due on building a "house" for Mr Still [when crossed out] to be ready for his (or the Bishop's) next missionary visit. A pretty good square bamboo house perhaps 20 ft square, but with dirt-floor, and looking already very dirty and (like all of them) most dismally dark. It would be impossible (at least on a cloudy day) to see to read, write, or work.

Each workman (of 8) [brackets added in pencil] got a knife or tomahawk head, 4 pipes, a "talai" (slip of iron) and two sticks of tobacco; and they seemed satisfied. "Taki" who went ashore with us bought for us two tiny lean pigs. Shortly afterwards while waiting for something I know not what (that is how 3/4 of my time ashore on such visits is spent!) I heard [196/197] a woman crying; and wondering whether she were having a "tangi" over one of our party I asked what it is and was told by the natives (who laughed) [brackets added in pencil] that it is a woman crying for her pig we had got! I noticed that, though their speaking voice is so very unlike our speaking voice, this woman's crying sounded exactly like an English-woman's crying; not, for instance, at all like a Maori's crying!

Had to "stand up" in a hut for a heavy shower & then went off to the ship having been about 1 1/2 hours ashore. People at this place of a fair size and build; but I observed that a man of my height (say 5'-8") looked very tall amongst them.

[198] If I remember right the Bishop brought off either one or two men to visit Norfolk Island.

Got off with some difficulty; very bad landing-place; had it not been a calm morning and tide well in, we could not have landed where we did.

Ran across to Saa with a fair wind (what a luxury!) by a little past two. Grey day, moderate sea, but quite enough for such an exposed landing. It is a very narrow break in the fringing reef, and encumbered with stones or loose rocks. A crowd of natives were waiting to receive us, but no canoes. As we lay waiting for a chance to pull in the Bishop said quietly to me "They've got a pleasant way here, when [198/199] a chief has died of killing the next visitors who come". "Oh indeed" said I and fell to hoping that no chief had died lately! However, as soon as the chance came, in we pulled, a couple of lusty dark brown Saa-ites swam rapturously off to help us in, a lot more ran in to help, and the boat was soon pulled safely up. The people were a fine well-made lot, and, though very hearty, less noisy that I had expected, having heard every day for the last 3 weeks that all my previous experiences of noise and clatter were going to be thrown into the shade by the Saa men! They were eager to traffic in combs; the bishop bought a whole sheaf of common wooden ones for his [199/200] Melanesian boys, for a very small bit of tobacco each -- about one smoke; and I bought some of the beautiful grass-worked ones for a stick of tobacco each!

One man with a very cunning expression of face, unwrapping many plies of rag, offered me for "sambiri" a -- - -- half-penny! and on my declining this, unveiled with equal care a whole penny to my dazzled eyes! However I would not have any truck for this [alas crossed out, inserted in pencil:] either! on the other hand I could not get a fellow to sell me a shell armlet, (ring) nor a pair of (single-shell) garters. I have tried at many places now for these, without success.

These people were unusually naked, many men being quite naked -- but still they had much jewellery! It [200/201] was so odd to see a fellow's great thick lips looking-out at-you (as it were) through the opening of a great white nose-ring, as through a window!

The Bishop was well-pleased with his interview, concerning which he had, I think, been really a little anxious. He cannot speak the language and had to trust to "Taki" the savage chief (who knows hardly any English), or to "Dora" (a N.I. boy we left here) "who is deaf" (i.e. deafish), or to Bywo another Melanesian "who is stupid" "Embarras de choise"!

There is a nice brook here like a trout-stream, about the best we have seen; the village is near it, about 1/4 mile back from the beach. [201/202] We brought off a boy with us to cross to Wango, and a stark naked old man to visit N. Island.

Great difficulty in clearing the boat of our boisterous friends, when we wanted to go off again. Reached ship all right, & left for Wango about 5 -- another shower; fine-ish night.

June 17. Sunday. When I came on deck this morning we were steaming in for Wango anchorage, dead calm, and drizzling!! I cannot express my surprise at the amount of dull grey or drizzly English weather we have had this cruise! No amount of "tropical rain" by buckets would have surprised me so much; to be unable [202/203] to get away from my pet aversion in England, even here, does surprise me, and indeed all on board. The constant damp is telling on many of us; I have festered hands, the Bishop a festered foot, a sailor a festered nose, another rheumatism, the Captain headaches &c. We are all so weary of it!

Anchored at Wango about 8 a.m. Some natives came off with Mr Still's big boat. Report two schooners (traders) having called here, and a 3-master gone by, probably Ferguson's barque; he is an old established copra trader in these seas. I had hoped I might have chanced upon his barque going back to Sydney, but I fear there is not much chance now! Natives can never tell you English names!

[204] It is 4 weeks since we took the chief "Taki" away for a cruise -- the natives had expected him back much sooner, and now, we hear, they made up their minds that he was dead, and in the extremity of their grief cut down . . . . . . his cocoa-nut trees! It reminded me of Burgess [Sullivan crossed out] (of Maungatapu notoriety) proceeding in the extremity of his pious penitence to confess the sins of Sullivan! (the informer)!!

However Taki takes it coolly; so we shall find I expect, either that the danger is not very great or that he knows how to get it made good.

Taki goes back in a white shirt, ill got up, and much too big for him, which may be more civilized, but utterly spoils his appearance. [204/205] Though a little man he did [underlined in pencil] look like a chief -- now [underlined in pencil] he doesn't!

More rain, and stifling cloud & calm!

Between drizzles this afternoon, at low water, walked out on reef at S. point of the tiny bay of Wango. It is however a very poor specimen indeed of a coral reef, and I should hardly have known it for such had I not been told. I found no shells (but I daresay it is well gleaned by the natives for "Sambiri"!) but in the waterholes dark blue starfish, drab anemones, black sea-slugs huge disgusting things (bêche de mer?) insects like caterpillars, and broken & growing bits of fifth rate coral.

June 18. Monday. A lovely day once more! I am so thankful! I was getting so weary of the incessant damp, dirt, & stink [205/206] relaxed fibre, depressed health and disappointment! So were we all, I fancy! But I am very thankful too that it came into my head (ought I to say, that God put it into my head?) to look over life of Bishop Patteson again. I looked into it to see the circumstances of his death which I had begun to forget, and got so interested, that I went back and back till I have read over again nearly all his Melanesian career. And it has been soothing and humbling, & stopped the growing irritation and absurd sense of injury caused by the long run of dreary weather! Ah! what a man he was!

Bishop very busy preparing for going ashore at Wango -- black boys and some men of Wango watering shop -- Capt & crew mending sails &c &c. [206/207] But the Bishop found time to get me a native guide, and with him and a petty local chief, I walked up the valley of the brook, & up the hill to a little village on the saddle of the hill -- where there appeared to be only 3 women & 3 boys in the village. Then on a mile and a half or so farther, along a "razor-back" to some gardens partly deserted & grown up into high weeds. Except for the village it was all wonderfully like N.Z. -- and just here it was not particularly fine tropical bush, so I soon got tired of the old thing -- slipping along a damp, rooty track, with nothing to see but trunks of trees. Singular absence of birds of birds & insects. I saw none, though I heard some pigeons, which have a hideous coo here, more like a groan!

[208] What a very noiselessly moving creature a naked man is! Over and over again in these Islands have I suddenly found a black man or boy at my elbow, whose coming my ear had no ways warned me of! And my ear is sharper than most men's. Even when listening expressly, I have not been able to hear any noise, unless leaves or stalks lay about, and there no more of a rustle than a lizard might make! They laugh at us booted pakehas slipping and crashing about -- especially going down hill! Their noiseless certainty is due partly I think to the wonderfully pliant sure hold of a naked foot that has always been naked, partly to the exquisite sense of balance gained by incessant practice.

[209] The Bishop bought here a beautiful little new canoe, big enough for two men, for a saucepan! Really for a saucepan, for that was all the man asked; but the Bishop thinking it really too little, gave also a tomahawk.

Reverting to the book "Life of Bishop Patteson" it was delightful to remember as I read that Tagalana of whom he speaks so well is deacon in charge at Ara -- Harper teacher in charge at Wango -- that Joe Waté is one of the best boys at Norfolk Island -- that "poor B----" the scapegrace about whom he was so anxious is the Edmund (Batatru) now in charge at Gaua (Banks Islands) of whom Bishop Selwyn this cruise speaks so very highly.

[210] Also Sapiuaniba -- one of the boat-crew that brought in Bishop Patteson's body is at N. I. doing well.

June 19. Tuesday. Another fine day! One watches for this with as much solicitude, one records it with as much triumph, as on any English [underlined in pencil] coasting excursion! It was really cool, almost to keenness this morning at sunrise!

Sailed about 10 and beat up to Ugi by about 3 p.m. Ugi is a long low but hilly and densely wooded islet lying some 15 miles S.E. of Wango; and on it are stationed two copra traders. The Bishop had heard that one of them, Atkin by name, was ill and wanted to leave and decided to go over and see about it, to leave us in his boat (which we towed over) to return to Wango.

[211] The landing at the station (which is as usual a couple of huts on the edge of the beach just inside the trees) we found indeed two white men but neither of them Atkin who had left 2 weeks ago. One, we found, had discharged himself from the services of the "Mary Anderson" party, in disgust at the want of proper provisions; although they had actually brought down an iron house (!) for him, in which he was living! He wanted to leave, but did not want relish the possibility of being jammed at Norfolk Island, and it was finally decided not to take him. The other white man (Howland by name) was one of the two we had visited at Ubuna on the outward voyage, but now looking a good deal the worse, and speaking as if [211/212] recovering from low fever. He however meant to wait for the Mary Anderson.

But there was also a Nengone black who was pitifully anxious to leave; and who had discharged himself from the Mary Anderson on some misunderstanding about collecting beche de mer. His name is Koniué, and finally the Bishop decided, though very reluctantly, to take him, & land him & me, if possible, at Nengone; Koniué say he has been 3 times at Auckland college, and was baptized by the first Bishop Selwyn, knew Bishop Patteson &c &c.

We then went back to the ship by 4; the Bishop left us for Wango, and we started on the long beat-to-windward for Opa (Leper's Island).

[213] Ugi was really a very pretty scene -- the white beach of broken coral -- high trees fringing the beach -- the blue sea like a great bay, being nearly shut in by the long mountain-range of St Cristoval opposite, which in its long slopes, and gentle curves, reminded me of the Tannus mountains behind Homburg. And the sun was shining gaily, and the mountain crest clear!

The Bishop took away 4 scholars, and 5 locals -- we have now about 5 scholars from Banks Is. who have been latter on the cruise and about 5 men, a woman & child going to N.Id. Comparatively a quiet ship -- and though sorry to lose Selwyn himself, I do look forward to a few days [213/214] of quiet ship, without the whole cabin being turned topsy-turvy and decked lumbered-up, every day.

Turtle dispaired of and ordered for slaughter. We have no proper place to keep him in.

June 22. Friday

"Rein n'est certain pas l'imprévu"! How surprised and disgusted I should have been had any prophet told me at the date of my last entry, that this day we should be once more at anchor at Wango! Well! It is grievous that after 3 days & 2 nights of beating against head wind & sea on our return South, [that crossed out] the carrying away of the main-top-sail yard, should have induced the Captain to put back to Wango! He changed his course [214/215] about 10 p.m. yesterday and about 4 p.m. today anchored here.

The Captain hesitated awhile, and then decided to put back partly because a crippled yard would lengthen the voyage and alarm the Bishop (from whom we were less than a day's sail distant) and partly in order to repair damages more conveniently at anchor. But-a-short bit of the yard has broken off at the port rolling-iron, but its being a yard fitted for the patent reefing will make it much more troublesome to repair, and of course a yard, being rotten in one place raises suspicion of others. The topsail was reefed & top gallant sail furled when the yard parted!

Went ashore at once with the [215/216] Capt. and saw the Bishop who took it coolly, helped thereto doubtlessly being in high spirits about his stay ashore, which has begun, it seems, in the pleasantest way. He speaks highly of the kindness of the people -- has a morning & evening school of 13, whom he teaches through one of the Mota-speaking boys. Went into his hut which really looks tolerably comfortable & cheery and with windows, & battened floor, & all his things stored in tolerably good order, for a wonder!

Sighted a small schooner today to windward of us, and apparently making for Ugi -- but too far off to speak her.

June 25. Monday. Sailed for South again at noon; very light head-wind -- vexatious as it is to have lost a week by returning to lie at anchor for repairs [216/217] for 3 days at Wango, the least interesting place we have anchored at, it is still more vexatious to think that the consequences will be a second hurried rush thro' the Banks & Hebrides. Coming North the Bishop consoled me from time to time for our hurried visits leaving unseen so much of interest by saying -- "Oh you'll have plenty of time to see all that on the return voyage". And now it seems certain that the return voyage will be at least as hurried as the outward voyage!

On Saturday walked down the coast about 3 miles, till a deep creek stopped progress. Taki & 3 other Natives were with me. Rather pretty & very bad heavy beach. Taki shewed me what he declared was the track of a crocodile, and the moment after spying the body of a boar at the edge of the fringing reef, almost in the [217/218] surf, fell into great excitement -- shouting, collecting dry palm-leaves, making a fire to singe him &c &c. Poor piggy had had a hind leg torn off, probably, I suppose, by a crocodile.

Curiously enough a native paddling his own canoe in the sea turned up in the nick of time, Taki hailed him, & he came in, & after piggy was singed and cut up, took him to Wango where "man kai-kai", Taki afterwards informed us.

This morning, with a Native, climbed up to a yam clearing high up the hill (just like a Maori clearing & old whares) & got [a crossed out] pretty views up & down the coast, & out to sea to Ugi & the smaller island. But not more than "pretty" [quotation marks and underlining in pencil] Weather fine, hot & hazy, with cool moonlight nights & very heavy dews. A Blanket acceptable in early morning even in cabin. Daytime Ther. 84° in cabin.

[219] June 25 Monday. Sailed at noon for Opa.

[inserted from page 111:]

Memo.

This journal was begun on June 5, after leaving Isabel homeward bound. Between touching at Ambrym May 7, and leaving Isabel June 4, I wrote journal-letters to my wife; after that, judging that almost certainly I should go myself by any chance good enough to send my letters by, I [sent crossed out] wrote no more letters, but began a journal.

Later on during the tedious beat from Wango to Opa, I made up back journal (with help of these letters) so as to have a complete narrative from leaving Norfolk Island.

I have now (July 3) made up the gap; & the general remarks inserted here [111/112] were written on the passage from Wango to Opa, beating against S.E.-trade, myself sole white passenger.

______

[These "Remarks" are preceded by a penciled note: These remarks should be read last. Therefore, they have been moved to the end of the Journal. The Journal continues on page 219:]]

July 8. Sunday. Beating past Vanua Lava, after 13 days constant beating against light airs, moderate breezes, stiff breezes and a week of almost incessant gales, always dead ahead! Those of us whose first cruises this way it is have remarked to each other pretty often of late "Well! I didn't expect this sort of thing here! [underlined in pencil] For it has been cold & cloudy too of late, with a high sea, & constant wet decks, and wet jackets. Today is not quite so stormy but dreary & gloomy and Ureparapara and Vanua Lava mere purple grey fuzzy shadows above the trembling sea, perfectly uninteresting for lack of light and of outline! Oh dear!!!

[220] I woke one night as salt water came down copiously on my pillow & rushing down by the book racks, to wonder what it all meant, till I heard a heavy "sea" washing about the decks and recognized by the pitching & rolling, & by a general wild clatter that we were "in for a gale"! Oh how tired we are all getting of it! How forced [underlined in pencil] the "chaff" is becoming!

One night I was waked by the hair on the crown of my head being sharply pulled -- I lay a moment wondering what it meant, then plainly heard a tiny shears at work. "Ugh! Cockroach! you brutes"! And dashing up my hand knocked off a cockroach, sure enough!

Passed a schooner this morning, before I was up -- to windward of us, & too far off to speak. But we have the heels of her, and are now to windward of her!

[221] July 12th Thursday. Opa at last after 17 days incessant beating! It piped up again just after my last entry and blew harder than ever that Sunday night, sail being reduced at one time to two staysails and close-reefed foretopsail, a dark rainy night to boot -- very "dirty" weather in fact. However it moderated next morning and has been improving ever since, till now it is fine & sunny, and even the tops of the islands clear; but the wind has been very baffling these last two days, making it difficult to get up to windward.

On Monday morning sighted a small craft to windward, under Sa Maria -- said to be a cutter, but too far off to make her out clearly. Anchored off Wareriki (Bice's station) Opa between 1 & 2; Bice came off in his boat pulled by [221/222] a crew of his scholars, looking very white & thin but unfeignedly glad to see us. He has had a cold cloudy but not wet season, a sickly season, many natives with fever & ague, of which he had had a 3 weeks bout, & is still weak from it and speaks in a languid, tired way. He has had a visit from one of the men-of-war schooners (the Conflict) & got fed up & cheered a bit, for he was running short of all but yam & biscuit.

He speaks with great satisfaction of the Natives and of his teaching work here. Has had daily school & service, & many people come. What a pity it seems to give it all up again for the next 10 months just as it seems beginning to take! [underlined in pencil] Has seen several traders, & labour-vessels, and some 30 or 40 [222/223] "labourers" sent from his neighbourhood to Queensland. Went ashore in the afternoon; when I was here before it was a dismal drizzling day, so I was very glad to see the island again in sunshine; neither Opa nor Maiwo have any particular beauty of outline, but the bush at the place is very beautiful from the profusion of cocoa-nuts. Mr Bice tells us of two or three "copra" stations on this little island.

Bice has had a new bamboo hut made for himself, a great improvement on the great dirty shed in which we left him and specially in being subdivided so that he had his general room, his bedroom, pantry &c &c. But no fire-place of any kind [223/224] seemed to me a great mistake -- particularly after hearing poor Bice complain of the great cold of the night lately; in which I quite agree with him, and be it remembered that to sleep in any one of these bamboo huts, is like sleeping in a sieve! If fire wood be the difficulty, then I think each mission hut should be supplied with a small stove to minimize the consumption of fuel.

Went to see the nearest village about 200 yards up the hill-side -- merely a few straggling huts in the jungle -- no open "Place". The only new feature I noticed was "pig-sties["]! Or at any rate sundry tiny sheds, each with its pig shut up in it!

The women here seem to wear two mats of good size, one round the [224/225] waist, the other loose, shawl-fashion over head & shoulders. Very few natives however came down to see us, beyond the school-boys and only 3 or 4 small canoes came off bringing nothing for barter; miserable little deformities they seemed after the really beautiful canoes of the Solomon Isds.

Bice came off & slept on board, rather feverish.

He told me that only two or three days ago had he found out their word for sacrifice, & that he has never been able to find that they have a word for "power"; slight practical difficulties there, in the way of enforcing the teaching of Holy Writ!

One "Mcleod" is in these parts collecting "Copra" to take to Noumea! This might be a good chance for me [225/226] if we could only fall in with him! It is annoying to have the Captain [underlined in pencil and inserted at the top of the page: Bongard] (whose fiancée is in Norfolk Island!) always harping on the probability of strong SSE trades not allowing him to land me at Nengone! which, seeing that Nengone is exactly on the line between here and Norfolk Island seems to me rather a gratuitous panic!

The Conflict has brought new of war having been begun by Russia with Turkey! Serve Turkey jolly well right! I only hope that England will not be dragged in, especially not on the side of Turkey!

July 13 Friday. In spite of his haste to get home the Captain decided to stay quiet here today to make sundry small repairs in sails, rigging and hull; so we only sailed for Gaua about 6 p.m. [226/227] under topsails & jib, the distance being less than a night's run.

It has been a half-fine day, i.e. a good deal of cloud, a little sunshine, and a few light showers.

In forenoon went with Bice to the copra-station of an American established about 3 miles Et. along the coast. We pulled about 2 miles, then landed at a little boat-harbour, and walked the other mile, strange to say, over nearly flat ground, by a good track through thin scrub, diversified by scattered trees & cocoa-palms.

The bit of coasting had been very pretty, skirting a low line of black lava rocks, edging a flat covered with light green scrub & trees, something after the fashion of the lower slopes of Rangitoto [or Rangitolo], but finer shapes of foliage.

[228] Passed one deserted copra station, man driven away by fever.

En route met a canoe, the paddler having a letter for Bice from the very man to whom we were going asking if the S. Cross had brought any news of Mcleod & his schooner (John S. Lane)! That was the very errand on which we were bound to him! However we went on.

We found the American established on a nice little flat at H.W.M. as usual, & in a bamboo cage (rather than house) as usual. He however had gone to the other side of the island to start a new station. But we found an Englishman there who told us that Mcleod had left a fortnight ago for Gaua, then to dismantle Capt Fuller's schooner & bring away Miss Fuller, the mate & black crew (v. page 44) and that [they crossed out] he was to call on his return -- [228/229] but they had seen nothing of him and we getting anxious. So we came back as wise as we went.

They had such a charming cook-shed at this place; it was hollowed (as it were) out of a great Banyan tree, by cutting away the inner trunk or trunks, leaving a space about 9 feet across formed round as it were by the outer trunks -- and over this space was hung umbrella-fashion a bit of thatched roof; it was the perfection of a rural cook-house. Natives seen, & heard screeching all along the coast.

Many shots heard this morning. Bice says they have lots of guns now, & have seriously thinned out the birds, but don't fight.

He told me the following curious experience, illustrating the real change effected of late.

[230] A few weeks ago while he (Bice) was living at his station, a brigantine ran in shore one morning, & sent her boat ashore. Bice & some of his natives went down to the beach just in time to see 8 returned ["]labour" landed on the beach with their boxes &c &c, & the boat row off again. Instantly the "labour" began in an excited way to load their guns and prepare for action, & could hardly be induced to believe in the friendship of Bice's party, & to come up [with them inserted in pencil] to [the converted by pencil to:] their huts to feed! Poor fellows! They had left 3 or 4 years ago, and not witting of the blessed change which had come over the island in the interim, and having been landed some miles away from their own village, expected nothing else than to have to fight for their lives! Even after having been fed, it was with the greatest difficulty, [230/231] only by a judicious mixture of persuasion and chaff, that they could be induced to fire off their guns and trust to the new reign of universal peace!! Even then it took some persuasion to induce them to divide their force, so that Bice could take up them & their "plunder" in squads of 4, in his boat! On his landing the first squad in safety actually at their own home great was the screeching and joy, and overflowing the gratitude of the "returned-labour" who opening their boxes insisted on allotting 2 axes and six sticks of tobacco to Mr Bice, & a proportional thank offering to each of Bice's native crew. But these as stoutly insisted that their service should be a service of love only, and finally carried their point.

[232] Nor were their fears really at all unreasonable. For only the month before a couple of "returned-labour" having been landed on Ambrym at the wrong place on the coast, were promptly clubbed, and their "plunder" [quotation marks in pencil] appropriated!

We brought off 2 boys for Norfolk Island in the boat; great screeching of females squatting on the beach as we shoved off, and the little fellows actually sniffed at hearing it -- the first time I recollect to have seen any of them show any such sign of tender emotion!! One of these little fellows, a schoolboy of Bice's here, had held so 'long' to his determination to go in spite of his friends dislike of the idea, and had cried about it so persuasively, that at the last moment they gave way and let him go. The missionaries [232/233] do not seem afraid now-a-days to take natives away to Norfolk Island for the first time, in the middle of winter! I hope it may be all right -- if so, it shows how very superior Norfolk Island is as the Mission Headquarters to Kohimarama!

After the early dinner went off again for Bice to bid a final adieu to his people, and to sweeten his departure by the gift of a few tomahawks &c.

I walked about a mile along the beach Westwards. Singularly lovely looking upwards to the steep dense bush studded [?] with cocoa-palms. Especially at an abandoned copra-station set down close to the sea in a flat nook walled round "corrie"-fashion, by great green [233/234] walls of tapestries rock and bush, from which tall "élance" cocoa palms flung up their graceful crowns against the sky in breathtaking variety & proportion. It was like a bit of fairy-land realized -- and the man, an American, had brought his wife and two grown up daughters there, and built them a 6 [double underlined]-roomed bamboo cage, and set his 30 black men to work, & lived in peace with the Natives of the land. But alas! some malignant fairy after all must have infused malaria into this delightful cup for fever drove them all away!

Yet it looked a lovely spot, dry, well open to the sea, no stagnant water! What a wonderful mystery this Malaria seems to be!

[235] Just opposite Bice's place saw a most extraordinary sea-going canoe, which had just brought a party of Natives and their pigs from the other end of the Island. It was I think one of the ugliest sea-going craft I ever saw. It had been hollowed out of a log, and "rose-upon" by having 2 "streaks" sewn onto each side of the original hull. I found it by rough measurement almost 24 feet long, by 18 inches wide, and 3 feet deep, perfectly wall-sided, but provided with a heavy clumsy outrigger, about 9 or 10 feet out on the starboard side!! It was so narrow that I could only just stand inside it, and could not sit down on the bottom. There were no seats; but Bice says [235/236] that at sea they have boards across the gunwale to sit on! I saw a fellow today, a very black one, paddling his own canoe, this fashion, squatted on a bit of board laid across the gunwale, sitting on his heels, with his knees up to chin -- he did look so uncouth, so top heavy, so thoroughly un boatman like!!! [un double underlined] I wish I could have painted him & his equally ugly log of a canoe. Such a different position from that of Bauro (Wango) (vide page 55)

Seat in (or on) Canoe -- Opa.

[237] I noticed here an amusing instance of the spread of fashion "pur et simple" -- 2 or 3 naked fellows with hats and pugries on their hats!

Brought off altogether 4 boys for Norfolk Island from this place.

July 14. Saturday.

A quarter [underlined in pencil]-fine day -- i.e. much cloud, frequent flying drizzling showers, and a little faint sunshine in the morning. Fair again at sunset. However it was a great improvement on our last visit to Gaua (page 42) and I was very glad of even that faint sunshine for my first (& I suppose only view) of a Coral lagoon. The Capt, Bice & I went in about 9 o'clock; landed two boys at Edmund Bat's place, and brought off two to go to Merlav. In spite of the dimness of the day it certainly was very pretty and [237/238] singular -- the long smooth sheet of light bright green water, mottled with brown when the rock shewed through the shallower water -- on one side the fringe of black lava rock and beach bush, on the other the toppling breakers curling high on the fringing reef, without visible cause, said reef at high-tide being itself invisible.

Though only about 8 mile long and a mile broad it was large enough to realize pretty well what I have read of such lagoons.

We did not stay long at our first landing place where we saw nothing but Bat's house which is also school -- a large place, dirty & slovenly almost as a Native's hut. Bat himself wore a shirt as filthy as ever I saw on a human being; I suggested to Mr Bice his touching up Master Bat on this point, [238/239] but he would not! Strange infatuation! To the outside observer these returned St Barnabas scholars are most disappointing in the points of cleanliness & order of person & house. Mary his wife was cleaner and is about the only Melanesian woman, indeed I think the only one, who gave me the impression of having "brains". She was spare too, not horridly fat & chunky as they generally are. We staid a very little while after Bat & his wife appeared, for whom we had to wait some time, & then went off in the boat 4 or 5 miles farther along the Lagoon, with great difficulty avoiding being stuck fast as tide was now falling, to the anchorage of the unfortunate "Jennie Duncan["], alias Espérance of Noumea, vide page 44.

[240] We found her hauled up on the beach, one mast gone -- & the mate & part of his black crew dismantling her of her copper, iron work, &c &c.

Capt Mcleod had sailed 3 days before for Aurora, & Opa, taking away some of the copra, spars &c and Miss Fuller -- he was to touch at Aurora first, so we only just missed him! [full stop converted to exclamation point by addition of pencil stroke]

Had some chat with this American mate, who seemed to have been most favourably impressed with Bishop Selwyn's off-hand sailor like ways -- also highly to disapprove of the trading plan of other Missions, who are (according to him) not only rivals, but unfair rivals, to traders by profession. Of course one can easily see how he may think so, without that being at all to the discredit of the said Missionaries, but it illustrates, I think, one strong [240/241] reason why Missionaries ought not [underlined in pencil] to trade.

The story of the Jennie Duncan, as he told us it, is still more dismal than what we heard from the Bishop. Not only did Capt Fuller's son die, but he, a young man of 24, had been long mad, & dangerously mad! He ran away into the bush & that was how he caught the fever & ague of which he died 3 or 4 days after being found & brought back. Poor Miss Fuller was still ill when Capt [Fuller crossed out and inserted in pencil:] Mcleod took her away. She was 19 but "you'd hardly guess her at more than 13, for she'd been sickly from a child"!

This mate complained of the copra trade not paying because the natives could not be got to bring it in quickly enough! Just what I have always feared would spoil this trade. [241/242] Rejoined the ship about 1 p.m.

Came round the island to Lakona (partly by steam) and anchored about 5 p.m.

Went off with Bice to see the natives on the beach -- they have literally no canoes to come off in. Short palaver just at dusk. Nothing but bad news. The natives have not built Maroos a house -- began but have been hindered by much fever. (vide page 23 et seq.) Poor Stephen whom we carried ashore so carefully last May 13, died 6 days later.

The white trader with whom the natives were so dissatisfied left for Ara, but left his boys (Mallicolo natives) behind. A labour vessel (one of many) called, carried off some "labour" amongst them a woman. "They" i.e. one or more of the Natives of this place, shot a Mallicolo boy out of revenge. Afterwards another labour vessel [242/243] called and carried off the rest of the Mallicolo boys.

[No crossed out] Also a woman has been shot, out of one of their own quarrels.

Also no school has been kept on account of illness.

Teacher Maroos, his wife & others landed here in May, all want to go [back crossed out] to [N. Id. crossed out and inserted:] Mota and I believe are to come on board again tomorrow. Mrs Maroos has the fever now.

So, so far, we have heard nothing but bad news from this place.

Saw today at Gaua two extraordinary developments of the "chignon" fashion on male specimens:

Chignons: three on each side.

The centre of the pate was occupied by a cockatoo-like ridge of hair made to stand up perpendicularly; on each side of this ridge the hair was gathered into three [243/244] lumps, each of the size maybe of half a turkey's egg, each lump being framed on something like a chignon; in the diagram, the third or most backward lump is out of sight behind the middle & first lumps; these lumps were plentifully powdered with the pink dust of the country; this gave them a half-raw look as of some diseased rumour, and made them look equally disgusting and ridiculous; in fact I thought at first it was disease ("plica polonica" perhaps!) and not art.

July 15. Sunday. Quietly at anchor -- In afternoon Bice, Captain & I, &, of course, a great native following went ashore, and to the two villages Bishop & I visited last time -- v. p 23; a very lovely little walk on a lovely day, but short as it was, it was damped by Bice's knocking up a good deal as he was [244/245] feeling his fever and ague again. As a missionary walk it was also a complete failure, as there was scare a soul to be seen! The fact being that with the exception of a few who came on board in the morning, some in our boat, and 7 swimming (for they have no [boats crossed out] canoes here) [brackets and underlinings added in pencil] ----- except these few and perhaps 3 or more, the population of these two villages had fled to the bush, [comma added in pencil] fearing lest we might be a man-of-war. They had heard from a cutter which came here since the visit of H.M. schooner Conflict to Opa, that there was a man-of-war cruising about, and their consciences pricked them for the murder of the poor Mallicolo lad.

Bice tells me the following additional particulars he had learnt about this affair. v. page 242.

[246] It seems that the Labour vessel I have spoken of took 11 or 12 people from here among them a woman eloping from her husband with her paramour. (Fancy that sort of indulgence on board a labour-vessel!!!) The husband hearing, came down to claim his wife, offering to restore her price -- the skipper would not listen to him and sailed away. The husband determined to have some "utu", [quotation marks added in pencil] shot one of the poor Mallicolo boys. The rest of them being frightened swam off to the next labour-vessel that called and got away. [Added in pencil:] The white man died at Ara whither he had gone sick to the place of another white man.

Maroos & his wife came onboard with all their traps.

We saw today a very nice bamboo frame of a house put up for them in a lovely situation overlooking the sea, by the people of this place; but the sickness and the 'raru raru' prevented its [246/247] completion.

Poor Stephen it seems died in the house Maroos was living in here, and in that same house his corpse was buried! After a time Maroos could stand the stink [underlined in pencil] no longer and fled elsewhere! And afterwards the natives of the village exhumed him, and buried him again "no one knows where"!

July 16. Monday. Sailed at 4 a.m. under steam. Very fine morning. Even Vanua Lava had only one of its peaks slightly capped. It is very like the hills about Queen Charlotte Sound in height & character of outline, but densely wooded.

Called in at Sassara (p. 48) about 10 a.m.; the boy Bice wanted to see had gone on to Pek. (v. p. 46.) Rowed on along the coast past the two cascades I saw with Bishop & Penny; [247/248] sea, rock, & foliage very pretty in the bright sunshine. After 4 or 5 miles [added in pencil: row] overtook the ship steaming very slowly against light head breeze; went aboard. Anchored off Pek about 1 o'clock. Spent afternoon ashore, Bice, Capt. & I, amidst a crowd of jolly Natives, chiefly in bargaining for yams, cocoa-nuts, & a few eggs, fowls, nuts &c &c. Edwin (the Native teacher) & his wife come on with us to Mota.

Bice very much pleased with this place & people. Edwin reports a congregation of from 100 to 160 on Sundays. People all very sleek and good humoured & dressed in clean little calico skirts. Picked up for a tobacco a-piece Lady's dresses of the old school -- a pretty little girdle of fine matting drab & chocolate pattern with small bunch of fine fibre pendent from the joining place in front! [full stop changed to exclamation point by addition of pencil stroke] If [248/249] possible a still scantier fig-leaf than that of the Wango ladies! Heard here that the American Copra-trader of Lakona (he who had the Mallicolo boys) (v. page 242; p. 27) who went away to Ara died there.

I noticed today the extraordinarily small portion of a log that these Natives take off the topside before they hollow it out as a canoe. So that the cross-section would be something like this

Cross-section of Banks' Island canoe at mid-length.

and I have never yet seen one straight! Query: have they no straight logs?

Bathed off the rocks today. About the same time Stewart (one of the crew) bathed from the ship, and had hardly regained the ship [249/250] when a shark came up alongside apparently looking for him.

It has been a clear day and Ureparapara though neither very grand nor of very beautiful outline has yet been a sufficiently picturesque object at from 20 to 15 distance, almost N. West

Ureparapara from S.E. [added in pencil:] about 2000 ft high.

July 17. Tuesday. Left Anchorage 4 a.m. under steam; sail set (fore & aft) when clear of island; steam done about 8. So pitifully weak is it that we daren't steam head to wind, although breeze & sea both very light, but simply used steam & sail in beating. Reached Ara (14 miles) about 11 a.m. Beautiful sunny day. Have [250/251] found out one reason why the peaks of Vanua Lava are almost always cloud capped -- skirting closely along the island today observed high on the flank of the principal mountain copious intermittent jets of steam. [underlined in pencil]. So it partly provides its own clouds.

Motlav today was an instance of the importance of point [underlined in pencil] of view -- approaching from Westward its outline is downright ugly -- like a cross-section of one of Telford's roads (with ditch & banks) drawn by very shaky hand. As we drew round to S.E. all this altered, & very bold varied hills rising from a long coast -- flat magnificently wooded made me admire it even more than the first time.

Landed here with Bice -- dropped 4 Natives & picked up two to go on to N. Island as a treat.

[252] People nice, & very quiet. It is true that the white trader we heard of at Pek, did die at Motlav, while staying with the white trader I saw when here with the Bishop.

A cloud thrown over this visit by poor Bice having a dreadful toothache.

Saw here a man with his sidehair done up in 3 balls on each side, as in sketch on p. 243 -- only much smaller and quite black (not stained with red dirt) so that they only reminded one of a bull-calf's budding horns, & gave him an inexpressibly queer expression!

Sailed again at 1 1/2, hoping to reach Mota only 7 miles -- but the wind being ahead, and a current setting in against us through the passage between the islands, the Captain gave it up, & made for Port Patteson in Vanua Lava, instead. We did not really lose any work poor Bice's [252/253] toothache being too bad to have allowed of his doing anything this evening -- but it illustrates the pitiful mockery of our little steam-power for the breeze was very light & the sea smooth!

Port Patteson is rather a small port and (except one corner) exposed to a N.E. wind -- rather picturesque. We anchored about 4 p.m. Captain lowered a boat and I went with him with a Native crew; sailing across the sheet of water maybe 2 miles we entered the mouth of a very small river and pulled up maybe 2 miles -- we could not go father for want of water; it was low tide; but even had a high tide backed up the river and given us water we could not well have gone father for want of daylight. The river was pretty; clear -- overhung with shrubs & trees & profuse creepers, [253/254] & fine screw-pines -- now & then a big tree, or a clump of cocoa-nuts shewing up; and [here for the first crossed out] now & then a bold conical hill standing up at the end of a reach, towering high above the trees on the flat. Here for the first time on these islands I found tree-ferns, pretty good, but not remarkable either for height or richness.

The view of Mota from off the entrance to Port Patteson is a great improvement on the view from the South -- the humps shewn in outline on p. 30 disappear and the outline becomes symmetrical: thus

Mota from West.

[255] In spite of toothache and ship-business Mr Bice found time to compose a matrimonial difficulty between two of his flock -- i.e. to persuade a young wife to return to her husband whom she had left on account of his scolding! They are both St Barnabas scholars!

From the ship we could see tonight the fires of the Natives on the shore, and heard for hours a most joyous hullabaloo, a most sonorous singing Oh, Ah! Oh, Oo! Oh! Ah! O, Oo! Eh, Ee! Eh, Oo! &c &c &c with wonderful force, much accompanied by a frantic Kentish fire, as of trampling over a bridge, but done I suppose with sticks on wood -- after a good long bout of this then burst out a furious chorus of shrieks, & [255/256] then there was a pause for awhile. Bice (who had seen these natives while we were away up the river) said they were rehearsing for a dance tomorrow on the occasion of initiating some of them into a degree of their quasi-free-masonry!

July 18. Wednesday. Wind veering towards East, sky growing more cloudy, so that by noon sun had disappeared. Left anchorage about 6, under steam, (kept up for about 2 hours) and reached Mota about 10. 4 hours to 7 miles, with breeze & sea very moderate! Slow work!!

Went ashore with Bice -- good many Natives gathered. General talk. No service. Got Natives to take me to first site of Mission-station, about a mile Eastward of present site. Old site now a banana-plantation. [256/257] The "great Banyan" mentioned in Bishop Patteson's letters is not remarkably fine, & the beautiful view is now grown out.

I am reminded of an admirable bit of translator's license taken here, in rendering "a grain of mustard seed" (in the parable) by a grain of Banyan-seed. This seed is equally small, & the tree 20 times bigger.

Bought lots of yams, bread-fruit, cocoa-nut, &c went off to ship, & after dinner returned for a second boat-load, also for 6 passengers for Norfolk Id. a teacher, his wife & infant, & 3 men going to see the place; two of these were old grizzled fellows, Christians, friends of Codrington's, and one of these had part of his grizzled friz done up in two [257/258] round balls on each side of his pate! I saw another man today so dressed out, with three black balls or prongs on each side! The hideous albinos, with their distressed eyes, turned up again; how very much more naked they look than the brown natives!

People very dirty, especially the two old men just come aboard, one of whom had on a shirt as dirty as I [added in pencil: can] conceive any woven material ever becoming! I am getting so tired of the stink of these dirty fellows. Sarawia gave us a sack of oranges! (very inferior quality)

The Church looks exactly in the same stage as when I was here two months ago, but I am told they have been preparing lime for the sidewalls. Landed I think 4 passengers here. [258/259] Remarkable difference in the luggage of the St Barnabas mission Natives, & of the heathen's. A heathen chief [underlined in pencil] brings a tiny kit or net of betel-leaf -- A Christian "tutua", [underlining and quotation marks added in pencil] bag, box & bundle, umbrella, bamboos, sugar cane, & sundries no end!!

Although the sun had 'gone in' as we ranged up to Mota today, yet I was as much struck as at the first time with the very rich effect of the forest clothing the shore. Yet whenever one walks on the island one does not notice this, indeed the bush looks rather thinner than in some [inserted in pencil: other] of the islands -- there being less undergrowth. I think this richer effect must be due to a larger sprinkling of Banyans on this Island.

[260] By the way yesterday at Ara I noticed a Banyan much more like the pictures of the Indian trees than any one I have seen elsewhere, the branch roots falling perpendicular in smooth straight stems, a sort of irregular colonnade, quite unlike the irregular slanting labyrinth generally seen here.

Left about 4 p.m. for Merilava. Shortly before we [left crossed out] reached Norf. Id. the farm bailiff Mr Kendal had died leaving a wife & 5 little children, for whom everybody was very sorry -- one of the Native boys we brought down, sends back by us a bag of cocoa-nuts as a tribute of compassion to the forlorn widow.

Mr Bice translated for me today the end of a letter to himself of one of the Native deacons asking very naturally & Christianly for his [260/261] prayers and promising his own & speaking of his love for him -- & Bice then remarked that they (the Missionaries) had had to invent [double underlined] a word for love, the natives having no word between liking, and desire (or passion)! [inserted in pencil:] Have the French?

July 19. Thursday. Wind veered more to N.E. during night, bringing clouds, showers and a muggy atmosphere, & capped hills; but the middle of the day out at sea was sunny. I note a curious change in my feelings towards this weather -- on the outward voyage keen to see the islands, chafing at the combination of spoilt scenery and progress, I had quite a despairing hatred to this kind as I think these notes shew. Now, almost tired of constant brief [261/262] plunges ashore on islands of generally [underlined in pencil] much the same character of beauty, & quite tired of the incessant headwinds & other delays which have marked this voyage, I am able in some degree to console myself for the spoiling of a new island, (perhaps, my last new island) [brackets and underlining added in pencil] by thinking, "By Jove! What a stroke of luck! A fair wind!! In the S.E. trades too!!!["] and almost forgive its bringing rain! We hove-to off Merilav about 7 o'clock.

It is a nice islet just one steep mountain rising abruptly from the sea some 3000 ft. Spite of this untempting character for cultivation it was once thickly people and has supplied much labour to Fiji & Australia & New Caledonia, and even now has many small villages built on terraces notched into the hill & supported in front by a wall of rubble stone.

[263] We saw two such; romantic nests and the houses more solid & better closed in than usual; "to keep out the wind". The ascent by a track up a steep gully, & then winding round the hill side to these villages at perhaps 400 & 500 ft above the sea afforded some most lovely bits of hill & hollow, & tree-tops, Banyan, breadfruit, cocoa-nut, seen against the blue sea far below. The cocoa-palm never shews better than in such situations.

There was a tolerable turn out of the population to meet us, & as we went off to do a little "wul a wul" [quotation marks added in pencil] (barter) yams, cocoa-nuts & oranges for tobacco & pipes. Having been so much abroad they had rather more European clothing; generally calico kilt, and often a shirt, trowsers, or coat. [263/264] The chief man a fat dark little man had that expression of fatuous conceit, & of bonhomie which I have often remarked in such men, and which I must suppose (strange as it seems) to be compatible with those other qualities which give men an ascendancy over their fellows. He wore a white flannel coat belted round his corporation, white trowsers, a straw hat, & on each side of his head extraordinary love-locks -- reaching nearly to his waist! Not natural ringlets but artificial hair-like flat bands looking felted together, & very repulsive! This great man having reached the highest known grade of their free-masonry, had to invent for himself a still higher, & calls himself "Wetuka" or sky-high.

As a penalty of greatness he has to take his meals alone. However he was good enough to us & gave [264/265] some oranges.

One lady distinguished herself by wearing two belts, one (the native belt with tuft of fibres) round the most protuberant place behind; the other (of white beads I think) round the most protuberant place in front: somewhat like this:

old lady with two belts!

One man carrying a gun, wore a kilt and a woman's moleskin jacket! One lad, very black wore an old black coat and black cloth trowsers and looked an "awful little cad"

[266] People jovial enough. Sheltered from a shower, & then went down to wul-a-wul, and so off to "skip["]. People here have a rarity in the canoe-line, a comical caricature of the covered-in wager-boat; thus

Left a native teacher here (Luke)

Sailed at 11 and anchored off Maiwo at 5 p.m. Rainy evening.

Sighted a cutter, & another sail today several miles off.

[267] July 20. Friday. A beautiful day throughout with a spanking fair breeze. Yet I have been content to lose a whole day here, while the crew have been watering ship & the Natives washing clothes; so glad have I been to revisit that fairy cascade & the wonderful Banyan, in bright sunshine!

I went ashore with Bice, but as he was feeling seedy today, he merely landed to look on; he got me a Native guide, another (of course) followed, and (to my surprise) the two old men from Mota -- my guide did not take me to the very best point of view, i.e. the very top of the rocky ledge, and I tried in vain by Mota words & by signs to make him understand where I wanted to go! It is such a nuisance when one's guide doesn't understand a word one says!! At last I had [267/268] to give it up, trusting to hit it off on our return! As to attempting a short-cut myself across such tangled masses of foliage it was not to be thought of.

We soon reached the Big Banyan which I thought almost more wonderful than when first I saw it. With what wonderful profusion does Nature do her work! Here for instance was a limb of a tree, of immense length indeed, but propped up by a labyrinth of air-roots and flying buttresses that might have supported a Cathedral in the air!

About 3 miles farther by a pretty good track along the nearly level high grounds through lowish bush sprinkled with tress brought us to "Tanrig" a cluster of little villages or hamlets, 7 or 8 in number within less than a mile's circuit. [268/269] Each, however small, whether composed of two huts or ten, stood round the edge of a pretty open space of bare red earth, almost as it might be on a red drugget. The huts were thatched V-huts -- 3 or 4 of these places were empty. At the others were a few men & women very friendly; the women stark naked! Curious that fashion should vary from one to the other of savage extremes of women's dress in the two islands of Opa & Maiwo only a few miles apart! In Opa two large mats as petticoat & shawl, in Maiwo nothing!

Some of the people came back with us to join in "wul-a-wul", [quotation marks added in pencil] or to see the ship and we had a very chatty party returning. Passing some cocoa-palms I asked for one, [269/270] and a man climbed up without tie, not "swarming" as we do, but applying the soles of his feet to the trunk. It looked so funny! I doubt if a white man, or any one not accustomed to squat on his heels, could [underlined in pencil] do it!

Native climbing cocoa-palm.

On returning (the falls being generally completely hidden by the profusion of foliage except when one is actually on [underlined in pencil] the rocks) we again missed my favourite view from the top nor could I make the Natives understand what I wanted. Yet did we come out on two such [270/271] fairy pools that I must e'en try to give an idea of one at least. We came out on this one suddenly, a little towards the western end. We stood on a tiny rich-green flat from the centre of which rose a sago-palm with magnificent crown, standing alone; close in front a small pool of clear water looking almost suspended [double underlined] amongst leaves -- for banks were none visible, nor so much as a stick -- only great rich-green leaves overhanging or floating on the water, and blending into the small green flat beyond from which stood up a few tall piles of heaped up greenery -- dead trees possibly, but only green leaves were visible as though flung over them in lavish profusion; also 4 or 5 lovely elancé & cocoa-palms rose up against the blue sky.

[272] And beyond this little flat ............nothing! [underlined in pencil] Earth seemed suddenly to drop away in to space! [underlined in pencil] Nothing beyond, but the far off, deep blue sea, and still blue sky! Oh! how lovely it was! -- and so odd! so new & so fairy-like!

The other pool was almost as lovely -- these flats, I think, have been at one time accurately levelled by the Natives for irrigation plots -- but no trace of artificiality remains.

Well I was so disgusted on reaching the beach to find that I had missed my favourite look-out, that with the help of the Captain who was busy "watering", I got another guide, and climbed up again (spite of the most beastly nature of the slide thro' the taro ground!) and reached my point and enjoyed it to my heart's content. v. p. 16.

[273] On this occasion, besides our own ship at anchor, I saw a cutter come sailing in inside of us, as I thought to anchor, but she tacked and went out again, and did not speak us. Also a large barque standing in!

On returning to the ship (after bathing in the lowest pool of the cascade) found the Capt of the whaling-barque aboard. She is the Waterwitch of Hobart town, 9 months out, 15 tons of sperm oil. The Captn a pleasant sort of man staid on board till dark. He is going to cruise between here and Torres Islands. I only wish he had been going my way! He had on board, and has had for 8 years, two Pitcairners [underlined in pencil] [one of whom is crossed out and inserted in pencil: who are first and third] mates. Bice knew them; they came on board-us in the Captain's boat. The Captain [273/274] also brought his little son, who bathed in the pool, coming up while I was swimming about, to my great surprise! Such a handsome boy of 12 or 13, I could hardly take my eyes off him, it was such a pleasure to see a straight nose and well well-cut lips & chin after the wretched blurred [caricatures crossed out] dirty caricatures of humanity that I have been looking on so long.

The cutter spoke the Waterwitch a few days ago and belongs to a Mr Proctor, American planter on Mallicolo, who is looking for labour.

The poor Waterwitch could only lower two boats, Capt Harrison having started 5 hands short and lost 3 who ran away at Aneiteum (the last place he touched at) and whom he could not recover though he stayed 6 days. Heartily tired they are of it, by [274/275] this time. I should think!

No later news for us than the Russo-Turkish war which he heard of from H.M. schooner Reginald at Aneiteum -- bound next for Noumea! [Noumea double underlined] How I do just miss chances!

Bice bad with relapse of fever this evening; so bad that we had no prayers for the first time on this voyage.

July 21. Saturday. A beautiful day, but lost our spanking fair wind! Well! "we live in a wale and must &c"! The "consekwences" [Note: reference to Mrs Gamp in Dickens TMB] in this case being no more than steaming slowly along the coast of Maiwo (or Aurora) and across the little strait, to "Aragh", (or Pentecost) where we anchored about 4 p.m. The Aurora coast (which I passed in the night before) is of the "rather" way [quotation marks in pencil] [275/276] rather high, rather bold, rather bushy; [underlinings in pencil] its outlines however more often lumpy then gracious or picturesque, its bush rather high scrub with a sprinkling of trees than fine forest; coast rather straight ---- altogether only rather beautiful.

We had not anchored long before a score of canoes were alongside, and a noisy lot of Natives aboard, the two teachers came off, and their news is good.

One tall slim young fellow came off more like one's idea of a Red Indian in figure than these fellows. He had a tight little white head of hair like a barrister's wig and a splendid brown & yellow cock's tail stuck into the top of his head (like a field-marshal's plume!) and an immense bunch of coloured leaves stuck into the back of his waist-belt! Many of them wore this last [276/277] adornment which has a very odd effect! One young light-brown fellow had his hair quite white & his face quite black as though he had been getting himself up for amateur Christie Minstrel's!

Bice secured another boy here for St Barnabas (N. Id.) this makes our total party aboard 11 chiefs & others to see N. I. and return in the schooner, 2 teachers their wives & 2 children, & 73 [3 crossed out and replaced by penciled-in 1] boys.

After awhile, we (Bice, Capt, I) went ashore to "wul-a-wul" calico, tomahawk-heads, knives & tobacco for yams. Yams plenty but prices high. For some time we all stopped in the boat and I formed part of the carrion attracting the blow-flies (p. 12). Finding at last that I could be of no use from my ignorance of the language, and finding the clatter of these human flies infinitely worse [277/278] than the buzz of any number of insect-flies, I stepped ashore, strolled about amongst the natives ashore, and picked up for some beads a rather pretty ladies kilt of fine coloured matting. I also spied a returned "labour" clad in hat, shirt, white waiscoat, trowsers and boots! [triply underlined] but having no English that I could understand and calling Maryborough, "Mellibullo"! He, like all the others I have met pronounced "Mellibullo" "no good".

After awhile I noticed the boat shove off a bit, and the women rush off to the bush-track. I thought nothing of it, supposing they had gone for more yams. Then came a boy of ours to summon me back to the boat and I waded off. I thought his manner rather pressing but it never occurred to me that there was any pressing reason. When I got aboard I first learnt [278/281]

[279] [written lengthwise on page:]

Some words of Mota

Muli ma Ragai, mulima! gaplote.
come boys come quick

Sua! Sua mantag - sua tuwale
Pull strong together

me paso
enough - round of all

vava mantag speak out boldly

Gagagapalag(!) the Gospel!

savrag -- throw away

mule at go away

[280] [blank page]

[279/281] there had been a bit of a row -- that a bush-native disgusted at not being able to sell his yams (more having been fetched than we could carry) had got his club & charged down on the boat loudly threatening to "bouss" (kill) somebody! But a St Barnabas boy snatching up an axe demonstrated that "two could play that game" and Bombastes subsided! Whether there was really any appreciable danger, or would have been but for an axe having been aboard I am of course no judge -- the women having run away seems to have indicated that they anticipated mischief. Anyhow it shows how easily a row may begin and how natural it may be that after a massacre the survivor [281/282] may have no idea of what it was all about! Certainly had they been killed and I escaped I should not have had "the faintest idea" of "what it was all about"!

Steamed off again immediately after this; steam expired in half-an-hour, and we flapped slowly along in a lovely moonlight.

A "narrow escape" from a lovely tropical sunset tonight, a thing I have not seen after more than two months in the tropics! Aliti Bay, Malanta, came nearest to giving us the real thing, but that too fell much short of the typical tropical sunset perhaps the very loveliest sight that Nature affords to man.

Bice better today.

Capt queer & headachy today.

July 22nd Sunday. Bright, warm very nearly calm -- light breeze in [282/283] afternoon but did not make above 40 miles I think since yesterday afternoon. Pentecost or Aragh a tame island to look at from a distance its skyline being nearly level, & not very high up. Towards sunset North end of Ambrym presented a high bold double peak, but not very peak-y, more like the side-view of a double-tooth! And then came Westward some ungracious straight lines & humps! This is rather characteric [sic] of these islands which very seldom present throughout a gracious outline either in the simple dignity of a single peak, or in a rich variety of peaks & curves, or of terraces & scarps -- they are not equal to N.Z. or to Tasmania in outline.

Poor Bice so seedy that he asked me to read service for him.

[284] We have been sailing today in the "Pool" i.e. the space nearly enclosed by Aurora, Pentecost, Leper's Island, Ambrym, Mallicolo & Espirito Santo -- and in it Doldrums are the rule, saith the Capt -- anything rather than labourious beating to gain 30 miles a day!

July 23. Monday. Lovely calm morning when I came on deck about sunrise, but we had made very few miles during the night. Those few however had vastly improved the outline of Ambrym, which was now really fine & varied. It remained very nearly calm till about 2 when we got a nice little breeze, & slipped most pleasantly through the Islands. Leper's was very coy all the morning, but in the afternoon the white veil was blown aside, and a really fine mountain Leper's is -- just an islet, one simple conical mountain rising out of the sea to a ht of 5000 ft [284/285] and looking much higher, thanks to a strip of delicate white cloud halfway up.

Sighted also Paama, Tasiko, Mallicolo, Two hills & Three hills (Mae) the latter most characteristically only the three conical hills being visible up to nightfall, the connecting slip of lowland being below the horizon. The other islands shewed no beauty of form, but at the distance at which we passed looked like some of the ridges of humpy fernery down one often sees in New Zealand. Most lovely moonlight night! In the morning we sailed through a widely scattered little fleet of 6 canoes, making their passage by sail & paddle from Ambrym to Mallicolo! Two or three of them we passed very close and most picturesque objects they were with their long-eared [285/286] ragged mat-sails, & cluster of brown savages, some sitting some paddling, with barely any visible support -- many singing. What a water-colour picture it would have made! The large canoes had from 15 to 18 Natives aboard.

I wish I could venture to sketch the group of men! I suppose the expedition was of rather a festive character from the yards being adorned with multitudinous streamers -- disorderly and ill-shaped like most of the handy-work of the New Hebrideans!

[287] By the way at Aragh I saw one or two fellows, each [bail corrected in pencil to] bale his own canoe after a fashion to me perfectly novel and unheard of: standing up in the canoe, and steadying himself in front by stooping down & catching hold of the gunwale, he would kick out behind vigorously (like a hen scratching) and so splash the water out in a shower over the stern! When the fellow had a huge plume of coloured leaves [like a cock's tail inserted in pencil] stuck in the small of his back (as was usually the case) the effect was truly comical! These outrigger-canoes seem very stiff.

Native Baling his canoe.

[288] July 25. Tuesday. About 8 a.m. after waiting 3 or 4 hours for daylight to make out the harbour, steamed into Havannah, Sandwich Is. In course of the day visited Mr McDonald, the Presbyterian Missionary (about 2 miles below where we anchored) Brown the storekeeper opposite our anchorage, and a brig and a cutter anchored near us. None of these afforded me, or could tell me of, a chance to get towards N.Zd. The brig Iserbook of Sydney was bound for "the Santa Cruz Islands" for "bêche de mer" and "copra"; the cutter was chartered by Mr. Minter an Irish Civil Engineer from Australia and an Italian Capt Bruno, to explore New Guinea to find either gold, or a run! Name Loelia - an ex-yacht, a tiny thing. Bice spent the day with Mr McDonald & struck up a friendship. I returned to the ship with the Capt and in the afternoon walked up [288/289] the steep terraced open [double underlined] hills opposite the anchorage and had a delightful view of the harbour and its protecting Islands, & the open sea beyond, and of Mai and other distant Islands. A most charming view -- not so really picturesque or strange as some of the others I have seen, but so open, bright and extensive that it was a perfect treat after the too incessant forests of the Northern Islands! The open ground over which I walked, and the open ridges beyond over which I gazed, were not really clad in the old familiar tussock much as they looked it, but with a high coarse stuff very like the Maori toe toe (the black-headed sort). Large belts of freshly-burnt black ground added to the likeness to N. Zealand. The Island though looking low & straight and almost ugly as approached by sea from [289/290] the N.W., yet shows a good deal of variety as one sails into the harbour by the Northern entrance, in long ridges some all bushed, some bushy along the base & broken by grey cliffs but rising higher into yellow terraces & high knolls, the harbour winding winding [sic] farther & farther ahead 'till lost to view -- a noble harbour, wide, long, sheltered, deep. Two or three settlers places scattered about.

Altogether a place I should have been very sorry indeed to have left the New Hebrides without seeing!

About 4 p.m. went down in the boat to fetch off Mr Bice to meet the S. Cross steaming out -- and staid a few minutes at Mr McDonald's, coming away at the repeated summons of the steam-whistle just as poor Mr McDonald had got a nice tea ready for us!

[291] Mr McDonald, a youngish man, (32 or 33 perhaps) has been there 5 years and had the fever several times -- his wife (born on the island a Miss's daughter, née Geddes), also catches fever & ague, not so their little children yet. He does not speak at all hopefully of his work -- has about 40 converts -- says that the Natives have an idea that if they listen to the preaching of the Gospel and won't believe, that the Christians' God will work them a mischief -- so when he goes to a new place to preach they run away and won't listen! The Presbyterians have 6 white missionaries actually working in these islands, and two away on sick leave.

Mr McDonald has a very bad opinion indeed of the effects of the labour-trade and especially of the inter-island trade to supply white settlers on the islands, which he thinks worst [291/292] of all, why, I had not time to ascertain. The settlers, it seems, have just got leave to enter on this horrid traffic. Mr McDonald is intending to publish his opinion & reason at length. I hope I may come across them. Sailed at 5 p.m., under steam till 7.

The few natives I saw here are very dark, and of disagreeable countenance. Mr. McDd. had a nice little mission-house, weatherboard plastered with lime inside. I should like to see such houses at Mota, Wango, Mboli &c.

Most astonishing that this dry, steep island, free from swamp, with so much open ground, and in the track of the Trade winds should yet breed fever-and-ague!!

Poor Bice so bad again tonight that we were obliged to forgo prayers, the attack coming on suddenly just after tea on board.

[293] Sunday [July crossed out, added in pencil:] August 5. 107 miles from N. Island at noon today! A most tedious voyage! The wind veered round to the Southward the very morning after leaving Havannah, and we have had head winds, baffling light airs & calms, ever since, the wind too pertinaciously edging us off Maré (where I ought to have been landed) so that I had the mortification for the last week of being carried away from my most promising route homeward. Luckily the weather has been very fine, bright & clear, (though sometimes unfortunately cold) [brackets and underlining added in pencil] nearly all the time; though we have had some heavy showers this morning & yesterday. Now [double underlined] that it matters not whether we have a 5 knot or ten knot breeze, we are spanking along and [have crossed out] shall have to shorten sail or heave-to tonight!

[294] This hostility of the winds, when so incessant, is a most deadening influence on a cruise! When a fair wind does come, one loses all heart to look forward to its continuousness and as for looking forward to farther travel, one looks forward to nothing but to having done with the fickle element.

But there were two influences at work even more depressing than the hostility of the winds. One, Bice's continued illness -- though I staved off actual fever [underlined in pencil] him with aconite & mercurius according to Dr Irvin's [Irwin's?] prescription, he remained so dyspeptic & weak, so miserable and fretful like a sick child that one wavered between pity, & contempt for him; and having no better animal food than salt or tinned beef, we could not get him to feed up.

[295] The other influence was a baby in the Ladies' Cabin, always whining & howling most plaintively. I should have thought it an "odious little wretch" [quotation marks added in pencil] had I not found that it had open sores on its back! And none of us knew what to do for it, nobody did anything, and its parents seemed to take it all as a matter of course! [full stop turned into exclamation point by addition of pencil stroke]

One day the ship trembled & shook as though she had sailed over a taut hawser. The Capt came running up on deck, but could make nothing of it. The next day, calm & bright with cloudless sky, we heard a rumble as of distant thunder but set down each incident to Tanna distant above 100 miles.

The only land sighted was the high [295/296 (back inside cover)] land of Erromango the first day out from Havannah, and Fotuna very distant, the day following.

Monday Aug 6. Anchored at Cascades about 9 p.m. All well at Mission. Mrs Still recovered & had baby. Mr Palmer & Mr Comyns go next cruise. Schooner Waiwera 40 tons anchored 2 hours after us to load horses for Noumea. Engaged passage in her.

Friday & Wednesday. Spent at Mission & waiting for Waiwera which was to sail on Friday, but of course did not get ready till Wednesday. Sailed at noon on Wednesday.

Norfolk Island looked very pretty to my eyes, even after the tropical Islands.

Sunday Aug 12. Landed at Noumea. Had fine run for two days, but Capt made very bad landfall, & Saturday was lost in beating up along surf. Got in about noon. Of 32 horses one died. Decks all lumbered up with grass & water; couldn't stir; glad to get in.

[Top of page:] (Turn back to page 147) [Also added in pencil at end of text:] Page 147.

[Note: Journal from page 147 is written upside down in the book, therefore, page numbers are descending.]

[147] 1877.

New Caledonia.
____

Aug 13. Pilot came off tonight outside the reef; took us in thro' the opening, past the lighthouse which is just inside the reef, and across the lagoon to Noumea, about 12 miles. Approach very pretty. At first like the Canterbury coast seen from off the 30 mile beach; a double summit like Mount Torlesse, [footnote added in pencil: Mount "Kogi"] another summit just like Mount Grey, [footnote added in pencil: "Mount d'Or."] & beyond to North lower hills nearly very like the Drans [?], & "the Black hill". As we approached we came among low islands & little hilly peninsulas suddenly turning thro' a passage, came upon a landlocked harbour with a good deal of shipping & a nice-looking town, with remarkable quality of barracks and a brace of churches!

[146] Landed about 2 p.m., after early dinner of crew, & got lot of blacks loafing about to carry my luggage to Hotel Sebastopol at other or upper side of town. No white porters to be seen; no boatmen; no customs!

Came in for a large Christening party in the salon of hotel -- such a clatter of perhaps 25 people; but as I was following where dinner was announced, fancying they were going to dine at the 6.30 table d'hote, the landlord tapped me on the shoulder & directed me to the verandah to dine; where it seems people do ordinarily dine at solitary little tables coffee-room fashion! No table d'hote! In foreign country don't like this fashion. It is a "trick" [quotation marks in pencil] for a solitary foreigner, especially without newspapers.

[145] At 5 p.m. I went to hear the Convict band, which plays for an hour in the main street! It consists of 36 members I think, & seemed to me just equal to an average Regimental band. The men wore the ordinary Convict canvas dress, & were guarded of course. They played very pretty pieces. A considerable crowd assembled, but mostly of soldiers & sailors; few towns people; a sprinkling or rather a knot of blacks, in shirts and trowsers, or shirts & kilts & very smart red quasi-turbans on their heads. It is very satisfactory here (I am writing on the Thursday) to see the large number of black fellows at work, or employed as domestic servants, especially the latter. Some seem to be New Caledonians, others Hebrideans. Let the [145/144] Missionaries say what they will it does seem to me so very much better that savages shd take to domestic service. They see more of the ways of decent whites, than in any other way & they diminish the severe colonial distress of want of servants. The benefit is mutual. It seems to me so very much better than when pride (as with the Maoris) or wandering (as with the Australians) prevents such arrangements. It seems to me natural, let missionaries say what they will -- all [underlined in pencil] work in a colony -- & the blacks work too, such work as is level to their capacity. It is not our [underlined in pencil] fault if that is oftenest menial service.

Monday Aug 14. Wandered about -- sought information. Got letter of Ellinor's. All well.

[143] I had expected, from what the Capt told me, steamer on Thursday [underlined in pencil] next -- from what the French pilot told me on the 27th [underlined in pencil] -- a date still endurable -- but now [underlined in pencil], from what the consul tells me, not for 4 weeks! [underlined in pencil]

There is to be a brigantine to Sydy in a week & I suppose I must go in her -- though I had hoped I had done with sailing vessels!

Called on the Consul (Mr Layard), after the fashion of the place before [underlined in pencil] breakfast. Father, mother & son. All very frank & kind, all noisy, egotistical, people with a (Fiji) grievance. Rather bores, though they did kindly ask me to breakfast. Great friends of the labour-trade & loud against its being accompanied [143/142] with outrages. Perhaps not now; but yet must it even now [underlined in pencil] be accompanied, even if involuntarily, [underlined in pencil] with much deceit. The thing now [underlined in pencil] needed seems to be an international agreement, as Englishmen [underlined in pencil] make fictitious sales of their vessels & then trade under French or American flag, & cannot be inspected! A grievous farce! Although man-of-war inspection even of English [underlined in pencil] vessels seems little better than a farce, at best! [added in pencil:] vide "Brig Carl"!

Streets lively here with swarms of uniforms, military naval & civil, reminding me of France. Only the soldiers here have a most jolly uniform to "suit the times"! Blue tunic loose & open at neck, white trousers, straw hat!

[141] Curious! [exclamation point added in pencil] when I was a boy, English [underlined in pencil] soldiers wore white trowsers French [underlined in pencil] not. Now, French [underlinings and comma in pencil] do, at least here; English never, [underlined in pencil]. I believe white trowsers too are very common among the civilians. They look so nice in hot weather.

Town very deficient in many points. Much has been done by convict labour in cutting down & filling in, but in all else, little. No good shops, everything excessively dear, no cabs, no boats, no gaz ['?' inserted in pencil above this word] no coach or railway, no evening amusements but cafe's & billiards, &c &c.

August 15. Friday. Long walk in morning Ride in afternoon a few miles into interior to reconnoitre approach to Mt Kogi, the highest near, the double summit like Mount Torlesse and which I have been thinking [141/140] of trying. The main road into the interior, that to Dumbea, took me just where I wanted to go; passing thro' a little village called Pont des Francais about 6 miles, I got quite unexpectedly, a mile farther, to a large farm, evidently a Govt. farm, & which I found to be the Govt Model Farm. Got leave to come tomorrow & leave my horse at this place, which seems to be the very point from which to begin to climb.

The scenery round Noumea is most lovely. Strolling out along the ridges of the low undulating peninsulas which stretch miles out into the great lagoon, one gets thro' the white-gum scrub the most lovely "bits"; [quotation marks and semi-colon added in pencil] of points, islands, water, & of bold mountains in the background. Or from bare knoll a [140/139] fairly ravishing view of long peninsulas, & tiny islets dark against shining bays & silvery inlets all framed in by gracious mountains. Not very grand but so varied, so bright, so lovely. I have seen no place for many years that so "takes my fancy". The highest Mount. in sight is under 4000 ft I believe.

pd 10 francs for a wretched pony for the afternoon!

August 16. Wednesday. Rode early to model farm. Breakfasted at tiny "loge à pied, et a cheval" at Pont des Français. My host immediately began to talk very fair & fluent English! Strange that in him I should find one of Barney Rhodes [underlined in pencil] station hands of the old days (50 something) in Banks' Peninsula! An old French sailor.

[138] The master of the Government Farm gave me my sailing directions, & I made a fair course of it for some miles. Then came some very severe coasting round a high rocky cone called Mal a Oliu (phonetic). I got round him, & reached the crest of the main range, very tired I confess with crushing through low gum-scrub, slipping over loose stones, and perhaps too from loss of condition on shipboard. From the point I reached on the main range I saw before me such very serious downs as well as ups, & so much forest scrub & fern, that I gave up the idea; but on my way back climbed Mal a Oliu, so very steep & rocky a cone that I had to use hands as well as feet. Fine map-like view of the lower coast-lands [138/137] & complicated harbours. Just like a chart! Found the N. Zealand 'Nei-nei' on these ridges, but very poor specimens. The wild country is generally like Australia, like Australian rocky country, thin white gum scrub, with white gum trees amounting in some parts to Forest. But high up the mountain found dense bush with undergrowth.

On my way home rode through an immense swarm of flying grasshoppers. They had settled along the road for about 1/4 mile in millions, quite blackening it; and as I came up rose in dense grey flights!

People here dread the grasshoppers more than everything.

Lots of frogs in the mangrove bays -- but they have been imported.

Tolerable carriage-road to model-farm.

[136] After dinner strolled over to Consul's (as I had recd a general invitation for morning or evening) and I wanted to ask about two vessels which had come in. They have a paper here, but only once a week! Found them just starting for an "At Home" at Government House, which the Governor gives every Wedny evening. So walked back with them as Hotel Sebastopol is at Government House gate. Much more about Fiji consular grievances, & labour trade. Lovely moonlight night. Delightful evenings here; I sit reading or writing in my room at night with both windows open, & in an alpaca jacket, sans waiscoat, & never feel cold. Delight of a roomy [cabin crossed out] bed-room after the 8th part of the S. Cross cabin, & the 1/3 part of the Waiwera's!

[135] I find my time rather lonesome, as Breakfasts & dinners on the "Coffee-room" principle, afford little opportunity for making acquaintances; so that I really know no one. And beyond very expensive (15 to 20 fr. a-day) and bad ponies, there is no other way of getting out into the country.

Found a poor little circulating library; read Souvestre's Riche et Pauvre, which for a French story is a good one, & winds up with a fine argument (by one of the characters) against suicide. The tale illustrates that envious feeling of poor towards rich which is, I think, much stronger in France than in England; just perhaps because, in some ways, they intermingle so much more freely!

August 17. Thursday. Two lovely walks before breakfast & afternoon -- made some inquiries about chances of getting away, and took my passage in the "Noumea" brigantine, [135/134] regular trader to Sydney, to sail on Monday next. Evening at Consul Layards by invitation. Although very kind to me, I don't like them at all, so I shall say no more about them. Mr. Layard thinks that what this place wants i.e. needs is an organized Coolie immigration from Mauritius & Bourbou [?]; and that what is needed to effectually control the "Labour-trade" (which au reste he thinks a good thing for the blacks) is an international agreement with France, America, & Germany; as now skippers make "fictitious" sales of vessels, fly the foreign flag, and do as they please. I have no doubt but that he is right in both these points.

August 18. Friday. Rode out to Dumbea, 12 miles. Lovely forest and mountain & coast scenery. Not unlike Tasmania in places. Dumbea is one of the principal vallies for cultivation near Noumea. [134/133] There is a small river there, a sort of scattered hamlet with Inn, & two or three sugar estates, but none of them at work. After breakfast at the Inn walked along a ridge of gum-tree hills between the coast on one side & the mountain-valley on the other -- lovely scenery each way. Returning, diverged from main road for a mile or two to ride up Dumbea valley through a sugar-estate. Large patches of young sugar-cane, & of bananas. But no sugar-mill at work, & owners & managers (I knew) were alike absent so I did not call. These patches of banana plants around even the smallest hut, give a very foreign effect and are almost the only tropical-looking thing here. Passed thro' some rather fine white gum forest today. Shabby as the individual tree usually is, what effective forest it makes with [133/132] its light green glittering leaves, and white bark.

Great many convicts employed repairing the road, which though narrow, is pretty good -- telegraph of 3 wires accompanies it.

Saturday. Aug. 19. Lovely ride this afternoon, to St Louis, 11 miles in the oppt. direction to Dumbea. I had a volunteer companion a very fat dark young Frenchman, staying at the same hotel and fresh from Marseille by last mail; come to do something commercial in these seas. After a mile or so he greatly astonished me by giving me his card M. Eugéne Hopkinson! But it seems that though his father was English, his mother was French & he has always lived in Marseille. Much talk. He gave me a most doleful account of the political state of France; and of the commercial state of N. Caledonia! I was rather struck by his asking me about what he had seen in Church at King George's Sound -- namely burning candles on the altar! The feature of St Louis is the wonderfully picturesque R.C. Mission Station. [132/131] A boys school, girls school, nunnery & church on a knoll amidst fields of sugar-cane & manioc, backed by a splendid sweep of mountains. I have seen nothing to compare to it in that sort of picturesque beauty since I was in Italy.

Sunday [inserted in pencil: Aug 20] French Protestant service 8 1/2 a.m. about 40 present, half of them children, about 7 men. They are allowed to use the Tribunal de Justice -- which, with a sacred air given to it by a crucifix at one end, makes a good chapel. Good sermon on Xtian. Education.

Am to sail to Sydney in "Noumea" bragantine tomorrow.

[Added in pencil: Monday Aug 20. Sailed for Sydney]

Monday Sept 10. 6 p.m. Landed Sydney. All headwinds, calms, light airs! only passenger; very slow tedious! Farley's Hotel. v. page 332(a).

[Added in pencil: to Page 332 upside down & wh is next to Page 232. Finally read remarks page 112.]

[332(a)] (Sydney)

Landed at Sydney, Monday Sept 10 6 p.m. Tried to get in at Petty's -- full -- went to Pfahlert's, & staid there till sailing of Hero, Sept 19. Pretentious Hotel and dear (10/ per day fixed) but poor place -- inferior table & company. Morn. Saw Gardens, Academy of Arts, Public Library, Observatory at night, (Mr Russell very kind) Mort's freezing Works, Spencers Mechanical Exhibition, North South and Middle heads & fortifications; dined at Sir George Innes, Darling Point. He is Mrs Selwyn's brother. He was kind Lady Innes I thought charming. Same night pelted back to Sydney, took Wollongong steamer 11 p.m., arrived 6 a.m. Walked to Balli & up Wawam [?] Range, lay down & waited for coach in which I had taken a place luckily for quite full. Campbelltown & on to Sydney by 4.20 train. Ascent of range, (for which I had taken the trip), fine; less romantic & bold than I had expected (not above 1200 ft) but bush fine; great gum-trees, bangalo palms [332(a)/333(a)] & palm-like cabbage trees & cicadiae; rather tropical effect -- blue sea and white surf far below. Lovely effect of blue mountain distance on descent to Appin; lovely day.

Liked Sydney more than ever. Oh by the bye, ascended Mr Holtemans Belvedere tower (Mr Saddington, tenant) at St Leonard's North Shore -- glorious view of all harbour & city, hills & Blue Mountains, sea &c &c. magnificent. No such view to be got from hill; too flat-topped, scrubby, & built over.

[April crossed out] Sept 19. 4 p.m. sailed [inserted in pencil: for Auckland] in Hero. Good ship, steady, saloon amidships -- good Christian Captain [inserted in pencil: Logan]. Service Sunday evening. Small quiet party of passengers, no drinking or card-playing. Fine passage with moderately fine weather. Saw for first time, that surprising thing a Cuttle-fish washed on board by wave.

[drawing on front inside cover:]

Cuttle

[112] [Inserted in pencil: These Remarks should be read last.]

Now that we have "done" the Solomons, and that there can hardly be much new to see in the other Islands (for we are to rush through them as fast as possible to make up for the many delays of this protracted voyage) ... now seems a good time to put down one or two general remarks.

Well! I have seen much that is beautiful in the Islands themselves; I am not disappointed with them, except that I have not been able to see any good specimen of a coral reef. And I have seen a great deal that is curious, comical and interesting in the savage life of the Islands; I have not been disappointed in [112/113] that, except in having been able only to make such very very short stays ashore, and in a lesser point in not having been able to see an inhabited tree-house; or to see any native "funçion"!

But in two things I have been much disappointed; one, the weather, [underlined in pencil] of which I have already said a good deal; I have been sorely disappointed and grieved by the astonishing prevalence of rainy, or drizzly [underlined in pencil] or gloomy-cloudy, or dim-sunshine-cloudy (sun just shorn of his rays) weather. For one place that I have seen to advantage (as Isabel on our second stay) I certainly have seen five not-to-advantage -- and this is the dry season!

Another point I have been disappointed in, is in the little conversation I have been able to have with Bishop Selwyn; none [113/114] or almost none, of [those crossed out] such deeply interesting invaluable conversations as I had with Bishop Patteson. To be sure Bishop Patteson was but a passenger with me to Norfolk Island, while Bishop Selwyn was the head of the Mission on board the mission-ship on a mission voyage. Still we were to be together so long, that I had looked forward to some deeply interesting intimé conversations. But no! And now I see, that, besides the force of circumstances, his character too was against it.

Circumstances -- Patteson was like myself, a mere passenger, & had no educated [passenger crossed out] companion on board but myself. Selwyn had charge of ship, stores and some 60 Melanesians. I had two of his brother-missionaries for companions besides myself. Then he is of a very stirring busy character believing in doing things himself, even when [114/115] perhaps to a bystander it might seem plainly a case for assigning them to some one else to do. Thus to some extent the care of the ship, the care of stores, of the Natives, of the Services, of the sick (of whom he generally had several (natives) ) & the study of language, occupied most of his time; & chess or reading the rest -- he was a great deal below, I never below but for meals, unless it rained. And he never walked the deck!!! Thus our opportunities for conversation were reduced to a minimum. I eschewed the [deck crossed out] cabin more than ever before, on account of its distressing disorder. If I ever thought of going there, I was almost certain to find it a scene of perfect chaos, with heterogeneous stores tumbled about in sickening confusion! [Every crossed out] The floor was pierced in all directions [115/116] with hatches leading to miniature holds which were rummaged almost every day. Every bed & sofa was undermined with lockers, &, every day almost, beds were tumbled upside down to reach the treasures stored underneath -- one couldn't find a safe corner to put anything with the least certainty of finding it let alone! And after the rummaging, things were not put in order but left in hideous, promiscuous confusion! Selwyn himself might have a general idea where things were, but [only crossed out] little better. Add to this the almost certainty of finding dirty stinking natives in the cabin (for even the scholars stink at sea, though not so much as the savages!) and in the damp weather clothes hanging up to dry, which could not dry in the rigging -- and rats, & cockroaches, [116/117] & filthy table cloths, [inserted: and 3 "Tables" to each meal] and dim flickering lamps at night, & I think I have made out a good case for my aversion to the cabin! [exclamation point added in pencil]

All this incessant "sorting out" [quotation marks added in pencil] & rummaging, was accounted for by the variety of destination of the stores -- for use on board -- for barter, for the missionaries on the islands white and Native -- for the schools ashore -- for the scholars being carried to their homes. Doubtless this must involve a good deal of re-packing & sorting; but I cannot think so much as actually took place.

The Bishop had asked me before sailing to act as Purser -- but when it came to the point, ignorance of the languages, & of the localities, proved an insuperable bar to my usefulness. Except in the simple direction of supplying ourselves, the [117/118] crew, or the scholars, with articles for barter, and keeping an account. And to this small extent, I did help.

So the opportunities were very few. But had they been ever so many I doubt now (written in July) whether much would have come of them! Patteson & Selwyn are in so many ways so different! He so gentle, thoughtful, patient, considerate, never carried away. Selwyn -- "vil", hasty, loquacious, argumentative, with ever a first-thought to contradict, hot in argument, a remorseless interrupter. Patteson a man whose views about things secular (judging not alone by my brief personal interviews, but also by his published letters) generally harmonized well with mine. Selwyn a man whose views, or at any rate his expression of [118/119] them agreed well with mine in matters religious, but in matters secular almost invariably differed, so that I could hardly touch any subject which did not lead to a warm discussion, in which he (like his father) shewed much of that very contempt & ridicule of opinion differing from his own, which in theory & in cold blood, he denounces as so wrong!

Then, as a matter of taste, he indulges in that tiresome jocularity, plentifully garnished with bad puns, and emphasized with far more laughter than I caught up for any wit I can see in it, which is to me so specially distasteful!

So though I esteem as such as ever (as much after close observation & intimacy as before) Selwyn's devotion, & thoroughness & [119/120] energy (& in some sense humility too) though I esteem him as much as I ever hoped & expected, yet I do not like him as much -- he is less congenial that I expected; much less so than Patteson.

As for the Work. It seems to me now to need consolidating [underlined in pencil] -- to be quite widespread enough now, if not too much so -- I have feared sometimes that effort was being frittered away. I should like to see every effort bent to secure the largest possible amount of resident work, at the most promising places -- work by Native "teachers", by Native deacons, & above all by the [Native crossed out] white Missionaries resident in winter as long as possible. I think Selwyn agrees in this. I think time enough & effort enough [120/121] have been spent in securing friendliness, & "openings"; now, push in to the openings & make use of them; and let the other islands wait awhile.

It is sad and rather bewildering, to think how the work of the Mission has been delayed by death, illness and misfortunes -- Patteson, Dudley, Atkin, Pritt, Kerr, Brooke, Jackson -- taken away, not to speak of some of the most promising Natives, Mrs. Palmer's death, wreck of Southern Cross -- & this year the illness of Mrs Still, and of Mrs. Palmer (No 2) keeping their husbands at home ----- how often are we pulled up in this strange world by David's thought "God's ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts".

It is to be hoped that the new clergyman Mr. Comyns will prove a treasure!

[122] I think the ship should have more steam-power; 4 knots at her very best, in smooth water in harbour, [underlined in pencil] is a mockery! It results in this, I am sure, that many times when it would be desirable to use steam, the opportunity is lost while hesitating over such thoughts as these "Oh, if we get ever such a "puff" of fair breeze it'll take her along as fast as the steam -- & if it's foul [underlined in pencil] it won't be worthwhile to burn coal for all we shall get out of her"! or -- "I'm afraid there is too much head swell -- she'd do nothing!"

I think she should be able to steam 7 in smooth water. Then she could steam out of a calm, or against a moderate head wind & make enough to be worth having -- 3 knots or 4 knots, where now [122/123] she would make 1 or nothing! And this would sometimes save (for instance) the chance of landing on an exposed beach, & so perhaps two or three or four days which (as things now are) would have had to be spent in waiting for a "slant" to land, or in returning in more favorable weather.

And the time so gained in the year might be used either in visiting somewhat more leisurely places that are now merely plunged at, & left again in an hour ----- or in giving more time for residence [at crossed out] to the missionaries who take charge of a place for the winter, or between voyages. When one finds a trader (Ferguson) thinking it worthwhile to have a steamer and a coal-depot in St Christoval it makes me think whether this be [123/124] not a case of "the children of this world are wiser" &c.!

Yesterday (July 6) well illustrated this. After 5 days of strong head winds, amounting for the greater part of the time to a gale, there came yesterday a lull of 10 or 12 hours -- with decent steam power we might have in that time almost have made Opa -- at any rate done as much as we can beat in two or 3 days -- as it was, it was not considered worth while to get up steam.

I have not a very high opinion of the Southern Cross. She is a good sea-boat, easy & tolerably dry, strong, well-ventilated below; but she is not fast under canvas, ludicrously slow under steam, & does not "stay" well -- a very serious defect for such work. This defect is owing to her main mast being stepped rather [124/125] too far forward; but as it comes down at present through the centre of the engine room, between the engine and the boiler, it would be difficult to alter.

Trade. I quite agree with the Bishop that it is most desirable to encourage honest trade in the islands, and to give the natives new wants, so as to encourage industry. But what can be done? Many of the islands are pre-occupied now; and then come the two questions I see no answer to: how are missionaries living in Norfolk Island to ascertain the suitableness of character of any trader intending to go to the islands and asking for their support? and if they were satisfied of his being a good man what practical help could they give him? [125/126] And what a responsibility it should turn out that they had mistaken the man's character!

I see nothing for it but just, (as the Bishop is now doing) to try to let it be known, that the Mission will not hinder but farther trade by any men of good conduct.

[double space between paragraphs]

The members of the mission often talk of the difficulty of finding work for Christian Natives. Now here is an idea has just occurred to me (July 23) to get the natives (say at Mota) to clear a paddock or two and then put in a few sheep as a stand-by for fresh meat for the Mission. And if they themselves required such a taste for mutton as to make them willing to work to have mutton for themselves also what a good thing it would be!

[127] Native Clergy

Ed. Wogale Fiji
H. Tagalana Ara
M. Wadrogal Mahaga
Rt. Pantanun N.I.
G. Sarawia Mota (Priest)

Native Teachers

Thomas Stephen Islgau
Maslea [both] Pentecost
or Aragh

Walker Bugu
Malachi Turi [both] Opa
or Leper's Id

Antony Maiwo

Luke Merilava

Ed Quarat Santa Maria
Gaua

Maroos
Ambrose [both] Gaua
Lakona

Edwin Pek Va Lava

[128] Waro Sassara
Vanua Lava

Fisher William
Walter
Wole
(& other junior) [all] Ara and
Motlava

Thomas
Marsden
John
Benjamin
Charles
& others junior [all] Mota

Harper
Baiwa [both] Wango

Mostyn Gaiata

[129] Terini
Oka
Mostyn [all] Mahaga

Native Women Teachers
_____

Mrs Quarat at Gaua Sa Maria
Mrs Maroos " Lakona
" Edwin (Emma) " Pek
" Tagalana (Juana) Ara
" William (Lydia) Motlava
" Mrs Sarawia Mota
" Marsden (Rhoda) "
" Thomas (Minnie) "
" Benjamin (Marian) "
" Charles (Ellen) "

[130] A cloud-problem

What is the reason of the singular fact that in the finest weather in the tropics, when the sky overhead is of purest blue, and no film of vapour is perceptible, yet white clouds always lie round the horizon? Sail on till the ship has reached the point which an hour or two ago was on the horizon ahead of her, and now, overhead no sign of a cloud; astern on the point where the ship was (at our supposed first observation); white cumulous clouds, and all round the horizon white cumulous clouds?

Can it be that an amount of [vapour crossed out] half-condensed vapour in the atmosphere absolutely invisible when one looks upwards though the normal thickness of atmosphere or though little more than the normal thickness or depth of [130/131] atmosphere, becomes visible when the glance rakes the horizon and pierces tangentially (or nearly so) to the earth's curve a far greater extent of atmospheric air.

[At this point, the text collides with the end of the account of the visit to New Caledonia, coming up, upside down, from the bottom of the page. It is therefore the end of the Journal.]

Project Canterbury