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Frank Lenwood

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Bought with the income
of the
Ann S. Farnam Fund

PASTELS FROM
THE PACIFIC

PRINTED AT OXFORD, ENGLAND
BY FREDERICK HALL
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

Su? A WlffrRF

THE "John Williams" AT Suva.

PASTELS FROM
THE PACIFIC

BY
FRANK LENWOOD 1 1 1

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOURS AND
IN BLACK AND WHITE

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
1917

TO MY
FATHER AND
MOTHER

PREFACE
As a result of the urgency of certain problems in the
South Seas and Papua it became my duty, with my friends
A. J. Viner and G. J. Williams, to spend the best part of
a year in a tour of investigation through the Western
Pacific. In hours of leisure, none too common, I was able
to make a few sketches in pastel of the places we visited.
Amateurish as they are, they show scenes rarely visited,
and still more rarely reproduced in colour, and may perhaps
help distantly to convey some idea of the extraordinary
charm of the islands and the long, lovely Papuan coast.
One of the line drawings (p. 168) is based on a photo
graph by W. J. Saville. The designs on the front cover
were obtained by C. W. Abel from a Papuan near Kwato,
and were handed on by him to Messrs. Whitten Brothers, of
Samarai, who have had waist-cloths printed from them.
Once offered the choice, the native gladly forsakes European
patterns (many of them anything but artistic) for the
typical lines of his traditional ornament. It is a pity that
trade does not more often give such aid to beauty.
As to the book itself, that, too, is a series of pastels,
hasty impressionist sketches in words. I have sought to
give the shadows honestly, for only so could I bring out
the lights. Some may feel that I have emphasized the
missionary side too much. Others may think that the
book is too detached and prone to criticism. I can only
say that I have tried to tell of things as I saw them.
Any reader with an imagination will guess how much

viii PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
I owe to the missionaries on the various stations. Much
of the most interesting material comes from them ; on
their judgment I lean, and lean with confidence. My
difficulty has been to avoid that personal praise which
came naturally to the pen, but would have been inappro
priate in a book like this, except in very special cases.
Several friends have helped me by their criticism, thus
laying me under a special debt of gratitude.
The spelling of all South Sea words is phonetic. The
vowels are pronounced as in Italian, and each should be
given its value. The only exception is in the chapter on
Lifou, where the vowels are sounded as in French, because
it is a French possession.
In the South Seas the word ' native ' is not resented by
those to whom it is applied, and in writing of more than
one people it is wellnigh impossible to avoid its use.
The story of travel may easily be a series of disconnected
sketches, and from the nature of the case it is difficult to
unify these and produce, not sketches, but a book. In this
case there is a real unity of subject running through the
whole, and I have tried to express it, however imperfectly,
in the last chapter. FRANK LENWOOD.
16, New Bridge Street, E.C.
October 19 17.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LlFOU ...... I
II. Cook Islands ... 18
III. Rarotonga and the Island Life 32
IV. Samoa and its Ceremonies . 46
V. Samoan Problems ... 65
VI. Suva and the Ellice Islands 88
VII. Gilbert Islands ... 108
VIII. Papua: Beginning in the West 127
IX. The Gulf Stations . . 141
X. Central and East Papua . 161
XI. Aspects of Papuan Life . 182
XII. Problems of the Mission . 202
Index ..... 221

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To face
To face
To face

The John Williams at Suva (Colour) . . Frontispiece
The Bay of Chepenehe
Deep Sea, Reef, and Lagoon at Aitutaki (Colour)
Presents to the Visitors in Mangaia
John, Chief of Mangaia
The Fairies at Atauloma .
The Taupou or Maid of the Village
Samoan Houses ....
One End of a Samoan House
A Samoan ' Talking Man ' .
Apia Harbour (Colour)
Elderly Champions at a Taalolo .
Sunrise at Suva (Colour)
Niutao Village, Ellice Islands
Miss Jolliffe's House on Funangongo .
Council-house in the Gilberts (Colour) .
A Church in the Gilbert Islands .
A Gilbertese Village (Colour)
Double-outrigger Canoe, Fly River
Fashions for Men on the Fly River
Dopima Creek — where Tamate died (Colour)
The Skull-rack in a Club-house, Purari Delta
Across the Swamps to the Mountains, AirdHill (Colour) To face
Maipua Village, Purari Delta
A Club-house at Orokolo (Colour)
Houses on the Water's Edge, Port Moresby

page 3
22 34
41

To face
To face
To face

To face
To face
To face

To face

To face

Si
53 57
6i68 7888
98
106
no116
122J35
139 142 HS148153158163

Xll

PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC

Kalaigolo Village (Colour) .
The Big Canoes setting out from Mailu
The Daugi Dance at Mailu
Mailu Village 
The Dug-out Canoe of the West
An Old Goaribari Cannibal
Dancing Masks, Urama
Spirit-house at Kerepunu (Colour)
Two Young Dandies ....
Interior of a Club-house at Maipua, Namau, with Dancing
Masks 
The Aesthetic Type of Raw Native
Mission Station Boys ....
A Grey Afternoon in Toaripi (Colour) .
A Samoan Missionary in Papua .
Maopa Village, Aroma

To face
To face

page 164168
172
176

| To face 182

:)

To face

To face
To face
To face

184 188 191
198
204
210
213216

MAPS

South-East Papua
The South-West Pacific

. 128
At end

CHAPTER I
LIFOU
Just as the sun rose I went on deck and saw Lifou Island
about four miles away on the port bow. What appeared
first was a long bastion of coral cliffs, pink in the rosy light
of a Pacific sunrise. At the water's edge deep shadows
marked caves in the coral and suggested a worthy setting for
pirate games, while sharp lines on the coral rock at various
heights made it plain that the island, like Mangaia and
Niue, had been raised from sea-level and that there had
been several stages in the rise. The top was covered with
dense bush, to the distant view smooth as a bed of moss,
but broken here and there by the slender, towering pillar
of a Norfolk Island pine.
It was the first of these lonely coral islands that I had
seen, and, as I thought of the English missionary and his
wife, I confess my heart sank. Falling away into the
limitless sea those steep walls suggested an island prison.
The sense of loneliness and constriction came in upon me
like a flood. Was it worth it ? Could the needs of a few
thousand natives ever demand such a sacrifice from a member
of the Great Society in the larger world of to-day ? Had
I the right to encourage any man to bury himself there ?
How impossible it would be to face it myself !
But an hour or two wore on, and we rounded the sharp
headland into the bay of Chepenehe. Here, by some curious
process, the cliffs have been planed away in a gradual slope,
which shelves up in a low amphitheatre to the general

2 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
level of the island. At the sea verge remains one great keep
of rock to show what the cliff level must have been. The
slopes are free of bush. Here and there rise big shady
trees, while graceful coco-nut palms fringe all the landward
side. The deeps and shallows of the bay show transparent
purple and creamy emerald : the gentle waves break white
against table rocks of coral at the edge. Most attractive
in the tropics and most rare grass flourished in the cool
of August and all the turf was green. It was like an English
common in a setting of the tropics.
From the ship's side we could just see the heavy shadows
on the bottom a hundred feet below, and, as we rowed
ashore, the dark rocks and the seaweed became plainer and
plainer. Brightly coloured little fish flitted in and out.
Over the patches of white coral shingle we looked down
through a sea more transparent than glass. Finally, we
grounded the whale-boat in a tiny cove among the rocks
that might have been cut for the purpose by human hands.
There the old missionary came to meet us. His wife was
ill, and he dared not leave her even for a little while to come
on board. He has a kindly, gentle face, patient but able,
set off, and — shall I say? — dated, by the whiskers which were
fashionable when he left England first. His wife reminded
me of my mother, which is to say enough. They both came
from Ashton-under-Lyne. Think of the contrast between
Ashton Sunday School and the bay of Chepenehe ! For
his theological training he went to Plymouth, of all distant
places, because he ' wanted to be near the sea ', and from
that time onward, except for rare furloughs, he has had his
desire fulfilled all and every day ! It is thirty-eight years
since they two, bride and bridegroom, saw Lifou for the
first time, and in such a climate and in surroundings so
simple and unvarying, age comes on with sure foot : they

4 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
are both old, and will not be able to hold on much longer.
But ' lonely ' or ' prisoners on their island ' they are not
nor have ever been. They have had their children round
them, playing on that open green and swimming with them
in the bay ; that great, thatched, cool, cavernous bungalow
has been the family home, and it was for the children that
they discovered the narrow staircase through the coral
leading to the wide arches of the bathing cave. In those
early days the children must have had a heavenly time.
But the father and mother have a larger family, a family
that has never needed to go home to England for education,
for they are father and mother of the Protestant folk on
the two islands. Indeed they have the quiet, unhesitating
power of parentage which no new-comer can hope to gain.
The pastors of all the villages have been through his simple
theological school ; the pastors' wives have been in and
out of her bungalow during their husbands' time of study,
and they bear the stamp of their mother's piety as surely
as the men look up to their spiritual guide. There is no
influence like it in the islands, and it is all for good.
At first the natives did not make the most favourable
impression on us. The women were dressed in what our
grandmothers would have called ' gowns '. Made of the
thin white materials suitable for the tropics, they are much
more like night-gowns. They hang formless from the
shoulders and flop round the ankles. The men were in
coats and trousers, and some of those who had been to
Noumea wore narrow boots, from which they must have
suffered much. A few rose to tie and collar. I have no
doubt that they were far less European in ordinary worka
day life, but I cannot pretend that their exterior was
attractive. Yet, as we saw more of them, we respected
them more. They are not handsome, having apparently

LIFOU 5
certain affinities with the Papuans, but plainly they are
a people of strong character. The Protestant part of the
population seems to show no decline in numbers. They
give with lavish generosity, they have maintained their
Church life, and they stand out against the heathenism
of the old chiefs as faithfully as against the corrupting in
fluences which come in from New Caledonia and ' civiliza
tion '. In the old days several went up with Macfarlane
to open our work in Torres Straits, and in the last few
years many have gone to the work in New Caledonia.
Indeed, Mr. Hadfield can write :
' I have yet to meet the student who is not ready to go there —
although from the material point of view he and his family would be
much better off at home.'
Then, too, they are very musical. So is James Hadfield,
and he has made it a matter of policy to encourage music
as an antidote to the heathen dancing, which revives every
now and then and which in Lifou is usually connected with
moral laxity. When we landed, the students of the training
school paraded about with drum and fife, and in the evening
they sang to us. As in other South Sea Groups, the men have
very deep voices ; yet they sang English part-songs with
feeling and beauty. While they were singing I took stock
of their faces once again. Some were ugly enough in all
conscience, but nearly all were simple, dogged, and inter
esting. They were men and women with possibilities,
needing something better than trader or Government
official to help them to develop those possibilities, and very
open to the appeal of the Jesus of the Gospels. My doubts
of the morning were gone. These two from Ashton-under-
Lyne had not wasted their lives in lonely isolation. I also
could be content to live in such a place for so fine a people.

6 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
But it was quite another question whether at the end my
life would count for half as much as the lives of these
unadvertised consuls for God.
Healthy as the work is, little communities such as Lifou
and the neighbouring island of Ouvea have many difficulties
to face in modern times. The power of the chiefs is still
strong, and, as they seem able to levy all sorts of imposi
tions on their clansmen, they put a very effective check on
enterprise in planting gardens. The excess profits tax is
an old institution in the back lands of Lifou ! Again,
there is a system of labour recruiting for New Caledonia,
and the majority of the young men bring back with them
the taint of all such mongrel ports. They leave their wives
at home : Noumea is a place of many temptations, and not
a few go wrong there, for sex impulses have a strong grip
on a people with so few other interests to fill their minds.
From recruiting, too, the chiefs make their profits, for they
draw a large commission on each labourer they recruit,
and their pressure is naturally all the more imperious.
From time to time, before the coming of the Entente,
relations with the French were very stormy. In 1841 our
missionaries landed the first native teachers on the neigh
bouring island, Mare, and it was not till twenty-three years
later that Roman priests introduced a rival faith, and sowed
the seeds of friction and hostility. The treatment of our
missionaries became the subject of representations from the
British Foreign Office, and promises were made in Paris
which proved impossible to fulfil in a Group so far away.
But now the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society does the
work on Mare that was taken from us, and does it well,
while on Lifou and Ouvea there has been peace for thirty
years. For some time past the officials have been our very
good friends.

LIFOU 7
Another difficulty touches our elementary education.
Allowing fully for all weaknesses, the net results are
substantial. These island populations have a system of
education better than anything that was known to the
peasantry of England a hundred years ago. Although in
1840 they were raw savages, nearly all the population can
read to-day. Of recent years Government has established
one or two schools in which French is taught with limited
success, but that is the end of its effort. For the rest, edu
cation goes with the Church. The pastor of each village,
trained in the little institution at the head station, is
not only pastor, but, on three days of the week, teaches a
school. It is the system which prevails wherever the London
Missionary Society has work in the South Seas. The teach
ing is only for three days, because on the other days the
young people fish or work their gardens to get their food.
It is the cheapest system which could be devised, and
within its limits it is very effective.
But the limits are obvious : the little training institution
is necessarily of a very primitive character ; the would-be
teachers come from the simplest surroundings ; their
school days gave them little learning, even at the time, and
years may elapse before they come for training, while
three days in the week is all too short to meet the case.
It must be granted that in Lifou at least the general system
has hitherto proved sufficient, but, as demands grow with
the growth of influence from the Western world, much
more will be needed. May the new men show the same
power of adaptation as the old !
In order to get clear of treacherous coral rocks, just
below the water, we had to sail away before the sinking of
the sun, when all the outlines were clear and beautiful.
My mind was filled with an affectionate reverence for the

8 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
two lonely old sentinels we were leaving behind. It was
all very simple and paternal and free from any theatrical
touch, but Mrs. Hadfield's illness and the lonely care of
her husband, himself a little shaky after all those years,
threw a vivid light on the price of apostleship in islands
so remote.
But any one may well ask what took us into the tiny
Groups of the Pacific and down the sunny coast of Papua
in the very middle of the Great War.
For a year before we started there stood on my study
mantelpiece a reproduction of the picture of an English
gentleman of the period of 1770. Before him is opened a
map, and, as you look more closely, you see that his coat
is laced with gold and that his sleeves have heavy cuffs of
golden braid. His knee-breeches, long coat, and stock are
faultless, but his waistcoat, buttoned only half and gaping
comfortably here and there as he sits at ease, suggests a
character that could wear dignity very lightly, and be fine
without self-consciousness. The shapely hands are framed
by ruffles, and the powdered hair is brushed back from the
high forehead. But the face is everything. Strong eye
brows and a nose, not big, but on the large side, flexible,
fine lips' and a projecting, determined chin, are all lighted
by eyes which seem to pierce and penetrate. Here is
kindness, but the firmest of authority ; here is humour,
but a resolution never to be shaken — it is the Greenwich
portrait of Captain Cook, and his story is like his face.
Among British explorers of the unknown seas, none,
surely, can show a record at once so brilliant, so brave, and
so humane. None has been more determined and made
less song about his determination. He opened the Pacific
for all to follow, he was the great explorer of New Zealand,

LIFOU 9
East Australia, and the Barrier Reef, and no Englishman but
would be proud to sail the same track in the same spirit.
For any one who has been in the South Seas it is fascina
tion to read Cook's Voyages, and follow the queer English
spellings of the places known to missionary history to-day.
Tahiti was his head-quarters, as it was the source of all the
work of the London Missionary Society, and, to any reader
who knows the Society's story, the names of Eimeo and
Raiatea, Huahine, Borabora, and Rurutu flash out in his
memoirs like blazed trees upon a forest trail. We can see
him on his second voyage sailing past the group to which
he gave the name of Hervey, but to which others later gave
his own great name. He put into one of the Niue landings
— one wonders which — and finding intercourse hopeless,
sailed away from the jagged, grey cliffs, and sent it down
to later generations as Savage Island. Till 1846 the
attempts of the successive missionaries had no more success.
He opened up the Tongan Group, so that to the missionary
imagination it became a second centre like Tahiti — with
tragic results twenty-four years later — and he had his own
conflict with the islanders of Erromanga, who murdered John
Williams in 1839. ^ was ne wno showed the connexion of
the Australian coast with Torres Straits, and so opened up the
route to Papua which was normal forty years ago. In short,
along all the course of his journeys, he prepared the way for
missionary effort. Captain Cook stands high in the list of
those who constrained us to set out upon our journey to
the South Seas.
Now for the second reason. Captain Cook's Voyages were
published, and the Church prepared to follow the lead he
gave. The evangelical movement of his time had produced
a new temper and leaders to express and embody it. Captain
Cook was murdered in Hawaii in 1778, and sixteen years

10 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
later, in Baker's Coffee House and the Castle and Falcon,
Aldersgate Street, steps were taken which led to the actual
creation of the London Missionary Society in 1795. Haweis
and Love and Burder, John Eyre and Matthew Wilks, set
waves in motion through those critical years which still roll
round the world and float straws like me upon their way.
I look at their solemn old portraits in our Board Room,
some of them beautiful, and some, if faces are any guide,
whose only chance must have been found in a special
measure of redeeming grace, and I think of their bravery
and foresight living after them, to carry forward, year by
year, an increasing multitude from many nations and tongues
into a fuller service of the same Lord. I suppose that at
one time or another between then and now almost every
mistake has been made which was possible in the conduct
of such a Society. But there is an overwhelming balance
on the other side. Take any policy which is now commended
as original, courageous, or wise, and you will find it illustrated
in the history of the Society. Where a hundred and twenty
years have brought us a fuller understanding of the Gospel
we have to send, it is only because we have risen on the
stepping-stones the elders laid. The men of 1796 had no
small part in sending us to the South Seas in 1915.
The final compulsion came from the missionaries them
selves. The Society has been peculiarly blessed in the
personality of its men. Morrison and William Ellis, Moffat
and Livingstone, Gilmour of Mongolia and Griffith John,
John Williams and James Chalmers, are only outstanding
instances of the recruits who year by year have offered
themselves to the Society. Some of the unknown men and
women did, and to-day are doing, work as productive and
as heroic as any of the great names which the world delights
to celebrate.

LIFOU n
But nowhere — for our present purpose this is important —
was the Society honoured with greater spiritual success,
nowhere was there finer and more adventurous statesman
ship, than in the islands of the Pacific. Owing to Captain
Cook's voyages the founders of the Society were led to
choose the South Seas, and in particular Tahiti, as the
place in which to begin their work. Some of their reasons
seem ridiculous enough. First, the natives of these fertile
islands, ' every man sitting under his cocoa or bread-fruit
tree ', had ample time for instruction, and an audience
would gather at ' the very sound of a hammer, a saw or
a smith's bellows ' ! How easily the Directors might have
learnt from Cook that the audience would be only too
likely to make off with the bellows, to say nothing of
hammers and saws ! Second, ' the Government seemed
monarchical but of the mildest nature ' — and this in islands
well known to practise human sacrifice ! Third, ' their
language was so easily acquired that a corporal of marines,
after three months' stay on the island, spoke it fluently,
and so widely spread as to be understood in many groups '.
From New Zealand to Hawaii, and from the Paumotus to
Fiji, the Maori tongues are indeed akin, but fuller knowledge
reveals idioms and niceties which baffle and betray the
foreigner for many a year. The corporal of marines must
have been one of the great linguists of history !
But the event proved that there was more truth in their
reasons than they knew. The fertility of the islands, with
all its disadvantages, at least made it possible to secure
self-support for the Churches at a rate that left Madagascar
or China far behind and India out of sight. It is difficult
to exaggerate the influence of this one fact on the Church
development of the Pacific Islands. Then, again, the
native governments, though disorderly enough, by their

12 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
very disorder convinced the native that the religion of the
West was sure to bring social improvement. In the East
the elaborate and stable systems of social life offer the
missionary no such initial advantage. Finally, the fact that
the language of practically all the eastern islands came from
the common Maori stock was of enormous importance in
missionary pioneering. Just as Captain Cook found it
possible to take interpreters from Tahiti and Huahine,
so the missionaries of Tahiti had no difficulty with the
tongues of Raiatea and Rurutu, and John Williams could
communicate with the natives of almost all the islands he
visited. To the fact that he was also able to land Tahitian
teachers in every Group with the assurance that they would
be easily understood, we owe the name which marks off the
London Missionary Society from other bodies, ' the religion
from Tahiti ' ! In Papua, villages twenty miles apart have
different languages, but in the South Seas one tongue,
varied slightly according to clear phonetic laws, would
carry the traveller or teacher for three thousand miles,
north, south, east, or west.
Anyhow, Tahiti was chosen, and amid the French wars
in 1797 the Duff sailed down the Channel with a cargo of
' missionaries and provisions ', as they told a man-of-war
that hailed her. The number of men was thirty, and only
six had wives. The majority were craftsmen, bricklayers,
carpenters, weavers, and tailors, with a ' gentleman's
servant ', a cabinet-maker, a cooper, a harness-maker, and
a hatter thrown in. Plainly the promoters expected to
attract the natives by teaching them European trades.
The Directors can have done no more than examine each
for his general fitness to give a layman's testimony ; the
date at which the ship sailed, when compared with that of
the Society's foundation, shows that no missionary training

LIFOU 13
was thought needful. Only four were ordained ministers,
and there was one surgeon.
After a comparatively easy passage the Duff made Tahiti
on Sunday, March 5, 1797. The Tahitian story is inter
esting to trace because there we see through how many
tribulations those old heroes trod their unknown path,
and how they brought the islands if not into, at least
within sight of, the Kingdom of God. The ' favour
able opinion ' the new-comers had formed of the natives
disappeared on that first Sunday. ' Their wild dis
orderly behaviour, strong smell of cocoa-nut oil, together
with the tricks of the arreoies,1 lessened the favourable.
opinion we had formed of them ; neither could we see
aught of that elegance and beauty in their women for
which they have been so greatly celebrated. This ' (they
plainly meant ' all this ' — but we should have lost one of the
choicest bits of missionary humour, if they had written
what they meant) ' at first seemed to depreciate them in
the minds of our brethren. But the cheerfulness, good
nature, and generosity of these kind people soon removed
the momentary prejudices.' It may be mentioned that
these words were written by those who left with the ship.
Those who stayed behind had bitter cause to know how
far from truth was the last sentence long before the ship
reached England with its report. Infanticide, promiscuity,
unnatural vice were all discovered very soon — to say nothing
of human sacrifice. From theft they suffered daily, and at
the end of twelve months four of the leaders were assaulted
and stripped. Led by one of the ordained men, eleven of
the eighteen thereupon took advantage of the presence of
a ship to abandon the Mission. A few months more and
Lewis, one of the undaunted seven, determined, against all
1 Chiefs, called Alii or Ariki in other Groups.

14 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
dissuasions, to marry a native woman, if ' marry ' can be
used of a state where chastity was unknown. He was cut off
from fellowship, and died soon afterwards under conditions
so sinister that there is little doubt he was done to death.
Broomhall followed Lewis's example and took a woman
of Raiatea ; he was excommunicated, and so five were
left, Bicknell, Eyre, Henry, Jefferson, and the great brick
layer, Henry Nott. In 1801 the Royal Admiral brought
nine further missionaries.
The sky brightened a little. Pomare, the old king,
friend of the English — which was fortunate for the Mission
— and bigoted old heathen, died in 1803, and Otu; his son,
took his chieftainship and name. For some little time
young Pomare had been friendly to the missionaries and
eager to understand their message. He began to learn
to write, and, like the Brahmans of India, was anxious to
keep writing as his own monopoly. But in 1808 Pomare
fell from power, and, after a fearful battle, was driven out
to Eimeo. In this second hour of darkness all the mission
aries left the islands except Henry Nott, who shared the
exile of Pomare. In the islands civil wars made their work
almost impossible, and, as if they were not stricken enough,
it was about this time that the missionaries received com
munications suggesting that many of the supporters at
home were losing faith ; indeed, those who at its founda
tion had ridiculed the Society were now chuckling with
quiet triumph.
But, little by little, missionaries came back. The Direc
tors sent out ' four godly young women ' to Port Jackson,
and there were four bachelors the less — one of the four
bridegrooms being Henry Nott. In 181 2 the break came:
Pomare sought for baptism. It was not given for seven
years, for he was judged to be unstable, and after baptism

LIFOU 15
his conduct proved unworthy, but at the outset the sup
port of the exiled king made it possible for other inquirers
to raise their heads. Two old servants of the missionaries'
households were found to have gathered little groups for
secret worship, and very soon the embryo Christian commu
nity was distinguished as ' the praying people '. One brave
priest burnt his idols wholesale. Of course such a revolution
was bound to provoke the friends of the old gods, and a plot
was made to wipe out the Christians. At first the Christians
evaded the enemy, but a little later it came to a pitched
battle ; the leading heathen chief was killed, and his defeated
army was treated with such unlooked-for mercy that after
1 8 16 heathenism never again gained the upper hand.
This is not the place to write the subsequent history of
the Mission in Tahiti and the Society Islands. Through
all the vicissitudes that beset any attempt at spiritual
advance the work made progress. The first civil govern
ment of the Pacific was established, and Henry Nott drew
up the code. Pomare, it is true, deteriorated into a drunken
sensualist, heathen practices were revived, and a few
young missionaries, who had read missionary reports without
imagination, found the Christians no better than they
should be, and wrote and told the Directors, as young
missionaries will do to the end of the chapter. Some of
the older men, then as now, were tempted to rest on their
oars. But in 1835 Nott finished the translation of the
Bible, and in every direction faithful work brought slow
but sure advance.
About the same period Roman Catholic missionaries
entered the island. Some of the members of the Mission
unwisely attempted to get them ejected by the Queen of
Tahiti and her administration. The French Government,
thereupon, took up the cause of the Romans and established

16 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
a Protectorate. From that point the Mission was always
in conflict with the authorities. It was before the days of
the Entente, and it was amusing to snub Englishmen.
The missionaries, by this time, perhaps, a little too accus
tomed to power, hated to see it pass into secular hands,
and, finally, the baser sort among the natives took occasion
to flout the benefactors they had followed, when following
was in fashion. A long period of friction, during which
neither missionaries nor the home Board were always
prudent, led from 1863 onwards to a period of stagnation,
and to final abandonment in 1886. The Paris Evangelical
Society were already well established there, and have
shepherded the Church from that time to this.
But from Tahiti, and the islands near by, the Gospel
was carried to other Groups. John Williams took the good
news to the Cook Islands and thence to Samoa. From
Samoa teachers were taken to Mare and Lifou ; and thence
the islands of the North-West, the Ellice, Tokelaus and
Gilberts, received the message : Murray of Samoa and
Macfarlane of Lifou began the Papuan Mission in Torres
Straits, and since then Papua has received teachers from
nearly every Group that has been mentioned.
Behind the last short paragraph is concealed the devotion,
the self-sacrifice, and the suffering of many British mission
aries and their wives. That now and then they should have
failed is no real detraction — who are we to cast stones
at failures far worse than these ? — nor is it surprising that
in sixty or seventy years they should not have created an
immaculate Church : — after some centuries there are still
stains upon the Church in Britain. What matters is that
they gave themselves to a task humanly impossible, and
succeeded beyond all likelihood because they went to the
Pacific as the delegates and deputies of Him who came to

LIFOU 17
save the lost, and because they lived there in the spirit of
the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. The
names of their successors are on the Society's roll to-day.
Missionaries present and past, together with those natives
who during the century have caught their inspiration, are
the third influence that took us to the South Seas in 191 5
to deal with certain urgent and pressing matters in connexion
with the continuation of their work.

CHAPTER II
COOK ISLANDS
Times have changed since 1797, and the Society has for
long been compelled to run a vessel of her own. In the
earliest days the neighbouring islands were reached by
taking passage in any ship whose master happened to be
intending to go to the desired port, or open to persuasion.
But as early as 1817 the missionaries on Eimeo built the
Haweis for Pomare, and seem often to have managed to
secure its use for the Mission. From that time the problem
of shipping has been always with us. A pioneer like John
Williams early saw how unsatisfactory it was to be at the
mercy of others, and in despair of a better vessel he set to
himself and built The Messenger of Peace in 1827. When
he went to England in 1834 he converted the leaders of the
Society to his view of the need, and in 1838 they bought
the Camden, the ship which took John Williams to Erro-
manga to meet his death. She was sold in 1843, and the
next year the first John Williams was built. From that
time the Society has never been without a ship, except for
the short intervals needed for replacement.
In 1894 a steamer was specially built, for the work had
grown so fast that no sailing-ship could overtake it. Since
then the work has grown again, and the fourth John
Williams is to-day doing far more than was expected when
she was built — indeed she travels more than 30,000 miles
in a year — and there is still the keenest competition for

COOK ISLANDS 19
every portion of her time. She is a trim little steel-built
steamer of 180 ft. long, with lines like a yacht. But for her
long funnel — needed to get a good draught in the heat —
she is as graceful as one could wish.
It is frequently asked whether the increase of commercial
shipping has not removed the necessity for a special mis
sionary ship. Without doubt commercial facilities have
greatly increased, and to the main centres of population
there is far more traffic than of old. Of all such changes
the missionary takes full advantage, and Lifou, for instance,
has only been visited by the John Williams three times in
twenty years, because passages and supplies could be
arranged on ordinary steamers in a cheaper way. But it
never was difficult to get to the main centres, and it was
not for them that the missionary ship was ever needed.
On the other hand the smaller islands, such as those in the
Cook Group or the Gilberts, are as isolated as they were
twenty years ago, and for many a long day will remain so.
Big steamers go where there is a big trade, and unless the
various Governments provide public steamers to develop
the trade of each area, there are not likely to be any satis
factory facilities to which the missionary can trust.
In our tour we travelled most of the full round which the
John Williams makes twice a year, for we saw the end of the
second voyage, and the whole of the third. Not only was
she our only means of transit, but at the same time we were
thus able to study the problem of shipping — a vital part of
our commission. The instructed know that ship-owning
is a special trade, and exacts special qualities. We can
only report that the record of the Society as a shipowner
will stand any reasonable commercial test, and further,
that from the missionary point of view the expenditure
pays. The fact is that in such work communications are
c 2

20 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
everything. In a group of islands three missionaries with
good communications can do as much work as ten who are
left in isolation, and it is only the former system which
offers any hope of putting the natives upon their own
resources, and leaving them to develop without the daily
chance of casting responsibility on a resident missionary.
The John Williams is a very efficient piece of missionary
organization. Nine knots an hour on the John Williams brought us
in a fortnight from Sydney to Rarotonga. The last few
days had given us once more an impression of the size of
the Pacific and of the way tiny bits of land lie scattered at
the farthest ends of enormous plains of water. So small
were the islands that it was amazing to a landsman how any
captain could find them. From a little distance the peri
scope of a submarine could hardly have been more elusive,
and, when the island was sighted, it seemed necessary to
keep it well in view, lest, as it were, the periscope should
sink and our ship be left once more alone in a waste of sea.
In this case we looked eagerly for land, and the best that we
could hope for was only six miles in diameter ! At last we
made it, and in an hour or two were skirting the north-east
shores with our bows pointing to the anchorage at Avarua.
It is worth while here to try and understand the special
anxieties of any navigation which involves calling at coral
islands. The foundation of each island is a mountain peak
rising sharply to its summit, sometimes above and some
times below the waves, and on the steep slopes of this
summit are reared the adherent walls of coral. On the
outer side these walls drop almost sheer. Start seawards
from the cruel reef, with its jagged teeth showing above the
water at low tide, and a hundred yards out you will likely
find that every fathom of anchor chain runs out before

COOK ISLANDS 21
there is any sign of bottom. Go a quarter of a mile farther
and you may think you have reached the unfathomed abyss.
From this it will at once be seen how difficult anchorage
becomes. If the wind blows off the land, it is possible to
hook on to the reef here and there with a short chain, but
if the wind changes, the ship is swung upon the fangs of
coral almost before the captain can ring to the engine room
and long before steam could be got up, should fires be low.
A sailing-boat is of course in still worse case. Further, the
currents of the Pacific are so uncertain and so rapid that
a calm may well be more dangerous than a breeze from the
sea. The first and second ships bearing the name of
John Williams, sailing-ships both, were wrecked by currents,
because the wind had dropped. When there is a lagoon
with a proper entrance, ships can anchor inside, and, hurri
canes apart, are safe, but where there are no open lagoons
the ship must always retain a certain head of steam. She
then lets herself be carried away from the island by wind or
current and steams up again at need. This process is known
as ' dodging ' ; weary work at best.
In the Southern Cook Islands there is no harbour except
that at Avarua, Rarotonga, and even this is poorly protected
in a gale. At Aitutaki it is barely possible to hang on to the
reef, as long as the wind is from shore, but the fires must be
kept going all the time, and at the first threat of changing
wind the ship must up cable and away. The same conditions
are found in many islands of the Ellice and Gilbert Groups.
There can be no relief of the master's anxiety as long as
his ship must remain in the neighbourhood of land. Even
a landsman can appreciate the extra strain of navigation
under such conditions. As I write these words, the papers
tell of the wreck of the New Zealand liner Maitai on the
reef at Rarotonga.

22 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
After ' entering ' the ship at Rarotonga as the seat of
government, we sailed that night to Aitutaki. It is natural
to sail by night so as to use every hour of day for work,
and most of the short journeys of the John Williams are
made by night. Aitutaki was taken first because all the crew
come from there, and while she is in the Group the John
Williams gives them a fortnight of annual holiday. From
the crowd of eager clamourers at the ship's gangway we
took on a scratch crew of islanders, and for that short
interval we did reasonably well.
The Aitutakians are great seamen. They still catch sharks
by a method entirely their own. In the outer wall of the
reef are countless shady holes. In one of these the lazy
shark shelters from the blaze of noon and goes to sleep.
A boat follows along the reef, drawing the likely holes until
a shark is found, and then one of the crew dives down with
a rope and, after a process like tickling, fixes a noose over his
tail. Brother shark is then hauled up to the surface by main
force and clubbed or speared to death. They are such good
watermen and swimmers that they think nothing of such
a feat. I could have seen the sport myself, if time had
allowed. On the John Williams such sailors are invaluable. No
white crew could be more expert or fearless. It is splendid
to see them manage a whale-boat in a high sea off the reef,
John Wycliffe the bo'sun standing firm in the stern with
an iron grip on the steering oar, and every man alert to
hold her, or dash for it when John says the favourable wave
has come. Nor would the same discipline and sobriety —
shame upon us that it must be said ! — be possible with a
white crew. An officer of some experience told me that he
had never had a crew so satisfactory to handle. Any one
who knows the South Seas, or cares to infer from books like

COOK ISLANDS 23
those of Jack London or Louis Becke the various forms of
wickedness of which in these remote places ships' companies
were capable, will be able, in part, to understand the value
to the Mission of such a decent, kindly, disciplined crew.
No one would pretend that they stood above temptation,
or that their morals were perfect, but they are wonderfully
better than anything else we shall be likely to get, and
many of them bring honour to the Christian name.
Friendlier souls it would be hard to find, and we were well
able to judge, for we spent five months on board. They
are well paid, and at the end of twelve months they have
a big balance in the captain's books. While the ship is in
Sydney, they buy all manner of expensive presents, having
small regard to their actual value, and it is their custom to
allow some tailor to concoct a new and fetching costume
with which to astonish the girls who meet them on the
little jetty in the home lagoon. In 1914 all wore con
fections of green baize; in 191 5 taste was dominated by
the war, and they went ashore in uniforms suggesting
a cross between Australian troopers and boy scouts, finished
off with shorts and leather leggings.
The mention of presents recalls a curious habit found in
Aitutaki, evidently the survival of an old pre-Christian cus
tom like those found in other parts of the world, by which
objects specially dear to the deceased are placed upon the
grave. Two or three years ago a sailor was taking from a
Sydney department-store a sideboard for his wife. When he
reached the island, he found that she was dead. He put the
furniture out in the open by her grave, and, when we saw it,
had erected an open shed of wood and galvanized iron to
preserve it from too speedy decay. By another grave
I saw a sewing machine of the latest pattern, ruined by
exposure. The custom is decreasing, but it dies hard.

24 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
A year and a half before our visit a terrific hurricane
had passed across the island. Very nearly all the houses
in the three villages were unroofed and many were wrecked
completely. It is not as if they were light or flimsy buildings.
The thick walls are made of solid stone and cement. When
we were there nearly every family was still living under
a little lean-to of wrecked timber or matting in a place
which would have been verandah in ordinary times. The
main rooms of the house were open to the sky, waiting until
the owners should save enough to repair and re-roof. But
here is the interesting point — the three churches and in
the main village the school and teacher's house had been
repaired with such faithfulness that no one would have
guessed that they had suffered in the least. Amid much that
is weak in the religious situation upon the Cook Islands it
is well to keep a fact like this in mind.
On Aitutaki we saw one more significant thing, the school
at Araura. The New Zealand Government has recently
taken over the education of the islands, and found in Aitu
taki a school previously guided by the Mission and financed
from native resources. Miss Royle for some time controlled
the school under the old system, and her two best pupils,
Tiavare and his wife Mitua, were appointed as Government
teachers. If Miss Royle did nothing more than make these
two young people what they are, she did immense service
for the future of the islands. They both speak English
well, and Tiavare has a good library, the only English
library which I saw in a native house on the whole of our
tour. On the shelves was Richard Feverel, looking as if it
had been well used, and Tiavare told me that he under
stood it !
The small island of Mitjaro has a population of only
200 people, and their Christianity does not go very deep ;

COOK ISLANDS 25
but the day of our visit will remain in our minds when other
places are forgotten, for more reasons than one. To such
an island ships come rarely, more rarely still visitors who
justify a little pomp and show, and the people of Mitiaro
made the most of the occasion. When we landed on the
outer reef at dusk, we found ourselves the centre of an
excited and shouting party. They had a long, light settee
carefully draped, and with poles underneath. On this we
sat in state, and were carried right across the low flats of
coral rock until we reached the shore. They had the path
strewn with fresh white coral as far as the open space in
front of the teacher's house. This also was clean and white.
How sorry I was for the bare feet of those who carried us, for
we were five on the settee ! But coral reefs with their knife
edges seem nothing to the men of the islands. As they set
us down, they informed us with pride that they had brought
us ashore exactly as they had brought Lord and Lady
Liverpool when the former came as Governor of New
Zealand ! In the teacher's house we were refreshed with
oranges and coco-nuts. Then began questions as to the
war. What was happening ? What battles had been.
fought ? Who had won the victories ? Were the Germans
being pushed back ? So we sat in the clear night in front
of the teacher's house with a hundred and fifty natives
crowded before us. The oleander flowers of the teacher's
garden showed up faintly, and the coco-nut palms stood
out black against the soft blue velvet of the sky. We told
them what we could of the news and then of our journey,
and then, as they were set on hearing more, one told
of China and one described his life in Northern India.
None of us will ever forget the picturesqueness of that
scene. When at last we broke away into the teacher's house we

26 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
were introduced to Viggo Rasmussen, the Danish trader.
He took us along to his house, and, little by little, we learnt
his history. He had been a sailor through the South Seas,
and chose to settle in the Paumotus, where he had experi
enced three terrific hurricanes. Somewhere out there he
met and married a woman from Mitiaro, and after being
for some time supercargo on a trading steamer, yielded
to the pull from his wife's side and came to make his home
upon her island. He was a little man with fair hair and
an honest Danish face. The natives held him in great
respect, and it was good to see his courtesy to his wife.
His little house was breathless and overcurtained, but his
store was full of interest. He had Manchester cottons and
Sheffield butcher knives for hacking down the bush. He had
all manner of mirrors, cotton reels, little boots, needles,
things that the women of the islands love, but he told
us that he could not put more than 20 per cent, on to the
landing price, and his income must be very small. He had
crude oil pictures of ships in which he had sailed, painted
by his own hand; and he was no mean carpenter. But
the greatest surprise of all was to come. We turned across
to the corner of the store under the lamp, where his account
books lay on his high desk, and saw before us a library of
about 150 volumes ! Almost all of these were English and
his interests were plainly theological. There was Everyman's
Encyclopedia, and many other volumes from Everyman's
library, Dummelow's One Volume Commentary on the New
Testament, Adeney's How to read the Bible, and D'Aubigne's
History of the Reformation ! We saw other traders after
wards, but none quite like this, a sailor who had roughed
it before the mast over these risky seas, a trader content to
live on this tiny island and serve its little community,
a gentleman with mind eager and cultivated, journeying

COOK ISLANDS 27
with his books through the realms of gold. I have met few
people who so compelled respect.
Mangaia is full of historic interest. At one time the island
must have been a small peak of land with a wide lagoon all
round it marked off by a reef at sea-level. Then, suddenly
or gradually, the whole must have been raised 150 feet,
so that the lagoon was turned into dry valley land. There
is thus left a central mountain mass with a ring of coral
cliffs all round the coast. The road to Tamarua lies along
the shore, and on the higher side lie, tier on tier, the bare
and jagged spikes of the old reef. Exposure and the tropical
rain and heat have eaten away all the softer portions, and
the whole gives one the impression of grey stone knives and
spears set on edge to catch any who might be flung upon
them. Never have I seen nature so cruel as along that
road. But nature at her worst is not matched by the horrors
that were daily use and wont in the old cannibal days before
the Gospel came. Tribe was at war against tribe with
irregular and treacherous intermissions. Human sacrifice
was common ; the chief had only to entrust a sacred
girdle to the murderers as the sign of his approval, and it
became perfectly natural to knock on the head even their
nearest and dearest. Certain families were ' devoted ' to
the altar by tradition. The slaughter was usually effected
by means of some cowardly ambush, and young girls and
little boys were frequent victims. One of the men who
had taken part in these horrors was still living in 1869
to tell the story. Within the living memory of others
a certain warrior had outraged even cannibal standards by
killing and eating his own wife, from mere cold greed for
human flesh.
Mangaia is full of such bloody reminiscences. At the top

28 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
of the cliff path behind Oneroa we crossed the fields of sweet
potatoes and dropped down into the chasm that gave
entrance to the great burying cave. The floor was sandy and
strewn with charred husks of candle-nuts, which, probably
for generations past, had been used to light the feet of those
who dared to intrude. From below we caught glimpses of
wooden chests mouldering upon the shelves of natural
rock. They were coffins of the dead, at least a century old.
At one time the cavern gave sanctuary to a hunted tribe,
and the spot was shown us — a high step between converging
walls — where one brave of the party kept all the pursuers
at bay.
Next day we saw the rocky hollow at Tamarua where
a fugitive youth was sheltered inside a natural chimney of
coral by the girl who loved him. She saved her food and
gave it to him through a hole in the side, and, doing this,
was caught and so betrayed him to the spearmen. The
hollow is now the garden of the preacher's house and the
rock remains. Crossing the hills in the early morning, we
saw on the right a valley where the party of a certain chief
were said to have thrust their foes alive into a red-hot oven.
Even with the open oven such as the islands use, the story
sounds impossible, but an oven was shown to William Gill
in Rarotonga, which had actually been used for human
sacrifice on a large scale.
Near Ivirua, the third village of the island, there is a per
fect network of caves. Once we turned off the village path,
the track became nothing but irregular knife-edges of coral.
To the lasting damage of our boots, we clambered down
the sharp faces of the rock, taking a gingerly hold so as not
to gash our fingers. The natives followed with bare feet !
We were also surprised to see the missionary stop for prayer
when we got to the cave entrance, and at each cave a

COOK ISLANDS 29
prayer was repeated. We should have shocked the islanders
greatly, if the prayer had been omitted. But I suspect that
the reason for the ritual lay far back in heathen fears of cave
spirits. It is interesting to note that Captain Cook records
of the one daring Mangaian who dared to board his ship,
that whilst in his canoe ' he repeated some words with a
devout air, before he ventured to lay hold of the rope at
the ship's stern, which was probably to recommend himself
to the protection of some divinity '. The coral wall, the
old reef of the now dried-up lagoon, was perforated with
caves this way and that, like an old piece of sea timber on
which the borers have done their work. Up and down we
went, round and about, sometimes coming out at wide
balconies half-way up the rock face, to look out to sea or
inland over the taro patches ; now and then peering into
deep pools of water filtering in from the ocean, and at
all times brushing against stalactites and stalagmites of
great size.
At Oneroa the main settlement is the ordinary anchorage
for the island. There Government has blasted a channel
through the reef which can be used by whale-boats in calm
weather and at certain stages of the tide, but for the most part
it is necessary to go within a few yards of the breaking surf
in a whale-boat and then get into a light outrigger canoe.
The canoe is much more handy, for, once it reaches the
reef, the canoe-men jump out and pull it on to the coral
platform before the next roller comes. It is, perhaps, worth
while to say that I found the typical coral reef very different
from the narrow wall I had been led to expect by maps and
diagrams. I had looked to see something sharply cut and
about the breadth of a substantial city wall ; I found that
it was quite an irregular mass of coral formations, coming
up to low-water level, and anything from a hundred yards

30 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
to half a mile broad. To blast a channel through the reef
sounds simple to the English reader, but only those who will
get rid of the common idea can measure what an under
taking it may really be.
All along the sea front runs the property of the Mission.
There is the church, the school, and the teacher's house,
built originally for a white missionary. At one corner there
is an old printing house and a class room once used for
training students. A stranger visiting the islands would
perhaps be moved to remark on the selfishness with which
the Mission has monopolized the best sites for its own
benefit. But the facts are all the other way. The mission
aries came to these islands long before settled and reputable
traders ; indeed, the native Christian pioneers took their
lives in their hands as they landed among savages. It was
the Mission that first brought any kind of civil government
and here, as in Tahiti, the first civil code — in other words,
the first ordering of decent life — was created at the instiga
tion of the Mission. For many years the Mission represented
the main, if not the only, public institution. It was
natural that the missionaries of those days should choose
sites opposite to the best harbours ; there was no one else
to consider, and it was to the advantage of every one that
they should do so. In many cases they showed the natives
how to make jetties and how to improve the landing.
They were the pioneers and all those who followed are in
their debt. Further, the lands which were given to them
have always been regarded by themselves and by the
natives as a very definite trust for the native community,
and it would be quite impossible for the Mission to
alienate any of these without securing native consent,
nor could the Mission think of making them a source of
profit.

COOK ISLANDS 31
The church of Oneroa is old and beautiful. The rafters
are almost black, fastened with brown sinnet (i. e. plaited
coco-nut fibre) wound in beautiful patterns. Oh ! if they
would only keep all churches so, instead of importing
galvanized iron and modern European fashions ! May the
hurricane be long delayed that compels them to rebuild !

CHAPTER III
RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE
Rarotonga is the largest and the central island of the
Cook Group. Speaking broadly, it is made up of mountains
with a narrow edge of good land all the way round, but the
shape of the mountains is spiky and unattractive. The
circuit is about twenty miles ; good road all the way.
John Williams's teachers met with a brutal welcome when
they landed in 1823. In the end Papeiha faced the risks
alone ; but for his courage no footing would have been
gained. As so often, one explanation of native hostility
was to be found in the brutal orgies of recent visitors under
a certain ill-named Captain Goodenough. Goodenough
might have been regarded as the first discoverer, but he was
so conscious of the stain upon his character that he made
no report of his visit to the island. Sailing into the open
bay of Avarua, where is the European settlement, we saw
on the right the cove in which John Williams is said to have
built the Messenger of Peace. It was a marvellous piece of
work, for he used no nails, had, indeed, no iron at all
but an old chain cable left by a previous ship, and knew
no more of technical ship-building than could be gained
by a careful study of the frame of a ship during the long
voyage to the South Seas. At the anchorage there is a jetty,
a Customs House, a Post Office, and you feel yourself in
the midst of an ordinary European settlement on a small
scale. The old, low native houses of pre-European days,
which to judge from descriptions were just ' humpies ',

* RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 33
mere roofs resting on the ground or on low walls, have
long given way to white-washed walls of coral and cement,
broad verandahs, and galvanized iron roofs. One would
suspect that they are a little too solid and impervious for
health in a climate which makes free air of the first impor
tance. Many of the roofs of the larger buildings are painted red,
and, as these lie against the green background of foliage,
ugliness is turned to something that is almost beauty.
A little way along the road is an open plot of green grass
faintly shaded by the feathery casuarina trees. Here the
buggies of the congregation gather before the service ;
behind the green is the old church of Avarua, heavy, digni
fied, and built on the lines of a massive country church in
England. If a South Seas church must be shut in by heavy
walls in the English style, the model was a good one. It
was built by the great industrial missionary, Aaron Buzacott.
If you go five hundred yards inland, you will find his old
bungalow. I doubt whether there is a more beautiful
house in the South Seas. It is of two stories, perched up
at the foot of the mountain with the bush just behind,
shallow of verandah and with two or three tall black
Norfolk Island pines standing sentry about the compound.
On one side is a little hall for teaching, and below stand two
lines of cottages for the married students. It is as historic
as it is beautiful, for it goes back to within thirteen years
of the opening of the Mission. When we got to the house
the first day, some of the elders were sitting over the
Sphere at one end of the verandah, and grunting apprecia
tion of pictures of Zeppelins and other such-like ugly compli
cations of modern warfare !
Here we saw how the Cook Islanders thought presents
should be given. The people of the village gathered below

34 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
the garden gates and we stood on the steps. The gift might
be a cotton bedspread with an enormous butterfly of turkey-
red sewn on to it, such as delights the hearts of matrons in
the Cook Islands. It was spread out by four bearers. Then
suddenly the leading man let out a yell and cut a perfunc
tory caper, which I suspect to be relics of the war-dance
we were to meet later in Samoa. Next followed a loud
enumeration of the rank of the visitor, and then a big and
inclusive catalogue of the ' chiefs, squires, champions,
pastors, deacons, choir, pew-openers, men, women, and
children, of such and such a village ', who were the givers ;
then, turning the quilt this way and that with lingering
pride for all to approve its beauties, they bore it slowly
forward, and laid it solemnly down. They went through
the same ritual for each guest, omitting nothing — there is
time enough for ceremony and to spare in the Cook Islands
— and at last we heard a shouted catalogue of the total
gift. A speech from them and a speech from us gave us our
release. Most of the presents were of small value : perhaps the
strangest were spring onions at Mangaia and arrowroot in
basins at Aitutaki. But we should have offended the people
mortally if we had been unwilling to receive them, and the
missionaries' native household were always ready to oblige,
if there was any risk of food being wasted.
Six miles round the north-west corner of the island, the
good coast road took us to Arorangi. Close by, at the north
west point, lies a short spit of basalt columns from which
the spirits of the dead take their homeward flight across the
sea. The direction is that of Samoa, whence the Cook
Islanders believe they took their origin. Arorangi has
a monument to John Williams and also to Papeiha, the
brave pioneer of the gospel from Raiatea. The New Zealand

PRESENTS TO THE VISITORS IN MANGAIA

RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 35
Government has taken over the Mission School here, and
in our minds Arorangi will always be connected with the
singing of one special song. The schoolmaster was well
trained in teaching Maori music, and, hearing an old dirge at
a funeral, he knew at once he had stumbled across something
great. He collected the fragments and restored its music,
but says that it would be impossible to write. The bigger
boys and girls sang it to us. It was a weird, plaintive lament,
and its lawless beauty reminded me of Russian music (I
may say I am not musical), till suddenly the older boys
broke into deep chest notes that were almost gasps, the
sobs of men, choked but still musical. The whole song was
full of primitive emotion kept in stern restraint. That
dirge would make a great sensation if it could be reproduced
in Europe.
Often had we heard those same chest notes ; they are
the mark of Cook Islands singing. The men sit cross-legged
and sway forwards to jerk the sounds out, but commonly
they produce deep grunts and little music. Most tunes, too,
seem to the English ear to break off incomplete with the
grunt strangled in mid-course.
At Ngatangiia in the other direction it was colour that
held the field. All the women wore the long night-gowns
before described, some of expensive material, and their
hats were large and piled up with ostrich feathers. In one
South Sea Island, I was told, the women are so much under
the influence of St. Paul that, though they wear hats on
no other occasion during the week, on Sundays they each
take a hat from a promiscuous basket kept at the door of
the church, and, without regard to size or fit, balance it
on their heads as best they can, only to return it to the
public basket at the close of worship.
I fear that the early missionaries must take much of the
d 2

36 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
responsibility for the fashion. There were altogether too
many hatters and tailors in the first party on the Duff,
and, when the hatter was one of the first to retire, it is
a pity that the Society did not accept that indication as
providential !
The judgment of John Williams was in most cases
excellent, but in the matter of clothes he seems to have
shared the worst prejudices of his conventional time.
He wrote in his Missionary Enterprises :
' The Rarotongans improved much in every respect during our
residence among them. The females were completely transformed
in their appearance, for, although both the teachers were single men,
they had taught them to make bonnets ; but I must add, that their
taste in forming the shape did not admit of equal commendation
with their desire to raise the character and promote the comfort of
the female sex. These deficiencies, however, were supplied by Mrs.
Pitman and Mrs. Williams, who made some hundreds of bonnets and
rendered many of the natives proficient in the art.'
Or again, I shudder as I read his words about Tonga :
' The teachers' wives, all of whom were dressed in European
clothing and wore bonnets manufactured by themselves from native
materials, had attracted considerable notice ; and, at the special
request of the queen, they made her one of similar shape and material.
By uniting their efforts, the queen's bonnet was completed before
the Sabbath ; and for the first time in her life she appeared at
worship in European costume, presenting a most striking contrast
to the awkward half-dress of her countrywomen. Some few months
afterwards Mr. Turner informed me that the females had much
improved in the art of making bonnets, and had generally adopted
the practice of wearing them.'
It is fair to say two things in the matter of dress : first,
the trader has equalled, if he has not far surpassed, the
enthusiasm of the older missionaries for clothing the
natives ; in the second place, the figures of South Sea

RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 37
people, after thirty years of age, are apt to be somewhat
too bulky to commend the charm of nakedness. The light
forms of the Papuans are very different.
The people of the Cook Islands have the same origin as
the Samoans, and probably represent a half-way house in
the migration to New Zealand. They are practically
Maoris, and their language and customs are closely akin.
Their ranks of nobility were clearly marked in a sort
of feudal gradation ; but, speaking broadly, all the sharp
edges of native custom are rusting away. One or two
survivals can be understood in the light of similar practices
still operative in Samoa, but the Cook Islands are in a fair
way to be civilized, and civilization is apt to be rather drab.
The problem of population is, and ought to be, the pre
occupation of all Pacific Governments worthy the name. It
is good to know that, if a decrease is going on in the Cook
Islands, it is very small. The rate of mortality seems to have
been fearful at certain periods just before and just after the
arrival of missionaries, but, writing in 1879, Wyatt Gill
estimates the total population at less than 9,000. There
are 8,500 now, and, with education in the laws of health
and the encouragement of trade, there is no reason why
they should not survive.
The thought of a census brings to mind their curious
customs in the matter of names. A child will receive
a name suggested by any important family event taking
place about the time of its birth. As this is sometimes of
the nature of disease or calamity, the child goes through
life as a walking funeral card or an embodied monument of
plague. When we were in Rarotonga five or six young
people came to the missionaries' house for a wedding. Of
the first four names signed in the register, the missionary
told us that one meant ' Paralysis ', a second meant ' Serious

38 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Disease ', and the third meant ' Disease-so-terrible-that-one-
should-f ear-to-mention-it '. Wyatt Gill tells of a certain
' Deal-coffin ', so called to celebrate the elaborate funeral
of a relative. Compared to such instances, Sileni, a shilling,
and Galasi, a glass, are pure poetry.
The islands are well adapted for fruit-growing. Oranges
and coco-nuts were the main staple, but of recent years
pineapples have become popular with the native planters.
The paw-paw or mummy apple (two ugly names for that
eupeptic melon-fruit, which in India we call the papaya
or papita) grows like a weed among the coral, and is fed
to pigs and horses. The boom in fruit has led the natives
to value their gardens very much more than a few years
ago, and the hunger for land is likely to become more acute
in the near future.
On their homeward journey the New Zealand steamers
take quantities of fruit from the islands. Trade as yet is
somewhat loosely organized, and the fine shades of value in
money dealings are but little understood. The natives of
a small island will strike, sometimes with reason and some
times without, against the wages given for putting the
fruit on board the collecting steamer ; the Company
retaliates by omitting the island from its sailing programme
for the next two trips, and their fruit goes rotten in its
boxes. In such cases capital almost always wins. I have
said that values are little understood. In the middle of
last century a ship was wrecked, and a bag of gold ' slugs '
from the Californian diggings was cast on shore. Gold was
so new to the natives that the finder boiled the slugs to make
them eat better ! A little while before our visit a native
had strolled into a store and looked over a large show-case
of silver-plated goods, spoons, tea-pots, soup-ladles, &c. ;
he then asked the price. The shopman inquired which of

RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 39
the things he wanted to buy, and found that he wanted the
price of the whole with the case included, and as a job lot
he bought them and carried them home, case and all, to
adorn his bungalow !
Till recently all education was in the hands of the
Mission ; the pastors of each village conducted elementary
schools with varied success ; the higher schools on Aitutaki
and Rarotonga have already been mentioned. When the
New Zealand Government announced its intention of
taking education under its charge, the interest in Mission
education decreased greatly. Government took some time
to set a scheme on foot, but in 1914 two higher elemen
tary schools were established upon Rarotonga and the
Araura school in Aitutaki was taken over. No Government
could be better fitted to handle such a problem than the
New Zealand Government with its experience of the Maoris,
and it is prepared to spend money generously to secure
good teachers. The beginning made is full of promise.
Everything as yet is in English, and I doubt whether the
complete neglect of the vernacular is good policy in Raro
tonga, though it may well be the wise course in New
Zealand, where the Maoris form only a small remnant of
the population. There is no doubt that the advance of
Government education will compel the Mission to take its
theological training much more seriously, or we shall have
a community educated beyond the level of its ministry.
Everywhere we found the greatest keenness to learn
English, and, on each island where schools have not been
placed, the first request was for the setting up of a special
school. There is little doubt that the Government will
meet this need as far as possible within a few years.
Communication is poor. At one time Government
subsidized a trading vessel to ensure a regular service round

40 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
the islands. Now three or four schooners and one steamer,
or perhaps two, sail at irregular intervals, according to the
amount of cargo to be collected, their owner's sweet will,
and the weather. Under such circumstances what should
a Mission ship do when passages are entreated ? Such
a ship is plainly not intended for public traffic, nor do the
Society's subscribers raise £8,000 or £9,000 per year for
the sake of ferrying white men or brown men from island
to island. It would seem simple and right to forbid all
non-missionary passages, as long as you look at the problem
from a sufficient distance. But would you say the same
if you were there and had to give the refusal ? Whether
or no, the ship is sailing, and there may be no other ship
for months ; whether or no, one more passenger can make
little difference, and it seems pedantic selfishness to refuse
his prayer. But, on the other hand, the idea quickly grows
that the native Christians have a right to travel on the
John Williams, and there have been instances in certain
Groups where Government has made use of the Mission
to transport its officers, taking the concession almost as a
matter of right and offering no assistance towards the heavy
expense involved. Either encroachment is all the more un
desirable since on the various islands spiritual work demands
every hour of the scanty time available, and if the native
passengers go junketing with their friends or the Govern
ment official holds a court, there is, to that extent, an in
terruption of the missionaries' work. Passages cannot be
refused, but they should be limited to a bare minimum.
The natives of the Cook Islands are strong and inde
pendent in character, slow-moving, and a little suspicious.
Heaven knows they have had reason for suspicion, both in
their own treacherous history and in their dealings with
white men since. They are a little apt to play off the

JOHN, CHIEF OF MANGAIA

42 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
' Sosaiti ' against the new and mysterious Government. In
the old days, as has been said, the Society was the Govern
ment : the chiefs controlled the people and the missionary
advised the chiefs and conducted education. Church laws
as to morality and the like were often incorporated in the
civil code. When government was undertaken by New
Zealand, it was naturally difficult for the natives to under
stand the difference, or even the meaning of the separation
of Church and State. I think it was in the Cook Group
that certain islanders greeted Government officials with
the words, ' Chiefs we know and the Mission we know, but
who are ye ? ' In Mangaia we agreed with the Director
of Education to unite in holding a meeting with the natives
on the subject of their desire for a special school. At this
meeting one or two natives openly stated that they would
have hoped to secure better terms, if they had been able
to bargain with each interest separately. This tendency to
shelter behind the Mission will have to be closely watched.
Happily our relations with Government are improving all
the time, and Government is showing itself more and more
clearly the friend of the natives.
From the religious point of view it may be said that the
Cook Islands are the most difficult piece of the Society's
work in all the South Seas. At first sight it is discouraging
to compare the present state of affairs with the new life
that followed so rapidly after the abandonment of idolatry
in the time of John Williams. In the same way the mission
ary service done by Cook Islanders throughout the Pacific
from 1830 to 1900 could hardly be expected from Churches
as materialized as they are to-day. But it is clear that John
Williams's reports respecting the abandonment of idolatry
were evidence of the new birth of a few, but of no change
of heart through the community. This is proved by the

RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 43
struggles of Henry Royle and some of the subsequent
missionaries. A change so rapid must always leave much
heathenism in the background. In this case it was not the
enemy who sowed the tares among the wheat so much as
the wheat that sprang up miraculously amid primaeval
jungle. Some of that jungle, it is true, the wheat killed at
once, but with the rest it is still engaged in a deadly struggle.
There is no reason why the wheat should not conquer.
But it is worth while to understand present difficulties.
To begin with, the work has been retarded by the geographi
cal separation of the islands. Willy-nilly, Churches have
been independent and the village traditions of clannishness
have done much to create that ' independency ' which is
always unhealthy for the immature Christian communities
in the Mission field. The islanders prefer as pastor a man
from the village, both because he will probably have land
to eke out his salary and because, even within these little
Groups, they have the hostility to strangers found among
peasants the world over. When one island has two or three
Churches, these are altogether too self-contained. The
contrast with Samoa, Lifou, or even Niue, shows how
much backsliding is due to this cause alone. Matters are
not made any easier by the presence of the Roman Catholics
and the recent arrival of the Seventh Day Adventists.
Sex morality is slow of attainment in Britain, as we
have only too painful cause to remember. Can we wonder
that there are many falls among islanders who only ninety
years ago knew no standard but desire and no deterrent
but fear ? Again, the manufacture of orange beer or spirit
was introduced from Tahiti about 1850, and in some places
the looser characters of the village go into the bush and drink.
Both these evils are made more marked by the fact that the
community is almost identical with the Church. In Britain

44 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
the Church has been deserted by most of those who do not
accept her standards. In the South Seas all are linked with
the Church body, and therefore it is Church adherents,
or even members, who commit adultery or drink in secret
on Sunday afternoons. (This, by the way, is one explanation
of the ignorant cry that Mission natives are immoral.) It
is the same oneness of Church and community which ham
pers spiritual advance. Those who seek to be more truly
Christian must ever strain against the drag of the inert
majority. That majority having the tradition of a Govern
ment identified with the Church, still tend to measure
the claims of morality by the demands of a secular law, and
find it hard to conceive of a self-subsistent Church calling
for a morality higher than that of the State. In Mauke,
for instance, we found that offenders were only disciplined
by the Church after they had been convicted of immorality
by the Resident Agent. Again, if the white people, instead
of criticizing Missions, would cleanse their own community
from drink and leave native women alone, the Church
would have one great handicap the less.
In its own small way the island life is passing through
a ferment of change. The cinema is coming, and if the
pictures are demoralizing British youth, what are they
likely to do with the folk of the South Seas ? Money is
flowing, and covetousness whets its appetite by that on
which it feeds. The Theological Institution is facing
difficult weather ; for some years past no new candidates
have come from the important islands of Rarotonga and
Mangaia, and the gaps have been filled by students from the
simpler and more ignorant islands of the north. A smart
Rarotongan youngster with a little English can begin on £50
a year in a store. Why should he come to train for the
ministry and keep himself in bare necessities by the sweat

RAROTONGA AND THE ISLAND LIFE 45
of his brow, with the prospect of £30 or £40 a year at the
end of his training ? Only a stronger sense of vocation will
bring the men we need.
Something may be done to heal the Church's weak
ness by allowing a larger share of the time of the John
Williams ; Church federation on lines fitted to call out
native leadership, and the search for educated men to
enter the ministry, would make a real difference ; but what
is most needed is a spiritual Church seeking to obey the
standards of her Lord and sloughing off those who refuse
to follow. The battle is a stern one, but it is pure gain to
know the positions that must be won.
Yet if this be the most unsatisfactory work of the London
Missionary Society in the Pacific, things are not so bad after
all, and we can thank God for good work carried through. All
these Churches support themselves, and even the Training
Institution has received but small grants from the Mission ;
the people know their Bibles, and on Sunday evenings
meet in special Church rooms about the villages to discuss
the lessons of the day. At present the whole community,
open as it is to influences of evil, is also very open to influences
for good. They think of themselves as Christians, and are
<open to the appeal of Him they recognize as Lord. They
give to Foreign Missions more generously than many
districts in Britain. The educated young men, even though
they will not face the sacrifice of the ministry, are by no
means alienated from the Church. History shows that the
Church has passed through periods of hostility and indiffer
ence before. Her life is genuine, and there is no reason,
why she should not conquer the new civilization as she
conquered the heathen savagery of an older day.

CHAPTER IV
SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES
On the way to Samoa we called at Niue. It is so much
like one of the Cook Islands enlarged or a small edition of
Samoa, that I cannot afford it a chapter, but it had points
of special interest. We saw the old drum or gong for
calling the people to church, a log six or eight feet long,
hollowed like a great trough. Many of the Groups used
gongs of this type. The sound is produced by banging
a stick from side to side, and can be heard for long distances.
John Williams speaks of the Niueans as the most degraded
type he had encountered except the blacks of Australia. My
own impression was very different. Their figures were
graceful, their complexion a light Italian brown, and their
features good. I fancy they have not the same staying power
as the other Maori peoples. Some two hundred had
volunteered for war service, and at the time of our visit
the John Williams took a New Zealand doctor to examine
the recruits. He passed about 120, but they found the
French climate exceedingly trying, and have, I believe,
been sent back. It was wonderful to see this exhibition of
loyalty on the part of a tiny people. Yet I cannot but
regret that Government consented to draw young men
in the prime of life from an island where population is the
question of questions. I have the same feeling about all
recruiting from the South Seas.
The interior of the church at Alofi still illustrates the
model of many of the old churches on Niue and elsewhere.

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 47
Heavy wooden pillars, slightly converging, are topped by
cross baulks supporting smaller pillars and shorter baulks,
and so on to the roof-tree. The walls are also set with great
wooden pillars, and the space between is closed by a firm,
smooth plaster which the early missionaries made from
burnt coral and supported on a light framework of laths.
Such a building is wasteful in timber, but has a massive
and barbaric beauty. The beams were ornamented with
white cowries, which are greatly admired, as big as hens' eggs,
and a steering-wheel was erected on the back of a pew three-
quarters of the way down the church. I could not make
out whether it was symbol or ornament.
It was at Niue that we saw the natives netting flying-
fish by torchlight. Out across the bay swept the line of
canoes, each showing a flaming torch against the black
dark. It was a lovely sight to see the line of fire move
slowly up and down and the ruddy glow flung across the
waters. We were told that a man stands in each canoe
with a sort of butterfly net, and with dexterous sweeps
bags fish after fish as they dart to the light. Flying-fish
is a change from tinned food, and not unlike whiting, but
it is tasteless and very bony.
The profiles of the Samoan Islands, though striking, are
reasonable and friendly. The harbour of Pangopango on
Tutuila is an exception, for it is a ravine cleft right into the
highest chine of the island. The sides are almost sheer, and
the vegetation, finding a precarious home upon them, pays
for its hospitality by holding the soil together. Two miles
from the bar the harbour turns sharply so that the interior
seems land-locked, and just at the point of the bend, on
a spur dominating both the outlet and the bay within, is
placed the house of the Governor of the American naval
station. A ledge of rock at the cliff foot carries the wharves,

48 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
go-downs, club rooms, and offices that go to make the Naval
Depot of Fangatongo. There is a fine hospital for the sailors,
with an ice-cream store selling wonderful American drinks
and contributing its profits to a hospital for Samoans !
For three or four days we enjoyed the comfort of the
Governor's house. I sat on the verandah looking down
through palm tops hissing in the storm of the upper air,
at a channel of deep blue and sapphire ending across the
harbour in the grey-green line of reef and the red band of
shore. The Elsass lay below, a big steamer of the North
German Lloyd, fugitive from Australia in August 191 4,
and by this time, I presume, an American prize. There,
too, had taken refuge the podgy little steamer of the
German firm at Apia, the Staat-Sekretar Solf.
But on the naval station nothing was so unique as its
head. If the United States can find many men as fitted as
Governor Poyer for the handling of the problems of the
less progressive peoples, it is a pity she does not bear a larger
portion of the white man's burden. Slow in decision, but
very firm, unassuming yet plainly a man of distinction in
any circle, full of common sense and of sympathy with the
natives, he sees what needs doing and gets it done. At the
same time he is likely to avoid the danger — not altogether
absent from American administration in the past — of
pampering the Samoans by doing things for them which
they ought to do for themselves. It is to be hoped that he
has not yet been transferred ; even the United States
will not fill his place too easily.
Incidentally, a curious fact may be mentioned. When
the convention of 1900 was ratified, Congress was apparently
too fearful of the imperial name to accept the territory
allotted to America ; and consequently these islands, to
this day, are nothing more than a naval station, controlled

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 49
entirely by the U.S. Navy and acknowledged by no other
department ! Hence education and such non-naval needs
must be provided from the internal revenues of that part
of the Group where commerce and income is of the smallest.
From such a man as Governor Poyer it was heartening
to hear high praise of our missionaries at Leone. They have
acted as informal chaplains of the station, coming round by
whale-boat or along the rough coast paths on odd Saturdays
for service next day. But it was even more their general
influence on Samoan life that secured the Governor's
approval. He said that no one was doing more for the best
interests of the Group. The day when Governments were
hostile to Missions has passed away. It puts missionary
service in the proper light to know that few of those who
read this book know the names of those to whom the
Governor referred. The best modern missionary seldom
gets the public recognition he deserves. He does not
complain. Indeed, he would wish it so.
When we went to the little islands of the Manua Group,
we found what a hurricane can do. Even after what we had
seen in Aitutaki our power of surprise was to be still further
strained. A friend in England had told me on no account
to miss Manua, for there we should see the old Samoa,
quaint and picturesque. Alas ! when we got there we found
the islands scalped of all their ancient comeliness and torn
with raw, red wounds. As we drew near we saw the great,
rusty patches of bare earth on the flanks of the hills ; now
the coco-nut trunks had been snapped half-way like carrots,
and now the gale had plucked the crown away as a boy
snatches the ears of corn in his hand and leaves the stalk
standing. In the worst places a few stumps, ghastly grey,
thrust forth at all angles from the tangle of shattered timber
like the lonely bristles of a ruined brush. We were shown

50 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
a rock, a hundred and fifty feet high, over which the angry
tide had poured. We picked our way across the ruins of
a church, of which scarcely one stone was left on another.
Its massive seaward wall had fallen undivided upon its side
like one wall of a Noah's ark, and lay with the wiifdow holes
clearly marked. From Ta-u the galvanized iron roof of the
church was carried in the blast four miles across the ocean
and then dropped on the opposite island of Olosenga. The
marvellous thing is that the loss of life was so small ; for
only two or three were killed.
The quality of Governor Poyer was proved at the out
set of his term of office by this disaster. On the eve of
embarkation from California to take up his post, he re
ceived the news. In twenty-four hours he set all the
machinery of Government in motion and put a hundred
tons of food-stuffs on board the liner in which he was to sail.
On reaching Tutuila his first anxiety was to get to Manua.
Some of the islanders he removed to Tutuila, which
strangely enough had escaped any real damage, and the food
from San Francisco sustained the rest. The Governor's
vigour and decision delivered the little population.
Returning from Manua we went west and passed Leone
and Atauloma. The Leone house is low and comfortable,
peering out across the bay over a green lawn and a flat
platform of wave-beaten rock. Atauloma is raised up from
the shore and has a merry little cascade on one side. It is
one of our two girls' schools, and, while it may lack
something as a finishing institution, there are few schools
in a more beautiful situation. Outside is the wine-dark
sea ; next the waves break white upon the reef : the many-
twinkling lagoon is fringed by the yellow strand, and above
high-water mark the great coco-nut palms sway inland in
the midday breeze. On the hill is set the school, swept

THE FAIRIES AT ATAULOMA

THE TAUPOU OR MAID OF THE VILLAGE
(see p. 55)

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 51
ever by the warm salt breezes. Between it and the little
pools of the stream is a small glade, where, as we saw it,
a dozen small fairies danced in a ring. Like the stream
the school itself rippled with keenness and laughter. They
sang a song about us with much enjoyment. There were
shouts of joy when they understood a question in English.
Over it all presided a young missionary from New Zealand,
as the fit mistress of unconventional, irreverent young life-
Floreat Atauloma, long may it give learning without tears !
Would you like to see Apia on Upolu, Stevenson's Samoa,
the bay on which he looked ? Take Windermere, sweep one
side away from end to end, put in its place the reef and the
open sea, and cover all the low land of the remaining shore
with palm-trees ; then you will have a fair idea of the archi
tecture of Upolu. The harbour is not a patch on Pango-
pango ; at all times it is unsheltered, and in times of
hurricane dangerous in the extreme. The stark ribs and
the rusty shell of the German war-boat, the Adler, lie there
to-day in witness. In March 1889 there were several war
vessels in the anchorage, and when it was plain that a great
hurricane was blowing up, one, the English Calliope, got up
steam and elbowed her way out, past the cheering Americans,
into the full fury of the open sea. Pluck conquered and new
engines. Not one of the other vessels saw the end of the storm.
The Windermere picture needs some modification to
complete it : — for two or three miles along the sea-front
runs the main street of Apia, practically the only street.
It has a Customs House and wharves, hotels, and a bank,
and all the offices of Government. The most prominent
buildings are the big Roman cathedral, and the great
warehouses and hostels of ' the German firm '. The build
ings of the German firm are a reminder of how the flag
follows trade. E 2

52 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Samoans, Chinese, and black fellows from the Marshalls
are to be seen along the front. Almost all the buildings
are of wood and roofed with galvanized iron.
If you want to see Vailima, you must turn in by the
church, where John Williams's recovered bones are laid,
and go straight back through the tropical vegetation of
the shore level, and then rise, past Samoan villages, past
Papauta school, past bungalows among the trees, up and
up a stony road that gets stonier as Apia gets farther behind.
The vegetation begins to be more open, as the shoulder
of the hill is passed. Then comes Vailima. It is a large,
spacious, double-storied house, for the German Governor
had it for his residence and improved it, but the old kernel
is still to be seen, the rooms where Stevenson fought disease
and conquered depression. Now it is occupied by Colonel
Logan, at first the commander of the New Zealand Expedi
tionary Force and later the civil Governor of the four
islands taken from Germany.
The house lies on the shoulder of the hill and looks
down over the bosom of the garden in front to the distant
sea ; and to the left across the little stream (of which we
hear so much in the Letters), to the hill above, where Steven
son's body is laid. He chose his look-out well.
The Samoans themselves, as compared with the Cook
Islanders, preserve far more of their national character.
Trousers are little seen. Normally they wear the convenient
and seemly lava-lava, a cotton kilt reaching from waist to
knee ; below the knee their sturdy legs are bare. On cere
monial occasions they wear vests and cotton jackets. The
women wear the rather shapeless gowns described already,
but the girls have a trick of arranging one or two flowers in
their dark hair which shows unusual taste.
Their houses, again, are in a class apart. Nothing quite

SAMOAN HOUSES

54 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
like them is in the South Seas. The common shape is oval
and the length some fifteen yards. Round the oval, at
intervals of three or four feet, are set sturdy posts about
five feet high, on which rests a rough thatch shaped like
a long tea-cosy. The floor is strewn with clean, white
fragments of coral, rounded by the grinding waves. If one
were quite certain that no refuse was ever spilt and that
casual spitting was unknown, such a floor would be ideally
dry and healthy. Walls there are none, but under the
overhanging eaves, between each pair of posts, are tied
four or five long mats, rough and open, in such a way that
they can be strung up out of the way or let down as screens
against sun, rain, and the wind that daily whistles across
the shore. A path of white coral is strewn close round
against the wall pillars. But the real beauty of the house is
only seen from inside. Tall pillars support the roof-tree,
and there are great racks up in the roof on which the rolls
of sleeping mats are stored during the day. All the curves
of the two ends of the roof are graceful, and it is beautiful
to see how the cross rafters bend like bows from one side
over to the other. All the beams and smaller laths are
rounded, and each joint is fastened with sinnet firmly tied.
There is so much delicate and artistic work that house
building is very costly. It is worth noting that though the
more important of the Samoan pastors have European
houses, there is always a Samoan house behind, and in that
they live their daily life.
The village is not rigidly planned. The houses tend to
range in line along the main track through the village,
but the lie of the ground is always regarded, and there is
no hard regularity in the village plan. House and village
are alike beautiful and natural against the background of
bush and plantation.

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 55
For the ceremony of kava-drinking the proper scene is
the chief's house, higher than the common house, and round
instead of oval. The guests sit somewhere on the circum
ference, and opposite them their hosts, the village chief and
his party. The soft, reflected light creeps in under the deep
eaves, and falls on the lovely copper skins of the Samoans —
the men are naked to the waist for this rite — on their dark
hair and the russet of their Samoan bark-cloth. Dressed
in the same sort of garb the taupou, the maid of the village,
a sort of permanent Queen of the May, squats cross-legged
behind the kava-bowl and presides. First, the chief takes
a gnarled root of kava, and offers it as a valuable present to
the guests. The chief guest takes it and raises it to his
forehead in token of thanks and acceptance. In the old
days the Tongan, Fijian, and, I believe, Samoan girls used
to make kava by chewing up pieces of the root, and spitting
the total product into the bowl. To-day the visitor will
find no such cause to shrink. As we saw it, water is poured
over fine chips of kava-root at the bottom of the bowl,
and the taupou, with well-washed hands, takes a wisp of
hibiscus fibre, and with this squeezes and kneads the chips
in the water. Now and then she wrings out the wisp and
hands it to a boy standing outside. He shakes it free of
grit and returns it, and the maid goes on until the mixing
is complete. Every gesture is studied and effective. Like
tea-making in Japan, the etiquette of her part of the
ceremony is a subject of minute and lengthy tuition.
When the kava is made, a cup of polished coco-nut shell
is filled and the crier calls out the name and rank of the
guest in resounding cadence. All clap their hands, including
the recipient, and one of the young men, taking the cup,
with a fine underhand sweep presents it to the guest, who,
before he drinks, pours two or three drops on to the floor,

56 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
saying 'Blessing'. This is evidently a survival of pagan
custom, and I find reference to a similar custom in relation
to food. All are served in the same style one by one ; but,
if it be desired to honour the chief guests specially, the local
chiefs may arrange, when their names are called, to have
the statement of their rank suppressed in compliment to
the visitors. Such a refinement would be impossible except
to a people of genuinely fine feeling.
Kava is the root of a sort of pepper tree, and the infusion
is fragrant, with a slight touch of peppery heat. Europeans
say that it is very refreshing at the end of a hot and tiring
day. Every stage in the ceremony was dignified, every motion
was graceful; the colour was brown in shadow, brown
everywhere, blending shades of brown, varied only by green
leaves bound round the pillars or twined from the rafters.
Nowhere more clearly do the Samoans prove that they
deserve to be called the aristocrats of the South Seas.
With the kava-drinking must be taken the taalolo. Here
I am speaking with authority, for I saw taalolos many and
varied — so many that on more than one day I could have
escaped with relief long before the end. The word means
' to surge up in a crowd '. This time the ' big house ' is
not the stage, but rather the grand stand looking out over
the arena. We waited expectantly, watching the open
space in front. Often hope was long deferred, for why
should the Samoan defer to the foreigner's absurd liking for
haste ? Somewhere beyond the farthest corner a vague
chanting would be heard. In a few moments a skirmisher
or two leapt forth, only to retreat before we could make out
what they were after. When they came again, there would be
three or four of them, leaping and gesticulating, and they
would be followed by the whole group of the village, moving

ONE END OF A SAMOAN HOUSE

58 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
unmarshalled and dragging their steps as they sang. Again
and again the young braves skirmished in advance, only
to retreat once more. They yelled, they ran hither and
thither, they postured, they threatened, they threw their
long-bladed axes into the air, pirouetted on one foot and
caught them as they fell. Their performance produced
all the harmless thrills of the best war-dance. They wore
the ancient dancing attire of the Samoans, that is to say, they
were naked to the waist and shining with coco-nut oil. For
lava-lava they wore round their waists the old Samoan bark-
cloth with its lovely shades of brown ; on their wrists and
ankles were fastened tufty bands of hair or leaves, and from
their necks swung long necklaces of the glorious red date
like pips of the smaller pandanus. On their heads they wore
the tuinga, a great plume of human hair combed out
straight and bleached with lime to a light chestnut. In
front of this plume was erected a small scaffolding of rods,
narrow at the forehead and broadening as it rose. This was
set with bright shells or mirrors to catch the eye. For the
most part the champions carried the long-handled, long-
bladed, beheading axes of olden days. I got the chance of
examining one closely and found that, like myself, it came
from Sheffield ! The champions are the sons or fighting
retainers of the chiefs, and some of those who came to honour
us were no longer young. With the champions there often
came one who played the clown and burlesqued their
actions for the amusement of the crowd.
At the same time as the leaders, but occupying a part of the
arena to herself, came ' the maid of the village '. She too
carried the tuinga, she too had an axe, and except that she
wore a cloth round breast and back, she was dressed like
the champions. In addition to the running and waving
of the axe she did some of that unbeautiful South Sea

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 59
dancing in which the girl with feet together and knees
slightly apart swings her petticoats from side to side.
The maid of the village is chosen by the chief to be his
representative on state occasions. She is carefully trained
in etiquette, and is supposed to maintain a special purity.
Her presence in the taalolo probably represented the fact
that in the old days she would have gone with the men to
urge them on to bravery in the fight. Some of those we saw
were graceful; some on the lowest estimate were portly;
but all were enthusiastic.
In the background dragged the chorus. The men
showed bare brown breasts and arms of burnished copper,
and, where European fashion had not introduced the
trader's calicoes, all wore the lava-lava or kilt of bark-cloth.
Many had brown and red necklaces. As they came close, the
impression of colour was almost overpowering in its perfect
blending. Kava-drinking had been the repose of browns
in shadow, but the taalolo was the riot of browns in the
sunlight. Then, as they got close, and one's expectations
were at their fullest, the whole thing suddenly petered out.
The champions and the taupou came forward glistening
with oil and sweat — it is no small exertion to be chief
performer in a taalolo — shook hands and turned aside to
recover breath. The others came forward, each bringing
a small gift, a coco-nut or perhaps a chicken, until a heap of
presents lay before the party. In many cases they took
off the bark-cloth which they wore as an outer garment,
and laid that too before us. Then, if there were other
villages to greet us, the parties retired to the sides of the
ground, one after another, and sat down to watch the fun.
In one or two cases we had seven or eight villages performing
in a long succession, for the dignity of a village would often
make it impossible to combine with others.

60 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Then came the turn of the ' talking man '. The tulajale
or ' talking man ' in Samoa, as in other countries, is a great
institution. The ordinary Samoan fono or council used
to be held around some open space, the chiefs and their
parties sitting in the grateful shade. When the turn fell
to any chief, his own particular ' talking man ' would stand
in front to speak on his behalf. The insignia of the tulajale
were the long simple ancestral staff and the short-handled
fly-whisk that recalled his first duty of personal attendance
on the chief. He spoke slowly and deliberately, and was an
adept at playing for time. When the chief had made up
his mind, a few words whispered in the background would
be expanded by the ' talking man ' into weighty periods.
It seems pretty clear that, as in other countries — Britain,
for instance, or Japan — the man of eloquence gradually
gained the power to guide policy as well as to express it.
When the Germans finally obtained Savaii and Upolu,
they thought it necessary to banish Lauaki, a great tulajale
of Savaii, with some scores of his followers.
As a rule in these ceremonial taalolos one ' talking man ' did
the speaking for several villages, but good manners compelled
the others to dispute his right. From each village there
would rise a tulajale, leaning upon his staff with the fly-whisk
carelessly balanced over his shoulder, and would assert his
claim to speak the general welcome. Then, when all had
spoken, one and another would again rise, and with an air
of vast concession waive their rights in deference to the
man on whom they had already fixed.
But on one occasion the programme did not work so well.
Degrees of precedence are elaborately thought out, and
the premier village of the Itu-o-Tane had been wiped out by
the flow of lava from a volcano in the hills behind. The
people of this village had retired to a scanty location on

A SAMOAN ' TALKING MAN '

62 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Upolu opposite. Just about the time of our visit they were
coming back. At Matautu their ' talking man ' claimed
the right to be the chief speaker on behalf of all the
villages, but this was stiffly contested by the tulajale of
a second village, who maintained that the first village
had lost its rights by retiring from its ancient lands. While
we waited for things to settle themselves in the ordinary way,
the difference of opinion became more and more emphatic.
It was plainly a matter of great moment, and while both
parties were anxious enough to be polite to us, they both
realized that to make concessions at this time would form
a dangerous precedent when it became necessary to settle
between their claims in a more formal way. One of the
speakers was thin and keen as a dried-up Chancery lawyer.
He was plainly going to concede nothing. It was he who
invoked the verdict of the Almighty in a way that seemed
to me peculiarly crushing. He said to the dispossessed party
that he greatly sympathized with them, but that since God
had flattened out their village with the lava, there was
plainly nothing more to say. The spokesman from the other
side suffered from elephantiasis, a disease altogether too
common in Samoa. His legs and feet were very large, and
his appearance seemed almost to be the external illustration
of a man who has put his foot down and will not take it
up again. After the conflict had waged for an hour, we
retired from the verandah in furtive detachments to get
some lunch. That finished, we found the ' talking men '
departed. The problem had proved too difficult for solu
tion, and they had left one of the pastors to do the speaking
for them.
The Samoans are great orators, though they attain their
effect not by tearing a passion to pieces but by the dignity
and point of their expression. They are very fond of

SAMOA AND ITS CEREMONIES 63
historical parallels, and the visit of a guest offers the chance
of exhibiting their knowledge of the past and making the
great days of history contribute their meed of praise to the
present. When the Bible was brought in to add to the
effect, the result was full of humour. On one memorable
occasion we were told of all the great crises of Biblical
history, and as each one was laid out in full with a sonorous
peroration, the close followed like a chorus, ' But your
visit to us is an even greater day ! '
If at times the parallels became almost profane, it was
easy to remember that this was only the simplicity of the
Samoan mind
At some point towards the end of every taalolo, the master
of the ceremonies in a loud voice called out the total list
of the gifts with pride and pleasure. The Samoan, quite
rightly, thinks that, if you have ceremony at all, it should
be carried through with dignity and without self-conscious
ness. One man accompanied our party as representing
Malietoa, the chief who for two or three days before the
partition of 1900 was King of Samoa. As deputy for this
chief he was empowered to take for himself at each place
anything he chose from among the presents ; but we were
told that if he should make any kind of excessive demand,
he would soon draw on himself stern rebuke.
Most of the presents were food-stuffs, which I suspect
were absorbed in the feasting and entertainment that
followed the taalolo. There were coco-nuts, yams, bananas,
chickens, and the inevitable pig trussed up on a pair of
staves for carrying. At least the young folk of the mission
aries' household had a good time with what fell to their
share. In several cases we were presented with really
valuable mats. The Samoan fine mat is a thing quite by
itself. Woven, as it is, with great care and ceremony, the

64 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
result is beautifully soft and fine, but the untutored
European would never guess how highly a mat is valued by
the Samoans. Each of the best mats was as well known
in Samoa as a picture by Velasquez or Rembrandt in Europe ;
each had its own special symbolic name, and a fine mat was
now and then the cause of actual warfare. The cult is
as justifiable as many of our collecting passions in the West,
but in this particular case the desired article has no value
outside at all comparable to that it carries in its proper home.
Beyond what has been said above as to the natural
politeness and courtesy of the Samoans, there are two
further proofs of the level to which they had attained.
They have a definite chiefs' language used on ceremonial
occasions and by no means easy to acquire, and they have,
further, a most elaborate system of ' names ', by which
must be understood very much what is nreant by our
' titles ', as applied to the nobility. In the old days certain
districts had the right of conferring particular ' names '
in virtue of which a man became chief, and, at the time
when there was civil war and the European nations were
attempting to reach a settlement on Samoan lines, the
decision involved the most intricate research into the
minutiae of Samoan custom. On any ceremonial occasion,
too, it is important to know exactly the right phrases which
should be used in reference to any particular chief.

CHAPTER V
SAMOAN PROBLEMS
At Apia we had our first experience of Fautasis, the
Samoan long-boats, built like whale-boats, but of enormous
length. They usually have two oarsmen per thwart, and
one or two that we saw had sixteen pairs of rowers. Yet even
with this length a boat may be no more than six or even five
feet broad. Such craft have every kind of disadvantage. They
are so long that in a heavy sea they are likely to break their
backs, and, as we found after a long stormy journey out to
the ship at Tuasivi, they are very unhandy alongside a ship.
It is quite impossible for the coxswain to make his voice
heard more than a third of the way up the double banks of
rowers ; meantime the middle section of the crew will follow
its own sweet will, while the other third at the bows will
be doing the bidding of the most forceful person forward.
The possibilities of disaster are obvious, and I was never
sorry to get out of a Fautasi. The boat is the outward
embodiment of that reluctance to choose a commander
from among their own number which results from the
primitive socialism of the South Seas.
So narrow a boat with a pair of rowers at each thwart
only allows of the shortest of oars, and in consequence their
stroke is a jerky little chop at the water, which is very
unpleasant for passengers.
Yet for all these evils there is a reason. The young men
get such boats that they may continue the ancient Samoan
institution of ' going on malanga '. When the gardens have

66 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
been stripped too freely of their crops or the village folk
are suffering from the Samoan for ennui, they want a holiday,
and like good socialists they enjoy it all together. The long
boat carries thirty or forty at a time, distributes the labour
among all, and looks as impressive as did its predecessor of
earlier days — the long canoe. When they have decided to
' go on malanga ', they clean up their gardens, so that
these may be bearing well by the time of their return, and
set out to visit their friends along the coast. Hospitality
is sure ; the villages chosen will put every last pig to the
slaughter, and the feast will last for days. Then the visitors
will go farther on their journey. Each entertaining village
knows that it will get compensation for the burden it is
bearing, when it chooses to set out on malanga in its
turn. The system is altogether like a cricket tour of the
Australians in England.
Indeed, some of the malangas actually were cricket
tours. A few years ago cricket was introduced into Samoa,
and taken up with unbalanced enthusiasm. One village
would go to play another, and would stay for days. The
gardens were neglected, and old tribal feuds bade fair to
revive. When teams got to 200 a side, and each 200 failed
to keep its collective temper, the German Government
stepped in and prohibited cricket matches in order to prevent
breaches of the peace. Under the American Government
cricket must be still allowed, for when we were in Tutuila
trouble arose between two villages over a cricket dispute,
which threatened to end in bloodshed !
Another amusement is the Siva or dance. Many of the
old dances are prohibited by Church law, and it will be
obvious that night dancing is undesirable among a people
specially open to sensuous appeal. The permissible kind
which we saw was a dance of some twelve men, and the

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 67
performers sat upon the ground. Led by one of the young
champions in the centre, with two others as corner men, they
waved their hands and swayed their bodies with perfect
time and precision. Once again the party formed a beautiful
harmony in different shades of brown. As they sat,
one saw upon their bare knees and thighs that tattooed
imitation of indigo cloth which looks exactly like a close-
fitting garment of beautiful blue network gripping tight
round every knee.
Church law forbids tattooing, on the ground that it is
mixed up with traditions of indecency and heathenism, but
for these young champions custom is evidently stronger
than Church law. This is probably one of the numerous
instances in which Samoan Church Councils have passed laws
which seemed to some missionaries meddling and unduly
strict. I find that William Gill in the Cook Islands years
ago disapproved of prosecutions for tattooing, since ' there
were enough sins without making any more'.
The Samoans are skilful fishermen, and there are almost
as many methods as there are species of fish. One method
we saw was curiously primitive in proportion to its effec
tiveness. Within the reef at high tide a long V-shaped
enclosure is made, with the point out to sea. The sides are
composed of nothing more than a long string of big leaves,
depending from a line at the surface of the water. The
point of the ' V ' is apparently open, and the fish, scared
along the Hne of leaves to the point of convergence, dash
through, only to find themselves in a string net.
The Samoan method of catching sharks is unique. The
apparatus is a large canoe, a rattle made of half coco-nut
shells sliding on a rod, a bait, and a big running noose of
fibre or cane. The rattle is sounded under water to attract
the sharks. When they are near, a bait is thrown overboard
f 2

68 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
on its string, and the noose is held out from the boat like
the hoop for a circus rider. When the shark comes close,
the bait is drawn slowly backwards through the noose, the
shark follows with a dash, and, as he passes through, the
crew of the big canoe spring the noose tight round him,
and draw him in to be clubbed.
A great deal of fishing is done with the ordinary fishing
spear of the Pacific, which has ten or a dozen points set
in a circle on the end of the spear haft. One tree, again,
produces a seed, of which the juice is poisonous enough to
stupefy the fish, so that they float to the surface of the water.
Of recent years contact with the West has introduced the
trick of fishing with dynamite cartridges. They are thrown
at a suitable spot in the water, just when they are about to
burst. But even a fisherman may hold the cartridge a
fraction too long, and as a penalty of such misjudgment
there are a good many handless men in Samoa.
Samoa has but a short history, and from 1830, when John
Williams landed in Savaii, it has been closely connected
with the London Missionary Society. In a native house
by the wayside near Malua I found an old man too feeble
to sit upright, who remembered John Williams well and
could recall perfectly the day when he set out for his
last voyage towards the New Hebrides and Erromanga.
It was curious to realize that 1839 was so near.
The German control of the main islands of the Group,
which dates from the Partition Treaty of 1900, was largely
due to the enterprise of a great German trading firm,
which, by energy and cleverness, was able to plant German
influence secure. The German Government seems to have
been on a level with some of our own smaller administrations;
that is to say, it was reasonably good. German views of
Sunday, it is true, did not coincide with the Puritanism

Apia Harbour.

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 69
brought by the missionaries from Britain, and, much more
important, they had an infamous law forbidding the
marriage of a European with a native. Since there was no
law against concubinage, this meant that a foreigner might
have a Samoan girl as his mistress, but, however honourable
their affection, he was forbidden to make her his wife. As
has been mentioned, the Germans banished many of the party
hostile to them. But, on the whole, the worst that could
be said was that the Germans did little for the natives in
either education or medicine.
This is specially true of education. Within the limits
of the vernacular the general missionary system of education
was a good one — till ten years ago thoroughly good and
adequate to Samoan need. From the elementary school
upwards the progress was leisurely but sure. The Samoan
pastor, who also conducts the school of his village, is a com
paratively educated man, and in general attainment the
villages would compare reasonably well with most country
districts in England.
But this system of education suffers seriously for lack' of
outside stimulus. Its incentives are small ; there is little
to do with education when you have got it. Three days
a week, under the plan described in Chapter I, the scholars
must go and fish the reef or scratch the earth for food.
On the three school days the teachers' methods are leisurely
and not very intelligent. The Samoan atmosphere is
restricted and the style of teaching conservative. The
result is that children reach the age of fifteen, or even
seventeen, before they leave the elementary school. Then,
it is true, the boys may go to a Faamasani or District School,
and, doing well there, may go on to our fine High School
at Leulumoenga, where they are taught English, boat
building, and carpentry. If they are to be preacher-teachers,

70 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
they go on to Malua with their wives — for by this time
they are married — and men and wives receive four or five
years of splendid training. But the leeway lost in the
elementary schools is never entirely made up, and it is just
here that Government pressure ought to have accomplished
so much.
This general neglect was brought into sharpest relief
by the Government attitude to the teaching of German.
Beyond certain prizes for German in two or three of our
schools, a school for teaching German in Apia, and a veto
on the teaching of English to any but pupils from the
Ellice and Tokelau Groups, the old Government did
nothing. An official lead might have been really produc
tive ; at least without it nothing much could be expected.
For there is the sharpest contrast between the rather
aggressive stripling in India who, at all costs, will practise
his English upon you, and the shy young Samoan who will
not use what he really knows for fear of being thought a fool.
One Samoan friend, a man of refinement and ability,
came home twenty years ago to take teacher training
in England. He did well and speaks English beautifully,
but now, I fear, he does not read English books or seek to
extend his knowledge. The same is true of almost all
Samoans ; they are not ambitious to learn a foreign tongue.
They would be glad enough to have it mastered and at
hand, but the slow patience that leads to mastery is beyond
them. It is just here that Government should come in.
Since Government was doing nothing and the Mission
confined itself to the vernacular, there arose about seven
years ago a strong agitation for the teaching of German,
and popular clamour forced the missionaries against their
will to attempt the establishment of special schools conse
crated almost entirely to the German tongue. Some of

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 71
the wiser Samoans were doubtful about the innovation.
In many cases the boys and girls of the ordinary Samoan
schools actually board with the pastor who teaches them,
and the new policy removed the boys from his influence.
The missionaries, again, objected to have the boys lifted
out of the vernacular system, for they found that the pupils
of the new schools concentrated on German to the exclusion
of all else. The Samoan pastors reported that these looked
down on their fellows in the vernacular schools, though
essentially they were not so well educated, and that in the
villages their self-importance was such that they were neither
to hold nor bind.
But under the strong pressure of public desire the
Society was asked to find German teachers for two schools.
After infinite difficulty it proved possible to find only one,
and in view of the speedy change of government this has
proved fortunate. That type of school will not be continued,
and a second German teacher would have been of little use
now ! But, German having been swept away, we have
still to deal with this unhealthy interpolation of special
language schools. The remedy is to teach English right
up the system, beginning with the more advanced children
in the school of each village. The way to produce more
men who are really at home in English is to leaven the mass
and help the best to come to the top. Of course we shall
need teachers of English in the villages. To secure them the
Training Institution at Malua ought to teach English
vigorously for the next ten years. By that time the influ
ence will have spread to the village schools, and, starting
the children well, we should find a higher attainment
at every higher stage. Perhaps at first the teaching of
English will not rise to the standard of language attained
in a school wholly consecrated to German ; but a widely

72 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
diffused training in elementary English will give subsequent
training a firmer foundation than is possible to isolated
schools out of relation to the general plan. It should also
help to increase the ambition to learn.
Some one may well ask why it is needful to teach English
rather than the vernacular. The question is a good one.
In our Indian High Schools, for instance, I am strongly
opposed to the undue dominance of English. The unreality
of many educated Indians and their power of ignoring
concrete facts is fostered by teaching them too early in
a foreign language. The terms they deal with are tokens,
with no relation to life as they know it. I am also a conserva
tive in matters of language, like most classical people, and
hate to see a language destroyed. But an opinion valid
in India with her great treasure-house of ancient, indigenous
literature must be recast from top to bottom when you
come to deal with a population of less than 50,000, who
had no literature at all in 1830. Indeed, writing was
unknown till Europeans came, and here, as generally
through the Pacific, it was the missionaries who reduced
the language to writing. The Samoan Bible is a beautiful
translation, but it was done by Europeans. Europeans
again have provided a mass of general and educational
material in Samoan, which is relatively large. Yet actually
it is small enough, and, as it is confined to the mere necessi
ties of a simple education, with strong emphasis on religion,
it can give little guarantee of all-round mental stimulus.
If India needs English to open up communications with the
modern world, how much more must the Samoans be
trained in some Western language ? English is all around
them ; English is the easiest language for them to learn
(I am told that the German traders used to give orders to
their servants in pigeon-English !) ; their new temptations

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 73
come to them in English ; it is, therefore, in English that
they must learn to be strong men playing their part in
the commonwealth of nations. The same conclusion
applies to all the islands of the Pacific under the rule of
English-speaking powers, and we shall see that it has great
force even for the simple tribes of Papua.
If the Germans should return to govern Samoa, the
position in regard to language will not be nearly so simple:
German is not an easy language for South Sea lips, used
as they are to soft speech and many vowels. The grammar
that was too much for Mark Twain is an almost insuperable
barrier to the Samoan. The German verb fights tenaciously
against the Central Powers. But the worst disadvantage
is that the neighbouring groups, Tonga, Fiji, Rarotonga,
and the islands of the north-west, are all learning to speak
English, and the stimulus to English must be as strong as
that towards German is weak. It will be a misfortune
if Samoa is again shut up to the German language, for
language will largely determine the degree of enlighten
ment likely to be reached by the Samoan mind, and en
lightenment may well be the condition of the survival of
the race.
The final disadvantage of English would be removed
if we had phonetic spelling. In all else English is well
adapted for a world language ; its spelling seems designed,
like the characters in Chinese, to limit and fetter its expan
sion. We laugh about the vagaries of spelling in this country,
though it is difficult to overestimate the needless labour
involved for our children. But when we attempt to teach
foreigners to read, we get some understanding of the terrible
handicap they have to face. When there is no single law
as to English spelling on which the learner can depend,
the wonder is that all foreigners do not give up in despair.

74 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
What we need is first an enactment through all our foreign
possessions that English may be written in either the
conventional or phonetic spelling at the wish of the writer,
and second, a large selection of English standard books
printed phonetically throughout. This would mean a
great assistance to the speaking of English — I can never
learn a language without using my eyes in conjunction with
my ears — and though the transition to ordinary spelling
would be difficult for the student who had exhausted the
phonetic supply, the total training would be far easier than
the weary, profitless, and uncharted jungle through which
he must now force his path.
But, much as I believe in English, I hope that room will
be found for the vernacular. For that reason it seems
wise that education should remain for the present in the
hands of the Mission. To cut away the vernacular is to
cut away touch with concrete things, and so to run the
risk of making the work of the school a mere cramming
of conventional symbols. The New Zealand schools in the
Cook Islands are splendid, but it has yet to be seen whether
the neglect of the vernacular will not revenge itself upon
the system. Education carried on entirely in English must
ignore much of the natural life of the people and translate
the children into a world where all national characteristics
disappear in a cosmopolitan culture. Fancy Samoans
dominated by a cosmopolitan culture ! Unfortunately,
among the various types of European teacher it is few but
missionaries who take the vernacular very seriously. Im
ported educationists are expected by Government to get
to work without delay, and, as in the case of other officers,
Government leaves, as a rule, far too little time for learning
the vernacular. It is the line of least resistance to work in
English, and by the most natural process the Government

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 75
school becomes as limited as its head teacher or palters with
the vernacular because the head master is incompetent to
supervise its teaching. Missionary Societies, whatever their
sins, do insist that the missionary shall learn the language,
and the missionary has, therefore, one of the essential
qualifications for building up education on a wise combina
tion of English and the vernacular.
Again, missionary education allows of that strong religious
influence which is generally regarded as needful among
natives for the building up of strong and true characters. In
Samoa and throughout the South Seas, the pastor, the most
influential man next to the chief, has the children under his
care. The combination of the two offices saves him from
eating the lotus for three days a week, and, as he commonly
has the children to live in his house, it means that moral
education outside school goes hand in hand with what the
school itself can give. This system cannot last for ever, but
it is excellently suited to the present development of the
people, and, if Government would subsidize a good system
of inspection, it might be improved to a level of general
efficiency which a Government education would be unlikely
to reach for long years.1
Higher education for girls is carried on at Papauta and
the daughter school of Atauloma on Tutuila. I have
already described Atauloma. Papauta, the older school,
lies three miles above the pier, half-way up the stony hill
road to Vailima, of which Stevenson writes so often. When
we were there the girls had decorated the schoolroom with
flowers in tasteful profusion. The central pillar was covered
with a thick embroidery of white and purple blossom bedded
among a background of leaves. The girls also did some
1 As this goes to press I learn that the Government has decided
to give a subsidy which will provide what is needed.

76 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
splendid marching to music. The school's record is a fine
one. I admit I thought some of the pupils rather old girls,
a little too old and heavy to be properly receptive. But,
even if there be something in this criticism, the fact remains
that, like the girls of Atauloma, they are turned out at an
intellectual level which seems often to compare a little
invidiously with the attainments of the village pastor. If
they become pastors' wives, well and good ; many do ; but
the unmarried girl who goes back home from either of these
schools and should be of great value as an assistant teacher
in the village, is usually at a discount. The pastor is apt
to be suspicious of this pert young thing with her dangerous
superiority in English, and he invokes the stubborn power
of Samoan custom to freeze her out. In this, as in a good
many other instances, it is to be hoped that Samoan custom
may be undermined.
The Church is of immense importance to the little
community. The Churches connected with the London
Missionary Society are the most numerous, for about
three-fifths of the population are connected with the body
which sent John Williams. Unfortunately, an agreement
as to division of spheres, which he proposed to Turner of
Tonga, the Wesleyan, and reckoned to be binding, seems
never to have been approved on Turner's side, and the
Wesleyans came in about the same time as our first resident
missionaries. Later, the Wesleyans withdrew for the sake
of comity ; but the Methodists of Australasia, when they
took over the responsibility from the parent body, sent their
own missionaries once more. The breach has never been
healed, though the European missionaries of the two
Societies are thoroughly friendly. The sectarian divisions
of the West become more bitter in the hands of the natives
and are apt to follow the lines of tribal cleavage. The

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 77
Methodists have about a fifth of the population, and the
Roman Catholics the remaining fifth. Mormon missionaries
have come to Samoa and seem to be working more or less
on industrial lines.
We received a great welcome at every place. As was
remarked by a high official, one of the best qualified of
observers, ' The history of Samoa is the history of the London
Missionary Society '. As a Deputation from the Society we
were welcomed by the people with all the generous appre
ciation they wished to show to the Churches of Britain.
These Churches had given government, morality, education,
the Gospel of Christ — in a word, life itself — and the Samoans
might well be grateful. Therefore, much as we were bored
by the taalolos, we never forgot the high honour and the
unbounded gratitude which they expressed.
But, on thinking things over, I imagine that I was really
bored, not because of the monotony — that in a good cause
I could have endured — but because the welcome was from
the Samoan village and not from the Church. The village
received us as if we had been kings, with outward pomp and
public ceremony, and after the taalolo many were too pre
occupied to stay for a service or too anxious to get home.
Yet it was the Church we had come to meet.
There you have in a nutshell the great handicap to work
in Samoa. It arises from success. We are the unofficial
equivalent of an Established Church, and suffer many of the
disadvantages of establishment. The folk who welcomed us
were possessed by the general idea that Missions had done
much for Samoa. They drew no fine distinctions, however,
between a spiritual Gospel and the planting of civilization
in the broadest sense of the term. Their own religious
experience was rudimentary, and probably amounted to
little more than that it was a good thing to have a Church

78 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
and that its coming was due to the friends from Britain.
There were others with a better understanding of the main
purpose of the Society and of the kind of thanks it would
value, but it was characteristic of Samoa that the choice
of the form of welcome they would give to the Society's
representatives was plainly decided by the ordinary leaders
in the secular life of each village.
In the same way, the selection of the pastors of the villages
used to be mainly in the hands of the chiefs, and, though
there has been much improvement, rank has still more
influence than is desirable in the Christian Church. The
principles of the kings of the Gentiles still hold in Samoa
as in other Christian countries. We were present at a Me
(a May Meeting ; the very word has been taken over by
the Samoans), and saw it through. Village by village came
and sat on the ground, but in each case the maid of the
village had a chair, and in all their finery these rose among
the rest like human islands in the midst of a sea of bronze
faces. Queens of the May are well enough in their place,
but their place is not in a gathering of the Church.
Again, just as the church building is the architectural
centre of every village, so it is the centre of the social life.
It is all very like the Middle Ages or the church of the old
Scottish parish in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
For this reason the village nose is out of joint if the next
village has a more pretentious church. This means com
missions for traders, and sometimes for Sydney architects,
who build heavy fabrics with small windows and bad stained
glass, where all should be light and airy.
Any one who reads the meaning of these signs will under
stand that in Samoa formalism may easily supplant the
freedom of the spirit. Faa-Samoa, the custom or etiquette
of Samoa, restricts Samoan life at many points, and even in

ELDERLY CHAMPIONS AT A TAALOLO

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 79
the Church the law plays an important part. Some of our
friends in gloomy moments think that it plays a greater part
than the Gospel. In many cases against the advice of the
missionaries, the Churches have passed numbers of Church
laws, and some of these verge on legalism and tend to the
manufacture of minor sins. It is so much simpler to base
religion on the list of things which we must not do than to
keep on aspiring towards the weightier matters of the law.
Sex morality is low. The temptations are very strong.
The restraints, and, above all, the counter attractions,
are very weak. The system of boarding boys and girls
in the pastors' house represents the verdict of Samoans on
the level of parental control in the ordinary family. Again,
illegitimacy is no blight upon a child's future, and from
one point of view that is good and merciful. The baby
belongs more or less promiscuously to the family as a whole,
and there is so much love for children that the Samoan
family welcomes them on any terms. But it is a more
serious matter that illegitimacy involves hardly any stigma
upon the father and mother. Then, again, a girl's parents
are often reluctant to give their daughters in marriage
until the young fellow has reached either rank or seniority.
The result is that, when a young man has not these qualifica
tions, he runs off into the bush with the girl he cares for,
in the hope that this will compel the parents to consent
to the marriage. If the parents are obdurate, the connexion
is frequently broken off again. No great blame seems to
attach to any of the parties concerned. In such ways the
missionary is often disappointed to find that the boys and
girls of finest promise have lost their purity. Again, it is
too often with the white men from Christian countries that
the girls go wrong. In such cases where lies the blame ?
But when all these things are added and weighed, they

80 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
can be paralleled over and over again throughout our
Christianity of the West. If no Churches throw stones
but those without sin, Samoan Christianity will have few
bruises. It is important to recognize these failures, that
we may know what weak places must be strengthened.
The missionary cannot be content with official religion
or with popular and unthinking assent to truths that com
mand no living obedience. But, making all discounts, in
mediaeval England it was a great thing that primitive
communities should be under the kindly sway of the Church.
Many of the people were not ready for anything more
spiritual, and, if they had not had an imperfect religion,
they would have had nothing. The Samoan Churches may
tend to flaunt the power and glory of their respective
villages, but they are well attended on Sundays, daily
prayers are said in many of the homes, and, if Church laws
are too numerous, at least a high standard of morality is
set before the people, and very generally attained. Indeed,
there would be less criticism from unsympathetic whites,
if the standard were not so high.
The organization is good from top to bottom. Every
month there are Local Councils of the pastors, District
Councils every quarter, and the great Fono, or Assembly,
once a year. On all these bodies the European missionaries
are in a tiny minority, and, even if by force of Western
pushfulness they were to carry their point against the real
feeling of the Council, the Samoans could always resort
to various effective forms of passive resistance. About
eight years ago the late J. E. Newell, in this, as in other
matters, a true statesman, led the District Committee to
establish the Au Toeaina, or Council of Old Men, in other
words the Presbytery. As in other Presbyteries, merit
may make up for the lack of age, and a young man has

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 81
a chance of usefulness. It has proved more than a success,
and the responsibility for the best interests of the Samoan
Church has been for some time in its hands.
Malua, the Training Institution, is worthy of -the rest
of the Mission. There a hundred young men and their
wives may be under preparation for the ministry at one time,
and the only cost to the Society is the salaries of two
missionary teachers and a trifling grant towards maintenance.
The students raise their own food from the plantations in
the bush. A good man, when he goes forth to the pastorate,
is sure of generous support and great influence. Unfor
tunately, the number of students is too great for the need,
even if the requirements of our distant Mission in Papua
be taken into account. The overplus become stickit minis
ters in their villages, sometimes a help and sometimes
a hindrance to the regular pastor. As in Wales a few years
ago, the reason for this overcrowding lies in the fact that
the ministry is practically the only career open to a man of
ambition, and, as in Wales, the remedy will be found by
improving the purely secular education and by the growth
of a commercial demand for men. The Committee is con
sidering the problem of limitation. In any case it is on
Malua that the future of the Samoan Church must depend.
Being a true Church, the Church of Samoa has shown its
gratitude for the Gospel by contributing generously to
Foreign Missions. For some time past the contributions
have rarely fallen below £3,000, and in 191 1 they reached
£5,000. As £5,000 covers the total annual cost to the
Society of all the missionaries in Samoa and all grants,
together with the expense of the John Williams in Samoan
waters, this meant that the London Missionary Society
received an exact equivalent for its outlay.
But it was not understood as an equivalent, and from 191 1

82 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
a decrease set in. The natives asked whether so large a gift
should go to what seemed a foreign object, and began
to think of keeping more for their own Church needs.
During our visit we were able to put the matter in another
light. We began with the proposition that they still needed
white missionaries. They were unanimous in agreeing that
this was true. ' But, if that was the case,' we went on,
' the white missionary should not be regarded as the servant
of a foreign Society but as a member of theii own domestic
establishment. He no longer came to tell a new Gospel or
to establish a Church, but to be their pastor and guide.
They were able to pay, for they possessed reasonable wealth,
and could, for instance, build expensive churches ; and
before they were generous, it was their duty to be just.'
The conclusion was that they ought to repay to the Society
the total annual cost of its work in the group.
The position is interesting to all concerned with the
future relation of Missionary Boards at home to the native
Church. In some areas the missionary has been withdrawn
far too early. It is folly to leave natives, not many removes
from savagery, to control themselves without help and
without advice. It is even greater folly to leave them alone
in face of the increasing power of complicated Western
influences. Many a native Church might by this time be
swimming unaided and self-subsistent in the calm waters
of native simplicity, which yet finds it impossible to battle
with the tide-race of incoming civilization. If, then, the
natives need European guides and teachers for their
training, let them maintain a close connexion with the
West, but let them pay for the help they receive, and thus
release support for their more needy fellows. This system
of daughter Churches living in the mother's house, and
paying for their keep until they are strong enough to make

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 83
an independent home, may well become the standard for
other fields.
In connexion with this suggestion we had felt that, if
the Samoans raised the money for the expenses of the
Mission, they should enjoy some share in its control. We
put the scheme to them, therefore, in two portions : one,
that of self-support ; the second, that of a gradually
increasing voice in the councils of the Mission. (It will be
remembered that they have already complete authority
in their own Church order.) The idea of self-support
within five years they accepted with a perfect loyalty, only
modified by a natural self-distrust : the control of the
Mission they refused to look at on any terms. ' Fourteen
years hence,' they wrote, ' at the Centenary of the Mission,
it would be quite early enough to consider such questions.
They trusted the English missionaries, and it was their
pleasure to leave control in English hands.' This decision,
even if it was in part due to a distaste for raising any of their
own comrades from the common ruck to a special authority,
is an interesting proof of that mutual trust between the
missionary and the Samoan which showed itself in so many
other ways.
The probability is that a contribution will still be given
to foreign work, though, of course, much smaller than of
old, and by the end of five years the Samoans will have
relieved the Society of all cost of maintaining the Mission
down to the last shilling. It is a great achievement within
ninety years from the coming of the Gospel.
It is a proof of the energy of the Church that they have
not neglected the Chinese within their gates. Of recent
years they have brought over a Chinese pastor from South
China to work among the coolies on the plantations. They
have given a large sum for his support, and have been
g 2

84 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
rewarded by several baptisms. So the Church becomes
one throughout all the world.
Those who disapprove Christianity anywhere will not
credit its reality in Samoa. To such I make no appeal.
But if any be sympathetic but still unconvinced, let him
go to Papua and see the Samoan missionaries working for
Christ in that treacherous climate, 2,500 miles from their
home, among savage people who seem to them as alien as
to the Englishman. Many Groups in the South Seas have
played a noble part through the men they have sent to
Papua, but it is safe to say that for genuine religion the
Samoans have come first upon the list. The Papuan Mission
could never have been what it is to-day if Christianity in
Samoa had not been the real thing.
One more thought came to me as I toured the Pacific.
Greek influence is over all the world, and it is specially
fitting that the Greeks, themselves so largely a people of
islands, should help to enlighten the distant islands of
that sunny sea. In what then has Greece left her mark
on these simple and lonely peoples ? There were two
Greek words which in the different languages I heard over
and over again with slight changes of intonation. They
were not the words of the philosopher or the scientist.
They were not in the vocabulary of artist or poet. None of
these had the fame to reach so far. Athenian statesmen,
it is true, used one of these two words, but used it in a very
different sense. The Greek words that reached Tahiti,
and spread from there through the Pacific, and even to
the swamps of the Fly River, came from the lips of proselytes
and slaves, for one of the two was Ekalesia, iKK\r)<ria, the
Church, and Satauro, o-ravpos, the Cross, was the other.
The Church that was despised of old, and is unworthy still,
the Cross that was to the Gentiles foolishness, have spread

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 85
their sway over the world's peoples, because between them
they carry that Gospel of God which was unto salvation
in the Roman Empire and is unto salvation in the Pacific
to-day. It remains only to add that the Samoans are socialists.
Socialism is found all over the Pacific, though it is most
decadent where the ideas and the wealth of the West have
freest course. It is even compatible with a certain measure
of aristocracy, and Samoa is a good illustration of a group
where the chiefs still count for much, and at the same time
primitive communism is peculiarly strong. Socialism has
many advantages. The daily needs of all are met, and there
are no starving poor or depressed classes. Hospitality is
always shown. Till quite recently the Samoan missionary
in Papua could send his boy home to the family in Samoa
with the assurance that he would be provided for. To
a marked degree the village life is beautiful in its simplicity
and fellowship.
But, having some leanings to socialism, I was surprised
to find how curiously the theoretic criticisms made by its
opponents in England are illustrated and justified by the
results in Samoa.
For, first, it does tend to discourage ability. One of
the reasons why the Samoans refused to share authority in
the Mission was because they thought the proposal would
involve the grant of special power to a few of their number.
The pace is that of the slowest ; the vision waits for the most
stupid before it can be translated into action. Nothing
is done by a majority vote : all must agree. If possible,
nothing is done alone. One of our missionaries in Papua
tells how his Samoan teachers asked that he would receive
them as a united deputation. After a great deal of talking
on all sorts of subjects he at last got them to the point and

86 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
found that the purpose of their coming had been unitedly
to ask him to give a dose of salts to one of their number !
Nor is the judgment of the wisest above the questioning
of the most ignorant. I was told that when a boat was
passing along the dangerous coast the youngest boy might
call out his suggestion to the steersman. Not only so,
it might quite well be obeyed, not because the steersman
believed it good, but because, if there were disaster, it
would be said that he had refused advice. This last fact
illustrates the second weakness produced by primitive
socialism — the fear of responsibility.
In the third place, the fact that all things are common
greatly handicaps initiative. A young fellow builds a boat,
and his father takes a fancy to it. Another is built, and
this time it goes to a brother. When three or four boats
have been used up in this way, without exhausting the
queue of relatives, the young fellow abandons the hope of
getting one for himself. Or he may come back from a
plantation with £20, the savings of long months of work.
It is all dissipated on or by his family in a week. Who would
work if others got all the profits ? Yet there is nothing
the Samoans need more than encouragement to work.
Communism goes hand in hand with climate to stifle
ambition. Closely connected with socialism is the universal domina
tion of Samoan custom. Faa-Samoa, the way of Samoa,
is a phrase that recurs over and over again in any Samoan
discussion. It will easily be seen from what has preceded
that conservatism is nowhere more strongly entrenched
than in Samoa ; and, like all custom, the letter tends to
remain, while the creative spirit is forgotten. In one of
my first days I was anxious to see a Samoan house, but I
found my guide strangely hesitant ; and finally, we received

SAMOAN PROBLEMS 87
a message that the family would rather we did not visit
them. It was Samoan custom always to give a present to
any visitor. They had no present, and their faces would
have been blackened, if it had become known that I had
visited their house and received nothing, and so for that
reason the chance of seeing what I wanted was denied me.
It would be hard to find a better instance of how the letter
kills. These criticisms that I have made are important, because
upon them may turn the future existence of the Samoans.
They are only just holding their own, and their future lies
in the balance. But they are a delightful people, dignified,
simple, and attractive. They know how to keep their place
without wrangling or discontent, and the result is that
they secure a respect from all who know them, such as is
not readily given by the Westerner to the more primitive
races or even to the great peoples of the East. They are
worth any service that the West may have within its power
to give.

CHAPTER VI
SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS
The Ellice (or Lagoon) Islands lie away north-west
from Samoa some 700 miles, but we doubled the distance
in order to coal at Suva, the capital of the Fijian Group.
Fiji contains some wonderful scenery, but apart from
a lovely profile of mountains across the harbour, Suva
itself is not attractive. It has spoilt the hill-side without
developing far enough to be a worthy town. Everything
as yet is half-baked. The streets are narrow, so narrow
that an earthquake at the centre would be a real advan
tage for development, and, even where they broaden
into country roads, they are spoilt by the ugly, unhealthy-
looking little shanties of the Indian coolies. The new
office buildings are largely reinforced concrete and
strictly utilitarian in design, and small attempt has been
made to give space for the splendid vegetation which
fringes the roads in Honolulu and could be grown as
freely in Suva. The hill above is rich with tropical
foliage, amid which the red-painted iron roofs of the
European houses give a pleasant contrast of colour. Even
on the twelve-mile drive to Davui Levu there is little
beautiful scenery. The ground has been cleared for
planting, few fine trees are left, and that particular sweep
of country is insipid. But as a centre of trade and
British government in the Pacific, Suva should have
a great future.
Through its streets the Fijians stalk proudly. They are

;: •» --.~>«W»»Ofeii3ik

Sunrise at Suva.

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 89
fine-looking fellows, holding themselves like grenadiers,
and the likeness is heightened by their hair, which by
a combination of nature and training stands stiffly
upright. In feature the Fijians are coarser than the
Cook Islanders or Samoans.
Both in the early cannibal days and in recent years the
Methodists have done splendid work. We saw a fine
industrial school they conduct at Davui Levu. Fiji is
on the way to become a self-supporting, self-governing
Methodist Church, but I suspect that the self-government
will have to be judiciously stiffened with Western ability,
if the Church is to survive the gift of independence.
Of recent years in the political sphere there has been
a good deal of unrest, and Fijians are claiming recognition
and power in a way much more like India than the rest
of the Pacific.
Indeed it is likely that this is partly due to the presence
of coolies from India, which has tended to cut off the
white man from the real native to a degree unknown in
Samoa. The Indian coolie was a low-class importation,
or, being of better caste, was so treated as to destroy
any self-respect he might possess. Having created a serf
population, the Europeans would naturally attempt to
distinguish themselves sharply from it, and the discrimina
tion would include the Fijians also. In such a situation
the complaints of the more articulate Indians would tend
to produce a like discontent among the proper natives
of the soil.
The use of Indian coolies in Fiji presents all those
unpleasant features which arise when two or more
civilizations are unequally yoked by the coarse tyranny
of capital. To begin with, any one who knows India
would expect to find just that fraudulent recruiting and

90 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
intimidation of which many profess to be the victims.
Even apart from direct fraud the Indian peasant,
especially the outcaste, landless man, has not the know
ledge of the heavy cost of living needful to discount the
high wages offered in the distant paradise of the recruiter's
persuasive speech. Many labourers did not even know
that they would have to cross the sea. The lot of any
from the better classes who were led to accept indenture
was a progressive degradation. The planters in Fiji,
and even the authorities, had not the means of distin
guishing ; to them Brahman and outcaste Panchama
were alike ' coolies ' ; what mattered degrees of sensitive
ness, if the skin were brown ? And so the educated
Indian, losing every tradition of self-respect, too often went
down and down. The members of the lost legion from
the English Universities, who sleep in common lodging-
houses and cadge half-crowns, are not more pathetic.
The recruiting regulations provided that for every
hundred men recruited there should be forty women.
Plainly women in India were hard to cajole, and very
undesirable characters were often pressed in to fill up
the numbers. Then in Fiji the competition of the
hundred for the forty led to tyranny and immorality ;
what else could the system produce ? Nearly all the
crimes of violence perpetrated by Indians were caused
by quarrels over women.
Just after we were there Messrs. Andrews and Pearson
came from India to investigate the conditions of inden
tured labour. It is plain that they conducted their
unofficial inquiry with great tact, and that they received
the help of Government and of the planters of the better
type. Government has done nothing to educate Indian
children, and this is much to be regretted; but in other

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 91
matters it has shown the desire to provide such safeguards
as could be expected where there was little knowledge
of the special complications of Indian society. It is
clear, too, that many of the planters have been anxious
to treat the coolies humanely. The free Indians whose
indentures have expired are in many cases prospering on
their own plantations.
Yet the system was thoroughly unsatisfactory, and the
report is not pleasant reading for one who loves Indians.
Apart from the weaknesses already mentioned, the fact
that the coolies were recruited from different Indian
language areas made it impossible for them to maintain
any intellectual life or to become anything but a rabble.
Hindustani naturally predominated, but as it was mangled
by Tamils and Telugus, as it was picked up by the children
born into such a medley, as it was ' simplified ' by
planters and gangers, it could only be a corruption for
which the name of bastard is too good. How can a people
have a soul, if it has no language ? Nor is it possible for
Government to deal with a tongueless mob.
Obviously men should have been secured who under
stood Indian conditions and could negotiate with Indians
in their own language. But how could that be done,
when half a dozen languages were in question, each in
cluding several distinct dialects ? May we not lay it
down as a principle for all such immigration in future,
that in any territory immigrants should be received
from one language area and one only, so as to allow the
Government to provide a staff of administrators who
know their language and the conditions of their life ?
A second principle should be that the children should have
every chance of learning the language of the Government.
Happily the system in Fiji and elsewhere has roused

92 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
much hostility in India, and, shortly after Messrs. Andrews
and Pearson had made their inquiry, the Indian Govern
ment announced their intention of abolishing indenture
for service abroad.
One extraneous proof of the low life of the Indian
community is found in the failure of Mission work among
them. They were freed from the ordinary restraints
and conservatisms of caste, and it might have been
expected that they would have been more ready to listen
to the Christian message. But, though the Methodists
have had the wisdom to devote men to this special work,
they have so far had no great success. The missionaries
have suffered like the Government from the lack of a
common tongue, and, though some have been sent from
Australia to North India to learn Hindustani, this will
only help them with the more educated, and they will
still find it difficult to convey spiritual ideas in the jargon
of the majority. Indian life has deteriorated out of all
recognition, and Indian religion has largely broken down,
yet no other faith has taken its place. The degraded
language, the break-up of Indian moral sanctions, the
disregard of marriage, the sense of servitude, have all con
tributed to destroy their sensitiveness to any religious
appeal, and no one who loves India can be content that
her children should wander thus.
No one is guilty of ill will, the evil is only wrought for
want of thought, but this Fijian instance proves what
care must be exercised in the years immediately before
us to secure that the races mingle under fair conditions,
and that the demands of commerce are not satisfied at
the price of human life and self-respect. We shall have
many such problems to face before 1950 and on an in
finitely greater scale.

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 93
^ Three beautiful days took us up to Funafuti in the
Ellice Islands. Just in time we reached the entrance to
the lagoon. An hour later and the light would have been
too dim for safety. Most of these lagoons are very
imperfectly charted, and there are coral ' mushrooms '
or ' horses' heads ' which have escaped survey, such as
that which seems to have led to the loss of the Maitai
off Rarotonga in January 1917. We approached with
the lead going constantly and John Wycliffe the bo'sun
up the foremast, looking down into the depths ahead
and helping the captain to con the ship in. The tide was
falling, and as it poured out of the lagoon there was
a strong tide-rip at the entrance. The men who run
the John Williams must understand practical navigation
and that under all conditions.
On the way up from Suva we passed by the little atoll
of Nukulaelae, famous as the place where the Gospel
first reached the Group. In the whole wonderful story
of Christianity in the Pacific there is no story of greater
wonder. By 1 861 the Northern Cook Islands, as they are now
reckoned, were fully Christian. In that year certain
friends from the neighbouring island of Rakahanga had
been present on Manihiki at the ' Me ' meetings of the
Church. When all was over, they set out homeward
without misgiving across the thirty miles of sea. The
day was chosen well, the wind was fair, and they got so
close in that they saw their own houses on the beach.
Then the wind changed. As has happened in the Pacific
to so many a seafarer, they were swept through the
passage westward into the open sea. They struggled to
make their island. When that seemed hopeless, they kept
up the strain with the hope of reaching Manihiki, but

94 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
night came on and they were out of sight of both. They
battled all the night in the direction, as they thought,
of Manihiki, but when morning came no land was in view.
They sat down in their weariness and took counsel.
Their ship was a large double canoe, 48 ft. long, and
joining the two vessels was a narrow platform six feet in
breadth. There was one big mat-sail and two little sails
of calico. For food they had a quantity of coco-nuts
and four gourds of water. In the party were six men,
two women, and one child, and all the time three men
must be on duty, one to bale in each canoe and one to
steer. As the result of their council they decided to
stand to the south in the hope of making Samoa or
Rarotonga. First the wind blew from the north and
helped them : then after a week it changed to the east.
At the end of a fortnight they sighted land, but tried to
reach it in vain. They came near enough, however, to
get the squalls of rain sweeping round the island, and
spreading their sails they caught water enough to slake
their burning thirst.
Next day they saw land once more ; once more in
vain. After seventeen days they let her drift and
merely kept baling. All other effort was useless, when
they knew not where to steer. And so, till six weeks
had passed, they drifted on. Two sharks they had
caught, and one bird, but now they were reduced to
six coco-nuts.
In that sixth week they held another council ; it seemed
vain to prolong the struggle, but one volunteered to
go on baling, if some one would back him up by baling
the other canoe. A second took up the challenge, and
the rest played their part by voting the six remaining
coco-nuts to the two who could do the work ; they

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 95
would hold out somehow on the few scraps that might
be left. Thus they dragged on to the eighth Sunday.
The power of human endurance is beyond belief. During
all that time they had daily prayers morning and night,
as their Church had taught them. So much flotsam as
they were on the broad bosom of the Pacific, they did
their best each Sunday to join in the worship of the
universal Church. Elikana the deacon was their leader.
On the eighth Sunday the end was very near ; half
a coco-nut was left. The Sunday afternoon service was
done, and the evening mocked them with its peace and
beauty. Taking one last look Elikana saw a tiny blur
on the sharp line of the horizon. He was at last sure
enough to call the others, and they agreed that it was
land indeed. Their hope revived, and then, once more
to dash their courage, a squall began to blow straight
off the land. But the squall brought rain which they
drank, and then by God's mercy the wind returned to
its old quarter. They hoisted the one remaining sail
and made for land. By this time it was dark, and though
they did not know it, they were heading straight for the
reef, on which the great rollers were breaking. Even
had they known, there was nothing else they could have
done. By midnight they were in the surf, and roller
after roller dashed them forward until at last on one of
the islets of the atoll the wreck came to ground. The
child and two others perished in the breakers, and a fourth
breathed his last on the friendly beach, but the rest got
through. Even so, they might still have died. The
islet was uninhabited, and though coco-nut trees hung
their fruit above them, none had strength to climb.
But a man from the village opposite visited the islet
early next morning and saw the clothes cast up on shore.

96 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
He went to look and found a dead body, and then he
spied the rest, gave them food, and took them to the
settlement. They had reached Nukulaelae, 1,200 miles
as the crow flies from their point of departure.
Elikana the deacon was one of the five survivors. He
found that some years before one Stuart, the master of
a trading vessel from Sydney, had told the islanders of
the true God, and on his advice they had burnt their
idols. When Elikana came, they recognized that here
was a man who could tell them of Him whom they had
worshipped in ignorance. Through all the dangers of the
voyage Elikana had preserved his Rarotongan Testament
and Hymn Book, and the folk of Nukulaelae made him
divide them up into portions for distribution between the
households. After four months a ship visited the island
and Elikana went down to Samoa and told his story.
He then entered on a training course in the Samoan
Institution at Malua, and in 1865 came back with several
Samoan teachers under the guidance of A. W. Murray
to establish the work which God had so wonderfully
begun. For some Elikana's return was too late. In 1861 he
had left on Nukulaelae a community of 300 ; now less
than 100 remained. The Peruvian slavers had come in
the meantime and carried away 200 of the islanders, and
most of these were never to return. At some islands the
slavers got the natives on board by persuasion and then
sailed away. At other islands they worked under the
guise of peaceful trade. In some cases they organized
a drive and beat the island from end to end. But at
Nukulaelae and Funafuti they reached the lowest depths
of villainy. They had as their accomplice a scoundrel,
Tom Rose, who, finding the eagerness of the people, had

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 97
given them some religious teaching for his own advantage.
When the slavers came, he lured the natives to the ship
by promising that they would be taken to a place where
they would get fuller instruction in the faith. Was ever
trap set with more shameful bait ?
The treachery of Tom Rose is balanced by the humanity
and quick wit of an oil trader on Niutao, whom A. W.
Murray only identifies as M'K  . A few days before
Murray first reached Niutao, on his second tour in 1866,
' a blackbirder ' from Melbourne, with a Frenchman in
command, came to Niutao ostensibly for trade. M'K 
boarded her and found the crew generously entertaining
sixty natives. The Frenchman took him aside and offered
him a high bribe, together with a passage away from the
island, if he would entice on board another hundred.
M'K  advised him to keep up the pretence of trade,
and for that purpose to send his supercargo on shore.
The captain agreed, and the supercargo went with
M'K  . As soon as M'K  had brought him to his
own house he turned on the supercargo and told him to
write to the captain asking him to release the sixty on
board, for till their return he would be held as hostage.
Among the sixty, one man refused to obey the summons
to return, and stayed on board. The slavers secured no
more from Niutao.
I wonder whether it has been brought out with suffi
cient clearness that, once a Mission had been established,
this sort of thing became from that moment impossible.
The books of Louis Becke and Jack London tell, and tell
truly, stories of unsurpassed horror, brutalities in detail,
and atrocities in the large. But, speaking for the areas of
the London Missionary Society, it is possible to say that
from the time a Mission was established, even if none but

a
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w u
1-1 w
w"o<

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SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 99
native teachers were its permanent representatives,
slaving operations or any organized oppression were to
be thought of no more, and even smaller crimes received
a severe check. I suspect the same would be found true
of all Missions in the Pacific. In the degree to which it
is true, what an immeasurable service Missions have done !
In the case last quoted the Samoan teachers had been
placed on some of the Ellice Islands for only a little more
than twelve months ; the ' blackbirder ' carefully avoided
those islands and made its attempt on Niutao, simply be
cause Niutao had been till then unvisited by the Mission.
Incidentally, this very protection explains many of
the stories against Missions. There have been many
Tom Roses in the Pacific, and many more who would
have played his part if times had been more spacious,
or if they had not let ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would '.
Even before the blessings of settled government, Missions
left no room for Tom Rose. And so from that day to
this he and all his exploiting kind have started scandal
against them in bars and smoking-rooms. From such
lips there could be no more perfect praise.
The atoll of Funafuti, where we left the John Williams
a few pages back, has a population, apart from the Girls'
School on Funangongo, of only about 240 souls. The
lagoon is eight or ten miles across and there are about
thirty islets on the encircling reef. It is the Government
head-quarters, and the resident agent there is the repre
sentative of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate,
now a Colony. Sometimes there is a doctor ; more often
there is not. The other seven islands are just like Funa
futi, except that two or three are simply platforms of
coral and have nothing worth calling a lagoon. Unless
you climb a tree or a roof it is impossible anywhere to get
h 2

ioo PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
twenty feet above sea-level. There is only one village on
each island, and the average population of each of the eight
islands is under 400. Communication is very poor ; ships
go where there is a market, and the islands have little to
buy with and few goods to sell ; for months together only
an occasional schooner or a little ramshackle steamer disturbs
the sunlit peace of the intervening sea. Coco-nuts and
breadfruit are the main sources of vegetable food. Bananas
grow with difficulty, and a coarse taro can be cultivated in
low damp spots. Beyond fishing there is little to do.
Government has done well to set out the villages on
a new plan, even if it has sacrificed a little picturesque
disorder. The houses lie in straight rows, and, as a rule,
the lanes between them run to right and left of the
island church. The huts are square built, light, and
protected against heat and rain with the same loose mat
screens found in Samoa. These crude Venetians can be
let down or tied up at need.
Here, too, I fear that the Mission influence, to say
nothing of the storekeeper, has tended to encourage
clothes, at least for Sundays. Wherever we went, the
people were dressed up, and, when the girls showed us
one of the old dances, they tied their grass dancing skirts
outside their frocks. Poor things, they did look hot !
In church the little girls, as they sat cross-legged, very
nearly upset my solemnity by putting a large fan inside
their loose frocks from below and fanning their bodies
vigorously through the service ! But when, some little
time after service, I went unexpectedly away into the
back parts of the village, I found many people shame
facedly scrambling for something to cover their shoulders.
I fancy that Sunday clothes are quickly put away, and
that for ordinary life neither men nor women are over-

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 101
dressed ! Government officers may easily exaggerate the
extent to which clothes are worn, because they too are
always surrounded with the atmosphere of ceremony.
Have I conveyed the impression of a tiny doll's house
life in the climate of a conservatory, a life far from the
interest or protection of the great world ? Till Govern
ment came, who would have cared for these people, if
there had been no Missionary Society ? Who would
have given five minutes' thought to them, if they had
been on the road to decay ? Even now, good as Govern
ment is, could it carry the burden alone ?
Apart from some Mission these people would have
wallowed in animalism — that foulest brand of animalism
which is found where the vice of the white man mingles
with native brutishness. I have not a shadow of doubt
that the islanders, but for the Mission, would by now be
dying off. As it is, the census figures of to-day, compared
with those of A. W. Murray fifty years ago, show that
they are more than holding their own. How much poorer
the world would be if those sunny, simple people had been
left to flicker away because no one cared !
A peculiarly interesting glimpse of the work at one of
its intermediate stages is found in Mrs. Edgeworth
David's Funafuti. The book is unfortunately now out
of print, but it is full of the spirit of the islands, while
its humour alone will repay the labour of digging it out of
the shelves of a library. In 1897 Professor David of Sydney
went on a scientific expedition to discover, if possible,
certain facts as to the growth of coral and the develop
ment of a coral island, and Mrs. David went with him
and stayed for some months upon Funafuti in close
contact with the natives. She had little or no previous
knowledge of Missions, and she took her data as she

102 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
found them. The trader deplored the good old days of
heathen dancing, the weaknesses of the Samoan teacher
in charge at the time were not hid from her keen eyes, and
her Anglican training recoiled from the irreverence of the
Sacrament, as it was administered by the casual child of
nature. She criticizes freely and her criticisms are valuable,
but most of all because in view of them we can rely with
assurance on her testimony to the work of the Church.
Nor is her testimony given in doubtful tones : she has
no illusions about the good old days, is quite unmoved by
the suggestion that the general good would be served by
a return to the fine, free days of heathenism, and compre
hends with perfect sympathy the slow and painful process
by which the people climb upward into the Kingdom of
God. She writes as a final summary : ' The natives seem
to have fully grasped the moral code and the main doctrines
of Christianity as taught them by these puritan pastors,
and, what is more, they live up to their light, and the
general result is one of which the Society may be justly
proud.' Her book represents the period of the Samoan pastors.
The white missionary came up yearly, and, since the
islanders are very biddable, he was able to do much in
his short stay. Yet his visits would have been so much
wasted effort, if it had not been for the faithfulness of
the Samoan pastors. These men plainly did useful work.
The respect in which they are still held in the islands,
and the peculiar influence they exercise, is a clear proof
that according to their lights they were servants of their
Master and of the people. True, they had most of the
faults of the Samoan. Some were vain, greedy, or lazy
in a friendly, childlike way, but the majority were faithful,
and some were saints. As a body they always mounted

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 103
a step or two above their people, and they lifted the
island life. It is even possible that their pastoral work
was superior to that which they would have done among
their own people. Here in the Ellice Group the shackles
of Samoan custom were unknown or very lax, and the
Samoans seem to have given their unfettered best. Or
was it that only the best would volunteer for these barren
islands ? In any case the Ellice Islands give fine testimony
to Samoan Christianity.
It is worth noting that the system could never have
been so fruitful without the annual visitation of the
Mission ship. No commercial firm would send a steamer
to work its rounds under conditions which would allow
the missionary to give any proper supervision. A Society
like ours must have control of a vessel, if it is to shepherd
islands so isolated and so small.
Two pictures may show how the London Missionary
Society continues its care. We landed on Vaitupu, one of
the more important islands, fifty years to the day after the
first visit of A. W. Murray. One of the first objects that
we saw on the shore was a white stone beacon, put up to
commemorate the payment of a debt in the past, and to be
a warning against debt in future. The beacon was falling
into decay, and we were tempted to conjecture that to
its neglect was due the fact that a peculiarly flagrant case
of borrowing had just been discovered in the Church
finances. About a mile and a half brought us to the
farther shore. We passed a large inland lake, and then
followed a track through some of the dankest jungle I saw
among the islands. Masses of great ferns like hart's-
tongue grew in the forks of the trees. The leaves were
often seven feet long and a foot broad. No wonder the
place was infested with mosquitoes ! On the farther side,

104 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
looking out over the ocean, were the missionary's house
and the boys' Boarding School for the islands. The school
was modelled on the Samoan District School, and seemed
very efficient. But the site was unhealthy. At the time
of our visit the missionary's wife had hardly recovered
from repeated attacks of fever, which had reduced her
to a shadow. No doctor was nearer than Funafuti and
it might be months before a ship called. It was from
such a centre that Bond James, the missionary in charge,
was doing his work. Once or perhaps twice a year the John
Williams would give him a chance of visiting each island
of the Ellice Group and also the Tokelaus.
He has been called back to Rarotonga, and for the
next year or two, at least, we shall not be able to put
a missionary in the Ellice Islands, which will have to be
superintended from Samoa, as was the case in the past.
But if a missionary family is placed there again, one of the
islets of Funafuti should be chosen for their residence,
and not Vaitupu. Probably the school also should be
on the central island, if a suitable islet can be secured.
In the case of Bond James, Vaitupu was chosen because
the school was already there. Miss Jolliffe, who estab
lished the Girls' School in 1912, was able to choose
unfettered. With the consent of the Government she
was given the little islet of Funangongo on the Funafuti
reef, about three miles across the lagoon from the Govern
ment settlement. The islet is about 1,000 yards by 120.
The outer side is protected by a barrier of boulders cast
up by the ocean. Inside is smooth sand and the calm
lapping waters of the lagoon. Except for two married
men who do the heavier labour on the plantation, the
islet is wholly given up to the girls, and a better choice
could not have been made. There are no mosquitoes,

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 105
as we proved during a lovely night, though the main
settlement swarms with them. Funangongo is perhaps
the healthiest place in the Ellice Islands. A repre
sentative council of the girls has charge of the discipline ;
helped by the men, no work is too heavy for them, and
Miss Jolliffe has a sway like that of Tennyson's Princess.
The school is in all respects well adapted to the conditions
of the Group. Including Miss Jolliffe's house, the build
ings are exceedingly simple, and are constructed of local
material by the natives. There would be no great loss
on fabric if the school were to be transferred elsewhere
to-morrow. I shall never forget our visit. After a busy day of
flaming heat, we sailed across the lagoon and landed on
the sand "just opposite Miss Jolliffe's shanty, as the sun
gave its last glow. The air blew soft and cool. After
night had fallen, we dined in an open thatched hut on
the edge of the lagoon. Almost at the back of our
chairs the tiny waves rippled on the sand. Then it was
prayers with the girls. The schoolroom was a larger
shanty, open on every side. The girls sat at their desks
and sang a few English songs with life and spirit, and
then some of their own hymns in Samoan. Miss Jolliffe
was leaving next day for six months' furlough, and she
spoke to them a little message of farewell. Something
had gone wrong with the lamps, and four poor little
lanterns burned yellow and dim. As a result the scene
was wonderfully simple and concentrated. Stillness over
the lagoon thirty yards away, not a creature moving
outside on the islet, the gentle booming of the rollers
on the ocean dike some hundred yards behind, air blowing
fresh through the open walls ; and within, a Rembrandt
picture : the face of an English woman, for the most

MISS JOLLIFFE S HOUSE ON FUNANGONGO

SUVA AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS 107
part in shadow, but lighted along a profile that might
have fitted a saint of the mediaeval Church ; opposite her
the girls of an unknown group of islands for whom she
was giving her life. Her whole soul was plainly in this
meeting as in the daily gift of a noble personality, and
since she cared little for the loneliness, I, too, saw enough
that night to know that she had got all the reward she
sought and more. There was no need to pity ; whatever
might happen to her, nothing to regret ; she had entered
already into the joy of her Lord.
The isolation might be too much for another — all
temperaments are not alike — and, if so, the Mission
would have to change its plans. But in the meantime
an English lady gives herself without break or respite,
and in perfect content, that the girls of the Ellice Islands
may conquer ignorance, sloth, and sensuality, and that
they may be the mothers of Christian homes, purifying
and inspiring the little island hamlets from which they
come.

CHAPTER VII
GILBERT ISLANDS
Through the Gilbert or Kingsmill Islands we con
tinued to enjoy unusually good weather ; we saved time
all through the journey and missed nothing of what we
set out to do. It is not always so. The visitation has
sometimes to be made amid continuous gales. At
Abaiang we made the mistake of calling on the windward
side in the hope of saving time, but the sea was too much
for us. The whale-boat managed to go in, but only got
back, almost water-logged, after an hour's desperate
struggle. There was nothing for it but to sail round to
leeward and row in across the broad lagoon. This one
experience, meaning a loss of about six hours, was enough
to show us what we had escaped. When the weather
is really bad, far less work can be done in the allotted
time, and then only at the cost of danger. Sometimes
when the wind blows from the west and the reef is a mass
of breakers, the only possible course is to steam to the
lee side, land the whale-boat, have it laboriously carried
across the island by main force of numbers, and relaunch
it in the lagoon. On one occasion a storm had sprung
up while the party were on an island, and Mr. and Mrs.
Goward saw a whale-boat upset three times in the attempt
to get out. Yet in spite of the danger illustrated thus before
their eyes they embarked upon the fourth trial, and this
time the boat got through the breakers and out to the ship.
That is how the islands have to be worked in bad weather,

GILBERT ISLANDS 109
yet there is nothing external to mark out the Gowards as
of specially heroic mould.
The islands are on the Equator, and, when we landed,
the contrast of the dry heat with the freshness of the
sea-breeze was overpowering. For the first twenty-four
hours my one desire was to sleep.
It is this heat that explains the conditions of the islands
and the character of the people. The only things that
will grow in any quantity are coco-nuts and pandanus.
Of the coco-nut I shall have more to say. It is the staple
food of the islanders, though, as a rule, Europeans cannot
use it freely. The pandanus or screw-pine bears a round,
red fruit, bigger than a man's head and like a giant
raspberry, with great pips. Each of these pips is hard
at the outer end, but the inner fibres are cased with
a soft pulp, scented like the best soap, and of much the
same taste ! This can only be removed by determined
chewing, and Gilbertese jaws must open wide and have
strong muscles. I can still see a row of small boys twisting
their mouths to chew pandanus, and grinning with
every other feature because they saw I was amused.
The diet can be varied a little by drying the pandanus
pulp on mats in the sun. For the rest the people live
on fish, and I am convinced that fish lose most of their
flavour in tropical waters. The Gilbertese fish, besides
being tasteless, ar.e full of bones.
In a few sheltered spots, especially in the more fertile
northern islands, it is possible to grow the giant taro,
a sort of arum lily of which the root is eaten. But all
attempts have failed to acclimatize the fruits and vege
tables of Samoa and Fiji. The European in the Gilberts
must live mainly on tinned food, and what that means
can only be understood by those who have done it for

no PASTELS FROM (THE PACIFIC
years at a time. It is not only that the actual nourish
ment is less than that of fresh food, but that it is difficult
to take an interest in your food when you are shut up
to the inevitable tin from a storehouse shelf. The
Gilberts are not a white man's country.
The islands tend to follow one general plan. The
heavier seas come from the east, and for the most part
the main backbone of the island lies across them, curving
round westward at either end to protect the lagoon.
From the north point of the curve to the south the reef
is drawn across in a line which roughly corresponds to
the straight line of a capital D, and thus the lagoon is
enclosed from the west. The island proper consists
of one long, thin chain of close-strung, narrow islets.
Though the total length from end to end may be thirty
miles, the breadth is rarely more than half a mile. No
where does the land rise more than fifteen feet above high-
water mark, and the soil for the most part is nothing
but finely broken coral. Everything above the shore
line is covered with a thick canopy of coco-nut palms.
The islets are linked by a foot-track of fine grey sand,
and the villages are built along the lagoon every mile
or two — double chains of houses on either side of the
track. The Gilbertese house is nearly square, with a gabled
roof and spreading eaves of thatch. In the roof is a
chamber, and the main floor is a platform of logs raised
two or three feet above the ground. Behind most of the
huts is a little barn for coco-nuts, not unlike the ' Yam
house ' of the Trobriands, off the east coast of Papua.
In all these features we begin to approach Papuan
architecture. The main hut is open on every side, and
it is quite possible to see from end to end of the village ;

Council-House in the Gilberts.

GILBERT ISLANDS m
privacy is not easily attained. But otherwise the houses,
under the kindly shade of the coco-nuts, are well suited
for Gilbertese conditions. Here and there is a maniapa
or Council-house. This has an enormous gabled roof
of thatch and little else. The sides are raised about four
feet on rough stone blocks so as to admit light and air.
There is something very impressive in the simplicity and
beauty of the line. The last forty years have added
churches of heavy stone and plaster, if built by the
Samoans, and of light and open palisades topped by a
broad cool roof, if built by the missionary.
It is all very barren and monotonous, but the simple
materials compose into a real beauty. Just after sunrise
the islands are radiant with the slanting sun, and the
open shore is cool and fresh. At midday, when all the
open ground is dazzling with light and scorching to the
foot, a heavy canopy of palm foliage shades the central
line of land. Or in moonlight you may walk between
the white stones that mark the Government track, over
the dark, sharp-cut patterns which the great fronds cast
on the silver sand. In the wind, even at midday, the
lagoon is fresh, and the canoe dodges the yellow tufts of
coral just below the surface and glides over fairy grottoes
in between.
Little of the above description applies either to
Ocean Island or to Nauru. These are islands raised up
with round hump-backs well above the level of the sea.
They must once have been at or below sea-level, for there
is much coral in the phosphate quarries at the top,
and some hold that the phosphate itself is seaweed and
other organic matter deposited through the centuries in
crevices and coral pools. Their vegetation is different.
The sea-breeze blows cool, and after touring through the

112 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
low Gilberts it is a new sensation to stand a hundred
feet above sea-level and command the ocean. On both
islands life is much richer in variety because of the
large white population brought together by the Phos
phate Company. Under normal conditions the Company's
vessels visit these two islands about once a fortnight,
and there is cold storage with everything a European
needs for life. Because gardeners seek for fertilizers, these
two islands are worth more than all the gold-mines of
Papua, and commerce has transformed them to its plan.
There are rails and engines, great loading piers and cranes,
crushing and sifting machines on a huge scale, stores and
mess-rooms, and a fleet of steamers plying to and fro.
To come from Beru to Ocean Island is to sail in a day
and a half from a Pacific Eden, with its village peace and
its childish life, to a dusty modern mining or manufac
turing district with all the complications of coloured
labour thrown in.
On Ocean Island the labourers are mainly Gilbertese
with some Ellice Islanders. They are under a careful
system of indenture, and the British Government sees
that they are looked after well. The wages offered are
attractive ; by their means food supplies and various
Western treasures find their way into many village homes.
Now and then, of course, the labourers take back with
them ideas they would be better without, but that is
part of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and probably
labour recruiting is rarely worked under better conditions.
On Ocean Island some payment is made to the original
inhabitants for the use of their land, and while these
rents are absurdly small in proportion to the profits,
they probably mean as much wealth as the natives are
fit to use. On Nauru the islanders are of a different

GILBERT ISLANDS 113
speech, and the labour is done by men from China and
the Carolines. There the German Government was in
authority, and it was not interested enough to insist
that the original owners should receive anything. Nauru,
by the way, was an important link in the German chain
of ' wireless ' across the Pacific.
Since the Gilbert Islands proper are so much like each
other, there is no need to mention them one by one.
But Nikunau will be memorable because we were able
to restore to their homes two men who several weeks
before had been carried away by the westerly current,
while they were fishing, and had been fortunate enough
to make Beru, some forty miles across the sea. They
were received back as from the dead, for all hope had been
abandoned and their little inheritances had been divided.
Another had been carried off on the same day, but in
his case nothing came to shore but the broken shell of
his canoe.
The big lagoons of Onotoa, Nonouti, and Tabiteuea
will be connected in our minds with the delight of sailing
in the local canoes. These cut very deep into the water
(a section amidships would be a sharp wedge), and are stayed
by an outrigger. Having such lines they act almost as
centre-boards. They need a lot of sea room at starting
or tacking, for, when they want to put about, the point
of the lateen yard has to be carried from one end to the
other. But when they are moving, they go with the
fleetness of the wind, and to skim the lagoon, with out
rigger sometimes in and oftener out of the water, and see
the shadows and colours of the seaweed and coral spinning
away beneath you is to know motion in one of its most
perfect forms.
On every island we found the traders in anxiety

114 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
because war conditions, and especially the fall in the
price of copra, had prevented ships from visiting them.
Their sale goods were exhausted, and in many cases
they were out of European food, while their sheds were
bursting with copra they had accumulated. As it was
likely to deteriorate by keeping, they were naturally eager
to know if we had any news of the ship. Perhaps at
another time they would have made a more favourable
show, but I got the impression that, compared with these
stores, the most primitive of village shops in England
would be a paradise for order and a very Whiteley's
for supply. At the same time I do not think their
prices were excessive, if the cost of their own labour be
reckoned in the bill. But it is not wonderful that the
Mission finds that by supplying its own preachers and
students with the goods they most need, great economies
can be effected.
It is a lonely life that traders lead, and for the most
part they are married to native women, or take them
without marriage. The temptation to drink is strong,
and some at least are not likely to lift the reputation of
the white man. But in this Group relations with the
missionaries are unusually good. Though the time for
visiting each island is very short, no chance is lost for
little acts of friendliness to very lonely men. Perhaps
the most valued gift has been spare newspapers from
the irregular English mails. In the Gilbert Islands the
trader does not find the day's newspaper waiting for him
by his plate at the breakfast table ! He may get letters
one, two, or maybe six months after the last delivery, and
at the very quickest they will be two months out from
England. The Cook Islands and Niue since 1901, and since 191 4

GILBERT ISLANDS 115
the islands of the Samoan Group formerly in German
hands, have been under New Zealand, while Papua is under
the Australian Commonwealth. The Gilbert and Ellice
Islands are under the Colonial Office, and it is interest
ing to find how free and efficient is government from
Downing Street. Of course in Suva there is the High
Commissioner for the Pacific, with counsellors who
know the Pacific, but except in large matters of policy
the Government of the Colony is free to follow its own
course. It is directed and inspired by a belief in the
Gilbertese native, and a desire to give him the best chance
possible. The tone of the office on Ocean Island is human
and friendly, and its officers are proud of the people
they govern. They are fighting disease with somewhat
inadequate apparatus, and doing their best to prevent
the decay of the population, apparently with real success.
They are watching the material and moral interests of
the natives, and they have a keen sense of the need of
education, and of the type of education likely to be best
for the islands. I believe the condition of the natives on
Ocean Island was notably better than on Nauru, where
the Phosphate Company worked under the German
Government. In short, the Government of the colony
is inspired by the best traditions of British colonial
government. There are, of course, minor points of criticism. The
sanitary villages to which sick people must remove are
not properly staffed, and their stark discomfort may well
encourage the concealment of disease. But, in part at
least, that is due to the difficulty of securing doctors
for such lonely islands who will stay long enough to train
a staff of native assistants, and the absence of regular
means for transporting them round the Group. An
1 2

116 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
island Government, as well as an island Mission, should
control its own ship. Then there is a very laudable
desire to discourage much clothing as being dirty and
liable to cause tuberculosis. But it would appear that
Government has failed to persuade the police to lead
the way. For the most part they were more heavily
clothed than the average villager ! Undoubtedly one
great cause of tuberculosis is the habit of sleeping with
the head covered to avoid mosquitoes, and the filthy
substitutes for mosquito nets which are sometimes used
are little healthier than wrapping up the head. If
Government could ensure a supply of good, cheap,
mosquito netting, it would do much for the health of
the islands. Again, disease must often be spread by the
common propensity for bathing in small fresh-water
pools a few feet across. The whole population of a village
will use one tiny pool, and an infectious disease has free
course. One specially perplexing problem clogs the administra
tion. The Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions
are unfortunately not on the friendliest terms, for the
Roman Catholics follow their usual practice of refusing
to recognize any other body as a Church. Further,
natives have a way of exaggerating the disagreements
of their white leaders and converting them into definite
feuds. As a result Government has felt itself restricted
to the old non-Christian or heathen minority in choosing
village officials. It is difficult to believe that this can be
a final solution, though what the solution should be, it
is not easy to say.
Besides the administrative centre at Ocean Island, we
saw the subordinate station on Tarawa. There was the
large prison for the Group, together with the Government

A CHURCH IN THE GILBERT ISLANDS

GILBERT ISLANDS 117
Hospital, and prison labour had been used to beautify
the station. Something akin to grass grows underneath
the trees, and a few sheep were feeding when we were
there. Through the open grove of coco-nuts neat sandy
paths were cut, and the whole place was more like a park
than anything we had seen since Suva.
The prisoners moved about freely except at night,
when they were corralled and under guard. We saw
two or three murderers under sentence of death, and their
presence at the little service made it hard to know what
to say. Apparently most crime is connected with sexual
trouble of one sort or another. As in other parts of the
Pacific, it is not uncommon to take prisoners into the
police when their time has expired. The offences for
which they are condemned are often but dimly under
stood, and in some cases they are hardly reckoned as
crimes in native morality. On the other hand, the
prisoner learns discipline, comes to understand the ways
of Government, and can be fully tested, so that he often
makes a good and faithful officer.
I have said that the Government officials are proud
of the Gilbertese ; their pride is justified. The very
bareness of the Group has produced manhood, and the
Gilbertese are probably a hardier race than any others
that we saw upon the journey. In the old days, without
being actually cannibal, they were wild and criminal.
They fought with wooden swords set with sharks' teeth,
and wore a mail of coco-nut fibre which could turn
most weapons of wood or stone.1
The isolation of the islands led, in old days, to wicked
ness of many kinds. But for some time past Government
1 An excellent example is placed at the foot of the stairs in the
United Service Exhibition, Whitehall.

118 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
and Christianity have combined to put an end to the
old feuds and to the raids of slavers. It is good to know
that Gilbertese bravery and determination still remain.
For a fortnight I watched boats' crews of young natives
doing heavy work under the burning sun. I never saw
teams more energetic and plucky, nor so uniformly
cheerful. A man who had been in the Government steamer
Tokelau told me of a piece of bravery which happened
before the war during his own stay on Tarawa. Two
ships were anchored in the haven of Betio under the
shelter of the main island. The two captains decided to
go for a short trip up the lagoon, and took a boat's crew of
Gilbertese, one at least of whom was a prisoner. When
they were well away, a storm sprang up suddenly, and
they were capsized. They hung on to the boat and its
floating gear. The gale was so strong that the two
steamers in their sheltered anchorage dragged their
moorings, and it was in the teeth of such a wind that the
prisoner of the story volunteered to swim to shore. The
distance was about eight miles. By sheer pluck he came
through. The first European house he came to was that
of an Englishman, who refused to let his boat go out
' because it was being painted ' ! At this point the
prisoner fainted with exhaustion, but after a little while
he revived and ran four miles along the shore. He then
found another trader, an Austrian, who was willing to
let his boat go out. It was thought wise to send a native
canoe as well as the whale-boat, and the prisoner was the
first man into the canoe. The two captains were rescued
after twenty-four hours in the water, almost black from
exposure to the salt and the sun.
The prisoner was taken into Government service, and

GILBERT ISLANDS 119
I was fortunate enough to see him among the crew of the
police boat at Nauru. His unassuming simplicity and
the cheeriness of his ugly face were very charming.
A people capable of producing such a man are worthy
of the best that we can offer.
As the islands are away from any of the main tracks of
the Pacific, the message of the Gospel was brought to
them comparatively late. When the Roman Catholics
began work I do not know, but the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded its Mission
under Hiram Bingham the younger in 1857. He and
his wife went through hardships parallel to those endured
by our own missionaries in the dark days of the Tahitian
Mission. He made a splendid translation of the Bible,
which will stand for many a long year. But unfortunately
the American Board suffered one or two serious losses
by death, and concluding that the climate was impossible
for white people, they withdrew their missionaries and
worked the northern Group from Kusai in the Carolines,
some 800 miles away.
Meantime, the missionaries of the London Missionary
Society were working up from Samoa through the Ellice
Group, and in 1870 they came to the five southern islands
and established teachers there. Perhaps the Gilbertese
were less docile than the folk of the Ellice Group, perhaps
the Samoans were not quite so successful as pastors, when
they were far from supervision ; at any rate there was
much leeway to make up when W. E. Goward and his wife
came north to settle on the islands in 1900. These two
had previously been charged with the supervision from
Samoa, and hearing the call to make the Gilberts their
permanent home, they obtained the Board's approval and
settled on Beru. The result has proved the wisdom of

120 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
their judgment. The work has gone forward, whatever
test be applied, and in the last few years the American
Board has been urging the London Missionary Society to
take responsibility for the whole Group.
After the American missionaries had been withdrawn
to Kusai, other forces had made headway in the north,
and as the Americans had of recent years no ship like the
John Williams their work could not be so well supervised
as our own. Finally, they offered so generous a subsidy
that in December 1916 the Board of the London Missionary
Society felt it safe to accept the responsibility, as it seemed
certain that all the new work could be financed from the
American contribution for the first ten years, and after
that be made self-supporting: The attitude of the
American Board has been a signal instance of missionary
comity and generosity.
As the work in the Gilberts is later, so it is in many ways
more primitive than in the previous Groups ; the element
of evangelization is more prominent, while pastoral care
is at an earlier stage. We have here a Mission whose
history and spirit lie midway between those of the settled
Churches of the South Seas and the pioneering temper of
Papua. The methods pursued are in some ways unique ;
the organization is much more centralized than in other
Groups, and everything turns on good communication.
This Mission has shown that, given good facilities for travel,
a Group can be worked effectively with a very small staff.
Beru is one of the southern islands, and about half
way down it lies the station of Rongorongo. The ground
is limited to five acres, and setting aside actual towns like
Apia or Suva, there are probably no other five acres in
the South Seas so closely packed with human activity.
The anchorage is outside the reef some three miles from

GILBERT ISLANDS 121
the settlement, and all supplies must be conveyed by
whale-boat across reef and lagoon. If the tide is high,
the passage through the reef — perhaps three-quarters of
a mile — is merely difficult ; as the tide falls a little, it
becomes laborious, and at low tide a boat cannot pass.
On the land side of the lagoon a little jetty marks the
station, and, setting foot on shore, you will find apparatus
of every kind. Close by are two large missionary bunga
lows, open and airy, with high pitched roofs of thatch, and
free ventilation above every partition. The church is
thatched like all the other buildings, and in the same
way its sides are of midribs of palm-leaf set on end like
fences. The printing machine has a house to itself, and
there is a rough workshop and a big store. The simple
school buildings are on the same plan as the church,
and all round are dormitories for young married couples
or for young men. The unmarried girls are in a special
quarter. Rongorongo draws its pupils from all over the southern
islands. From the village schools the young folk go, if
possible, to a Central School on their own island, still quite
elementary in its standards. From the Central School such
as prove themselves worthy are drafted on to Rongorongo.
The visitor who keeps his eyes open while a missionary
is visiting an island cannot mistake the keenness of the
boys and girls for education. They come as eager
candidates, and, if they are accepted, they go away
rejoicing. After all, in its small way, Rongorongo means
to them what the University meant to some of us. They
will pay money down, even to £4 or £5, and the parents
will pledge themselves to provide food that they may be
no burden on charity. The principle of the Gilbert
Islands Mission is to make people do everything possible

122 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
for themselves, and nowhere have I seen such pride in
the opportunity. Indeed, I am coming to the conviction
that where by means of foreign money everything is
done for people, there is found grasping and discontent ;
where a missionary insists that the native should give
up to, aye, and beyond his power, there is happiness,
courage, and mutual respect.
At Rongorongo the machinery of the Mission is ever
at work to prepare for the next half-yearly visitation.
The visitation itself is so occupied with problems of dis
tribution, spiritual and material, that everything must be
parcelled and labelled beforehand, so as to produce the
largest effect in the shortest time.
To understand the Mission you must accompany the
ship on its rounds. One night at high tide all the boats
will be hard at work embarking stores on the John
Williams outside Beru. Next morning she will be lying
off an island forty, fifty, or eighty miles away, and a new
activity will begin. Maybe there are young folk to return
for holiday, and perhaps the widow of a teacher who has
died at his post on some other island ; there are the
visiting party, the white missionaries, the invaluable
Samoan assistant, Jupili, with a leading Gilbertese pastor
or two, half a dozen cheery girls from the Institution to
look after the picnic meals, and a couple of boats' crews
of young fellows. Boats are lowered and canoes come
round, and, if the weather is good, all are ashore in an
hour. Then come the stores, Bibles and hymn-books
for sale, bundles of local magazines printed in Beru,
school books and books of religion, boxes of medicine
for the teachers to handle, other cases for the missionary
to dispense that day, if time allows, not forgetting
spectacles for failing eyes. There are parcels of papers

.HoU*^ NohovTj (%dh^Tn ttfi,.iti?l ¦/$¦. A Gilbertese Village.

'

GILBERT ISLANDS 123
for the traders, and the boxes of various goods which
represent the teachers' wages.
On the shore we see waiting heaps of unhusked coco
nuts which will be embarked, some in the boat, and some
towed floating behind ; rolls of dried pandanus and
bundles of high-smelling dried fish are brought out and
laid on the shingle to be carried through the shallows to
the boats. These are for the maintenance of the students
of that island who are at Rongorongo, and they correspond
to the bag of oatmeal the Scotch boy used to take from
his village to Glasgow University. Boats are coming
and going all the morning, and at the end the whole
forepart of the John Williams is a glorious jumble of
native stores, for a foundation of unhusked coco-nuts
does not lend itself to neat arrangement.
The missionary, meantime, has had a service for the
people, followed by a meeting of the pastors. Then, as
soon as the pastors have drawn the stores they choose as
the equivalent of their pay, some scandal or matter of
discipline may need careful inquiry, and here the native
helpers are of the utmost value. The school must be
examined, "contributions collected, book and Bible
accounts checked, and the remaining time may be spent
in dispensing till darkness falls. Then there is the weary
row to the ship, to begin the same varied labour next day.
After visiting two or three islands the ship returns
to Beru to unload and reload again.
If we could do without a store system everybody would
be profoundly thankful. Payment in kind involves such
careful accountancy that it is very difficult to know
where the undertaking stands except in most general
terms, and most missionaries are not chosen for their
skill as accountants. Besides these complications the

124 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
system involves much serving of tables. The store easily
generates disputes between the missionary and his
subordinates, and gives rise to the charge of trading and
of unfair competition with the local trader. The charge
of trading becomes of less moment if, as is now the case
in the Gilberts, the store is only available for the pastors
and students of the Institution. There is still less
injustice to the trader, when he is himself the customer,
because the ship has failed to come in time for Christmas.
The trader wants to buy stores for himself and his family :
is the missionary to refuse to supply him on general
grounds ? In Papua the same system obtains, and since
stores of the ordinary commercial kind are far fewer than
in the Gilberts, rigorous limitation to teachers and students
becomes very difficult. I saw a Papuan, plainly not in
Mission employ, come to the missionary who stood, key
in hand, on the steps of his store. He asked for a packet
of fish-hooks, and the missionary turned to me.
' Should I supply this man or not ? If I don't, he
has to sail fifty miles along the coast to buy what would
cost a shilling. He knows I have the hooks, and, if I
refuse, he will only be convinced that I* have some
selfish reason for refusal.'
Yet it is plain that, if the missionary does sell goods, he
makes it to that extent more difficult for the store-keeper
to come in and do a decent trade. A minor matter
is that the store makes the missionary the ally of the trader
in the encouragement of unnecessary clothes. In the
days of long ago the missionary was expected to eke out
his little salary by trading for profit, and no doubt this
fact contributed to the insistence on clothing in the South
Seas. Even now there is a temptation to try and add to
the income for the work's sake. At Rongorongo, if I had

GILBERT ISLANDS 125
my way, there would be no women's hats in church with
their bright ribbons. If only the Apostle Paul had not
used that unfortunate sentence about women being veiled
when they prophesied ! But even he did not say that
they were to wear hats, if they were only worshippers.
On the other hand, both in the Gilberts and Papua
we make Mission finances go much farther by the store
system than they would if teachers had to buy in cash
from a small trader, and the teachers get far better value
for their money. Without the store we should have to
pay much larger salaries. The missionary himself gets
most of his stores from Australia or England, and nobody
would think of limiting him to the local trader. Why
should he not help his South Sea teachers by organizing
similar import on their behalf, and, if he has two or three
score of young people to clothe, why should he not use
the money in the most economical way ? But all this is for
the present distress ; let us hope that trade conditions may so
improve as to enable us to dispense with the Mission store.
To return to the visitation of the islands. Throughout
all the southern part of the Group there is the sense of
life and progressive work. In the forefront of all the
activity, and in the centre of every council, is Jupili the
Samoan. Jupili, no doubt, was so baptized because about
the time of his birth there came the Jubilee of the Samoan
Church. He is a big, burly man with a fine smile, and,
curiously enough, has not been trained in the Theological
Institution for Samoan pastors. Perhaps to that fact he
owes a certain freedom from the official stamp. He is
a man who has conquered self and never wastes time in
standing on his own dignity, and the result is that he can
command any service from others. He and his wife are
worth as much as European missionaries to the Group.

126 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
The day we left Beru and the lonely missionaries there,
we took the Communion with them and with the native
leaders on the island. During the service I got a new
sense of the meaning of it all. Here, and here only, was
to be found the centre of life for the islands. It was not
in the traders or in the ships of Australian merchants ;
it was not in the great Phosphate Company, nor even in
the Government, good as it is, nor in its resident officials ;
it was not in the new promise of education. The centre
of hope lay in a little brotherhood of ordinary men and
women, native and European joined in one, who were
mastered by the Cross of Christ and working in its power.
The weakness of God is stronger than men.
But another thought came with the first. For our
wine at that service we had, most fitly, the clear juice
of the coco-nut. Over and over again I had been re
freshed by its delicately flavoured liquid, and in these
islands the mature nut is the staple food. Its peculiarity
is that it must grow near the sea, and on islands such as
these, where it is at its full glory, it actually strikes its
roots down through the sand to the sea caverns among
the coral, and draws its nourishment from the salt water.
Its roots are in the brine, and from that supply it can
provide sweet and living water at its crest. The vine
speaks of suffering, of the tree pruned without remorse,
of the grape crushed in the wine-press ; the juice of the
coco-nut spoke to me of the conquest of Resurrection
and of the power of the Cross to take all that is most
bitter and most barren and transform it into victorious
life. That assuredly is the summary of the Church's
work in the South Seas.

CHAPTER VIII
PAPUA
BEGINNING IN THE WEST
The problem of our Papuan communications vexed us
early. New Guinea may appear small on most maps, but
place the eastern point of the whole great island over
London and the other end will cover Constantinople. Even
the limited section of Papua, or British New Guinea,
covered by our Mission stretches along 700 miles of coast.
Though in mileage one station is not very far from another,
it may take two or three months for a letter to reach any
of those more remote. It is this combination of distance
with inaccessibility which necessitates the use of costly
motor launches on nearly every station. There is no
other means of effective transit. Between Daru, Port
Moresby, and Samarai there is regular communication
by the Misima. Yule Island, Port Moresby, and Samarai
are linked by Burns Philp's larger boats, but on the
coast between these centres there is nothing the traveller
can trust. There was one little steamer with no fixed
programme, and a few schooners from Port Moresby
moved uncertainly out and back again, but none of these
would have served our purpose. To charter for our own
special use would have been expensive.
But thanks to B. T. Butcher's loan of his launch, the
Tamate, and his willingness to go with us down the coast,
we were guided to a solution which we never had cause

PAPUA 129
to regret. The Tamate is only 48 feet long, with a beam
of 9 feet. On the cabin settees three men could berth,
if the heat allowed, to say nothing of the cabin floor and
the narrow spaces on the deck above. But, though small,
she is very heavily engined, so that we lost no time, and
we did the 800 miles with great ease.
As Butcher had to nurse the engines at all important
or dangerous points, we needed a mate. Again there
was much thought, and this second problem was solved
by sending for Sam to Suau in the east. Sam's service
was typical of the heights the Papuan can reach, when
he is properly trained. His real name is Taudiveve,
which was naturally too much for indolent English tongues.
As with many of the Suau boys, his nose seemed crushed
back into his face, leaving his forehead and chin protruding.
But still more characteristic was the elevation of the back
of the head, exaggerated by the stiff, upstanding hair.
He was short and thick-set, with feet that stuck to the
deck like limpets. He had been a sort of mate on a coastal
boat, but that was wrecked — some said because Sam's
advice was not followed — and for a year he had been
disengaged. A modester, friendlier, more efficient
steersman I never wish to see. He brought with him
Leudoga, copper-brown, well built, and, though his head
was framed on the same plan as Sam's, the handsomest
of the crew. Of these two I became the master by
' signing them on ' with all formalities demanded by
Government. The rate of pay was declared, and I
covenanted to pay them off before the Government
officer at Port Moresby or Samarai, to give them certain
rations of biscuit and bulamakau (which is tinned meat),
to provide each with a plate and a blanket, and, if need
be, to give them mosquito nets. The system of ' signing

130 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
on ' is on the whole a good one ; the stipulations do much
to protect the natives.
Then there was Jim from Hula in the Central District,
a very capable and willing second engineer. As we started
from Daru, Baxter Riley lent us David, one of his best
boys,1 patchy-black like the men of the west, tall, long
of arm, and with bulging muscles on his chest. The
complement was made up by Aive from the cannibals
of Goaribari. His projecting lower jaw and the great
hole through the septum of his nose just above the upper
lip were very animal, and, with his long, ill-nourished
limbs and loping walk, always reminded me of a young
wolf. But he played neither the cannibal nor the wolf
with us.
Papuan life seems to develop a sense of humour, and
many of our friends wished that we might have thoroughly
bad weather as we travelled along the coast, so that we
might know what they had to face. I understood their
desire, and, if I had been in their place, should have '
shared it, but happily it was not fulfilled. Storms only
came during the days when we were in shelter. We had,
it is true, one adventure. On Christmas Day, at 4 p.m.,
amid the islands and shifting channels of the Fly River
we ran aground on a shoal. The tide was at the spring,
and had it been near the flood when we grounded, it
might have been a fortnight before we could get off.
Meantime, we were right in the funnel of the Fly Estuary,
and the first real waves would have broken us to match
wood. There was nothing for it but to wait and hope
it might not be so bad as that. We were thankful that
the boat settled down into a hollow and hardly left an
1 ' Boy' is a very elastic term in Papua, and may mean any youngish
man.

PAPUA 131
even keel. Then at 11 o'clock that night, as the little
waves came m,ih.eTamate began to bump, and at midnight
we were free.
We were also perplexed by the problem of the season
for our visit. It is natural that Australia, though she
administers Papua, should have but small knowledge of
her distant territory. From Brisbane, Port Moresby
is a week's journey, and even from the little North
Queensland ports of Cairns and Townsville Papua is
about as far as Finland is from London. Further, Papua
has the repute to the ordinary Australian of a fever-
ridden, inhospitable land, where even the explorer must
look well to his equipment, and where ordinary folk set
foot on shore at great risk. But it surprised me to find
that information as to Papuan conditions seemed to be
more easily obtained in London than in Australia !
From London we proposed December to March for
the season of our visit. That, of course, is the hot season,
and from Australia came the criticism that we should
suffer from the extreme heat, and that we should be
exposed to the dangers of the hurricane season. It
seemed obvious that, coming from a country only a week
away from Papua, the criticism should carry great weight.
Fortunately, three men from Papua were available in
London, and they gave their entire approval to the time
first chosen. They admitted that the heat was great,
but as Papua was always very hot, a little extra heat was
of small account. Papua, they said, was entirely outside
the hurricane zone. Their final argument was conclusive.
During the hot season the NW. monsoon is blowing,
and it is possible to land at all our stations. During the
rest of the year the trades blow up into the Papuan Gulf
from the south-east with such force that landings such as
K 2

132 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
those at Moru and Orokolo may be impossible for weeks
at a time. We found in the event that we had chosen
wisely. We had good weather all the way. We were
able to travel in the little launch along 700 miles of coast,
often outside the reef, and none of us had fever during
the whole of the sixteen weeks we spent in Papua. Papua
is not a health resort, but it is a great deal safer than many
people imagine.
No one will understand Papua who does not keep in
mind that it is a series of divided fragments of nationality.
It may be admitted that two main racial strains can be
discerned — those whom I should be inclined to call the
True Papuans, inhabiting all the country around the Gulf
and west of Cape Possession, and the Papuo-Melanesians
farther east, who might well be called the Mixed Papuans.
But even the True Papuans fall into sharply-marked
sections and towards Orokolo begin to show much race
contamination, while the Mixed Papuans to the east
vary radically every thirty or forty miles. Nor does the
variation follow the line of a regular progression.
Tribes of one type crop up unexpectedly amid those
of an entirely different type, and the only explanation
seems to lie in supposing a series of migrations from the
western portion through to the east and to the islands,
and then from the islands back to Papua. Sometimes
the settlers came in canoes and dropped on a particular
line of coast amid a people quite alien, sometimes from
the mountains a new tribe came down to the sea.
Language naturally corresponds to these divisions, as
it helps to mark them. A few years ago the Bible Society
sent a scholar to report as to the number of main lan
guages in British New Guinea. He reported that there
seemed to be twenty-seven definite languages with which

PAPUA 133
the Bible Society ought to reckon, quite apart from
numerous dialects. In the L. M. S. area are thirteen
Mission districts, and in these our missionaries have to
deal with eleven languages. On the average perhaps
10,000 to 20,000 people may speak each particular tongue.
Any one will see at once how difficult it is to provide even
a portion of the Bible and to create the simplest literature
when readers must be so few. It has therefore been the
dream of the missionaries for many a year to encourage
one of the languages and make it general along the
coast. Government had the same desire, and tried to
push the use of Motu, the language of the people
around Port Moresby. There has been some result,
but nothing like what might have been hoped, and
I fear there is nothing for it but English. The tongues
of those tiny primitive clans are not suited to ex
press the new, and above all the spiritual, ideas which
are flooding in upon them. English alone can open the
doors through which the Papuan must enter. But
English takes much time to learn, and in the interval
Motu is certainly more natural and may serve a useful
purpose for a long time yet. If the babel of tongues be
not simplified in some way, the unity of Papua will never
come. Ethnic and linguistic cleavage makes for mutual
hostility, and in turn hostility prevents the intermingling
which might bridge over the gulf. From end to end
the country is cut up by great rivers, and, as roads are
still very few, ordinary journeys must be taken by sea,
and the man who comes in by sea seems much more
of an alien. The hill dwellers are afraid of the shore
villagers and visit them rarely. The shore dwellers
reciprocate their feeling.

134 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Differences are shown in all the externals of tribal
life. The men's club-houses, in some districts called
duhus, increase in height and dignity from the west
towards Orokolo. From that point the duhus gradually
fall away to a little bare scaffolding. In some cases
women are allowed to enter these ; in other districts
they are excluded on pain of death. There is no common
standard for the height of the piles on which the houses
are built ; in the Port Moresby district some of
the houses are built so as partly to overhang the water,
and some villages are set a couple of hundred yards out
into the sea. Facial types are very marked. I fancy
that after five years' experience a shrewd observer could
tell from what region any Papuan came. Again, clothing
varies enormously. The Papuans themselves are shocked
by the differences, and the full dress costume of the Port
Moresby native appears quite indecent to his cousins
east or west. Burial customs are as varied as the tribes
themselves. Morality differs greatly, as does the mass
of animistic belief which passes for religion. All the
clans do a certain amount of artistic work of a primitive
kind, but suddenly around Fife Bay you are startled by
an unexpected outcrop of wonderful designs not unlike
some of the best Runic work. Something parallel is
found among the eastern islands, but why should such
striking art begin just at that point ? What gave to this
little Daui-speaking colony such a perfect sense of line,
and why did it come to the east alone ? In short, there
is probably no area of the size in the known world where
there is such a museum of racial division, and at first
sight one feels inclined to accept one general conclusion —
that it is impossible to generalize.
Yet unity enough can be discovered to justify us in

^ Hr^M.ifL

( i-^^;-.x

/i'1"^-..

*•>

DOUBLE-OUTRIGGER CANOE, FLY RIVER

136 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
thinking of the Papuans as true kinsfolk, and in hoping
for their consolidation into a genuine Papuan race. For
the most part they are alike in that they have no chiefs
with any clear authority, nor organized government
of any sort. They are even more alike in the absence of
gods and idols. They all approach religion through the
fear of spirits, and their ceremonies are of very disputable
meaning. There is a universal belief in witchcraft. In
these matters they would always understand one another.
Then again, long before the coming of the white man,
there was a remarkable chain of pilgrimages moving up
from east to west and back home again. The Mailu
people had an annual engagement at Aroma to exchange
their arm-shells for pigs. The Hula canoes come into
Port Moresby to get rid of their fish, and the greatest
trade movement of all was the Hiri, the annual migration
of the Motuans from Port Moresby and the allied villages
right up to the cannibal areas of the west. Year by year
the lakatois — each made up of four or five huge dug-out
canoes lashed together — went up in October before the
end of the SE. trades, and the men in them (no women
went) settled down in the river villages of the Purari
Delta, till they were able to go back in February, when
the monsoon blew from the north-west. During their visit
a truce was rigidly observed. Taking up arm-shells and
pots, they exchanged them for sago, and for great logs
of trees from which they hewed out more canoes, so that
each lakatoi by the time of return became a broad
pontoon of ten to twelve canoes side by side. The
system still continues, and each November the young men
of the Motu villages set their mat-sails for the west.
In the third place the coming of fixed government
has worked for unity in new ways. The Government

PAPUA 137
official moves up and down, making feuds impossible
and stirring the stagnant villagers into contact with their
neighbours. The police are drawn from all over the
country, especially the west, and are all expected to
learn some Motu. They carry back to their homes the
idea — the revolutionary idea — of Papua as one land.
Insignificant as is the shipping, it also brings Papuan
sailors into contact with the tribes all along the coast,
and labour recruiting for plantation and gold mine
carries men right out of their own district. Before
Government came, the Missions preached peace, and
turned foes into brothers in Christ. More and more
they are uniting the most divergent types, as may be
seen from the list already given of the crew of the Tamate.
These and other such influences are combining to make
a Papuan people, and, if only time be given, the process
will be carried to a successful end.
We can now leave generalities and speak of Papua as
we saw it. Coming from the Gilberts, we struck Samarai
first and coasted hurriedly westward past the out-stations,
at each making the needful plans for our return. Finally,
at Daru we left the John Williams, and returned in the
little Tamate to visit each station one by one. Each has
its own distinctive stamp.
Daru is one of the islands on the seaward fringe of
the delta of the great Fly River. They say that enough
water comes down the Fly River to supply continuously
the needs of the whole world. Whichever way one
turns, there are low islands and swamps covered with
a wonderful mass of vegetation. Baxter Riley works
the coast to the east and up the Fly Estuary along and
beyond Kiwai Island. Apart from the dangerous shoals
and rapid and shifting currents, the district is somewhat

138 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
depressing. It is true that communications are better
than on most stations, and for Daru that means more
European society with less risk of crime and savagery.
But the people who live in the middle of the delta mud
have grim faces with noses more hooked than Shylock's,
and their faces rarely light with joy or humour. Their
complexions have curious patches of sooty black in the
hollows, as if they had been coaling ship and had given
their faces a hasty wipe.
The Queensland pearl fisheries of Torres Straits are
so near that many of the men go away pearling, and
pigeon-English is common. So are European clothes.
I fear that too often a vest is worn until a new one is
bought, and the new is put on over the rags of the old.
We visited several villages on Kiwai Island up the Fly
River. We ran the launch as near in to shore as we dared,
and then got into the little dinghy. In her turn she stuck
in the mud and we dropped gingerly overboard into
a foot of slime. After about a quarter of a mile of this
we reached a muddy shore. The village was set upon
a bank of mud, and mud was on all the people's clothes.
I wondered how any one could hope to make the village
clean. Such conditions press with crushing weight on
the teachers from the South Seas, for they are used to
clean villages by the open sea.
In the old days these people of Kiwai were great head-
hunters, and at Iasa, when Samuel McFarlane visited them
first in the Mission steamer, the canoes put out to cut
her off. They were greatly surprised when, as they
described it a few years later, the great boat was suddenly
set on fire and began to smoke and move away of itself,
before they could come up. Plainly witchcraft was at
work.

FASHIONS FOR MEN ON THE FLY RIVER

140 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
Still, from these unhopeful conditions, savagery and
dirt, the Mission has succeeded in developing a strong
and courageous Church life. For Papuans, who are not
generous, the Churches around Daru give well. The boys
and girls in training on Daru Station have a brightness
and spring which is in happy contrast to the general gloom
of the villages, and when they return to their people,
they should take a new life with them.

CHAPTER IX
THE GULF STATIONS
Leaving Daru district at Wabuda, we sailed across the
mouth of several great rivers to Goaribari, and, stopping
at Aidia, were among genuine cannibals. This is in
Butcher's own parish, and they knew his launch well ;
in their dug-out canoes they came swarming round.
They wore a crescent of mother-of-pearl by a string round
the neck, a pointed nose-skewer, heavy ear-rings, and, as
a rule, a great triangular piece of shell instead of a loin
cloth. They look like American Indians out of a boy's
adventure book, but unclothed as for the tropics. Either
from natural uncleanness or from some vegetable unguent
they smelt strongly. When their canoes were twenty
yards to windward, a strong whiff, as of high partridge,
came down the breeze ! We went ashore in the heat of
midday and saw their women for the first time. These
had their heads shaven, and wore nothing but a wisp
of grass strung from their belts between the legs and
fastened up behind. They looked hunted, haggard, and
as if age came upon them very early. Little crabs, and
a shell-fish like a large cockle, together with sago and
bananas, make up the daily food of these Gulf villagers.
They especially appreciate the large white maggots that
breed in the sago-tree.
The making of sago is a very interesting process. The
sago palm grows amid the swamps, and only there. It
is not unlike a coco-nut palm in shape, but the stem is

142 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
very much thicker and the young leaves low down are
protected by spikes five inches long. A sago-making
party goes into the swamps and the men cut down the
trees ; then, as a rule, the women take up the process.
The bark is taken off and the fibre inside is soft and friable.
A woman sits down opposite the log, and with a V-shaped
piece of wood hacks away the fibres into a soft heap.
They are then squeezed and kneaded with water — such
water ! — over a rough trough made from the socket of
the big leaf, and the brown liquid that drains away leaves
a pinkish-white sediment at the bottom of the leaf basin
below, which dries into a mass like flour caked after a
wetting. In the west, after mixing in any meat they have, they
make up the sago in long rolls, and, binding these in
leaves, roast them over the fire.
That same afternoon we reached Dopima, the scene
of the massacre of James Chalmers and Oliver Tomkins
on April 8, 1901. I suppose no one who had once seen
Chalmers could ever forget him. ' Tamate ', as the South
Seas knew him, was not tall, but he was broad and stalwart,
and his face was the face of a lion. It was he of whom
R. L. Stevenson wrote, ' I have a cultus for Tamate ;
he is a man nobody could see and not love ' ; and again,
' He has plenty faults like the rest of us, but he 's as big
as a church.' The younger generation can scarcely
know how much they missed in never having seen him.
From 1866, when he left for the South Seas, only to be
wrecked in the second John Williams on Niue, he worked
in Rarotonga till 1876, and from that time he lived to
spread peace and the Gospel through New Guinea.
Beginning at Suau among the cannibals of the east, he
moved west to Toaripi or Motumotu (now part of our

Dopima Creek— where Tamate died.

THE GULF STATIONS 143
Moru district), and after exploring all the gulf from there
he settled on the south end of Kiwai. He had moved
to Daru a few months before the end, and it was there,
as if by premonition, that he left all his effects in order,
when he set out in the little Niue on his last journey.
What happened at Dopima is hard to disentangle from
the stories in his ' Life ' told from various angles, for in
details they seem contradictory. One account says that
the natives persuaded the two missionaries to go ashore.
Some of our men, however, believe that the Goaribaris
were conducting the Muguru, an unclean tribal cere
mony, and warned them not to land, but that Tamate
felt his influence would wane if the natives learnt that
warnings would frighten him away. Anyhow, early on
April 8 they landed amid the crowds of those who had
gathered from the other villages of the clan. The
boat grounded on the far side of the little point in
my sketch. On the site of the big house stood its
predecessor (burnt to the ground by Government after
the murder), and into that the party went. As previously
arranged, two braves felled them from behind with clubs
while they were sitting, and others cut off their heads.
During the few years following, the skulls and most of
the bones were recovered and now lie in the grave at
Daru. The people of Ipisia on Kiwai never forgave the
Mission for the loss of their chief and of the boys who
went in Tamate's train and died there. Some think that,
if firearms had been taken, there would have been no
massacre. My own doubt is whether Tamate would
have lived so long, if he had depended on firearms at
all. No man, however armed, could be on his guard all
the time ; and I feel quite sure that his influence would
have been less.

144 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
We anchored very much where the Niue anchored
on the fated day, and went ashore at once. Butcher is
well known to the people, and the launch's name no longer
calls up guilty thrills. We strolled slowly up and down the
big house — the club-house of the. warriors. Its section
was just like a huge English barn on piles, and with none
of the distinction of the lofty eravos of Orokolo, but in
length it was unique. I paced 200 yards and saw besides
a large section of fallen roof at the front, which proved
that a few months before it must have been twenty yards
longer. The rough planking of the floor was laid loosely
on the cross-bars below, and quivered and sprang beneath
our heavy boots. At the far end were rough pigeon-holes,
each holding its skull. Some had features moulded on
them with gum, and these were said to be those of friends
who had died a natural death. On every side there were
masks and ' spirit ' figures used in their dancing. The
naked warriors came round us shyly, and after many small
presents of tobacco they gave us half a dozen bows as
keepsakes. Then at the door of the big house we sat
down and had service. How much did they under
stand ?
We wandered along the village, the women running
away to their houses as we passed, and after seeing the
'house of the boys' the rest went aboard in the dinghy,
while I looked round for a sketch. Finally, by signs I
persuaded a boy to ferry me across the little creek, and
got the view that is reproduced here. It was as calm and
beautiful as the Thames on a summer's evening, when
neither boats nor wind break the reflections in the water.
Near the point to the left of the sketch the whale-boat
was left while the murder was done, and the first intima
tion of real danger came to the crew of the Niue, anchored

THE SKULL-RACK IN A CLUB-HOUSE, PURARI DELTA
L

146 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
in midstream, when they saw a band of savages rush
down from the big house, launch the boat again, and take
it round the point into this very creek. Somewhere
just opposite to where I sat, the murder had been done ;
to the right, a little higher up the creek, they had smashed
up the whale-boat. In the heavy, sleepy peace of the
afternoon it was difficult to realize the history of blood.
That night we slept calmly, only ten in all, with no
watchman, half a mile out in the open channel.
Yet, as the skulls suggested, the peace is only superficial.
A few months before my visit a labour recruiter in a
canoe was treacherously attacked and badly wounded
by a crew of Goaribaris. With difficulty he and his boy
from Port Moresby escaped through the channels to
Homu at Urika. Less than six months after our visit
a young officer from the Kikori station, twenty-five miles
up the river, was brought more than 250 miles down the
coast in the police launch, on his way to the surgeon at
Port Moresby. Stage by stage he journeyed, weak and
burning with inflammation, for he had a barbed arrow
through his breast, which no one could extricate. When
he got as far as Delena, he died.
After the night at Dopima we reached Aird Hill by
noon. The station was established in 1909 from Arthing-
ton funds to work this new district. All the way up we
followed the winding channels through the great swamps
of the delta. At high tide the roots of the mangroves
stand in water, the little creeks run swiftly back and forth,
and anything worth calling land is hardly to be seen. At
low tide you might still hesitate to call it land, for you
would be faced by a slimy, knotty tangle of mangrove
roots, and rising out of the slime crabs scarlet-spotted,
and little hopping mud-skippers with uncanny staring eyes;

THE GULF STATIONS 147
perhaps even a crocodile. Travelling conditions through
a mangrove swamp are beyond imagination !
No one was at home at the police post at Kikori, and,
as we turned a little east, we saw Aird Hill rising above
us out of the trees. The hill is some thousand feet high ;
indeed, the screen of trees overhanging the waterways is
so lofty and unbroken that only an outstanding hill could
be seen ; one small knoll very suitable for settlement,
though twenty yards from a common route, remained
undiscovered for years. Butcher has placed his native
settlement on the terrace fifty feet above the swamp, and
his bungalow 100 feet higher on a bluff. The site is
beautifully chosen. While we were there, it was fresh,
cool, and entirely free from mosquitoes. Pineapples grow
like weeds and with a flavour that stay-at-homes will
never know. There is a wonderful view over the swamps
to the sea thirty miles away. On the east a far longer
vista brings one up against the blue line of distant
mountains. From the hill-top the view spreads on every
side, and the sight of the unvisited, unknown high lands
up the great rivers to thenorth must be a sore temptation
to any one touched with the spirit of the explorer. On
this station, just five years old, the work among cannibals
is at its earliest stage. Butcher has gathered a few boys
to come for six months at a time to learn the white man's
ways. Two or three families, more peace-loving than the
rest, have settled on the flat below, and morning by morn
ing in the little breezy church on the shoulder of the hill
they meet for prayers.
The material is very raw. About ten o'clock one night
we heard a noise of many voices outside the bungalow,
and after much talking it became plain that a woman had
been hurt. She was supported to the dispensary (built
l 2

148 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
away from the house to treat very uncleanly people) and
lamps were brought. Little more than a girl, -naked and
ungainly, she had a great gash in the head, dealt by some
blunt instrument. It turned out that the husband was
away in Port Moresby as a labour recruit, and his father
wanted to take the girl for himself. The father's wife
naturally objected, and in the family row that followed
it was probably she who had knocked down the too-
attractive young woman with a billet of wood.
While the gouts of blood were being washed away
and the bandages put on, the little crowd outside was
tittering at the humour of the general situation ! Early
next morning father-in-law went off with daughter-in-
law, bandages and all. But the story is not all black.
The second son stood up for his absent brother and
rebuked the father for wishing to steal his wife. For him
morning prayers had not been all in vain.
In May 1914 a village of the wild Kumukumu, less
than a mile from the jetty, was attacked at night by the
police because it had been molesting passers-by. The
missionary was absent or probably the trouble would
never have arisen. Several people were killed, and an
inquiry was held by Government as to the conduct of the
native police. The big house was burnt in the raid, and
the villagers deserted the ill-starred site. We went to
see the spot, and after eighteen months it was next to
impossible to find. Paths were gone, houses were gone,
everywhere was a tangle of young trees, twenty feet high,
and three or four inches in diameter. We discovered
with difficulty a couple of burnt piles, a few floor boards
that had not quite decayed, and a heap of cockle-shells
trodden into the ground. The jungle had eaten up the
village and left practically no trace of human occupation.

Across the Swamps to the Mountains, Aird Hill.

THE GULF STATIONS 149
Nothing I saw gave me so clear an impression of the terri
ble power of vegetation in the tropics.
Among clans of this lawless type the missionary moves
about in his launch for a week at a stretch. In the
meantime his wife lives fearlessly in the bungalow on
the hill, with no news and no human protection but that
of a Samoan teacher of no outstanding authority or courage.
On New Year's Eve we left Aird Hill for the low levels
again. Partly through the swamps, and partly along the
open sea, we reached the district of Namau and made
our way to Kaimare. What Charing Cross is to London,
what Crewe is to the North of England, that is Kaimare
to Western Papua. Doubtfully following one of the
innumerable waterways, we rounded a corner and came
suddenly into sight of the town, the first of the towns
of Namau. Several channels branched out on every
side like the arms of a star, and on the point of land
between each arm was a section of the town. The high-
pointed roofs of many ravis (or club-houses) yawned
upwards on all sides, with some faint reminder of Gothic
architecture and its lofty, pointed naves, while above the
brown of clustered dwellings the smoke of the evening
cooking mingled blue grey with the mist rising from the
water. Alas, it was too late to sketch or photograph, and
next day we started before dawn, but I hope to see
Kaimare again before the inevitable changes sweep away
its charm.
We found J. H. Holmes waiting for us there, better
known to natives and Europeans as Homu, missionary
of Namau. He told us that his launch boys on shore
had picked up a story of how, three months before, two
girls had been caught in a foray against neighbouring
clans, brought into Kaimare, sacrificed, and eaten ! Yet

150 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
police superintendents and other Europeans are constantly
passing through Kaimare.
On New Year's Day, 1916, we wound our way through
gusty rain storms to the great villages in the swamps,
Ukiaravi and Korepenairu, as picturesque as their names,
and on the model of Kaimare. Several lakatois from
Port Moresby were anchored along the lanes of water
between the houses, apparently quite at home among their
strange hosts. On our way we passed many isolated
settlements and garden huts, which prove that, though
lawlessness is not wiped out, the pax Britannica is not
far away. At least the natives now feel safe enough to
break off from the big villages.
How any one could find the way passed my under
standing. To me each swamp, each lane of water, each
corner, looked just like the last, but by the afternoon the
lanes narrowed and we reached Homu's station at Urika.
Urika is nothing more than a swamp island reclaimed.
On the seaward side, it is true, a narrow belt of sandy
ground rises two or three feet higher, and a big coco-nut
plantation runs along the front, but, where the house
is placed, water channels run around and under it. At
high tide they are teeming with water, at low tide they
are drains of black mud. Mosquitoes are many, but the
site is not nearly so unhealthy as its description sounds.
Homu is one of Chalmers' aptest pupils, and to hear
him talk of what he has been through is an unbroken
delight. For his first period of nine years he wandered
backwards and forwards through the Purari delta from
Moru and Orokolo, and up into the islands behind.
For the most part he took his life in his hand, and what
to him mattered more, the lives of others. Sometimes
at night they would lie in a native canoe under the over-

THE GULF STATIONS 151
hanging vegetation by the waterside, not daring to strike
a match, lest they should bring upon themselves attack.
Several times he nearly died of fever or dysentery, and
all those nine years he was engaged to a woman in Devon
who could not come to marry him because she had some
one at home to care for. I fancy his letters told little of
the risks he ran !
Then at the beginning of his second period of service
they came back together, and started the station among
the tall, black, grim people of Namau. Urika then was
pure swamp, and they lived in a little ' humpy ' near the
beach. They began to cut a canal to drain a site for
houses and settlements. Many difficulties arose with
their wild labourers ; sometimes they would go for one
another with knives or axes ; but at last the cut was
complete. As Homu watched the stream running to the
creek and leaving the land dry and firm, he turned to
the most intelligent of his boys and said, ' Now you under
stand what I was after. Why were you such fools as to
make all the delays you did ? ' The boy drew Homu aside
where they could not be overheard, and said, ' Homu,
do you see that bank of trees about a hundred yards down
the canal ? Twice the people of the big village near by
came up to kill you. The second time they got as near
as those trees. They made up their minds that you
were offending the spirits of the district, and that they
must wipe out you two and all of us. When they got
to those trees they halted and began to discuss. Suppose
they made a mistake ! They thought of the danger from
the spirits. They thought of your friendship with the
chiefs. So they argued it back and forward. At last
those who were reluctant persuaded the rest for that time
to go home, but they promised each other that, if in the

152 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
next few months illness or calamity came to the dis
trict, nothing should save you. Now you know why
we were sometimes a little reluctant to carry out your
plan.' The people of Namau are not impressionable from
a religious point of view. It seems impossible to settle
South Sea teachers out in the villages. Either the men
from the South Seas are not strong enough, or the people
are not enough advanced. Homu of recent years has
sought to attract the young folk to Urika, where they
are offered wages for knitting and the making of fibre
mats. I cannot pretend to desire that the natives should
be supplied with knitted vests, and neither industry
seems likely to pay, but it is wonderful to find how
machinery interests the natives. In the villages they
cannot count beyond five, and school they despise : yet
at Urika youngsters will work a knitting-machine with
no other instructions than a series of numbers written
on a card. Education in Papua should plainly be strong
on the manual side.
On the way to Orokolo we passed the important
village of Maipua, once hostile, but now increasingly
friendly. The tide was high and the waterways of the
village ran swift. Bamboo bridges only carried us part
of the way, and we crossed in dug-outs to another
quarter where I took the photograph at p. 198. Pigs'
jaws were strung on the posts, crocodiles' skulls were
neatly placed on the floor, and everywhere were the
dancing-masks and wooden shields that represent spirits.
At the back of this house we saw several kaiamunu —
wicker-work figures as large as a horse and like a cross
between a pig and a crocodile. No woman is allowed to
look upon them.

MAIPUA VILLAGE, PURARI DELTA

154 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
It was in Maipua in the early days that Homu had one
of his most vivid experiences. The people of a new
village, when they see a white man, are always inclined
to turn up his sleeves and trousers to see whether the
curious colour extends to the rest of his body. On this
early visit relations seemed friendly and he was going
through the regular process of examination. Suddenly a
chief from a neighbouring district, who had come with
him as peace envoy, gave him a secret signal to depart.
In five minutes Homu leisurely and casually made his
good-byes. When they were well away from the village,
he turned on the chief and asked why he had broken off
negotiations so quickly. ' Well,' the Papuan answered,
' it was like this — the man who was turning up your
trouser leg, and feeling your calf, was just saying,
" Wouldn't it be good to knock him on the head and
see how this white flesh tastes ? " and I thought it was
time to go ! '
From Maipua we panted and bustled up a narrow
stream with hairpin corners and swelling eddies to meet
H. P. Schlencker, the Australian missionary of Orokolo —
' Seneka ', as the Papuans call him. Here Homu left us
and we followed the stream in swaying dug-outs, so crank
and lightly balanced that several times I thought we should
be overturned and my cameras be ruined. Two or three
miles took us to Muro, where we found a band of carriers
and started the seven-mile walk to Orokolo. First we
cut straight south for five miles through the bush to get
to the sea. Sometimes we walked dry-shod, sometimes
in mud that almost plucked our boots off, or with our
feet crushing through rotting trunks ; sometimes we waded
through water to the hips ; but at last, after a very
pleasant afternoon, we came out on the beach at Arehaua,

THE GULF STATIONS 155
the western end of the Orokolo settlement. Two miles
along the firm sand brought us to the bungalow.
Orokolo is a great chain of villages, spreading for four
miles along the curving beach. Seen from the sea a score
of huge club-houses raise their immense jaws amid the
coco-nuts. The club-houses, here called eravos, are not
so big in themselves, but the huge projecting verandah
is carried farther and higher than elsewhere. It is difficult
to conceive what can have given them the idea, except
the openjaws of the crocodile. From the back of the house
the roof slopes ever upwards, and projects outward
and upward over the platform in front. When two
or three face one another in the same hamlet the effect
is specially striking. If, on the other hand, from the sea
or any other place that allows an open view, three or four
together are seen from behind with the palms all round
them, one gets the impression of huge water monsters
or mastodons with enormous shoulders, breaking away
in panic through the bush.
If Kaimare is the Charing Cross, Orokolo is the Margate
of Papua. I do not mean that there are hotels and
excursions, but that the long beach, even in calm weather
smoking with spray, seems alive with children. In the
cool of the afternoon the working women return, carrying
their heavy burdens on their backs with the help of slings
across their foreheads and bending forward under the
weight. Mothers with infants sit round on the sand
above high-water mark, fathers leave their thatching
of the club-house or their job of garden fencing andlounge
about at ease. Boys and girls wander out into the shallows
with nets and fish-traps, and the smallest imps play
' king of the castle ' in a great root of Nipa palm washed
out to sea by river-floods, and then bedded at the beach

156 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
crest by the last high sea. Under heathen conditions
I have rarely seen life, and especially child-life, so sunny
and so free from care.
The people of Orokolo (and from thence eastward nearly
to Fife Bay) abhor cannibalism, and their contempt for
it has tended curiously to check the practice in Namau,
twenty miles away. The Orokolo people look upon it
as thoroughly bad form. The people of Namau, while
greatly hurt that their reasonable use of slain enemies
should make their neighbours turn up their noses, have
been nevertheless so affected that they have reduced
cannibalism in quite a marked degree. Yet the cheery
light-coloured men of Orokolo are good fighters. There
is a funny story of the time when Homu was stationed
there. Two clans during a feud used to come to the
opposite banks of a small stream and, sheltering behind
the big trees, fire their arrows into the air, much as
a howitzer drops its shells over a screen of earthworks.
Neither side accomplished much, but they went on
without a break. At last Homu proposed that they should
have an armistice at six every night, and they agreed.
Regularly at nightfall he went down and fired his revolver.
Both sides gathered up their arrows and went home to
supper and to bed, for all the world as though he had blown
the whistle for ' time ' at a football match.
The young fellows came up and gave us a shooting
exhibition. No doubt modern conditions do not encou
rage archery, but I was surprised and disappointed. As
a mark Seneka put up an unhusked coco-nut about the
size of a large human head. From twenty yards away
only five arrows out of forty hit it, and fifty yards seemed
beyond any effective range. Their arrows looked too
long and too light. Of course, when twenty or thirty

THE GULF STATIONS 157
were fired at once, it was very easy to see how deadly
might be the effect of volleys from close quarters.
The promise of the beach of Orokolo was fulfilled in
the school. The boys and girls swarmed to learn, and
apparently made no special demand for manual education
— in both points quite unlike the children of Namau.
The sports day was a pretty sight. The Orokolo girl
of twelve or fourteen, with her grass skirts swinging as
she walks, is as free as any girl in England, and is quite
sure that ' life is a game that 's just begun '. She wears
a mass of necklaces, and her head is cropped fairly close
and then shaven in a pattern, as if paths were cut between
the little tufty plots of hair. The married women are
close shaven and without ornament. Most of the boys
wear an amusing round ball of hair at the front and
another at the back of the crown, and for the rest are
shaved. We went one night into one of the big eravos
and had a short service, which was somewhat spoilt by
the begging for tobacco at the end. The Papuan does
not naturally take much stock in things unseen. Another
night amid the big houses at the western end of the town
we held a service brightly lighted by acetylene lamps.
Results so far are scant in Orokolo, though the people
are very friendly. But among such surroundings it was
interesting to find, in the study at the end of Seneka's
lightly-built, airy house, a library of devotional books
such as I have rarely seen. In that library we could
understand how a man might possess resources powerful
enough to win even the materialized Papuan.
I never got over my surprise, by the way, to find
that almost all along the coast in each compartment of
the wooden houses there is a fire-place, in which a fire
is kept burning all night. The hearth is a big wooden

158 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
block covered deep with old ash, and the block can be
renewed at need. I suspect that the real purpose of the
fires is to keep away mosquitoes, but it is not difficult to
understand that houses are often burnt down.
Orokolo, though itself lies low, is the beginning of dry
land. The next stage brought us to the hills coming
right down to the sea, with the great mountain chains
showing up behind. From here to the east end the whole
coast was unbroken beauty, and at the best points the
backbone of mountains stood out, some of them 13,000
feet high, like Alps without their snow. Though not
the highest, Mount Yule is as striking as the Matterhorn,
for its top is like a great Wellington nose pointed upwards
to the sky. The natives reproduce the outline in many
favourite designs. On the sea margin there were lochs
like those of the West Highlands, but fringed with tropical
vegetation, and little river deltas teeming with all the
life of the swamps. Few people have any idea of the
beauty of Papua. At Orokolo, too, the True Papuan
type was becoming less dominant, and many had skins of
a lovely chestnut brown. The mingling went further in
the Moru district, the last before the racial dividing line
at Cape Possession, and far more faces of the Mixed
Papuan type were seen.
The great village of Toaripi or Motumotu, the old
home of Tamate, was our first call in the Moru territory,
and here we met Pryce Jones, whose name being translated
is Sione. In this district the girls of marrying age had
their heads shaven, and were anointed all over the breast
and body with a horrid mixture of red earth and oil, which
gave them a peculiarly brutalized appearance. One of
the customs which seems to run all down the coast is
that those in mourning smear themselves with black all

A Club House at Orokolo.

THE GULF STATIONS 159
over the body. Sometimes in the west the women use
brown earth instead, and in the case of a couple of Goari-
bari women we were given the pretty explanation —
much prettier than the ladies themselves — that they were
in mourning because their husbands were away east as
labour recruits. In several districts the widow is expected
to wrap herself in a tight-fitting bodice of narrow straps
of plaited string, but at Toaripi for the first time we
had the good luck to see a widower. He was specially
painted and from his shoulders two long trains of feathers
depended. His head was ornamented as for a dance.
Altogether he had feathers enough to deck out a whole
nodding hearse. Was it, one asked — was it grief, or
courtship reviving ?
In this district we found the Church well rooted,
which is as it should be, for the work is older than that
to the west. At Toaripi, after a primitive but eager
gathering, we were introduced to an old bearded deacon.
He was not clothed unduly ; a pocket-handkerchief
would have supplied all that he wore ; but from what
I heard he was as good a deacon in proportion to his
opportunities as many in the Churches at home. At
Moru, the head station just above the big village of
Jokea, we saw a little congregation in which a fair propor
tion were in ordinary paint and feathers. For the most
part Christianity has told against long hair and ornaments
and certainly the Christian boys look trim, and must
save much time by not having to get themselves up. But
it was good to see both types together in the Church.
In the big villages of the Moru district the club-houses,
though smaller, were still in their glory, and their influ
ence was seen in a curious way. Women had been so
drilled by the system to take no public part in the life

160 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
of the tribe, that they found it hard to face the prominence
of church. Almost all our audiences in this district were
men. To the east, however, the influence of the club
house is less, and that of the Church is more, so that this
handicap is not felt so much.
But the station is mainly unique for the repeated and
regular visitation of the villages. Sione, tireless pastor and
evangelist, is always on the move, and he has big schools
and an active, loyal staff of South Sea teachers. He
manages, somehow, to train his boys without bringing
them under too tight supervision ; and, though with some
the method fails, the general result is that they can look
after their own discipline wherever they are. Sione was
in Madagascar in earlier days, and, as in almost every case
where a missionary knows more than one field, he has
been able to contribute very much of value to the system
of his new Mission. He is also one of the men who have
done much for Bible translation. His keenest interests
lie in the investigation of the unexplored pathways of
native speech, and he believes that he has found at last,
what men in other western districts would be thankful
to find, a word that may be used for ' God '.
Education hath her victories. The men from one of
Sione's villages, as they made a journey up the coast,.
were in danger from an enemy village, which poured out
armed with clubs to attack them. They had no weapons
themselves, but producing paper and pencil they said
proudly, ' We know how to write. We shall take all your
names and show them to Sione, and then you'll see what
he'll do.' They got away unmolested.

CHAPTER X
CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA
Delena is historic for some of the early work of Tamate,
and now as the station of H. M. Dauncey (Donisi), the
senior of the Mission. There is probably no one, except
Sir William Macgregor, who knows the intimacies of
the past history of Papua as does Donisi, and as Secretary
he helps to hold together the scattered line of missionaries,
and to give younger men their chance. We met him at
Kivori, and found the South Sea teachers greatly per
turbed by our premature arrival. The news had been
sent by two boys from Delena in ample time, but,
swimming across a flood stream where a Government
ferry-man should have been on duty, one of them was
taken by a crocodile, and the other went back home to
bear the bad news.
Here is quite a different country, as befits the change
to the Central Division and to the Mixed Papuan stock.
The district begins to be dry and less fertile. All but the
dampest hollows are covered with long grass, and the
fertility of the swamps is left behind. The club-houses
become smaller and have fewer masks and no skulls at
all, while the people approximate to the Motuans of
Port Moresby. Motu is very widely understood and is
generally used in Church services. From here along
the coast to Hula there is something like civilization, and
Church life has passed beyond the infant stage.
Port Moresby is the centre of Government, with a
M

1 62 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
population in normal times of about 400 or 500 whites.
In 1874 tne nrst European house built on the bay was
put up by the sailors of the John Williams for W. G.
Lawes, Tamate's great colleague. The protectorate
declared in 1884 was preliminary to full annexation on
September 4, 1888, and Sir William Macgregor was
appointed first administrator. A better appointment
could not have been made, and Sir William did special
service in exploration and in laying down a humane
policy towards natives. The bay is a long basin about
two miles across at its narrowest, and offers splendid
anchorage. Steamers to and from Australia come in
about three times every month.
The country here is very dry, and Ela, the European
settlement, is a collection of tin roofs on a red ridge
almost bare of vegetation. The Governor's house is
well situated between Ela and the native settlement, but
even the Governor cannot shield himself from mosquitoes.
These swarm all through the Central Division, but
I remember no place where they were so ferocious in
daylight as on the walk up to Government House.
The native settlement consists of three villages built
partly over the water, so as to allow of rapid escape
to canoes in case of attack. The natural dress of the
Port Moresby or Hanuabada man is exiguous to the last
degree. But the Port Moresby stores are near enough
to create a large demand for calicoes and vests. The
people we saw wearing clothes in the church at the
villages outside Port Moresby seemed a long way removed
from cleanliness, and in the district there is very much
of that skin disease which produces loose scales all over
the body. After shaking hands with the Christian
community, a ceremony to which they attach much

s

T~;r* r g- 'Vt^v

HOUSES ON THE WATER'S EDGE, PORT MORESBY

164 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
importance, we used to retire to the nearest soap and
water without delay. I cannot be sufficiently thankful
that nose-rubbing is no longer in fashion.
When we were there, the people of the district were in
sore trouble. Many of their big lakatois had failed to
return. The light winds, to us so fair, had been disastrous
to them. Their great unwieldy craft got no way on them,
and crossing the estuary of the big rivers were swept
helplessly out to sea. Most of the young men of the
villages were in one or another. A few returned, and at
the climax of the uncertainty the friends of the rest became
more and more anxious. We saw many women wailing,
and it was evidently the custom to tear their cheeks and
temples with their nails. Many were mechanically
moving their clawing fingers up and down at a safe
distance from the skin, but with others the wounds were
genuine and gory. In the end I believe almost all the
men returned, though much of the sago they were
bringing was lost and several lakatois.
The Training Institution at Vatorata is thirty miles
down the coast by Kapakapa village. Like the rest of
the Central Division it sometimes suffers from a shortage
of water, but the site is healthy and central. Young
married couples from several districts are trained there
as teacher evangelists, and the mixing of the types is
pure gain. The west, except Daru, is not far enough on
towards Christianity to make any contribution, and in
the past the Port Moresby and Kapakapa districts have
produced the largest number of candidates. W. G.
Lawes, in his quiet way as great a missionary as Tamate,
founded the little ' school of the prophets ' at Port
Moresby, and then later was wise enough to move it
away from the influences of the growing town. But

Kalaigolo Village.

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 165
Vatorata must have its proper place when we talk of
education. From the point of view of interest in mere travel Vator
ata comes in mainly as the gateway to the interior. The
Society has made one of the very few roads in the territory,
and this, as the Governor writes, ' renders it possible
without excessive labour to penetrate a fair distance into
the interior'. After coasting for 300 or 400 miles, it
was a happy change to journey inland. The going was
not easy. It was well enough as long as the narrow track
went through the grass lands, or skirted the bank of a big
river like the Kemp Welch, but often we crossed back
wards and forwards over the serpentine bendings of a
rocky mountain torrent, or climbed on to a narrow ridge
only to find that it dropped again. I was certainly out
of training, and I fancy I drank too often during the middle
of the day ; at least some cause produced a desperate
weariness by the afternoon. The heat of midday was
really too great for normal travel, but we pressed on
because in the middle of the afternoon rain often falls
heavily, and after that the traveller alternates between
sliding back as he goes up and sliding forward as he goes
down. But the views from the two bungalows at the end of
each day's march were worth all our labour. Kalaigolo
is a solitary hill above the Kemp Welch river, and looks
down its lower course and over Kerepunu out to sea.
Boku, forty miles from the coast by road, at the end of
the Henty Ridge, looks up to the blue mountains opposite,
10,000 feet high. , The villages inland are built on ridges
for safety, and no doubt also for health. The Papuan
of the coast cannot bear to be far away from water, fresh
or salt. These villagers of the hills seem to prefer to

1 66 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
nest far above the streams. The people are wild, but
reasonably moral and friendly, the population is sparse,
and the work, though in its early stages, is very hopeful.
Hula, thirty miles east from Vatorata, was the last of
the villages actually in the sea. The spit of land on which
the Mission bungalow is placed is so parched and scorching
that, apart from safety in attack, there is much to be said
for the advantage of living on a platform above the cool
water. Hula beach I picture as the ' Lord's ' of Papua.
In the late afternoon, school well over and the heat
relaxed, the boys and girls drop down the ladders of
their sea houses and wade ashore, or commandeer a handy
canoe and paddle in, and then in ten minutes all along
the hard sand a dozen games will be in full swing. They
sort themselves somehow, boys, big and little, girls, some
tiny and some full grown, in one or two games boys
and girls mixed, and they all seem as keen as mustard.
True, they throw instead of bowling, and any wooden
club will serve for a bat, but their hitting is free and
fearless, and the girls of Hula would entirely refute the
brotherly judgment that girls cannot throw.
What has cricket to do with Missions ? In this case
a great deal. Hula district had, in the old days, several
white settlers, some of them of the baser sort. Concu
binage went on all the time, and, when they invited
their friends from Port Moresby, the visitors made free
with the girls. The worst excesses arose in connexion
with the immoral dances of the district. The nature
of these may be judged from the fact that while the wife,
as being so much private property, was not allowed to
be present, the unmarried girls were present and became
the centre of uncleanness. Beharell, the missionary of
the last ten years, discouraged some of the pandering

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 167
to white men by threatening to thrash any father who
prostituted his daughter. But he did better still when he
gave them decent amusements to take the place of the
immoral dance. Charles Kingsley would have rejoiced
to see Hula beach in the cool of the afternoon.
Close by at the mouth of the Kemp Welch is Kalo,
whose people, in 1881, murdered South Sea teachers,
wives and children, ten persons in all, because one of
the wives had pushed the wife of a chief off her low
verandah. The men of Kerepunu come of the same
stock and are very big compared with most of the Papuans.
I felt glad, while they shouldered me, that I was their
friend. As a rule the Papuan is not tall, but he is so
beautifully proportioned and so alive and alert that he
looks much taller than he really is.
From Port Moresby to Hula the work of the Mission
is strong all along the coast, the schools being efficient and
reasonably advanced. The proportion of native Papuan
teachers is large and the churches are well attended.
Big Christian gatherings like the Mes of the South Seas
are held every year, and do much to supply the brightness
and jollification we all need, the child races not least.
Some of the old practices must go, such as the dances
referred to, and it is our bounden duty to put Christian
festivals in their place.
Religion never was designed
To make our pleasures less.
Our next station used to be on Millport Harbour.
It is now on Toulon Island, six miles from the coast, for
in this case the longest way round has proved the nearest
way home. The key to the mainland is the island village
of Mailu, big with a population of five hundred, and the

^•^S^^i:**-*-.

THE BIG CANOES SETTING OUT FROM MAILU

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 1 69
metropolis of these parts. The lovely bays of the main
land conceal small hamlets here and there, but you will
find no centre of general traffic or kinship unless you
cross the strait to Mailu. Sooner or later all the coast
people come in there, and every year from the sheltered
bay in front of the village the big canoes set out to Aroma
on their yearly pilgrimage of trade, with the great crab-
claw sails bellying in the south-east monsoon. There is
little doubt about it : Mailu is the best place for the
Mission. The village of one street curves gracefully along the
line of the bay, and the houses, heavily thatched in rusty
black, edge shoulder to shoulder lest the spirits should get
in between. For here we are back again to raw heathenism,
and here, some for good and many for evil, the old customs
are reigning still.
W. J. Saville arranged that the young folks should show
us how they play, and so early one afternoon the boys and
girls clustered round the Mission station and loitered
under the casuarina trees that fringe the sandy cricket
ground. Their elders followed to see the fun, the men
in scanty loin-cloths, the women in full grass petticoats
to the knee. We strangers broke off from our business,
and immediately we showed ourselves the games began.
First came the Walk of the Cuscus, the tree-bear of
Papua. The boys stood in two rows facing inwards, and
each linked hands firmly with his partner opposite.- One of
the smaller imps was hoisted up to stand on the arms of
pair number one, and kept upright on his shaky perch
by a friendly man at either side holding him by the hand.
A short chorus was sung with great gusto, and at a certain
cadence the ' bear ' was hoisted upward with a jerk of
the straining arms and landed on to the wrists of the next

170 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
pair. Then the song began again and there came another
hoist. As each pair of supporters were released, they
moved to the farther end of the row to take their turn
again, and we were told that in this way the game would
often travel the whole length of the village street.
Then the women and girls had their innings with the
Snake Game. All joined hands in a single line : number
one girl turned and dived under the joined hands of
two and three ; two gave a twist and followed still
holding on ; the leader scurried in a circle to the front
and so dived between three and four ; another wide
sweep and then between four and five ; and so on down
the line. As the moving train grew ever longer and longer,
the laughter and screaming increased until the leader
had passed under the arms of Y and Z. Then she circled
on and on with her tail circling after, until like a cord
round a top all were wound at full stretch of arm
round Z as centre. When they became one throbbing
mass of grass petticoats and brown backs supported on
slim, twinkling legs, they all pushed to the centre to throw
Z to the ground. At last all went over together and so
the fun reached its height.
There was an attempt to make a merry-go-round with
boys as spokes and two or three others sitting on their
massed feet at the centre, but when the bearers at the
circumference applied their power and tried to swing
the locked mass as one whole, it broke miserably. Yet
no one minded a bit.
To have bare feet and no clothes worth anxiety opens
up great possibilities, and for the next turn the line of
girls sat bending forward on the ground, each with her
shoulder pillowed on the bent back of the girl in front.
Then the hindmost girl, guided again by an elder at either

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 171
hand, plunged and stumbled along the causeway of backs
till she came to the end, where she too bowed for the
procession to tramp over her. Necks and heads came in
for some hard pounding.
Smaller plays finished, the boys and men divided for
the Fish Game. The boys massed themselves to make the
shoal of fish,; the men away on one side had a rope to
represent the net. When the boys crouched each on
his left knee, each vibrating his flat right hand above his
head, the suggestion was almost perfect of a smooth sea
broken by a moving shoal of ' leather jackets '. Stationed
along the rope the men watched tensely. Then two small
boys edged forward to represent another kind of fish that
does not move in shoals. The net line quivered for the
first spring, but the fish darted back. Then came a single
fish of another species. And now the shoal moved
cautiously forward, swinging to this side and that as a shoal
does. The net began to move ; they were startled and
made off out of reach. Once more they came forward,
this time with less hesitation ; they reached the middle,
and the net swept forward like a sickle to cut them off.
Some dived round the ends, but the main body rushed
blindly into the sagging rope, and were swept forward
struggling by the superior weight of the men. Then
began the Song of the Fishing, and, singing, laughing, and
struggling, fishermen and fish lurched across the lawn.
It was characteristic of that land of Babel, with its
thirty languages and its uncounted dialects, that the
singers could tell the meaning of none of their songs.
The old men had got them from those that went before,
but even they confessed that the words came from some
tongue they did not understand. They sang the songs,
and with that simple fact inquiry should be content.

1 72 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
After this, as the sun went lower and the shadows
deepened, they played the ' Attack in the Sago-Swamp ';
but the old men were contemptuous — 'The boys and girls
did not know how it should be done,' they said, and the
words of the proper songs handed down mysteriously
from the time when the tribe spoke another tongue
made a real difference, even if no one understood them
now. So the old men offered to come the next afternoon
and go through the scene again.
Sure enough there they were, and the hours it must
have taken them to dress were rewarded to the full.
Such a show it was ! Armlets and garters, belts and
necklaces, supplied any deficiencies of the narrow loin
cloth. At every band on arms, knees, and ankles, red,
green, and yellow croton leaves were inserted with a real
sense of decoration. Their hair was carefully frizzed
out and set with combs, feathers, shells, cassowary plumes,
and all manner of ornament, attractive and terrifying.
On the forehead some wore one or more beaks of the
hornbill, each the token of a man slain. Most faces were
painted in patches of red and blue. A few had long
wooden spears, and all the main performers carried the
Papuan drum shaped like a long hour-glass with handle
in the middle and skin across one end. Sitting in the
village they had looked ordinary and ugly enough : here
the war panoply gave real dignity to their faces. The old
profiles showed keen and aquiline, and they might have
been tropical editions of Fenimore Cooper's Redskins.
As a prelude they danced ; first they did the Daugi
(keep the ' g ' hard and pronounce the vowels like Italian),
the dance of war. A dozen or so lined up in double file
following the chief, with a couple of spearmen as scouts
on either side. The drums began their low sinister

THE DAUGI DANCE AT MAILU

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 173
booming, and to their time the warriors danced. They
crouched head forward, with knees bent for sudden
springing, feet set widely to swerve to this side or that,
the drum held in the left hand low at the knee of each
and the right hand striking the measured time. They
moved slowly, now swaying crosswise on to either foot,
now taking short leaps forward that scarcely seemed to
leave the ground. Their finery streamed behind them as
they sprang. Looking at them from behind, one saw them
bared and tense from shoulder to heel, and never have I
seen the human form more beautiful. Every sinew was
lithe, every muscle could be seen playing beneath the
glossy brown skin. It was the perfection of weird grace.
For about two pins I could have turned Papuan !
Then they did a lighter interlude, the Cockatoo Dance ;
the main chorus, still with drums, waved cassowary
plumes above their heads. The parrots were two young
men, parti-coloured with red and black in quarterings
across the face and breast and with feathers arranged
round the head like the crest of the cockatoo. The two
squatted opposite to one another and gave an absurdly
close imitation of the love-making of two birds on a boughs
Then came the Dance of the Raid. The cricket ground
became a sago swamp. A log was propped up for the
sago-tree and felled with much shouting. The shreds of
fibre were hacked out of the trunk and squeezed over the
primitive washing-trough. It was all very realistic, and
recalled every stage of the process to any one who has
seen sago-making. Then they bundled up the imaginary
yield of the morning's toil and moved off to a sheltered
place for their midday meal and rest. All the while
they were spied on by two or three of the other party,
who concealed themselves with an obviousness worthy

174 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
of the mediaeval stage. The siesta over, the sago party
sent out scouts, and, deeming the coast clear, proceeded
to cut another tree. It was scarcely done when the
attack came ; from all quarters the spears rained. The
shower came so thick that I was reminded of the hero
of the Latin exercise book who, hearing that the arrows
of the enemy would be thick enough to shut out the sun,
posed himself suitably, and said, ' Then we will fight in
the shade.' We seemed indeed to see a cloud of green,
for in the game the spears were fleshy stalks of a big leaf.
Some of the sago party ran, some lay ' dead ' at the first
volley, and some put up a hopeless fight against over
whelming odds. Finally, all were clubbed or hacked to
death according to the best traditions. Then some were
carried off, hanging obligingly to poles, presumably for
the dinner of the conquerors. Among these the village
idiot distinguished himself and drew peals of laughter
from the crowd. I was more interested to see in how
animal a way his nose ran into his upper lip, just like
the statues of Pan. From some bodies they hacked
off the imaginary heads and put them into baskets.
Speedily the raiding party reached home with their
prizes, and the triumphal dance began. The head
baskets were set in the centre and the dance surged around
them. Every now and then all brought the left foot
down on the ground with a resounding thud. Four
women, the older pair obviously performing a pleasant
public duty with zest, the younger self-conscious for
all but a few excited moments, danced round the circle
of the warriors swinging their grass petticoats and leaping
lightly from the ground ; then all sat round the head
baskets, and there was that posturing with the hands
which counts as one form of dancing in the Pacific.

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 175
At last, from the argument proceeding, it appeared that
even the old men had forgotten the proper words. Night
fell rapidly and it was all over.
But many of these old men had played the game in
earnest. In other parts of Papua it is played in earnest
still. Mailu village is not an easy place for the missionary.
After some years of work the boys and girls at last are
changing. They trust the missionary and his wife. They
come to them for counsel, they want education, and they
will give labour and thought to aid this new strange
movement which the missionary has set on foot. Above
all, when they have lived for a time in the missionary's
house and been trained, they have learnt enough of the
Gospel to want to choose their own partners in marriage,
so that, having learnt so much, they may not be dragged
back by being mated with ignorance, brutality, and
superstition. A new day dawns.
At such a transition it is easy to imagine the suppressed
but bitter hostility of the older people, especially of the
older women. Hitherto they have ruled the girls, but
that new-fangled creature ' from the skies ' with her long,
pretty dresses, her skill in dressing wounds, her quiet
power to teach the girls about the house, and her absurd
objection to the old natural paths of physical and moral
dirt, has stolen the hearts of the girls away and they will
heed her only. The men do not feel so strongly, and are
more approachable than of old. They move about more,
and have a better chance of realizing that the old ways
must change, and that these foreigners will stand up for
them and are quite different from some of the foreigners
they have learnt to fear. And so they are economizing
on pigs from Aroma at the time of the great feast, in

MAILU VILLAGE

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 177
order that they may be able to build a church where God
will be worshipped in the unique Mailu tongue.
Many strange things jostle each other in Papua, but not
many more strange than the contrast I saw in Mailu village.
On one of the front stagings of a house there sat an old
shrivelled lady, fully dressed in a grass petticoat, her bare
legs dangling above me. High behind her rose the gable
end of the house, and in the middle, stuck there probably
by some one who had begged it as an ornament from a
Samarai store, was a large picture of a sleek gentleman
in top hat and frock-coat with the inscription ' Wear
Blank's Boots '.
At Fife Bay, with its station of Isuleilei, we were back
again, if not in civilization, at least in a state of quietness
and established friendship to the missionary. Historically
the east, like the west, was cannibal, and it is less than
forty years ago that cannibalism ceased to exist. In the
lovely Highland strait of Suau, so narrow that you could
almost throw a stone across, with steep, shaggy hills
rising on either side, is a ledge of rock which is covered
at high tide. That ledge was the shambles, for there
the bodies of the foe could be cut up for the feast, and the
tide would come up and wash all clean. It was at Suau
that the Chief Kirikeu came and laid a basket of meat
by Mrs. Chalmers's side as a friendly offering. She looked
down at it absent-mindedly, and gradually recognized
that it was a piece of the breast of a man ready cooked !
Chalmers and his wife settled there in 1878, and by
1882 God had made use of these two to end the old system,
though Mrs. Chalmers had gone down to die in Sydney
before the change came. Now the natives are able to
scatter in tiny hamlets all along the little bays, very
nearly as safe as any English hamlet from treachery or

178 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
attack. This freedom to live where they will makes educa
tion more difficult than where the natives are gathered
into big villages and the school can serve many families
close by. Suau was the home of Sam, our steersman, and
we found, when we got there, that he was a man of
substance and owned two whale-boats.
C. F. Rich has given great attention to plantations,
and in this district a result has been obtained from his
example which, if not quite different, is at least on an alto
gether different scale from anything of the sort elsewhere.
Natives have planted 19,000 coco-nut trees in the district
upon native land. Under the old ways of cultivation,
or rather of neglect, the Papuan thought of a tree as
likely to profit his son, or perhaps his grandson, and was
too lazy to endow posterity. Now that he sees that a tree
properly planted will bear after six or seven years he takes
up plantation keenly. Thus a real service to the country
has been done by model planting.
Kwato is a tiny island in the China Straits given to
the Society in exchange for Samarai Island, two miles
away, which the Government requisitioned because of
its anchorage. After a glance at the map any one will
understand the comparison of the district to any of the
finest pieces of scenery in the West Highlands, though what
in Scotland would be broom or heather, in the China
Straits is the interwoven foliage of considerable trees. In
the water by the pier are great star-fish, sea-urchins with
spines like barbed needles, great brown sea-slugs (the
beche-de-mer of the China trade), and fish striped like
zebras or iridescent with blue, or gold, or some other
colour splashed out from God's paint-box. On and around
the central hill is all the apparatus of a great station for
a couple of hundred souls, and everything works up to

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 179
the thatched octagonal church, with its wide open door
ways looking up and down the straits.
Kwato is one of the older and more advanced stations.
Organization and leadership have been strong, unusual
resources have been available, and the fruit is plain for
all to see. In the old days the district was as barbarous
as Suau. At one Communion Service a few years ago
the bread and the wine were served by two well-known
chiefs from neighbouring districts, one of whom had
killed and eaten the wife of the other in the old bad days.
That meeting was a symbol of the destruction of the old
order. C. W. Abel has adopted for many years the system of
close, careful training, and the influence has been good.
He can go away for six months' furlough, leaving all his
possessions and valuables in charge of Papuans, to say
nothing of a motor launch or two. As a preface to the
following story, it should be remembered that the
Papuan attitude was expressed by a Mailu boy who
was consulted by W. J. Saville about the translation of
the sentence ' It is more blessed to give than to receive '.
The version he turned out, and insisted on, was, ' It is
much better to get than to give.' So thinks the natural
Papuan. Yet not long ago a business man from Melbourne was
on the steamer which called, at Samarai, and, having the
day to spare, went off to Kwato, but found Abel and his
family away on furlough. The Papuans in charge showed
him round and gave him afternoon tea. He was greatly
impressed when the tip which he wished to give them was
gladly but firmly refused. They said, ' We have been
taught to do these things for love and not for money.'
That means a good deal. N 2

1 80 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
At one time a saw-mill was run on a large scale at
Kwato, but European supervision was difficult, and,
owing to the lack of seasoned timber, skilled labour had
to be wasted in mere lumbering during some months
of each year. But some fine little launches have been
built on Kwato, and have sold as well as any launch from
a European firm, and many another should be built in days
to come.
As Kwato looks across to Samarai and is close to the
entrance to Milne Bay, where European plantations
have greatly extended, the problem of relations with
Europeans is acute. In the old days these regions were
the scene of much brutality to the natives on the part of
white men, sometimes because they were of the baser
sort, or sometimes because of sheer, clumsy ignorance of
native ways. But the progress of government has put
an end to any flagrant cruelty. On the other hand, the
wisest whites and natives recognize the dangers which
are arising from the sale of large areas of native land to
European firms and individuals. At the outset the native
is usually reluctant to sell and probably refuses, but when
before his simple eyes axes are heaped on axes, ornaments
are multiplied, and cotton goods are spread out by the
piece, his better judgment gives way; and grasping at
the shadow of possession, he is almost certain to lose the
substance. The great inroads which have been made
upon the native lands on all sides of Milne Bay have tended
to break up the tribal organization, and the native may
easily become a landless, wandering outcast. C. W. Abel
thinks that part of the solution lies in the establishment
of native reservations, and undoubtedly some provision
of the sort should be made. He has also taken up coco-nut
plantation on a large scale, so as to provide a future for

CENTRAL AND EAST PAPUA 181
the young couples he has trained on his station. The
organization of the scheme and the care of the plantations
are splendid, but the Mission will find it hard to secure
a successor capable of managing so big a concern. The
further problem arises whether a Mission should take
up business on a large scale. On that point I have more
to say below.

CHAPTER XI
ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE
It is time to say a few things about Papuan habits and
ways, and to discuss a few of the problems the country
presents, always remembering that generalizations must
be of the loosest. The frequency with which the word
' cannibal ' has occurred will suggest a great disregard
for human life in parts of the country. What is difficult
to convey is how completely cheerful that disregard can
be. The men of the west, as I have said, are a dour,
morose-looking lot. As far as the island of Kiwai goes,
that might perhaps be because the old amusement of
head-hunting is allowed no more; yet the people of
Goaribari or Urama, who still enjoy the privilege, are
just as glum. But all the rest would seem to murder, as
schoolboys might fight with snowballs, from sheer animal
spirits and love of adventure.
Something humorous seems to gather round most
reports of Papuan experiences, perhaps because those with
out a sense of humour go home or die young. But I hope
I shall not be misunderstood when I say that in Murray's
Papua there is nothing more grimly funny than the
stories of murder in the chapter on the Administration
of Justice. He says at the outset that there is almost
always a pig mixed up in the case at some stage, though
sometimes the cause is much less substantial. In one
instance a pig died which belonged to two brothers, and
' the brothers in their unquenchable grief went forth

the;dug-out canoe of the west

AN OLD GOARIBARI CANNIBAL
(see p. 141)

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 183
and killed the first man they saw '. In another case
natives of the Main Range, who should have been
reasonably civilized, cut the throats of two runaway
carriers, and could give no explanation except that the
carriers ' looked cold and hungry '. At Samarai a prisoner
once urged that the murdered man was a bore — ' All
the time he talk, he talk, he talk too much,' and the magis
trate seems to have had enough fellow-feeling to give him
a sentence more suited to a case of killing in self-defence !
When we visited Government House Judge Murray told
us a more recent story. A man having murdered a
woman, the Governor asked why he chose a woman rather
than a man ? The warrior leaned confidentially towards
him and explained, ' Two things : one, woman he not
run so quick ; two, woman he not carry spear.' The
spirit of Papua is the spirit of the Bab Ballads, except
that there is no special need for expiation if the other
party is not strong enough to enforce it.
You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear —
It 's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece ;
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown a piece.
Girls will be girls — you're very young, and flighty in your mind ;
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find.
We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks —
Let 's see — five crimes at half-a-crown — exactly twelve-and-six.
What, however, the ' red slayer ' has to fear in Papua
is not the priest, but the sorcerer, and still more the
attempt of the injured party to 'pay back'. As in all
tribal feuds, the doctrine of paying back is the foundation
of justice. The last time the two villages met, village
A succeeded in killing five people from village B, so
now B sets out to kill an equal number. But moderation

DANCING MASKS, URAMA

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 185
is always difficult, and instead of killing five B succeeds
in killing twelve. That leaves seven which A must
attempt to make up at the next opportunity. And so
the count goes backwards and forwards. It is for all the
world like one of those games in which you must throw
the exact number to win, while anything over or under
that number counts against you. In the first establish
ment of peace there is no greater difficulty than that
created by the sense that a village has something which
it ought to ' pay back ' to those with whom it is asked
to make peace. Yorkshire and Lancashire do not feel
more keenly about a Whit-Monday cricket match.
It is fair to say that Papuans do not regard their own
lives very much more than the lives of others. Like all
the simple races, if they make up their minds to die, they
seem to be able to do so by sheer strength of will. That
is why the sorcerer's power of suggestion is so terribly
effective ; any who believe themselves bewitched ask no
cause more tangible, but lie down and die. To show how
loose is their hold on life, could you find anything better
than the pathetic story (for which I do not vouch, as I
cannot verify it) of two murderers, who were under the
loose confinement usual in a Papuan gaol ? At the
hour of their execution everybody was ready but the
victims, and, though prisoners rarely take to flight,
everybody assumed that these two men had run away.
But they turned up half an hour late, hot and panting,
and apologized profusely because they had kept the
officers waiting ! ' If the Government wished to kill
them,' they seemed to say, ' it was the Government's
way of paying back, and they were willing to be sacrificed.'
It is good to think that the death sentence is very rarely
given for murder among such a people.

1 86 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
But the humour of which I have spoken is only in
a book, and you must get away as far from life as the
Bab Ballads if you are to have any continued appreciation
of Papuan bloodshed. As is suggested by the story of the
slayer of women three pages back, the thing itself is dirty
and treacherous, with hardly a redeeming feature. For
the most part the process of paying back is carried out
by a surprise attack, and usually half a dozen canoes will
cut off one strange canoe, or a bevy of men will waylay
youngsters or women. Far be it from me to criticize
them harshly. Western military science always seeks
a large preponderance of force as the key to its tactics.
Perhaps the real difference between their bloodshed
and ours lies in the triviality of its cause, and that
motives so arbitrary and so paltry should lead to so
terrible a result. And yet, if we could get inside their
minds, I suspect we should find that the doctrine of paying
back had in it some elements not unlike our theories of
national honour. When all is said, however, there is little
that is heroic in Papuan warfare, and the reign of peace
is pure gain.
If in any Christian gathering of Papuans you ask them
what Christianity has done for them, the older men will
tell you at once that owing to Christianity it is possible
for them to move backwards and forwards along the
coast and into neighbouring villages, where previously
they would never have dared to show their faces.
Yet no one should think of Papua as a dangerous country
for Europeans. In certain districts there is still danger,
though to white men very little ; but in all the more
settled portions a white person is nearly as safe as up
country in Australia or in London itself.
Murder at once suggests sorcery ; indeed, it is only by an

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 187
artificial separation that I have kept sorcery out so far. We
all know there is no such thing, and yet the Government
arrests and punishes the sorcerer — and Government is
right. As any one will believe who knows natives at a similar
stage, sorcery runs all through the village life. If a man is
wounded in a fight, or taken by a crocodile, or carried off
by dysentery, it is plainly because he is bewitched. To
the Papuan mind there are no natural causes, and no one
ever dies a natural death. Therefore the sorcerer, apart
from the knowledge of poisons which he sometimes keeps
as a side line, actually does kill people by suggestion, as I have
said above. In that case, and just as much when there
are causes of death to our minds quite unconnected with
sorcery, the relatives begin to pay back by more sorcery or
by violence, and so it goes on right up to the full-grown feud.
The sorcerer is thus very near the centre of the Papuan
social system as a perpetual cause of terror and of the blind
brutality that terror breeds. Unfortunately, when Govern
ment imprisons the sorcerer, his neighbours are sometimes
all the more convinced of his power. ' Would the great
Government have interfered,' they say, ' unless it was
afraid of what he could do ? '
Sorcery springs out of the animism which rules all Papuan
religion, an animism so crude that it is doubtful whether
it deserves the word religion at all. In many of the languages
no term for God has been discovered, and, even when a word
has been found, it usually means only a spirit rather greater
than the rest. In parts of the west missionaries go so far
as to use a transliteration of the word God, because they
can trace no word that they can think of using. There
are no signs of worship, except certain rites to propitiate
evil spirits, and various animistic ceremonies to secure the
needs and desires of the performers ; no altars are found,

1 88 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
and there is no temple except the club-houses, which include
in their freemasonry a large element of mystery. Near
Kapakapa these become rough frames and painted logs
on which various ceremonies are performed, and farther
east, in the neighbourhood of Kerepunu, there are ' spirit '
houses. Up west the masks and shields carved with
grotesque faces are spoken of as ' spirits '. Many of the
canoes are given eyes to see their way, and in some districts
every object, animate or no, has a spirit of its own. The
anthropologists do not seem able to help us much, and I
have heard of no one who was capable of measuring how
much of genuine religion is to be found in the Papuan
attitude to spirits. Each district has its own type of spirit
ceremony, and it may be that the peculiar disunion of the
Papuan clans has prevented that comparison and competi
tion which in a more united race would have evolved the
idea of a spirit supreme. The lack of this conception leaves
the natives in a low moral state with nothing to redeem
them from complete materialism.
The untouched native cannot be said to be generous.
' Nothing for nothing ' is a good Papuan motto, and I
have heard it said that the very mothers expect to be repaid
later for the milk they give to their babies at the breast.
The contrast with the generosity of the South Seas is very
marked, and especially with the lavish giving of peoples such
as the Samoans. In the matter of sex some tribes are very
animal, though there are curious differences of moral tone
among the different peoples, but as a rule there is little
restraint on sex relations before marriage.
Yet nothing surprised me more than to find how com
pletely human was the impression the Papuans made
upon me. I have lived in India and have Indian friends of
all classes. When I went to Papua I expected to feel at once

lr^
J
¦^?,
Spirit Housl at Kerepunu
ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 189
a barrier between the natives and myself, and even positive
repulsion, in exact proportion to the difference between the
Indian and the Papuan in the scale of civilization. I admit
that the savages of the gulf are not attractive, largely because
they are dirty and live in dirt, but with that exception
I can say with some surprise that in Papua I never felt any
barrier of race greater than that minimum which naturally
persists between the Indian and the Englishman. I found
the young folk trained on the Mission stations simple,
childlike, and worthy of real friendship. The Papuans are
men and women, men and women for whom Christ died,
and beyond that common humanity one need ask for
nothing more. In theory I believed in the brotherhood
of man before ; I know it now by an experiment, which,
if not the ultimate test, comes very near it.
Indeed from many points of view the Papuans are a very
attractive people. Any one reading a book like that of
A. K. Chignell, An Outpost in Papua, just because he will
feel that the writer is no sentimentalist, will be minded to
agree that the book is conclusive testimony to the Papuan.
The mingled humour and affection which make that simple
chronicle so fine as pure literature would be impossible
if the objects of affection were unworthy. Further, his
picture of the men of the north-east coast entirely fits
what I saw of the south-coast Papuans, and may be taken
in all essentials for a picture of them.
Though they may be simple, they have a good deal of
intellectual power. Purely theoretic learning, it is true,
means to them very little, but in all practical affairs they
are apt and fresh of mind. It is only the most handy of
South Sea teachers who can keep pace with them in carpentry
and native crafts. They can line out coco-nuts, even though
the ground is undulating, and they humour the machinery

190 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
of a motor launch with all the affection of the born engineer.
Beharell will send his boys to Port Moresby, sixty miles
and back, for mails and stores, a dangerous sixty miles,
and the boat will be handled as carefully as if he himself
were there. During our long tour we owed much of our
safety to Papuan boys. On the more developed stations
the leading natives can take many a burden from the mis
sionary's back, and the Papuan ministry has started well.
One often asks the question, ' What contribution is this
race or that qualified to make to the corporate Christian
experience of the Church ? ' Of India and China it is easy
to predict, and one may guess some of the solid strength of
the African. What can the Papuan bring to the common
stock ? As I was nearing Papua I read the judgment
of a missionary author that the Papuan contribution will
be that of simplicity. I laughed with some superiority.
It seemed so obviously an evasion of the difficulty. But
I was quite wrong. Since I have seen Papua I know what
he meant. Simplicity is of two kinds. One is the mere
negative absence of brilliance or complication ; the other
kind is a certain positive effluence with power to make others
want the simpler ways, and love and admire the straight,
unsophisticated, uncorrupted realities on which alone true
life is founded. I suppose that is what is meant by ' be
coming as little children '. It is this outflowing, reacting
simplicity which is found in the best Papuans, and to the
Christian Church they may well bring what the child brings
to the home.
They have peculiarly fine artistic feeling. I have spoken
of the Runic designs of Fife Bay and the east, but every
where the Papuans show real taste in personal adornment.
On most afternoons the young Papuan dandies show off
before the girls, each pair hand in hand, like a couple of

TWO YOUNG DANDIES

1 92 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
sentimental schoolgirls, up and down the village street.
Combs set with feathers are in their hair, flowers (probably
from the missionary's garden) or croton leaves are stuck in
their armlets and garters, and bright streamers of bark fibre
flutter behind them in the breeze from their elbows and
tight, carved bark belts. Their faces are painted, which
is unnecessary and usually unbeautiful, but the taste of
the general ornament is perfect. The Papuan must have
a genuine love of colour. It was curious to notice how
many young fellows had the full Burne-Jones lips, and their
features, so sensitive as to be almost neurotic, inevitably
recall the ' aesthetic ' type of European.
Then again, the blue tattooing of the women was really
beautiful. In some cases they have a broad collar tattooed
round the neck, and dropping to a point between the
breasts, which produces an effect like embroidered clothing.
If only they would leave their faces untouched, there would
be very much to be said in favour of tattooing.
But after seeing all the various decorations, patterns,
colour and carvings, one asks whether this taste for beauty
cannot be maintained and used in the service of the Church ?
Another dominant impression is that of the decency of
nakedness. The missionaries who found the Papuans naked
had left behind by some years the theory that clothing
was ordained of God. They and their successors have
encouraged the wearing of ramis (kilts of cotton), but on
all else they have frowned. For the first day or two it is
a strange experience to be waited on at table by girls with
no clothing above the waist, but the strangeness passes
quickly and one is left with a sense of the true purity and
naturalness of it all. On one station is a woman of specially
fine character who visited England with the missionary's
wife, and has spoken here at public meetings. (At one

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 193
EngHsh mission room, by the way, the rough boys of the
neighbourhood with their coarse interruptions showed
themselves far less civilized than she !) In Papua I saw her
dressed in a rami like the rest, moving about and doing
the common work of the house, and in a rami she was just
as much a lady as she had proved herself in England with
European dress. It is strange too to see English women
moving naturally among men whose clothing consists
literally of a piece of string and ornaments. But W. N.
Lawrence, wisest of seniors, who lived in the Cook Islands
for many years, tells me that in conduct the unclothed people
around Port Moresby are probably as pure as the much
clothed people of the South Seas. If the big stores are not
too fatally successful in forcing clothing upon them, we
may even yet learn the meaning of essential decency from
the people of Papua.
The population is surprisingly small ; Governor Murray
estimates it at 400,000 for all British territory. That of the
area for which the London Missionary Society is responsible
is probably not more than 150,000. In the first place tribal
feuds have taken their frequent toll. In some of the eastern
tribes, too, abortion is common, and everywhere there is a
special danger from diseases indigenous to the country or only
known since the coming of white men. Enteric does not seem
to exist, but dysentery, malaria, dengue, and blackwater fevers
are only too frequent. Though the natives are promiscuous
enough, syphilis was unknown till introduced by Europeans,
and the process of dissemination seems likely to go on with
horrible rapidity. Yet the population appears to be holding
its own, and should easily continue to do so apart from the
diseases introduced. If industrial and practical training
could be given, there would seem to be no reason why the
number of the people should not increase greatly. There

194 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
is unlimited room for expansion, and, as the ' white Australia'
party is likely to prevent the importation of other races
as labourers, everything is to be said for training and en
riching the Papuan people, with the hope that prosperity
will bring a large increase, and that they will fill up the
waste places.
White influences are not always good. Ordinarily the
white store-keeper or miner does not take a wife with him
and has recourse to native women. The missionaries'
wives have shown that even in the wilder parts there is no
real reason why a European woman should not join her
husband, once his home is fixed. The more white women
in Papua the better.
Behind Port Moresby there are copper mines, and oil
has been found in small quantities near Orokolo. Sisal
hemp (or aloe fibre) does not seem to have paid, but plan
tations of coco-nuts are comparatively common, and rubber
has begun to boom. For these the future should be bright.
Unfortunately in some cases plantations mean buying
out the native. When this is done, other land should be
secured to those dispossessed, for there is plenty of room.
Further, Government policy, as giving special consideration
to the natives, should encourage them to become small
holders, and not to sell. A Government system of buying
and collecting copra would establish hundreds of Papuans
as business proprietors in a short time. What has been
done in West Africa could be done in Papua, but at this
stage in Papua Government organization would be essential.
For the plantations owned by Europeans native labour
is of great importance. Recruiting is going on all the time,
and, since the recruiter gets as much as £3 per labourer, it
is obvious that the traffic may easily lead to fraud and petty
tyranny. I got the impression that it was becoming more

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 195
difficult to secure workers, and with so small a population it
is important to make labour as popular as possible. Any ill
treatment is fatal to the commerce of the country. Govern
ment on its part does much to protect the native. The
system of ' signing on ' before the magistrate, with rules
as to rations and official discharge at the end of six months
or a year, the prohibition of the truck system, and the
punishment of ill treatment may involve, a degree of vexa
tious interference in some instances, but they do much for
the class that has the fewest friends. On this account the
Government is healthily unpopular in certain quarters,
as a Government of native territory always ought to be.
But Government cannot always be on every spot, and
some planters are short-sighted and unimaginative. The
European gangers (usually on contract by the piece) are
often ignorant people with little understanding of the
natives, and think only of handling their pay at the end of
the job. One of my friends, standing by the manager of
the estate, was watching one such driving his gang without
restraint or mercy. After a little while my friend turned
to the manager and said, ' How many of that gang will
ever want to sign on for plantation labour again after this
six months is done ? ' The manager answered, ' None of
them ! ' With the small labour supply such thoughtless
exploitation of the workers is commercial suicide, to say
nothing of the wrong.
Missions have sought by various methods to provide
a better way. In some cases the missionaries of the London
Missionary Society have planted small areas, and in Milne
Bay land has been taken up on a large scale. For the most
part the first motive has been to provide healthy occupation
for the boys and girls on the station, and to give them train
ing that might stand them in good stead later in life. The
0 2

196 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
second motive has been to help to make the Mission self-
supporting, and the desire to solve the general problem
of native labour, which has greatly influenced C. W. Abel's
work in Milne Bay, has in most other cases been only
a subsidiary object.
For small plantations the case is strong. Planting is
the natural and basal form of agriculture in such a country,
and it is far better for boys and girls on the station to learn
to use their hands effectively than to get the idea that the
A B C is a passport to a career of dignified ease. If the
result is also to reduce the fearful expense of each station,
and so allow the opening of new areas, no one can complain.
In the east and the west, where planting pays, as it rarely
does in the centre, each Mission station might conduct
small plantations with real benefit to the natives. In
another case besides that of Fife Bay, we had evidence that
the villages around had learnt from the Mission plantations
to lay out their own lands in a more scientific way. Anything
which will give to the native an incentive to honest labour
will be a blessing to him. In the old days fighting and the
preparation for it demanded much effort, and that often
of very continuous character. Now that fighting is being
stopped, they must learn new uses for their time. Small
plantations may be very useful.
But the system of large plantations directly under the
Mission is a very different matter. It involves great com
mercial risk and the sinking of much capital, but the worst
problems are personal. Few people who talk lightly about
the value of industrial work understand what they are
asking. A superintendent must be secured who is :
( i ) a good business man under ordinary conditions ;
(2) a good business man under Papuan conditions
(which is more rare) ;

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 197
(3) firm in dealing with the natives but Christian in
constant kindliness ;
(4) ready to put the spiritual interests of the work
before the commercial.
Now men of such qualifications are hard to find. Where
one has been secured, it is impossible to be sure that we can
find his successor if he should die or retire. While small
plantations can be abandoned with no great loss, it is no
light matter to surrender a big undertaking in which much
money has been sunk. The managing body responsible for
a large area may find itself in a position where duty to the
natives may conflict with financial interests. Again, the
arguments used to justify Mission plantations of great
magnitude would involve the Mission in an attempt to
organize the economic life of the people on a very large
scale, and this would mean the usurpation of Government
functions and the unfair elimination of the honest white
trader. But the final argument is that the position of employer is
incompatible with that of spiritual guide, and therefore
is impossible in the long run for the missionary. If a man
defaults, the Mission cannot prosecute. If he is dissatisfied
with his pay, he is not likely to open up to the missionary
as to the needs of his soul. Even under the fairest condi
tions a strike might arise, if people so ignorant were misled
by slanderers, and the Mission would have to surrender or
place itself in an altogether wrong position.
My general theory, then, is that the large organization
of plantations is not a suitable activity for a Mission as such.
At the same time I have no doubt of the need and of the
opportunity. The risk to the Papuans at present is great.
A system under which the managers of plantations regard

198 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
their recruits merely as so many hands, and have no personal
relation to them, is bad enough where employer and em
ployed belong to one race and can communicate freely, but
in a country like Papua it brutalizes or destroys. It can never
be redeemed by the negative provisions against ill treatment
which the Government attempts to enforce. The future
of the Papuan race is more largely in the hands of the
capitalists of Britain and Australia than one likes to think,
and Christian business men alone can provide the remedy.
If they would commit themselves to the development of
Papua with native interests uppermost in their minds, they
might do an inestimable service to a people just emerging
from savagery.
I do not pretend that it would be easy to create the
atmosphere we need. Christian directors at a distance
are helpless unless the spirit of the men on the spot is
Christian also, and it is hard to persuade men at once of
character and of ability to bury themselves on the Papuan
shore. Even when a man goes out with good intentions,
the moral climate so easily wears him down. But if it can
be shown that commerce is the inevitable handmaid of
the Gospel, service not less worthy than that which has
been given so freely for the Gospel will surely be forth
coming to save the natives by teaching them to work. The
lives of these simple and attractive people may well depend
on the readiness of Christian men to plan for, and live along
side, the Papuans, simply because they too are part of the
family of God. In any family worth the name weakness and
immaturity are the supreme claims to love and care.
The administration, which from 1906 has been under
the federal Government of Australia, is good as far as it
goes. The hints already given of its real care for native
interests indicate the general policy of its superior officers.

INTERIOR OF A CLUB-HOUSE AT MAIPUA, NAMAU, WITH
DANCING MASKS (see p. 152)

[ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 199
From the outset Sir William Macgregor set a standard
of tact and mercy in dealing with wild tribes whose sins
were mainly those of ignorance, and whose outbreaks were
often caused by sheer terror. At the same time he did his
best to develop the natives and give them their opportunity,
as, for instance, by the employment of Papuans in the
constabulary. No better tribute could be given to the
method than by stating that there is no soldier in all Papuan
territory, and that the native force is sufficient to keep
order among peoples who, badly managed, might easily
get out of hand. With rare exceptions Sir William Mac-
gregor's traditions have been continued to the present day.
Then again the land laws are good. Permanent alienation
is no longer allowed, and leases for ninety-nine years are
the general rule. When the European wants to acquire
land, after preliminary parley with the native owners, he
must call in an official who conducts the final negotiations
with them on behalf of the Crown, and then in the Crown's
name leases the land to the new holder. While this method
cannot check all abuses, it does much to prevent the more
flagrant kind of exploitation.
On the other hand, more attention should be given to
the lower ranks of the service. Australia would' do well to
create a Foreign Civil Service parallel to the Indian Civil
Service, to which men of good education might be attracted
for training. There is some danger that a Labour administra
tion may not realize this need, but Labour should recognize
that, as it dispenses with rank and pride of family, it must
substitute the trained mind, and above all character, that
has stood the test. Just as a concentrated training is given
to young officers going to the Front, so subordinate officials
with a good general education could be helped through
many a difficulty by a year's course on the practical side of

200 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
administration as it must be adapted to Papuan conditions.
Such a service would have to be better paid ; I gather
that in some cases present salaries are so small that it
must be difficult to attract good men. Then all Govern
ment servants of whatever rank should be encouraged
to take their wives with them. A white woman makes
so great a difference in the whole spirit of the Papuan
bungalow, and in the influence of the station upon the
natives, that it would pay the Administration over and over
again to give higher rates to all officers who are accompanied
by their wives.
Further, even admitting all the difficulties of language
in Papua, a stronger pressure should be applied to make all
officers learn to speak one or more of the native languages.
All through the Pacific, in Groups too where the excuse
is far less than in Papua, there is too much of government
through interpreters, and when the only interpreter is
a native policeman there can be no guarantee of competence
or indeed of honesty. The first essential of good govern
ment is that people should be able to tell the official what
they have in their minds. Here again, if I had my way,
I should not be satisfied to deal with the official. In India
and all other dependencies where we govern other races
I would pay a further allowance for his wife, if she
learnt the language properly. The day will come when
women will be part of the administration, but in the mean
time a wife can do much to conciliate and sympathize,
especially with the native women, and, however good the
staff of unmarried women, the wife has always the dominant
power of the home. But if that power is to be for good,
there must be an understanding of the people, and that
can never be without the vernacular.
Nor can the administration continue to neglect education

ASPECTS OF PAPUAN LIFE 201
as it does at present. The only chance to preserve the natives
is to train their capacity, and, either by subsidies to the
Missions or by schools of its own with a strong leaven of
manual teaching, Government should see that its proteges
are fitted to take a place in the battle of modern life. Indus
trial education is expensive, and, unaided, no Mission can
undertake it on a sufficient scale. The reply will be that
Australia already gives to the territory a subsidy of £25,000
every year, and that this is not the time to ask a penny more.
But if education of the right sort were given, there is very
little doubt that the prosperity of the people would so
increase that from internal revenues the initial outlay could
be repaid.
My last suggestion would be a great increase in the number
of buoys to mark the harbours, especially the smaller
harbours, and a road from Orokolo to the east with Govern
ment ferries at the rivers. A road is always a great step
in the development of a country towards ordered govern
ment.

CHAPTER XII
PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION
Now for the Mission in its strength and weakness. I
must turn again to Chignell's Outpost in Papua with grati
tude that a man has taken time, and been articulate enough,
to help his readers to feel themselves into the simple
happenings of a Mission station. The things expressed
in that book are true in varying degree of the Roman
Catholics in the hill country opposite Yule Island, of the
Anglican Mission in the north-east, and of the Methodists
in the great eastern islands. It has been the privilege
of the London Missionary Society to plant along the Papuan
coast twelve stations like that described, and a thirteenth
forty miles up into the hills of the Main Range.
Further, the Society from the outset has given no en
couragement to celibacy, and no one can travel along the
coast without seeing how much has been gained by the
presence of the missionary's wife. Of course, this gain has
not been purchased for nothing. Of the cost to the man, and
the woman's heavier cost, it is not mine to speak. Enough
that the cost has been paid and that the results are worth
the paying. Here and there a teacher's wife who entertains
the traveller with careful consideration for his European
needs will prove to have got her training from the white
woman. But that is not the most important result — the
womanhood of all the villages, and especially of those near
by, is lifted up by the teaching and purity of the missionary's
home. Travel anywhere along the coast, and, after passing

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 203
raw native villages with perhaps here and there a European
shack and a tiny store, suddenly you will come to the Mission
station. There, if I am not much mistaken, you will feel
that you have reached a haven for spirit as for body. The
house is comfortable in a very simple way, for men and
women of education inevitably make themselves a home.
You may even think your entertainment luxurious, if your
good feeling does not remind you that it is for you that
they have killed the last chicken, or turned out the most
expensive tin. But as to the peace and beauty of the home
there can be no two opinions.
To begin with, the place is physically and morally clean.
You are in an atmosphere of friendship which radiates in
every direction, so that to be known as a guest of the Mission
station is a passport through the villages. The eager free
courtesy of the merry boys and girls under training in the
big open hall at the back of the house shows you what the
Papuan may become.
Medicines are given out, and you may catch the mission
ary's wife binding up some neglected and repulsive sore.
The boys are taught carpentry and boat-building, and the
girls learn how to wash, cook, and keep the house clean.
Babies stagger about erratically and unrepressed. Older
people come and wait at the verandah steps to see their
children in the boarding-home, or to ask advice or mediation.
Perhaps a man who has earned good wages is bringing them
for the missionary to keep. Stranded men from another
district come to him to put them on their way home.
A couple of South Sea teachers, or, if it is a special day for
issuing stores, a dozen of them, will arrive from their
distant villages to report and discuss their problems.
On some stations there is a school house, on others the
missionary's house itself is so built that while the roof is

2o4 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
square, the rooms are on three sides only and thus a great
airy hall is left, opening on to the back verandah. In this
hall school is held, and in the evening games and evening
prayers wind up the day. At a free moment the missionary
will go off to look at the small plantation, or to see that
the station is kept clean and the woodwork saved from
those forces of decay which can be repulsed for a time
but in such a climate admit no final defeat. In the intervals
he does his accounts for the store, or translates the Bible,
or . makes up school books, or studies the unfathomed
secrets of the local tongue. All is friendliness and activity.
Amid the wilderness each station is an oasis.
The school in all its aspects is of crucial importance.
Government does nothing but give friendly encouragement
to go to school, unless EngHsh is taught, in which case
encouragement may turn into actual compulsion. For all
the education the Papuan receives it is the Mission he has
to thank, and, in view of the limitations under which the
missionary works, the results are surprisingly good.
On the other hand, there is very much to criticize. The
village school takes in the rawest material and can only
attain a low level. Discipline is a word unknown in the
Papuan home. In many districts the natives cannot count
into double figures, and even the adult wiU work out a big sum
laboriously on his fingers and toes (digits in the literal sense) ;
when these fail him he goes on to pat elbows, knees, and
shoulder-joints to help him out. The missionaries, for the
most part, start with the ideas of education on which my own
school teaching was based thirty years ago. The South Sea
teachers are the result of an older system still, and like all
half-educated people are desperately conservative. The
Papuan teacher can hardly be expected, as yet, to understand
the aim of education at all. Yet the problem of educating

THE AESTHETIC TYPE OF RAW NATIVE
(see p. 192)

MISSION STATION BOYS

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 205
a race in danger of extinction unless it be fortified against
the disintegrating forces of modern life, is one of haste
and urgency, and the methods which were tolerable in
the stable communities of the west thirty years ago are too
slow for Papua, simply because they are defective in
principle. If we are to save the Papuan, the lessons which
we are learning at the end of our experience in Britain
should be applied at the outset in Papua. We are far too
literary and intellectual in our teaching, and bring far too
little into play all those bodily activities which proceed
from, and react on, the mind. The result is that while
our method is intellectual and literary, the results are
neither. Any one who sees a mob of children learning the
tables in English (remember there are no words for most of
the numbers in Papuan) and repeating them in a chorus
with a pronunciation which makes the scantiest difference
between fifty and fifteen, or seven and eleven, will be filled
with pity for the waste of it aU. The Papuan parent, no
doubt, asks the child what has been taught in the school,
and when the answer is an uninteUigible rigmarole, he tells
the youngster to come out on to the reef and learn to catch
fish, or to study bush-craft, or to copy some carved ornament.
My sympathies in such a case are all with the parent against
the school.
Kindergarten, Sloyd, Montessori, — we want the best
concentration of them all for Papua. The ordinary life
of the village is in many ways a better training intellectu
ally than the bookish appeal which we are apt to make. If
we are to teach, every subject ought to be taught in con
nexion with objects, every iUustration should be from loca
interests. It is only necessary to go on to the wide sands
at Orokolo at low tide to realize how naturally the children
take to drawing ; ships, and pigs, and houses are sketched

206 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
in unending repetition. The native arts and crafts, and
above all the native decoration, ought to be used to the full.
We must provide for Papua as far as we can the new
kind of school which we need for our children in the west.
There we have the advantage that much of the material we
in Britain have to seek laboriously, stares us in the face in
the Papuan village.
We had a young Australian in Port Moresby who was
doing work of this sort, and his school would have become
a practising centre for teachers up and down the coast.
But he was compelled to retire owing to the health of his
family, and an experiment well begun has come to nothing.
But it will be tragic if the experiment is not renewed.
But the little institution for pastoral training at Vatorata
has had no such interruption, and obviously it assumes great
importance, if we are to improve education either on old
lines or new. As it is at present, a few of the best children
are drafted from the elementary school to the missionary's
home, and there trained till they are supposed to be fit
for further education at Vatorata to be pastor teachers.
But the missionary on his station has so many other things
to do that as a rule the home training he can give is
broken and amateurish. We need a high school, though
the word should mean nothing but a school somewhat
above the elementary degree, and it should be for the
boys, and then later for the girls also, from all the stations
along the coast. If this could give a good grounding in
English taught on the directest of direct methods, and
a thorough-going manual training, including the making
and handling of rough tools, all the pupils would go out
to their villages to be much more useful, and the men
who pass on to the religious training would start with far
better mental furniture. If the same two useful subjects,

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 207
English and handicrafts, were also kept going during the
training of the Bible school, the pastors would go out into
their villages ready to be the economic saviours of their
people. The time has certainly come for such a school, and
the main need is money.
It should be recognized also that pupils will not be
recruited without some effort. All Papuan history tends
to make the native very chary of leaving his own narrow
territory. He dislikes education away from home, and still
more he fears that after training he may be sent off against
his wiU, he knows not whither. He also has a preference
for returning home once a year, which is reasonable enough,
but not easy to satisfy while we have no Mission boat to
work the coast. But the institution for the training of
pastors at Vatorata has had the same battle to fight, and is
winning so completely, that by general agreement it would
be impossible to dispense with the central seminary for
training pastors. What has been done for higher training
in the old difficult days can be done now for the lower grade,
if a coastal boat be provided. If a high school were started,
Vatorata would become the centre for all the Mission, and
I do not think I shall be highfalutin if I say it would help
to bind the Papuans into a nation.
One thing remains to say about the Mission itself. It
is an expensive Mission, and we may learn something for
the future if we discuss the cause of the expense. The
Missions to the South Seas started on the early theory that
missionaries should support themselves by handicrafts and
commerce. It was soon found impossible for them to
provide for aU their needs in that way, and then through
many years small aUowances were given on the under
standing that the missionary made what he could by trade.
That system had its own special disadvantages. Men had

208 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
very different ideas of what they had a right to make, and
the store called for too much attention. Their position
as spiritual guides was imperilled when their customers
were members of their own flock and the missionary dis
agreed with them about the price of shirts. About thirty-
five years ago that system was completely abolished.
But it had had one great advantage. The Board did not
feel obliged to pay salaries to missionaries on any adequate
scale, and it felt even less obliged to finance the native
Church. If the natives wanted pastors, they must pay for
them ; if they wanted buildings, they must build them ;
and the home body expected that the power of the Gospel
would make them willing. In other fields the slow difficulty
of founding a Church made the Board recede gradually
from this position, as it had also receded from its old ideas
of missionary support. Since then Missions have tended
to become more and more a financial operation, and a period
came when, in planning new Missions or extending old
ones, greater emphasis than of old was laid on finance and
less on the Holy Spirit. Nowadays there is much radical
thinking on the question of self-support,1 and we may
hope the missionary body may be recalled to methods more
like those which helped to build up the early Church.
But now that Missions have such enormous financial rami
fications, it is not easy to get clear of traditions and vested
interests. One of the places where the old method succeeded was in
the South Seas. The islands were relatively fertile and the
people's wants very few ; whole communities came over
together and the Church became the centre of the civic
1 As for instance in such a book as Roland Allen's Missionary
Methods : St. Paul's or Ours.

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 209
life. An ordered Christian life meant the saving of resources
previously wasted. In short, there was the wherewithal for
self-support. At the same time the spirit of the people
was generous and local traditions encouraged giving. It
was, therefore, comparatively easy to get large contributions
towards the expenses of the Mission, and there was far less
tendency than in other fields to look to the home Board to
support native teachers. What may be hoped of the great
Samoan Church is written above, while Lifou has paid all
its expenses during several years. In the Cook Islands,
which now, alas ! are the least generous of the Society's
areas in the South Seas, the Churches give about £200
yearly towards the cost of the foreign missionaries and of
the missionary ship. But aU local expenses they bear
themselves, and in the Aitutaki hurricane it never seems
to have entered their heads to write to England for help.
O si sic omnes !
Unfortunately Papua was opened up for missionary
purposes at a date when the natural way to open a Mission
was to make the home Church responsible for all the finance.
Everything in Papua tended to increase the demand for
help from home, and to create the idea that it was useless
to hope anything from the natives. To begin with, the
missionary landing on a strange shore among savage peoples
had inevitably to purchase a friendly reception with
presents, and then by more presents to smooth the way
of the teachers he left behind. In the second place, the
Papuans, as has been said before, are not generous by nature,
and, seeing in the Mission stores what seemed to them vast
wealth, they concluded that, if there was to be giving, the
missionary must do it. Thus the fight to secure contribu
tions seemed so hopeless that it was often given up. On
the other hand, some of the older men, and I fancy Tamate

210 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
himself, were lavish and free-handed, and the tradition
has never ceased.
Another reason for expense is that the standards of safety
have risen, and we should no longer think it right to ask
men and women to expose themselves to the risks of such
isolation as in the early days, when the Directors were
ignorant of what their envoys went to face. The nature
of the Papuan coast makes travelling at once needful and
costly. A motor launch is most effective for visitation, and
greatly increases the missionary's power of work, but it
cannot be said to be cheap. Set it on the other side of the
account that only last year on one station two missionaries,
one European and one Samoan, were saved from disease
that seemed to be following a fatal course by the motor
launch which took them ioo miles to Port Moresby. The
station was absolutely isolated and the launch had only
been bought six months earlier ! Of late years many a
South Sea worker has been succoured physicaUy or morally
because a launch was available.
Happily the Papuans are beginning to raise more of their
own expenses, and, especiaUy in the Central division and
Daru, their gifts, though smaU, are increasing. It is an
interesting side-light on the Papuan character that he will
give money comparatively freely (probably because he does
not yet understand what it is worth), but he hates to part
with anything in which he has ' mingled his own labour '.
But the Christianity of the Papuan Church will be a poor
thing until she learns to sacrifice the wealth she has, and,
as has been said in connexion with the Gilberts, wherever
a people has learned to give, there you will find content
and joy.
One very important cause of expense has not yet been
mentioned, and that is what may be caUed the parochial

o
H

U

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 211
heory of the South Sea teachers. By 1870, the date of the
pening of the Papuan Mission, the London Missionary
ociety Churches among the islands had reached such a stage
hat for every Christian village (and most viUages were
Christian) there was a pastor. The South Sea teachers
ad that conception in mind, and so had many of the
lissionaries who planted the seeds of the Gospel in Papua.
"he teacher was no longer an itinerant evangelist responsible
sr a large area, and after a little instruction turning each
illage cause over to its own members to support ; that
leory was forgotten. The South Sea teacher who comes
d Papua was conceived to be the pastor of the village, and
lis was true even though none in it had embraced Chris-
.anity. The idea of the viHage as the unit is strong among
re peoples of the South Seas, and perhaps equally so in
apua, and so the South Sea teacher regarded himself
> the appointed spiritual guide for one place and for one
nly. As a natural consequence there have been instances
1 viUages scarcely opened to the Gospel of South Sea
jachers claiming rights of discipline and religious com-
ulsion, which could hardly apply in a viHage acknowledged
j be Christian by its own choice. That the pastor was
[so the teacher of the school was another and a better
;ason why he should stay in his parish and not visit round
DOUt. Now each South Sea teacher used to receive at least ^23
year in salary, to say nothing of the extra cost of running
lem right across from Samoa or Rarotonga in the John
7illiams. When, therefore, they were estabHshed each in
separate village as foreign missionaries, the total expense
as high. But since salaries have had to be increased by
early sixty per cent., it is even higher. It may be noticed,
)o, that a man in such a position does not usually encourage
p 2

212 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
the Papuans to rise up and make his guidance unnecessary.
The parochial theory may have been almost inevitable,
but on policy its influence has been bad. It should give
place to a more mobile evangelization.
The teachers from the South Seas deserve a section to
themselves, for without them the white missionaries could
never have obtained the results we saw. There are very
few instances in the world where there are joreign mission
aries of a non-European stock. These at least deserve the
title. Some one may question the word ' foreign ' ; indeed,
before visiting the Pacific I should myself have thought
that the men of the South Seas would have such affinities
with Papuan natives that they could easily identify them
selves with their adopted country. Just the opposite is
the case. Conditions in Papua are utterly different from
anything they know at home. True, in some matters they
are more naturally at home than the European, — the food,
for instance, is much the same. But any slight advantages
they may thus possess are more than swept away by the lack
of mental training to understand a new country and to
strike their roots into its soil, and still more by their lack
of mental and spiritual resource to meet loneliness and
depression. They are far less fitted than the European
to understand the laws of health, and to meet disease with
quiet courage.
Over against the native they know that they belong to
a higher civilization and they feel themselves superior. We
English cannot blame them, for they have merely stolen
our own pet sin. Indeed, I suspect that just in proportion
as they feel that the Englishman rather looks down on them
from a high elevation, and in proportion as they detect
his tendency to lump all coloured people together as natives,
just in that proportion are they eager to emphasize the

" -M.J

/ / 1

,/v/w

A SAMOAN MISSIONARY IN PAPUA

214 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
difference between themselves and the ' uncivilized crew '
around. But, like our own English temper, this attitude
keeps the natives aloof, and to that extent hinders the
spread of the Gospel. Then again, Hke all foreign mission
aries, they bring with them the sins of their own Churches.
Sometimes they are guilty of attempting to add to their
income by trading a little, sometimes they are overbearing ;
they lack mental interest and their outlook is small. Above
all, the Papuans are catching them up, and Papuan teachers
are already equal to the weaker men from the South Seas.
The above considerations, together with the increasing
expense of their salary, have led to a decision to reduce
their number greatly, and in future the weaker men will
be sifted out and only the strongest will be sent from the
islands. These will need an increasingly definite spiritual
experience of their own, but, if they have that, there is
still a great contribution for them to make.
I have given first all that can be said of their weakness,
because I want to be believed when I speak of their strength.
There is no finer record in missionary history of any age
than the story of the South Sea teachers in Papua. Many
of their names are not known to the most enthusiastic of
the friends of Missions, nor recorded in the most detailed
missionary history. Ruatoka of Mangaia and Port Moresby
has alone been heard of in England, and that is mainly due
to the popularity of Tamate, his tutor in Rarotonga and his
friend through their Papuan career. Among hundreds of
others no one can tell the names of more than a few, or give
any conception of the way they struggled and were patient,
of the way they failed or won success.
If the missionary's house is an oasis in the desert, so in
a smaller way are the houses of the men from the South
Seas, and you will find them everywhere along the coast.

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 215
We should have a great record, if only the houses could tell
of their occupants. These lived among filthy swamps and
fell to malaria aU the more readily because it was unknown
in their islands. They tried to teach little savages, them
selves only a few lessons ahead. Husbands saw wives, or
wives saw husbands, pine and die, and sometimes it was the
little children. They lived in face of constant insults from
the fighting bullies of the viHage. They stood up to the
white men and rebuked them for their sins, and then,
when those same white men collapsed on the gold trail
and lay helpless by the roadside, Ruatoka and the men of
his breed went out and brought them in on their backs.
Half our present EngHsh missionaries could tell how they
have been coaxed back to convalescence by the nursing and
care of the teachers and the teachers' wives, and there is
no counting the times when the brown missionary has
stood by the white missionary in situations from which the
chance of escape seemed very small.
The afternoon we were at Kerepunu, I noticed a stir
in the meeting, and, as soon as it broke up, Beharell hurried
us away. The news had come that a teacher's wife at
Maopa in Aroma was dangerously ill. The Tamate had
gone ahead of us, and as we came in to Maopa in the glowing
peace of sundown we saw the Tamate' 's flag at half-mast ;
we were too late to do anything, for the teacher's wife had
gone. Next morning, at ten o'clock, after all the delays
that accompany a native funeral, we walked along the shore
in the burning sun, and turned inland for 100 yards among
the dunes. In one hollow a great hole was prepared. It
had begun as a grave, but sand fell in so constantly that they
had enlarged it to a shapeless pit. The coffin was bits of
packing-case knocked together. The mourners standing
by the husband were two or three South Sea teachers who

MAOPA VILLAGE, AROMA

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 217
were near enough to come, and the four Englishmen of our
party. The Papuans from the big grey village stood in
knots on the hillocks to see what these Christians would
do with their dead. The barren sand and scorching heat
seemed to correspond with the dull ache of tearless sorrow.
Husband and wife were from Pukapuka in the northern
Cook Islands, with its one little village and at most the calling
of two or three ships from year's end to year's end to
stimulate its very simple life. In Rarotonga we had deplored
the tendency to recruit the seminary from this very island
and other islands equally primitive rather than from the
educated young men of Rarotonga. The Cook Islands as
a rule faU below Samoa in spiritual instinct, and these were
from among the crudest material of the Cook Islands. I sus
pect that, if you had known their work, you would have
been tempted at times to wonder what sort of Christianity
they taught, and indeed what good they were doing there
at all. But when later the congregation gathered under
the big tree by the teacher's house, there was only one
thing given me to say to them, ' She out of her want cast
in everything she had, all her life.' In the simplicity of
their very elementary training there came to these two,
probably among the simplest and least educated in the
institution, the caU to go to Papua, 3,000 miles across the
sea. In those wild villages of which they heard, the Master
had other sheep whom He must bring. So much they
understood and so they went. For her this was the end of
their going.
Therein is the summary of the work of the South Sea
teachers in Papua, ' out of their want they cast in every
thing they had.' Whatever their lives were worth, they
gave them ; what more could they give ? On the hill-side
at Vatorata there is a little memorial chapel for the Papuan

2i 8 PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC
students. In one wall is a window to Chalmers and Tomkins ;
over the Communion Table is another, as ugly a window as
ever I wish to see. It is just four lancets side by side with
scrolls zigzagging from top to bottom, but I fancy that the
man who wrote of the heroes of faith in the Epistle to the
Hebrews would have spent some time on that window,
for on the scrolls are the names of eighty- two South Sea
teachers who have died in Papua. The catalogue, covering
the years from 1870 to 1899, includes men only, and no
mention is made of the wives or of children. Some died
of malaria and dysentery, one or two were drowned, and
a few were poisoned ; some were finished by arrows, and
some by stone clubs. But more always came to fiU their
places, and since 1899 there is a list of more than forty
others, again men only, who have given life itself that the
Kingdom of Christ might be established in Papua.
There lies the unity of our work in the Pacific. From
Group to Group the Gospel spread, and ever anew white
men and brown men lived and died together that untouched
islands might hear the message. Each Group mentioned
in the earlier chapters of this book passed that message on
and never counted the cost. Here is the supreme test of
the work done by the first missionaries and the great men,
known and unknown, who have foUowed them. Nott,
Buzacott, John Williams, and all the rest, they have their
recompense here. The men they taught are foUowing in
the Master's footsteps ; indeed they follow in a way that
puts the Churches of the West to shame.
They were simple peoples and their strength was small,
but they gave their best that others might know the good
news that had saved themselves. The fire was scarcely
lighted on their own islands, before they were passing on
the torch across the sea. When other Groups were ablaze,

PROBLEMS OF THE MISSION 219
they went on to Papua that its long coast also might flame
from end to end. Many torches and one fire — with more
torches stiU to light ; diversities of operations but one
work — and that one work is not yet done. Without us
even the old heroes of the Pacific shall not be made perfect.
God gives to us the glory of going on.

INDEX

Abel, C. W., 179 f., 196.
Adler, s.s., 51.
Aird Hill, 146 f.
Aitutaki, 21-4, 34, 39, 49, 209.
American Board of Foreign Missions,
119 f.
American Government, 66.
American Naval Station, Governor of,
47-
Andrews, C. F., 90, 92.
Anglicans, 202.
Animism, 187.
Apia, 48, 51 f., 65, 70, 120.
Araura, 24, 39.
Architecture, 47, 54, 78, 100.
Aroma, 136, 169, 175, 215.
Arorangi, 34 f.
Arthington Fund, 146.
Atauloma, 50, 75.
Australia, &c, 9, 46, 48, 92, 115, 131,
162, 198.
Avarua, 20 f., 32 f. B
Becke, Louis, 23, 97.
Beharell, C, 166, 190.
Beru, 112, 119 f.
Bible (Bible Society), 15, 45, 63, 72,
119, 132 f., 160.
Bicknell, Henry, 14.
Bingham, Hiram, 119.
British Government, 6, 88, 112, 115.
Broomhall, Benjamin, 14.
Burder, George, 10.
Butcher, B. T., 127 f., 144, 147 f.
Buzacott, Aaron, 33, 218.

Calliope, H.M.S. 51.
Camden, 18.
Carolines, 113, 119.
Chalmers, James, 10, 142 f., ijo, 177,
218.
Chepenehe, 1.
Chiefs, 13, 59.
Chignell, A. K., 189, 202.
China Straits, 178.
Chinese, 52, 73, 83.
Clothes, 4, 35 f., 52, 100, 116, 192.
Communications (travel), 39, 108,
127, 131, 186, 210.
Cook, Captain, 8-12, 29.
Cook Islands, 9, 16, 18-4J, 46, 67,
73. i; .93, i.H. '93: *°9> ="7-
Coolies in Fiji, 89 f.
Cricket, 66, 166.
Council, Church, 67, 80.
D
Dances, native, 5, 66, 166, 172.
Daru, 127, 130, 137 f., 143, 164, 21c.
Dauncey, H. M., 161.
David, Professor and Mrs. Edgeworth,
101.
Delena, 146, 161.
Dopima, 142 f.
Drinking, 43 f.
Duff, 12, 13, 36.

Education, 7, 39, 42, 69, 74, 104, 121,
152, 157, 160, 204.
Eimeo, 9, 14, 18.

222

PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC

Elikana, 95 f.
Ellice Islands, 16, 21, 70,88-107, 112,
115.
Ellis, William, 10.
English language, 70-4, 133, 206.
Erromanga, 9, 18, 68.
Eyre, John, 10, 14.

Fife Bay, 134, 156, 177, 190, 196.
Fiji, &c, 11, 55, 73, 88-92.
Finance, 81 f., 207 f. See also Self-
support.
Fly River, 84, 130, 137 f.
French, &c, 6, 15.
Funafuti, 93, 96, 99, 101, 104.
Funangongo, 99, 104 f.

Games, 169 f.
German firm, 48, 51, 68.
German Government, &c, 52, 60, 66,
68, 7°, 73, "3, "5-
German language, 70-3.
Gilbert Islands, 16, 19, 21, 99, 108-26,
137, 210.
Gill, William, 28, 67.
Gill, W. Wyatt, 37 f.
Gilmour, James, 10.
Goaribari, 141 f., 146, 159, 182.
Government, 7, 15, 30, 49, 74, 99 f.,
115, 187, 199, 204.
Governor of Papua, 162, 165, 183, 193.
Goward, W. E. and Mrs., 108, 119.
H
Hadfield, James and Mrs., 2 f.
Hawaii, 9 f.
Health conditions, iij, 193.
Henty Ridge, 165.
Holmes, J. H., 146, 149 f., 156.
Honolulu, 88.
Huahine, 9, 12.
Hula, 136, 166 f.
Hurricane, 24, 49.

I
India, &c, 11, 25, 38, 72, 89-92, iS
190, 199.
Industrial work, 194, 195 f.
Isuleilei, 177.
Ivirua, 28.

James, H. Bond, 104.
John, Griffith, 10.
John Williams, s.s., 18-20, and
throughout
Jolliffe, Miss, 104 f.
Jupili, 125.

K
Kaimare, 149.
Kalaigolo, 165.
Kalo, 167.
Kapakapa, 164, 188.
Kemp Welch River, 165, 167.
Kerepunu, 165, 167, 188, 215.
Kikori, 146 f.
Kivori, 161.
Kiwai, 137 f., 143, 182.
Kusai, 119 f.
Kwato, 178 f.

Labour, 6, 194.
Land laws, 199.
Languages, 11 f., 39, 72, 74.
Lava-lava, 52, 59.
Lawes, W. G., 162, 164.
Lawrence, W. N., 193.
Leone, 49 f.
Leulumoenga, 69.
Life, value of, 185.
Lifou, 1-8, 16, 19, 43, 209.
Livingstone, David, io.
Logan, Colonel, 52.
London, Jack, 23, 97.

INDEX

223

M
Macfarlane, Samuel, 5, 16, 138.
Macgregor, Sir W., 161 f., 199.
Maid of the village, 55, 59, 78.
Mailu, 136, 167, 175 f.
Maipua, 152 f.
Mangaia, 1, 27-31, 34, 42, 44, 214.
Maniapa, m.
Manihiki, 93.
Malua, 68-71, 81, 96.
Manua, 49, 50.
Maopa, 215.
Maori, 11, 35, 46.
Mare, 6, 16.
Marshall Islands, 52.
Matautu, 62.
Mauke, 44.
Me, 78, 93, 167.
Messenger of Peace, 18, 32.
Methodists, 76 f., 89, 92, 202.
Millport Harbour, 167.
Milne Bay, 180, 195 f.
Mitiaro, 24-6.
Moffat, Robert, 10.
Morality. See Sex.
Moresby, Port, 127, 136, 161 f., 194.
Mormons, 77.
Morrison, Robert, 10.
Moru, 132, 143, 150, 158 f.
Motu (Motuan), 133, 136, 161.
Motumotu, 142, 158.
Murray, A. W., 16, 96 f., 101, 103.
Murray, Colonel. See Governor of
Papua.
Music, 5, 35. N
Namau, 149 f., 156 f.
Nauru, m.
Navigation, difficulties of, 20.
New Caledonia, 5, 6.
New Guinea. See Papua.
New Hebrides, 68.
New Zealand, &c, 8, 11, 24 f., 34,
37 f., 42, 51 f., 115.

Newell, J. E., 80.
Nikunau, 113.
Niue (Niueans), 1, 9, 43, 46, 114, 142.
Niutao, 97, 99.
Nonouti, 113.
Nott, Henry, 14 f., 218.
Noumea, 4, 6.
Nukulaelae, 93 f . 0
Ocean Island, m-16.
Oneroa, 28 f., 31.
Ornament, love of, 192.
Orokolo, 132, 134, 150, 154 f., 194,
201, 205.
Outpost in Papua, 189, 202.
Ouvea, 6.

Pandanus, 109, 173.
Pangopango, 47, 51.
Papauta, 52, 75.
Papeiha, 32, 34.
Papua (Papuans), 5, 9, 12, 16, 37, 73,
81, 84f., 115, 124, 127-219.
Papuan Mission, 16, 84, 127-219.
Paris Evangelical Missionary Society,
6,16.
Partition Treaty, 68.
Paumotus, 11, 26.
Pearson, W. W., 90, 92.
Phosphate Company, 112, 115, 126.
Plantations, 178, 180, 194-8.
Pomare, 14 f., 18.
Population, 193.
Possession, Cape, 132.
Poyer, Governor, 48 f.
Presbytery, 80.
Pryce Jones, E., 158 f.
Pukapuka, 217.
Purari, R., 136, 150.

Queensland, 131, 138.

224

PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC

R
Raiatea, 9, 12, 14, 34.
Rakahanga, 93.
Rarotonga, 20-44, 73, 93, 94, 104,
142, 211.
Rasmussen, Viggo, 26.
Recruiting (labour), 6, 194.
Religion, native, 187.
Riley, E. Baxter, 130, 137 f.
Roman Catholics, 6, 15, 43, 77, 116,
119, 202.
Rongorongo, 120 f.
Royal Admiral, 14.
Royle, Henry, 43.
Ruatoka, 214 f.
Rurutu, 9, 12.

Sacrifice, human, 27.
Samarai, 127, 129, 137, 177 f., 183.
Samoa (Samoans), 16, 34, 37, 43, 46-
88, 94, 96, 102, 104, 115, 119, 125,
211, 217.
Savaii, 60, 68.
Saville, W. J., 169, 175, 179.
Self-support, 11, 45, 82 f., 208 f.
Separation, racial, in Papua, 132 f.
Seventh Day Adventists, 43.
Sex morality, 43 f., 69, 79, 188, 193.
Ship, missionary, 19, 40, 103.
Slavers, 96, 118.
Socialism, 85.
Society Islands, 15.
Sorcery, 186 f.
Stevenson, R. L., 51 f., 75, 142.
Store, 123 f.
Suau, 129, 142, 177 f.
Suva, 88, 115, 117, 120.
Sydney, 20, 23, 78, 96, 177.

Taalolo, 56, 59^,63, 77.
Tahiti, 9-16, 30, 43, 84, 119.
' Talking man ' ^Tulajale), 60, 62.
Tamate (launch), 127 f., 131, 137.
Tarawa, 116, 118.
Tattooing, 67.
Teachers (South Sea), 152, 212-19.
Theological Schools, 4, 33, 39, 44 f.,
71, 81, 121-3, 125, 164, 206 f., 217.
Toaripi, 142, 158 f.
Tokelau, 118.
Tokelaus, 16, 70, 104.
Tonga, 9, 36, 5J, 73, 76.
Torres Straits, 5, 9, 16, 138
Toulon Island, 167.
Trade, traders, 38, 113 f., 124, 136.
Training Institutions. See Theologi
cal Schools.
Tuasivi, 65.
Turner, Samuel, 36, 76.
Tutuila, 47, 50, 66, 75.

U

Upolu, 51, 60, 62.
Urama, 182.
Urika, 146, 150 f.

Vailima, 52, 75.
Vaitupu, 103, 104.
Vatorata, 164 f., 206 f., 217.
Vernacular. See Languages.
W
Williams, John, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 32,
34, 36,42,46, 52, 68, 76, 218.
Williams, s.s. John. See John.

Yule Island, 127, 202.

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