PART THREE

## CHAPTER I

OLD BRANDY AND NEW EGGS

First let’s try to peg the story down to the spring of 1931, when I put a bottle of rare old brandy under my arm and went up a very New Yorkish elevator to see Mr. Raymond Fosdick. The brandy, worth its weight in gold, if you could price it at all, had been given to me in exchange for three dozen fresh eggs.

Mr. Fosdick, as legal advisor to the Rockefellers, was also an important trustee of the Foundation, therefore my business with him was legitimate. So was the brandy, although America was then in the throes of Amendment Eighteen.

As I waited outside his office I almost asked his amiable secretary if I hadn’t better smuggle the bottle under her desk and say nothing about it. I was conscious that Mr. Fosdick’s brother was the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Mr. Rockefeller’s great temple of sobriety on Riverside Drive, and the Rockefeller family were honestly in favor of prohibition. And how about the big Rockefeller executive in his office over there? Representative of a great temperance family, brother of a great preacher.... No, I had better hide that bottle somewhere....

Then his secretary said “Dr. Lambert,” meaning me, so I picked up the bottle and went into his office. I had been told that I would meet one of the most charming men on earth, and I wasn’t disappointed. But our conversation hadn’t gone very far before I noticed his eyes straying toward the wrapped bottle I was holding in my lap; he was wondering, I suppose, if South Sea doctors always carried their own liquor. Maybe I was getting off on the wrong foot, but something had to be done. I pulled off the wrapper and handed him the brandy. I began, “I don’t know how you stand on prohibition. This happens to be rare old stuff--but if you have any prejudices--”

“Prejudices!” He stared at the faded label. “It’s 1835! Yes, I have prejudices--in its favor.” Relieved, I said, “Well, it’s for the black sheep of the Fosdick family.”

Still nursing the bottle, he laughed, “My brother Harry is so strict I have to balance the ship. Now let me uncover a family skeleton. My great-grandfather was a distiller before he became a preacher. His distillery failed because he endorsed bad notes for friends, so he turned to the Baptist pulpit for consolation. In those days they had high pulpits with a steep stairway in the back. My ancestor used to keep a bottle under those stairs, and before sermons he would brace himself with a couple of good spots; then he would mount the ladder and give his congregation and the distillers hellfire for two solid hours.... No, Doctor, I don’t mind your telling all about the family. I’ve often said to Brother Harry that it would be a good thing for him if he imitated the old gentleman. But Harry seldom listens to my wiser suggestions.”

The brandy perched on the desk like a silent diplomat, opening the way to confidences. Mr. Fosdick had studied at Colgate when I was at Hamilton, and when I told him that I was on the team that knocked the living perfume out of Colgate our entente was established. He asked about progress over my six million square miles of sea. Maybe he had read my reports, but there were so many reports blowing in from all points that I sought briefly to refresh his memory. With education and tetrachloride, I said, the hookworm disease was getting under control and populations were on the upgrade, where the High Commission and the Foundation had a free hand. Wherever we worked with the New Zealand health authorities we got fine results. We expected the Cook Island natives would show an increase of 20 per cent in the decade between 1926 and 1936. The Mau Rebellion had set back New Zealand’s work in Western Samoa, but they were making good headway again, the Foundation doing its share. The awful Condominium was still making a mess of the New Hebrides; and the Australians--well, they weren’t playing ball.

The Central Medical School had graduated two classes, but without the thorough curriculum which the new students would have. Soon we would be able to throw more well-educated N.M.P.’s into the work.... I am not sure that Mr. Fosdick remembered our little School at all. Fiji is a long way from lower Broadway. When he had commended our modest project, a few years before, he had thought of it as romantic; yet when he fixed his signature to the plan, buried among the vaster projects, it was one of the most fruitful acts of all his useful life. Many Rockefeller millions, for instance, had gone into the great school in Peking, and into field work in China. Five or six years later the Sino-Japanese war blasted away those handsome contributions. The little school at Suva was destined to grow steadily and bear an annual crop of trained native talent.

I told him that our work was now directed toward mass treatments for both cure and prevention. The big, shaggy Solomon Islands were black spots in the Pacific which we were doing our best to penetrate with modern medicine, and with what few responsible white men we could find. They were injecting thousands with neoarsphenamine, for yaws, dosing thousands with tetrachloride and tetrachlorethylene for hookworm. I had made a short survey of the Solomons in 1921 and later on, through Montague, had started things going that way. I had visited there again in 1930 and this trip had taken me at last to the lost Rennell Island.... I tried to tell him about Rennell Island, small as a mustard seed in a pond, yet unique in all the world because it was inhabited by a people who were 20,000 years behind our modern times....

I told him of two of our excellent men, working in the more attainable Solomon Islands--if anything down there is “attainable.” Gordon White and Dr. Steenson were outstanding. White was an Australian small doctor made over from a pharmacist, and he was doing wonders with the hardest assignment in the world, “blackfellow treatment.” Dr. Steenson was a scientist of large caliber, although physically he was about vestpocket size. The Dean of the New Zealand Medical School knew what he was about when he recommended Steenson to me.

These men would send me their journals, written from the field when they worked up and down the double chain of six or seven big, wild islands. There were plantations and missions around the edges, but the interiors were usually inhabited by unregenerate killers. Malaita, for instance, was a little larger than Long Island, and twice as tough. When black Malaitamen worked on the plantations they had to be carefully watched; they had a nasty habit of turning on their straw-boss. No Malaitaman ranked as a true male until he had killed his man. There was the case in 1927 which newspapers played up as “The Malaita Murders.” Captain Bell, a tax collector, with his white assistant and fourteen native police, fell under massed spear-points, and when the guilty ones were tried for murder they made no attempt to deny anything. Hill-grown Malaitamen don’t know how to lie. Somebody had “sent” them to do murder--a witch doctor, most likely. Without a sign of fear they walked up to the hangman.

Dr. Steenson had drawn a very accurate map of Malaita, in four colors. The colors, he explained, had been made for him by mission boys, out of plant juices. He and White both carried phonographs, and when patients came in too slowly the white medicine men would turn on stale music-hall pieces. “Show Me the Way to Go Home” was a favorite. Mission boys learned it, formed male quartets and butchered the tune horribly, far into the night. Malaitamen loved the needle--sick or well, they demanded it. But on adjacent islands they would run and hide, scared to death of it. When audiences failed to show up the interpreter would say, “Big kaikai”--whether they were eating men or pigs was never revealed. Earthquakes were a commonplace, leaf houses tumbling, young parrots falling out of the trees, natives scrambling under a barrage of coconuts. Lollipops were always in demand; stalwart warriors would wait for a dole of candy before they would talk business. Sometimes a native, who had never been near a treatment, would curl up and die of a heart attack or gallstone colic or whatever ailed him. Invariably his fellow tribesmen would blame the death on “stick medicine,” hypodermics, and it would take a wealth of diplomacy to argue them down. This situation was never less than dangerous. Steenson carried his Bible with him, and on Sunday mornings, when the missions enforced leisure, he would open it at Genesis and pull out a file of papers entitled “Yaws Campaign Notes.” He wrote me: “There is one thing in this Bible with which I do not agree. I refer to a sentence in ‘The Equipment and Working of a Yaws Unit (Samoan Experience).’” Dr. Steenson was basically religious.

Quaint letters came from native mission teachers, White and Steenson sent them to me as comic bits: “_My deer friend Dr. Steenson_, I am David Ikala write this letter to you, about all your boys, on this night, you put Goaril to look after all your things, now behind you he went down to Raresu, he going on Mother’s house and he do a trouble there, he catch hold the girls.... And another time he brake the roof of there house....”

This letter was signed “With a great love.”

It was a horse of a darker color when surreptitious notes were slipped into Gordon White’s hand, saying, “Don’t go down to Wanderer Bay,” and telling how the natives there were waiting to club the white men. Gordon White wrote casually, “Wherever I go the local lads come along with their various relations, and there is no sign of trouble or discontent.”

White had the services of Charlie One Arm, the policeman, who with his single arm could knock out all comers. Charlie’s maxim was “Treat ’em rough.” Around mission stations he would shock the pious by shouting to women who wouldn’t take their medicine, “Listen, you sunnabitch fellow!” But when I read White’s reports of threatening letters I saw Montague; we had White, Steenson and Charlie One Arm moved to safer, tamer ground. We couldn’t afford to have another Malaita murder....

Gordon White rounded off his report by telling how a flock of naked cannibals, well armed with clubs and spears, swarmed down and surrounded his tent. Had they come to finish him off? No, it turned out, they were bearing gifts. Gordon wrote, “The Malaitaman generally wants as much as he can get for anything he has to dispose of, and giving things away he looks on as sheer madness. But here they were showering me with presents, and with no apparent strings on them--cowrie shells, kai-kai spoons, a bow and a few arrows, a basket of fruit, and a middle aged rooster--I should say about forty-five.” Just a little tribute to modern medicine, and no flowery speeches; solemnly the Malaitamen strode back to their jungle....

* * * * *

I did not tell all this to Mr. Fosdick, a busy man on a busy day. But I had time to outline enough of it to hint at the problems we had to face among the howling pagans of the Solomon Islands, where the missionaries, good, bad and confused, were merely nibbling around the edges. Tuberculosis was prevalent in the Solomons, and we expected to tackle it on a grand scale when there were more N.M.P.’s.

Before we shook hands Raymond Fosdick asked: “But what about this wonderful 1835 brandy? Is it so easy down there to get hold of such rare stuff?”

“It is,” I said, “if you find the right man. I got four bottles of it in exchange for three dozen strictly fresh eggs.”

Then I told him how.

## CHAPTER II

ANOTHER ISLAND NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT

Late in 1930, shortly before I broached the egg-and-brandy riddle to Mr. Fosdick, the beautiful yacht _Zaca_ pulled in at Suva. Templeton Crocker, who had inherited richly from banks and mines in California, was taking friends on a world cruise. He had a thirst for anthropology and scientific exploration, and it was rumored that he might later equip his fine ship for research in far places. I am afraid my sigh was a bit envious as I watched the _Zaca_ steam gracefully in. I had scoured the southern seas in so many tubs, junks, bumboats, leaky launches and cockroach-ridden steamers that my bones ached at the very thought of them. Crocker’s explorations were _de luxe_; most of mine had been _de louse_.

Templeton Crocker came to my office, a well-favored man in his late forties, pleasant and almost boyishly anxious to learn. He seemed much impressed because I was just back from Rennell Island and its little neighbor, Bellona. Did they come up to my expectations? Yes, I said, when you fly to the moon you may be sure it will come up to your expectations. His curiosity was on edge; had I taken notes, could he see some of them? I handed him a small batch of rough dictation, not enough to tell him all by any means. I could see by his excitement that Rennell Island had the same pull on his imagination that it had had on mine all the eight years that I had awaited an opportunity to see it.

When we dined on the _Zaca_ the owner showed me around and explained that she was an enlarged “bluenose.” The main dining room was also the lounge, but the Crocker party ate mostly on deck, tropical style. Everything was roomy, the cabins plain but comfortable, equipped with electric lights and fans. Gus Schmidt, who managed the galley, was a real chef, and there were quantities of refrigerators to help him out. The ship carried what they called “frozen foods”--Idaho steaks, Long Island duck, fresh peas and strawberries--about all the luxuries for which we tropicals were hungry. Crocker had a plentiful supply of wines, used with judgment; when there was an occasion for it he could surprise you with a rare vintage.

He was at our house a great deal, always asking about Rennell Island. When he didn’t dine with us he dropped in for a rum cocktail. We played bridge, and I was surprised to find that he was making money; a rare feat in Suva, where the game is sharp as a razor blade. When we dined on the _Zaca_ my inner mind kept exclaiming, “Think of following a health campaign on a ship like this!”

The night before his boat sailed he came around with my notes; I knew he couldn’t have made much out of them, the stuff was so scrambled. At dinner I complimented him on the _Zaca’s_ cook, and he said the great trouble was getting fresh eggs. On the _Zaca’s_ long hauls even refrigeration wouldn’t keep them fresh. I mentioned doing something about it--then Eloisa gave me the matrimonial look. Wherever Eloisa settled down, she started to raise chickens; she had a way with chickens.

But on Crocker’s mind there was something heavier than an egg. It was Rennell Island, I knew before he had said a word. Finally he said, “I wish you would tell me all about that trip.” He and I were having coffee on the veranda, and I said, “You remember that girl of the Arabian Nights who had to tell the sultan a story between dark and dawn--or else? Well, we’d better have a fresh pot of coffee, because this story is going to be pretty long.”

“I can stand it,” he said, and waited for me to begin.

* * * * *

Last May [I said] I was in Tulagi, capital of the Solomon Islands, looking over our health campaign. I don’t have to tell you how long I had waited for a chance to see Rennell Island; and mine wasn’t all an explorer’s curiosity. When George Fulton told me, back in 1920, that the Rennellese were “practically untouched” I had wondered if these seemingly archaic people were infected with one of the known varieties of hookworm. Or if they were infected at all, would it be a variety hitherto undiscovered? If so, I might be able to furnish valuable data on the origin of a race that had been so long lost to the world.

From inquiry and general reading I knew that Rennell Island, and its tiny companion Bellona, had been visited in the past; but those visits were few and far between, even in the Pacific sense of the term. Some sailors might have penetrated to the interior. Two brave bishops, Selwyn and Patterson, touched there in 1856, and fifty years later C. M. Woodford and A. G. Stephens had made geological surveys around the shore. Dr. Northcote Deck, of the South Sea Evangelists, visited several times with a companion missioner, between 1908 and 1911; Deck made a gory mess of proselytizing. Resident Commissioner Kane, on his official inspection of 1925, might have been the first white man that ever went into the interior. A few years before that, the powerful Lever Brothers had “recruited” some labor from offshore; but the natives were so unresistant to disease that the recruiters had decided to take back the ones who survived. In 1928 Stanley and Hogbin made a geological survey for the High Commission, and reported that they had found absolutely nothing of commercial importance.

The next year the Whitney South Sea Expedition went there collecting birds for New York’s Natural History Museum. The young men from this expedition, on its second trip, were the ones who brought me into the story. Rennell lay only 150 miles to the southeast of Tulagi; it was hard to realize that it was so near, or that in 1930 one could turn back the book of mankind’s history for thousands of years and read the living page; that the voyager of today might thrill as Captain Cook thrilled when he first saw a Pacific island.

Well, I talked about Rennell to Captain Ashley, Resident Commissioner at Tulagi, and he offered to take me there on his next cruise. He’d have to drop me on the beach and pick me up when his yacht swung around that way again. But Rennell Island wasn’t very safe for strangers, he said. A few years ago when Dr. Deck of the South Sea Evangelists had sent three native missionaries there the Rennellese had killed them off; eaten them, probably, for nobody ever found the bodies. No, the safest way to see Rennell would be behind an armed guard.

Time was precious and there was no telling when Captain Ashley’s boat would take a notion to come. Then I saw a stout but battered little auxiliary schooner lying offshore. It looked like a turn of Providence, for she was the same _France_ that had taken the Whitney Expedition to Rennell three years before. A crowd of young men came ashore, looking more like hoboes than naturalists. Their leader was Hannibal Hamlin, grandson of Lincoln’s Vice President, and an old Yale football player. I pricked up my ears when Hamlin said that they were heading the _France_ for Rennell Island again, if they could make it. My ears stood higher still when he said that he was the second white man, perhaps, to have gone inland as far as the Lake.

I wasted no time, you can well believe, in asking them what dicker I could make to go along. Hamlin showed true American generosity. They were indebted to Captain Ashley for a lot of things, and if I was his friend they’d do anything to oblige me; only trouble was the Whitney Expedition backers hadn’t come across with their check. They were out of provisions. All right, said I, provisions and trade were on me. Let’s take them on and get started. At the Burns-Phillip Store Hamlin took on some very odd supplies, including a great number of adzes, hatchets and trade knives with wooden handles and blades six inches long. When I asked him if we were going to use them on the savages he said, “No, but that’s what they’ll want.” I could understand the jumble of cheap mirrors and scissors. When he called for calico and beads he always asked for red. Why red? “That’s the color they’ll want,” he said, and started dickering for three pasteboard trade boxes with flimsy locks.

Our only stop was at Gaudalcanar where Gordon White was heading one of my Solomon Islands treatment units. He was an especially valuable addition to the party, as he had been to Rennell Island on the Stanley Expedition, two years before. On this trip he was to act as my microscopist.

We were a careless, happy company, getting dirtier every hour. We had with us a youngish German named Walter--I can’t remember the rest of it--who was a shell collector and looked the part. Our skipper was an ancient Scot, sour with religion. Gordon White had brought on three Solomon Island attendants, and he lent me a very black one named Ga’a, four feet high, aged fourteen, and proud as Punch to be serving a white gentleman. Service consisted mostly in opening tinned food and throwing the empty tins overboard--or letting them roll. The main cabin was so small that you couldn’t stretch without banging your elbows; here we ate amidst fumes from the engine. We only used the engine in dead calm, when it could make four miles an hour. We had a small lavatory and a shower, neither of which worked. I was more than grateful to my companions when they allotted me--out of respect to my superior girth--the largest berth on the ship. It was right off the cabin, and there was no privacy. But privacy was a stranger to the _France_.

There was a place for nothing, and nothing in its place. Walter the German strewed shells, Hamlin and Coultas stuffed birds and scattered feathers so that some of them always managed to get into the stew. Our native deck-hands slept in places where you couldn’t help stumbling over them. Gordon White, when he wasn’t trying to find where he had stowed his microscopic outfit, turned on the phonograph and shouted.

We were on our way to Rennell Island--maybe. And just another touch to our oddity: We had a stumpy black Hercules who helped the cook by spilling soup, waited on table by dropping dishes, cleaned the cabin by pushing the dirt across into another corner. He was an ebony figure of the Masculine. And his name was Bella.

* * * * *

When the report came that we would reach our destination next day I began looking into the physical condition of all aboard. If the Rennellese were as primitive as I had heard, any introduced germ would catch like wild fire, and we might spread a scourge. Harry, our Solomon Island cook, had developed a nasty eye condition; he was a spectacle in the galley, with that dirty rag over his eye. White and I treated him and he began to improve. Still I was worried, wondering how his infection would react on the people we were about to visit.

I looked them all over. There were no common colds, and that was satisfactory. How about that quick-moving venereal contagion, gonorrhea? To the embarrassment of some, and the merriment of many, I lined them all up, from black crew to white captain, and gave them what the Army calls “short-arm inspection.” They were all negative. Satisfactory again. Also there were no visible signs of skin infection. We seemed to be, all told, a very healthy lot.

Then I got my thrill when Hamlin called me on deck, pointed over the bow and said, “There she is!” It lay isolated in the sea. I saw a straight line of cliff, sheer as a prison wall, lifted some 400 feet and running as far as the eye could travel. Scraggly foliage showed faintly at the top. What except an airplane could get anybody up there?

Hamlin, all out of patience, told me that there was only one dent in the cliff, a narrow passage called Kungava Bay, the “White Sands.” If the Scotch skipper hadn’t been so stubborn we could have sailed straight into it. As it was that day was gone and most of the next before we made our final tack and found the opening in the cliffs which marked Rennell’s only landing place, a pin-point approach to an island that was fifty miles long and some fifteen wide. Those guardian cliffs were relics of a strange volcanic action which pushed the Pacific’s largest atoll into high prominence. The island was so tightly ringed with a collar of coral-stone that Sinbad himself could not have found the entrance without a chart. Fortunately Hamlin had one which his navigator on the former trip had made for him.

We shot through the reef and found anchorage inside a beautiful, sheltered bay; it was especially serene because the cliffs protected it on two sides; below their impressive height the beach curved like a white necklace. Things began to move. Two rudely built outrigger canoes came paddling up to us, and I got my first glimpse of these strange people. There were two men, a woman and a couple of small boys. They were not like anything I had ever seen before, and I remembered what Fulton had said: “About twenty thousand years behind modern history.” At the risk of being trite, let me say that the men, very tall and handsomely muscled, had the figures of Greek gods. Around the loins they were swaddled in folds of clumsy tapa (_kongoa_), made grotesque by a palm-leaf fan stuck in the back. The fans, I learned later, were for protecting the hair when it rained, or for brushing away flies when it shone. Their heads were impressive, dark as to hair and brows, and with strong, well-modeled features. Their hair, almost straight, was coiled in a bun at the back. Their dark, expressive eyes were somewhat slanting, but not Mongoloid fashion, more like the American Indians’. Although they wore small tortoise-shell ornaments stuck through the septum, their noses were slenderly arched. There was nothing negroid about their gracefully cut mouths. What were they like? Somehow you couldn’t call them either Polynesian or Caucasian. Yet there was something indefinitely Caucasian in their features.

The woman was shorter, nude save for a long strip of tapa, bound so tightly around her hips that it seemed to hold her legs together. Those legs were her imperfection, for they were short, stocky and knock-kneed. I wondered if this peculiarity, which I saw later in the majority of the women here, had something to do with the tight binding of the thighs. Or was it an occupational distortion, caused by carrying heavy loads? In the Kuni dwarfs of Papua I have remarked on another sort of occupational distortion--they were pigeon-breasted and duck-footed from climbing hills all their lives. This Rennellese wife, like the man, was well tattooed except for her face and back The designs seemed to be all in the same pattern.

They had hardly gotten aboard before they were all over the ship, prying into everything, handling everything, including ourselves. Delicate, dirty fingers felt of our shirts, felt of the buttons on our shorts, patted us all over to see if these strange beings were real. One of the small boys patted my stomach, not satirically, but in admiring surprise that it could be so big. One of the men went into the galley where he tunked the tin pans and chuckled strange words in a dialect which was not quite Polynesian.

Hamlin and I went down the ladder to look at their canoes, strange hulks gnawed from thick logs--gnawed is the word, for they had been hollowed out in the most primitive possible way.

Hamlin said, “Yes, they char the wood and hack it with shells. But these canoes are better made than the ones I saw before. I gave them some hatchets, and they’re working with them. They’re crazy to get iron and steel. They’ll do anything for it, give you anything they’ve got, and that isn’t much--mostly women.”

Back on deck I saw the woman making up to Bella, the cook’s powerful helper. There was danger ahead, I feared. Not the danger of being clubbed to death, as they had clubbed the mission teachers; but the trouble that comes to any island visitor when crews go ashore to “refresh.”

The people who had come aboard spoke a little queer pidgin English, just a word here and there which they had picked up God knows where. They didn’t know much of it, for when we first spoke to them they returned a polite, blank stare. Then the woman saw an empty beer bottle, and said “Me want,” in a pretty, husky contralto. But when we tried more pidgin on her she was dumb. “What does she want with an empty beer bottle?” I asked Hamlin, and he explained, “The men break them up to shave with. Until beer bottles came the older men were all bearded. The young bucks pulled ’em out by using clam shells, like tweezers. I guess you could buy the island for a dozen razor blades.”

Then a few more canoes straggled out to let men, women and children clamber aboard, to make themselves at home. They had never heard of privacy. Why should they have heard of it? They were the primitives of primitives, therefore naïvely communistic. They poked their fingers into every hole in the main cabin, turned up our mattresses and wondered what they were, tried to find out why locked boxes and cupboards wouldn’t open. Occasionally they would slip some small thing like a shoelace or a beer-bottle cap into their tapa sashes. A few of the girls could say, “Me want knifie,” putting a caress into their voices as they handled our shirt collars. Late that night unmistakable sounds from the crew’s quarters indicated that some local beauties had remained to earn a knife or bottle.

* * * * *

(Here I paused to give Templeton Crocker the last cup of coffee in the pot. Then I went on.)

* * * * *

When we were at meals they’d leave us alone--and that was the only time, why I don’t know. Right after dinner or breakfast they’d be back. We tried to play cards, but with beautiful torsos pressing against our shoulders, backs and arms, it was hard to concentrate.... Two new arrivals came into the cabin, and Hamlin recognized a friend of his former trip. He got up and rubbed noses solemnly with a bright-eyed, nuggety little fellow, whose look was quick with intelligence. “This is Buia of Kanava,” Hamlin said, and then of the taller, younger one, “he’s named Buia too. He’s Buia the Bastard. Buia of Kanava is heir to one of the Big Masters--that’s what they call their chiefs here--and he speaks a little pidgin.”

At once I decided that Buia of Kanava should be my very own for the duration of the trip. His pidgin was quite bad, but intelligible. When I asked him how he learned it, he said the Japanese sailors had taught him. He was a progressive spirit, far beyond the island average. One day he had swum out to a Japanese pearler, lying offshore, and offered his services for a trip of a few hundred miles. He was there to learn the white man’s ways; Japanese or Swedes were all the same to him.

To bind his service securely I took Buia to my cabin and laid an offering out on my berth; an adze, a hatchet, a trade-knife with a six-inch blade and one of the pasteboard lock-boxes Hamlin had been foresighted enough to buy. He gazed, dumb with fascination; he was like Aladdin at first sight of the jewel-filled cave. “Belong me?” he murmured. Yes, they were all for him, _if_ he would be goodfellow boy, show me everything and tell me everything. When I got a key and opened the box Buia was mine for a lifetime, if I wanted him that long. I replaced the treasures in a cupboard, but every afternoon while we were on the island he would appear in my cabin and beseech me to let him look at them again. I would lay them out on the berth and watch him gloat, rubbing his hands. He would be a very rich man.

By piecing Buia’s words together I gained some knowledge of a religious and social structure which had only moved forward a third of the distance from the Glacial Period.

* * * * *

Buia told me that Rennell Island was divided into five districts, each ruled by a kingly chief called a Big Master. The two most powerful Big Masters were Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, and Taupangi, Lord of the Lake--the lake was Tenggano, lying in the center of the island. The people did not worship images and they had few devils. They adored an unseen God (Big Master Walk along Sky, according to pidgin). The Big Masters were the most powerful because God lived in their heads. (“God does _what_?” I asked.) God lived in their heads, Buia insisted earnestly; so they were wiser and stronger than other men. Once a year, at the harvest festival up by the Lake, Tahua and Taupangi could wish God to leave their heads, just for the period, and dwell behind the brows of some chosen subordinate. Then the subordinates were very strong and wise, but God always came back to the Big Masters. The harvest festival was being celebrated right now, Buia said, and that was why Big Master Tahua was not on the White Sands.

Then Buia came out with a scandal which somewhat alarmed me for the future of these “untouched” people. It was a real-estate deal with more of Hollywood’s flavor than Rennell’s. Probably the five big chiefs were descendants of five sons of the early conquerors, and Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, was of the eldest line; at least he was the most powerful. Once he ruled both the Lake and the White Sands; but the beach looked useless to him. Perhaps God told Tahua of Kanava that beach property had a future. At any rate Taupangi was induced to give Tahua temporary use of the White Sands, but when he saw vessels anchoring there, with good trading in iron, Taupangi realized his mistake and ordered Tahua out. This started a war, and the enterprising Tahua must have won it, for when we got there he was well established as Lord of the White Sands.

The yams on the Lake were small and poor, but the beach was a different matter. Iron was gold. Iron would put Rennell on its feet. Rennell had girls, the incoming ships had knives, axes, scrap iron. With a corner on iron Tahua could become master of the Big Masters.

As a public health physician I didn’t like the sound of this. Trading love for iron was going to work havoc with these natives, unless this form of commercialism was soon discouraged.

Since the main object of my visit was to look into hookworm infection, if it existed, and to study the nature of the parasite which, if they had it, must have been borne by their ancestors generations before the dawn of our modern history, it was necessary to use Buia as a go-between. If he could get it through his head that we were here to examine feces specimens, he could explain it to his people. But after two patient hours of careful pidgin I saw that I was making no headway. Buia simply didn’t understand what I wanted. I had been using the lingo almost daily for thirteen years, and had never before had such trouble in making myself clear. Then it dawned upon me that it wasn’t entirely the man’s faulty knowledge of pidgin. He had no conception of disease, as we view it. All sickness was punishment from their offended god, penalizing the evildoer. That was the only reaction that I got from him after steady pegging away. Finally we changed the subject.

Gordon White and three boys went ashore and erected a tent and fly where we could go properly to work on our examinations. Walking along the sparkling beach I was surprised to find only one house, such as it was, a leaf-building with a steep-sloping roof, eaves that almost touched the ground and no doors. But where did the people sleep? In caves? On the bare ground, with the rain sifting over them? When I knew them better I found that was what they did.

I got around to the subject of murder, for I never quite forgot Dr. Deck’s three murdered evangelists. I asked Buia what he would do if somebody tried to kill him. “Who would want to kill me?” he asked, surprised. Suppose somebody should steal his land? “But who would want to steal my land?” Then I got around to Mr. Deck’s slain teachers; Rennell people had certainly killed them--and I had heard that they had eaten them, too. Buia’s face clouded. “Those mission boys were very bad fellows. They asked our people to build them a house, and when the work did not suit those mission people they were very cross. They gave no presents although they were rich. So our people killed them.” And ate the bodies? “No!” Indignantly. “My people have never eaten men. It is not the fashion.” I knew he was telling the truth. Cannibalism might be like many another curse, imported. The Rennellese had never acquired a taste for long pig, or for pig of any kind. Their diet was simple in the extreme: the small variety of fruit and vegetables they could grow, what fish their clumsy wooden hooks could bring in, what birds their arrows reached. They ate just one thing at a meal. If it was fish, it was fish and nothing else. If it was yams, it was yams alone.

There were many things they couldn’t understand, but their bright minds were quick to learn. Our ornithologists were out for specimens, and Hamlin had given a few native boys their first lessons with a shotgun, half an hour’s target practice on the rare birds flying about. Then he had casually handed guns to the boys and told them to go to it. They came back loaded with feathery game. What was still more wonderful was that nobody had shot himself in the foot.

So I sat down at my typewriter to write a report, something that couldn’t be done in sociable Kungava Bay. The boat was swarming. Native heroes and their women had gone into about everything on board, and were helping themselves rather freely. It was neither politic nor polite to offend these charming people by telling them to go home and stay there until they were invited. As a counter-attraction I had set the phonograph up in the bow and ordered little Ga’a to keep the needle going till it wore out. The ghost-music attracted part of the crowd part of the time, but they always came back to me. The phonograph was all right as a miracle, but what really puzzled and charmed them was my portable typewriter.

A baker’s dozen of the brown-skinned young things lolled over my shoulders, touching the keys as they flew, drawing their fingers over the ribbon to see the ink come off. What was this strange box that made such straight tattoo marks across a very white sheet? Finally I gave up all pretense of working and called Buia. His eyes, like all the others’, were fixed on my portable. He said that they all wanted to know what I was doing. I told him that if he would push the girls back a few inches I would try to show him. This machine, I said, made talk. Those things I was tattooing on the white sheet were words; if Buia were to carry the sheet as far as the albatross flies, a man on the other end would just look at it and the words would talk to him. Buia’s bright eyes were standing out of his head as he murmured, “Me no sabe dis fellow talk.” “I’ll show you,” I said, and tick-tacked on a piece of paper, “_Hamlin, please give Buia a tin of cigarettes_.” I told what the paper would say to Hamlin, and sent Buia below.

Presently he staggered back, a tin of Chesterfields shuddering in his hand. Furtively he whispered the miracle to the huddled islanders. And it _was_ a miracle in a land where there had never been the slightest trace of a written language, not even picture writing. In their excited faces I saw a hungry eagerness to learn. Experimentally I lined them up, and as each one told me his name or hers I would typewrite it and have the bearer take it down to a man in the engineroom, who would read it out to them. This game lasted until my fingers were tired of hitting the keyboard. Some of them tried to help me; mischievous fingers would poke at random, and the ship would be a gale of rough contralto laughter when a key flew up and struck the paper.

That night I wrestled with Buia again over the subject of hookworm. Carefully I told him of the snake that hung to the human intestine and sent its eggs out with the bowel motion. In my jungle campaigns I had informed the most backward and savage Melanesians that they had “senake in bel’” which their witch doctors could not cure because they only removed the ghost of a snake, but we could fetch the real thing. I had worked in safety among tough cannibals and found that they were afraid to attack a man who could do such magic.

I thought that my detailed explanation had at last got under Buia’s skin. He was politely impressed, and I felt sure that he would act as my friend and interpreter tomorrow when I would begin the delicate work of collecting specimens of feces.

Next morning Gordon White and I went to the beach with our microscope and little tin containers; the first thing I did was to give a container to Buia, and ask him if he remembered what I had told him. Now Buia seemed unable to understand. Gordon White came to my rescue and said, “Doctor, I’ll go and demonstrate to these bastards, personally.” With Buia and a retinue of small boys he retired into the bushes. Silence. Then a perfect bedlam of frightened yells. Small boys came scampering out, hands in air, mouths open, screaming. And Buia followed the panicky retreat. They ran as though a mad dog were after them, nipping.

At last Gordon came out, dejectedly holding a tin. “When I put the specimen in and closed the lid,” he said, “they stared as if they were accusing me of an atrocious crime.” The natives of the beach kept away from us for a bad half-hour; we were isolated among a lot of savages who had interpreted our well meant attempt as the grossest insult. These men carried spears and clubs; we knew how they dealt with those who offended them. Whether or not they had eaten Deck’s missioners was only of academic importance. What happens after you’re dead doesn’t matter much. The main thing was to keep alive....

Then Buia came sidling back to our tent. His look was portentous. He said, “Master, dis fellow he something altogether tabu. Him he tabu too much. Suppose Big Master Tahua sabe something belong dis fashion, he altogether too bad along you fellow me fellow”--Meaning that if we went on with our search for hookworm eggs Tahua would kill us all, including Buia. We heard the noise of people scrambling down the precipice. Buia told us that they were from Lake Tenggano. And as we valued our lives, he said, we mustn’t even hint at what happened in the bushes. Otherwise terrible things would befall us for breaking their tabu.

Well, there we were, on the third day, absolutely bunkered on the main object of our trip. When I went back to the _France_, feeling that my investment had turned out a total loss, I found the people of the Lake swarming over everything, and among them a grandee of the White Sands, an adopted son of Tahua. And there was Tamata, too, adopted son of Taupangi. They seemed to be a reception committee from the Big Masters, inviting us to the harvest festival at the Lake.

Hamlin had warned me of difficulties going overland to the Lake. But our failure of that morning had roused all the mule blood in me. If I went to the Lord of the Lake and prevailed on him to cancel the tabu and let me make the necessary examinations I might accomplish the purpose of my visit. After all, it was only a walk of seven or eight miles, I was in fair condition, and impatient when Hamlin argued that I had better not try it. I didn’t know what I was in for....

* * * * *

(Here I paused and looked at the empty coffeepot. “Guess I’d better make some more,” I said to Templeton Crocker. When I got back with the coffee I asked, “Are you tired of listening?” “Lord, no!” said Crocker. “And I hope you’re not tired of talking.” “I’m never tired of talking,” I said, and went on.)

* * * * *

I was rather glad to be away from the _France_ for a while. The sociability on board was getting on my nerves. I had already learned that their dialect was akin to Polynesian and that the word _tabu_ was feared and respected. But it wasn’t at all like the German _verboten_. We didn’t use _tabu_ properly or understand it properly. A thing could be tabu one minute, I discovered, and not tabu the next. When I found standing room only in my cabin, everything in it being pulled up or pulled down by curious island fingers, I would smile mildly and say, “Tabu, tabu!” It wouldn’t do to lose patience and push them out. They would be tabu-ed out of the main cabin, but we only had to wait a little before a head, then an arm, then a leg would appear slyly in the companionway. Then they would all ooze in again. We had talked it over among ourselves and had decided that they were Polynesians, kind and courteous to friends; but an uncouth word might rouse their tempers to a fury.

We started on our little stroll to the Lake. At Hamlin’s suggestion I put on a pair of heavy army shoes with stout brass screws in soles and heels--seemed rather a silly precaution. Buia was guiding us and we had a few carriers for our light packs. A tin of sardines and two ship’s biscuits would be enough for each of us, in case of famine. My pack included a light change of clothes and toilet necessities. Also we had a bundle of tribute-gifts for Tahua and Taupangi. Hamlin had been foresighted enough to include tea, butter, sugar, salt, pepper and a benzine tin to make tea in. Otherwise we expected to live off the country.

Our march began with a climb up 400 feet of cliff, up a sort of ladder trail which generations had scooped out with shells. The coral stone seemed to be so many little daggers, slicing at me until my hands and knees began to bleed. Once on the summit, there were slopes of coral; everything on the island was coral, except thin patches of earth that had caught on the surface. I think that the people got what they ate by moving from patch to patch and picking whatever grew there. We found a grove of pawpaws. The carriers were eating the fruit green, so I tried a paw. They were not bad. Green pawpaws are full of papain, with an

## action similar to that of pepsin.... Walking along, nibbling, I began

to feel that the difficulties of the trip had been overrated. Then beyond the grove I looked across the bleakness of the land from which a healthy people had hacked their bare living through ages of struggle. Over the trail in front of us was a mass of briary vines. Must we go through that? Buia led the way.

I wore a helmet and was sorry, for the rest of the way we had to walk at a crouch through a tunnel of close-woven twigs. Vines pulled off my helmet, tripped me up, flung me about. Two good men with machetes could have cleared this trail; but there were no machetes in this land of little iron. There was always coral underfoot, cutting with thousands of minute edges. Beyond the vines trees were growing out of solid coral; the forest was so dense that we were in twilight, all the way to the Lake. Perspiration oozed out of us, rain oozed in, wetting us through. Yet we were so thirsty that we must stop every half-mile or so to swig from our water-bottles. A cigarette would have helped, but they were saturated by misty rain the instant they came out of the box.

The barefoot carriers didn’t seem to mind the jagged stuff; they would step daintily around a bristling lump which could have opened an artery. Now I knew why Rennellese legs were always scarred up to the knee. The gods of Rennell Island had thrown up another barrier against strangers. When we approached an especially bad lump Buia would point it out in time for me to balance myself on my cane to avoid a fall that might have scraped me to death.

Maybe you have scared your children to sleep by telling of obstacles, natural and supernatural, which the hero must overcome in his climb to the ogre’s castle. On that walk to the Lake fissures would appear in the rock, spanned by rain-slippery, mossy logs. Buia would stand on the slimy thing, agile as a monkey, and pleasantly help us across the void. I wore two pairs of woolen stockings when I started out; now they hung in shreds against my bleeding calves. At the first step on a log I saw that the thick leather of my shoes was torn as if it had been scraped across yards of barbed wire. Now I knew why Hamlin had thought that I couldn’t finish this little tour. By the time we reached the muddy shores of the Lake my dreadnaught shoes had about gone back on me, and the brass-studded soles were flopping about like broken wings.

On a knoll some fifty yards from the Lake we came upon another of those queer Rennell houses, practically all roof with eaves a couple of feet from the ground. There were no doors or windows, so you got in by crawling under the eaves. There was nothing inside but a great pile of coconuts. We were told not to touch them because they were extra tabu. Coconuts were very scarce. Hog-dirty, dog-tired, White and Hamlin and I tumbled down and panted, quite willing to die among the coconuts, if only they let us alone.

Somebody was crawling in after us. It was Buia with a couple of handsome natives. Buia said that we had better hurry up, as the Big Masters, Tahua and Taupangi, were waiting to receive us. So we were up again, mucking our way through a mile of lakeside and up to a so-called village. There were shackly palm-leaf canopies on crooked poles--where people slept, perhaps. There were caverns in the coral over yonder, which might serve as apartments. We came to another Rennell house, slightly larger than the one we had been in. In a palace like this there is no question of Majesty having obeisance paid it or of a court officer instructing one how to bow and kneel. You crawl in on all fours, and on all fours you greet the reigning sovereign. Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, sat in state on a pile of native mats, and was properly dressed for the religious ceremonies. Around his waist he wore a wide tapa and a fancifully woven mat. His hair was in a knot at the back of his head and he was smeared all over with sacred yellow turmeric. He was still young, and about the biggest man I saw on Rennell Island, with shoulders like an ox’s yoke and a wonderfully proportioned body. All of the Big Masters that I saw were handsome men, none of them running to fat as Polynesians do in middle age.

At the other end of the house sat a younger, still handsomer man, enthroned on mats. He had the perfect classic profile and his tattooed torso was magnificent. This was Tekita, who had acted as the Big Master’s substitute during the ceremonies of the week; during the ritual God had passed from Taupangi’s head and into Tekita’s. He was being king for a day, as it were, for the great spirit (Tainatua) owned every stick and stone on Rennell Island, and the man whose head possessed him spoke with the voice of God. Taupangi, for the nonce, was only human. Soon, when Divinity resumed its seat in his brain, he would again be all powerful over the division of labor, crops and everything else in his little realm.

Tekita, the substitute, had been chewing betel-nuts, and seemed excited, as well he might be considering his lofty rise. Superficially he behaved like quite a conceited young fellow. He spoke pidgin English fairly well--he might have been one of those whom Lever Brothers’ yacht had taken away on an unsuccessful attempt at recruiting. With all the gestures of royalty Tekita seated himself next to the Big Master and graciously did some interpreting. As he talked he rolled his eyes and every few moments he would go into a silent semi-trance. He was going on much like any charlatan trying to impress an audience. In a prophetic voice he admitted that he was glad to see Hamlin again. “Hamlin fadder belong me,” he said. And promptly wanted to know what present “fadder belong him” had brought. This honorary fatherhood, although it cemented our friendship with Taupangi’s people, was becoming a bit of a nuisance.

I found more pidgin than I had expected, at first. It was gradually filtering in. (I can’t forget Tekita’s lordly farewell, spoken between trances: “Me too sorry belong you fellow you come along here.” Meaning, of course, that he was glad; but he had somehow mixed his adjectives.)

I wanted to see Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, but when I asked this favor of Taupangi, the Lord of the Lake, he was jealously evasive. Our tribute of an adze and axe changed his mind (which was Tekita, speaking with the voice of God). Guides led us over to a miserable little hut of sticks and vines. Apparently Taupangi wasn’t being too lavish with his rival. But there was enough room inside for the bearded, muscular Tahua to sit in state opposite his divinely inspired substitute. Tahua relaxed to a somewhat cupidinous smile when we presented him with an adze. This meeting wasn’t much, but it was what a bond salesman would call a “contact.” I knew that I would have to gain Tahua’s good will before I could even attempt hookworm examinations on his side of the island.

Tomorrow would end the festival, with the ceremony of putting God back into the heads of the Big Masters. I was too tired to care. I had sloshed through mud until I found fresh water, made a pretense of washing my face and hands and came back dirtier than before. Now I could see why the inland Rennellese went unbathed, except when it happened to rain on them. I crawled into the guest house--not daring to touch the pile of sacred coconuts--and eased my feet with clean socks and tennis shoes. Then I spread out my blanket and got on it.

“Oh, sleep! it is a gentle thing,” said the Ancient Mariner. In Taupangi’s domain it was a mixed blessing. When I started to drowse, our courteous hosts came in with a rough wooden bowl filled with _pana_, a glorified sweet potato. Although they had peeled the vegetables with their dirty fingers, the smell of food woke me pleasantly. Since leaving the _France_ we had had nothing but a few sardines and one sea-biscuit apiece. I had watched the natives cooking; Rennellese fire-sticks were pieces of rotten wood which they rubbed until the spark came. They lined a hole with coral stones, started a fire on them and kept it going until the stones were white hot. Then they wrapped food in leaves, laid it on the stones, covered it with earth and let nature take its course.

Except for a small clamshell, which they used mostly to scrape the meat from coconuts, the wooden bowl was their only eating utensil. At festival dances they used the bowls as drums. These, and big wooden drums, were the only musical instruments they had. I was sorry that we had forgotten to bring them jew’s harps, which would have charmed them into ecstasies.

To say that I slept that night would be a gross exaggeration. Every man, woman and child who could crowd in became our bedmate. Communism and comfort seem to be strangers. We lay all coiled together, Gordon White and I sharing the common lot. The rest of our crowd had had sense enough to find some sort of shelter outside. Before we slept--if it could be called sleeping--a burly, blustery fellow named Panio came in and showed all the specious heartiness of the typical politician. Instinctively I felt that we might have trouble with Panio. If I had known, as I learned later, that he belonged on the beach, a henchman of Tahua, and was one of the three that had killed Deck’s missionaries, I might have slept even more lightly than I did.

Lying on the floor, cuddled very close to me, was Tamata, son of Taupangi, and on the other side, equally intimate, was Tahua’s adopted son. I could see why the house was so popular, for the night was quite cool; outside in the ridiculous leaf-and-stick shelters only a mat protected the sleeper. I had seen women lying in the open, babes in arms, snoring serenely with cold rain sifting all over them.

The house inside reminded me of Mark Twain’s description of Brigham Young’s bed; if anybody turned they all had to turn. Far into the night, pidgin English questions were pegged at me from this side and that. They all wanted to learn a little more while they had the opportunity. Indoors or out, it was the crudest existence imaginable, not far removed from the animal. Yet they thrived on it, to all appearances....

Next morning, after we had implored our hosts to break their one-meal-a-day custom and cook us a fish, we went over to the harvest festival, which was drawing to a dramatic close.

* * * * *

(I paused to light a cigarette, and Crocker prompted me with “What happened then?”)

* * * * *

Well (I said) the show was held near Taupangi’s house. He and his rival, Tahua, with several other Big Masters, were the features. They had laid aside their bunchy loin coverings and wore nothing but strips of tapa between their buttocks and around their waists. From head to foot they were yellow with royal turmeric. Tahua’s first gesture, when he saw me, was to point at my bare legs. I didn’t understand, until I learned that Resident Commissioner Dick Kane, the first white man known to have penetrated as far as the Lake, had worn woolen stockings. When the natives were curious, he told them that in civilization only big chiefs were allowed to wear stockings. Next time I visited Taupangi I restored my status by covering my calves.

There was a rough dirt court, about fifty yards by ten. They had fenced it with sticks and leaves, higher than a man’s head. This was to keep women out. If any female looked in on the ceremony she would surely die, they said. There was some trouble about letting us into the enclosure. We were told that the gods, angered at our presence, might do us harm. Finally, as a measure of protection, Taupangi sat between us and danger. Before he rose to take part in the ceremonies he insisted that another Master, a very old one, should sit in his place, so that at all times we were well insulated against the supernatural.

The precious coconuts which we had been sleeping with were now piled in the center of the court; beside them was a rude platform where sat the two young men who had substituted as godheads for the two Big Masters.

Then the Masters--there were about twenty of the minor ones in all--began filing slowly around the coconut pile, their faces turned heavenward as they chanted. First Taupangi would take up the theme, then the others would join in a sort of obbligato. The walk sped up gradually to a curious leaping, first on one foot then the other; they hopped by rule, two on the right leg, two on the left. The pounding of drums and food-bowls, the howling song and general yelling increased to a hubbub. Abruptly the dancers would sit down, and the racket would cease. Finally Tekita (still monarch pro tem) rose from his platform and distributed coconuts from the pile.

The big moment came. The celebrants began working God out of the two substitutes and back into the heads of Taupangi and Tahua. The faces of both Big Masters were set in earnest religious devotion. The lesser Masters formed a line, four abreast, and hopped some distance toward the house where Tekita had been sitting. Singing at the top of their lungs, their hands outstretched toward Heaven, they hopped back. Their slow retreat and progress brought them nearer the house each time; they came at last within six feet of the eaves. At last with a bloodcurdling howl they rushed up and struck the roof with the flat of their hands. Then, apparently, God flew from his temporary dwelling back into the heads of Tahua and Taupangi.

The minute this transfer was made Taupangi’s substitute seemed to come back to normal. He had lost the superiority complex altogether, and was a relaxed, courteous and jolly fellow.

That night our bird hunters brought in some ducks, which we ate half raw, because the natives only knew how to scorch them. Themselves, they never ate ducks; ducks were unclean feeders, the people said. Thinking that we might protect ourselves from the sociability of the house, we set up a tent. In fifteen minutes our tent was jammed with self-invited guests. The frail canvas came down two or three times during the night from the pressure of those inside getting out and those outside getting in. In the weary, dreary morning, plagued with thirst, I tried drinking water from the Lake, where the natives seemed to get theirs. On the coral-jagged march back to the beach, I found to my embarrassment that the Lake was quite unfriendly to a white man’s digestion.

When we reached the White Sands some interesting gossip was going the rounds. It was about Tekita, who had been substituting for Taupangi. By all the rules a substitute was supposed to be very tabu during that period, especially for women. But when God got back into Taupangi’s head he told on Tekita, who had broken his tabu with a certain village maiden. So God visited his punishment on Taupangi, not Tekita, and told him that he could not go down to the _France_ while she was in the bay. Somehow the Almighty must have reversed himself, for Taupangi visited us a few days later.

* * * * *

While I was at the Lake I never for a moment overlooked the problem of hookworm examinations, nor did I fail to put in a great deal of time making a census of the people for apparent diseases. Since Buia had warned me not to mention hookworms to the Big Master, I was still searching for a way to go ahead. Then Buia fixed it. My guess was that he spoke to Mua, son of Taupangi; for both the Lord of the Lake and his son had first class minds. Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, was reputed to have less “power” than Taupangi; that is to say, he was unable to go into a “sweating trance” as the chief of Lake Tenggano could, they said. Mua told me that Taupangi could kill by wishing, through his closer connection with the Grandson God.

At any rate, when we were back on the beach Buia told me that if I could give him and Mua the specimen tins, and would make examinations before the two Big Masters came, maybe it would be all right. I had offered a large fishhook and a small fishhook for every specimen, which may have been why we got a few. We found a light infection, but under such adverse conditions we were unable to determine whether the hookworms were ancient, modern or what. It was interesting to observe the watchful care with which our tin containers were returned. Each man would squat in front of our worktable and never take his eyes off the specimen until we had finished and thrown it into a hole in the sand. They were taking no chances on our being witch doctors, come to make black magic.

If I had been given the ghost of an opportunity I might have reached some conclusion; I might have washed out their specimens according to the regulation field technique and studied the parasites under the microscope. This might have added important clues in the search for Rennell Island’s history, for the hookworm contents of a race may tell a great deal about the origins and migrations of a people. Dr. S. T. Darling, eminent in tropical medicine, had developed theories on this parasite, which he collected all over the globe. He demonstrated that the original habitat of the _Ankylostoma duodenale_ was north of twenty degrees north latitude, while the _Necator americanus_ stemmed from a region south of that line. This is a point which has not been given due weight by anthropologists. All my work over the Pacific added validity to Darling’s theory. Certainly I found that both Melanesians and Polynesians living south of twenty degrees north latitude--provided that they had not been contaminated by Asiatics--carried only the _Necator americanus_--an evidence that their origin and migration must have been from south of this latitude.

You can imagine my disappointment in learning so little from the tabu-haunted Rennellese, to whom the intimate details of a worm-count would have been a capital offense. On all the island there was nothing like a latrine; like the followers of Moses, these primitives dug holes in the sand and carefully covered “that which they had done”--this as a precaution against some witch’s charm. Sand, however, is far too porous to hold down the enterprising larvae, especially when the hole is only a surface scratch. We devoted much time to examining blood for filariasis, which was conspicuous for its absence. Our spleen examinations revealed no malaria, either on Rennell or its little neighboring sister, Bellona, although both were definitely in the malaria belt. Neither did we find an anopheline mosquito.

The complete absence of dysentery was interesting, because it had once been brought there by an apparently clean ship, and had decimated the population. It had died out, probably because the Rennell flies, although they flew in swarms, did not seem to light on human beings; also there was no water supply to be contaminated--the beach natives drew water from holes at the bottom of the cliffs, the interior natives drank out of the Lake. Food was no carrier, for it was cooked in the skins.

There was little sign of past devastations, although there was evidence that the few visiting ships had brought them influenza and an infection of gonorrhea, from which they had recovered.

Wandering about, I finally came upon a few miserable beings, hidden away from intruders. They were suffering from yaws. The people had not talked about yaws. They seemed to be ashamed of it. It was quite evident that they had kept the disease from spreading by an age-old, self-taught practice of segregation.

The Rennellese wore their one garment until it was threadbare; by day it was trousers, by night pajamas. Since the water in the Lake was hard to get at and the water below the cliffs came in driblets, only expert swimmers knew the pleasures of bathing. They rather disliked the touch of salt water, but this prejudice was not responsible for a certain skin condition.

Scabies was present, but not serious. The prevalent disease on Rennell, I think, was something they called _onga-onga_, a sort of itch. The inhabitants claimed that it had been brought there by Dr. Deck’s unpopular missionaries. Apparently it only appeared as a dermatitis, the result of scratching. Constant scratching was a native gesture. When the disease first came, they told me, everyone went mad, ran to the bush, threw away their clothes and dug their nails into every part of their bodies.

Within a month after we left the island all of us came down with it. To me it was a most unpleasant visitor. It began at my thighs and covered me from knees to waist, like a pair of shorts. I could see no discoloration, save where my nails had torn my skin. Hot baths irritated it. Successive days of treating myself with saturated solution of salicylic acid in strong tincture of iodine, then with Deek’s ointment, brought relief. My skin peeled completely away from the infected area, and I haven’t heard from _onga-onga_ since....

* * * * *

Shortly after we had re-established headquarters on the _France_ natives from the interior came flocking to trade mats and baskets for beads and knives and fishhooks. Obviously the situation was growing touchy, with jealousy between inland-dweller and beach-dweller. There were one or two wrestling matches, not too good-natured--strange combats, in which two strong men pulled each other’s hair until the weaker fell. These were dogfights, and we were the bone of contention.

The situation tightened when Panio, Tahua’s strong-arm who had helped do away with Deck’s missioners, came aboard and proceeded to make himself obnoxious. Panio was unlike the other islanders. He dramatized himself as a murderer. With much diplomacy we had reached a point where we could keep the people out of our cabins for short intervals--but not Panio. In blustering ward-heeler style he would walk in, throw out his chest and take possession. He was angry with Buia for getting more than his share of good things; also he had a social bee in his bonnet; his daughter wasn’t being recognized by the local _haut monde_.

Yes, it was getting ticklish. Like all bullies, Panio was putting up a dangerous front because, probably, his gang was behind him. For all I knew we were a dozen against fifteen hundred. All the rights were on their side; we had come unasked, and they had entertained us with the best they had; on the _France_ they were merely returning our visit, and it was impossible for them to understand why we shouldn’t give them the run of the ship and whatever they fancied in the way of food. When we asked for privacy they no doubt thought of us as stingy, grasping strangers. Remember, these people were all born communists.

Our nerves were wearing thin. Something must be done about Panio. One night when we cleared the cabin he refused to budge. This time I made my voice firmer than Rennell diplomacy required; he stood his ground, looking not at all pretty. I told Hamlin and White what I was going to do, and when they nodded I used my clearest pidgin on Panio. Would he get out or be thrown out? Rather a ridiculous question, for he was years younger than I, immensely powerful and in the pink. Facing him, I thought, “I’m in for it now. I’ll _have_ to put him out....”

* * * * *

(Here I paused to drip cold coffee into my cup. Templeton Crocker asked, “And did you?”)

* * * * *

What happened next (I said) was a sort of psychic curiosity. Panio stood firm and looked for a long time straight through my glasses into my furious eyes. My glance didn’t swerve. Suddenly his nerve seemed to ooze away. He dropped his eyes, shuffled, turned and marched out of the cabin and up the stairs. When I got on deck he was gone.

I don’t mind confessing that after the thing was over I had the “wind up,” as the British say; so much so that I went to my grip and found my pistol. Next morning the relations between us and our guests seemed a bit strained, and I was dreading the consequences--when back came Panio, carrying a broad grin and a tribute of baked _panas_ for me. To this day I don’t know how I subdued him, with only a look. Possibly he was afraid that my glasses would slay him with the spell of the evil eye. Possibly I had quelled him the way, I am told, you can quell wild beasts, by a fixed and powerful stare.... I should hate to try it on a Bengal tiger.

* * * * *

The native name for Rennell Island is Mungava (Big Rennell) and for Bellona Island it is Mungiki (Little Rennell). The _France_ hadn’t visited Bellona on its other trip; very few Europeans had ever dared to go ashore there. After Buia told us that one of the kings of Bellona was his cousin and might make things easy for us, Hamlin was

## particularly anxious to touch there. Then all the population of Rennell

Island clamored to be taken along. Mua, son of Taupangi, was the most clamorous of all. I promised to take these two young men, provided and agreed that they would smooth the way for me to get plenty of hookworm specimens. If we hadn’t taken Mua, his father would have been furious because his son had been left behind and Tahua’s representative had gone with us.

After talking things over with their two Big Masters, Buia and Mua made a quaint suggestion. The people of Bellona might be “cross too much.” As we were approaching the shore Mua and Buia had decided that it would be a good idea to dress up in European clothes, put shotguns over their shoulders and look like hunting naturalists. This disguise would impress the natives, for some undisclosed reason, and after that everything would be smooth going.

We reached the little bay in the little island, which was a stone-walled Rennell in miniature--about four miles long and three wide. It had much more soil on it and looked much more fertile. When we found anchorage we shouted and fired guns to attract attention, but nothing stirred. Jagged masses of coral endangered our anchorage; on a windy day we would have been beaten to pieces. As it was, our keel got a terrific bump on a hidden snag, the anchor chain parted and we were set adrift. The four-mile engine got us around at last; we worked all night and finally dropped an improvised anchor. Our survival was a compliment to the stout teakwood hull of the _France_.

In the early morning canoes appeared, coming out to us. Buia and Mua hastily arrayed themselves in white men’s raincoats and hats, and when the natives drew alongside our amateur detectives began shouting at them in the vilest and most profane pidgin English--evidently their conception of trading skippers approaching an island. Buia and Mua looked their parts so little that you wouldn’t have thought they could fool a baby. But the Bellona folk stared anxiously up at them, and when our impersonators began to address them in their native language the listeners were bewildered. Who were these foreigners who spoke so fluently in the speech of Bellona?

Suddenly Buia and Mua threw off their disguise. A sigh of wonder went over the reception committee, then a shout of welcome swelled to an ovation. It was a breath-taking occasion: native boys had actually come as guides to a European vessel! The people of Mungiki, very like their relatives of Mungava, swarmed aboard and rubbed noses with their heroes. Every visitor bristled with bows and arrows, spears and clubs; they looked fiercer and wilder than the Rennell folk. Surrounding us, more curious than hostile, their every gesture seemed a threat. The few who could speak pidgin went anxiously among us, asking, “Captain, Captain?” They wanted to know which of our party was top dog.

Finally Buia led us ashore, and we were surprised at the neat little houses among the heavy palms. Everything we saw was clean and well kept, including the villagers. For some lost reason they seemed to have learned the art of taking care of themselves. When we returned to the boat Buia’s cousin, one of the three kings, sent word that he was ready to receive us. We returned the compliment by asking him aboard, only to be told that it was tabu for a king to come on a stranger’s ship. There had been war between the three kings; and how in the world there was room for three wars between three kings is another South Sea mystery.

As the soil looked richer, so the people looked healthier than those of Rennell, where epidemics had killed many elderly folk. On Bellona there were many of the old and wizened. They were fine-looking, very light in color, their features well cut. When I sent again to the three kings, telling Buia to say that they wouldn’t get an ax or an adze or any other dainty unless they came, their Triple Majesties showed up. They were polite enough, and after I bribed them with an ax apiece I told Buia to tell them the object of my visit: hookworms. Whereupon they informed me that they did not want doctors, they did not want missions, they did not want government, and they would give me no census. Quite courteously, they preferred our room to our company.

Even an overnight inspection showed the good results of quarantine against foreign-borne disease and custom. Although pathologically I was unable to look into the case, they seemed to have nothing to fear, except petty wars. Their teeth were poor in comparison to the handsome mouths of the Rennellese. This was due, perhaps, to a different method of betel-nut chewing.

Then we sailed back to the White Sands, where by the demonstration they made we might have been to Peru and back. Big Master Taupangi grabbed my shoulders and tenderly rubbed noses with me. Marking my surprise, he shook with laughter and extended me an invitation to attach myself to his court and stay there the rest of my life. For one with God in his head, he was feeling very jovial and stood back to back with me to prove that he was an inch taller. When I went over his chest, thighs and belly with a tape-line he was proud as a peacock to know that he was larger all around than the largest European on the vessel. Each day before we left he came back, as God’s vicar in Tenggano, and presented me with a basket of yams and a basket of _pana_ in trade for a tin of bully beef, a tin of salmon and a few ship’s biscuits. This human reservoir of divinity was extremely fond of tinned fish. So were they all. Every few minutes a Rennellese brave would show up and say, “Master, belly belonga me he hongry too much.” Our Solomon Island crew looked down on these people. Once Hamlin said to me, “Doctor, these Rennellese live almost like dogs.” Whereupon little Ga’a chipped in, “Master, dis fellow he no dog. Dog he know somet’ing.”

Our departure was the end of a field day. Tahua, always a businessman, had been selling us the finer mats and baskets which the Lake people had made. Mats were coming in faster than we could handle them, but we still gave in exchange the best we had to these kindly, likable islanders. Everybody wanted a lock-box, because I had promised one to Buia. I had only one left, and that I gave to Tahua, out of respect for his superior station. Tekita and Mua were clamoring for ones just like it. Then down came my old college chum, Taupangi. If Tahua had a lock-box, where was his? Imagine my embarrassment. Finally I found an old wooden box in the engineroom, got Bella to hinge a cover on it and to nail on the brass locks of my own tucker-box. The Lake people cheered _en masse_ at the presentation, but Buia and Tahua looked very glum. The small pressed-paper boxes I had given them were nothing compared to the grand prize which the Lord of the Lake carried away.

The people saw that we were actually going, and the prices of mats and baskets fell to almost nothing. Rennell’s little stock exchange was having a slump. Before we started for Tulagi I doled out fishhooks to the two rival kings. I served out the hooks with Spartan justice, first two to Tahua, then two to Taupangi. I started in with a box of large-sized ones, and when that was finished Tahua hastily picked up the box of smaller ones and thrust it in my hand. He was afraid I might forget about it, or change my mind. Appreciative laughter from the crowd, who probably realized that Tahua was a chronic go-getter.

Lock-boxes, however, were the treasures of treasures. It wasn’t until we were out at sea that I realized why. To them these things, with lids that you could fasten with your own key, represented privacy. Here was something where you could store away small objects that were your very own. From birth to death in Rennell’s primitive society there was no such thing as a door to close or a curtain to draw when you wished to be alone and mind your own business. Instinctively the untaught savage longed for a sanctuary, away from prying eyes. I had to have lived on communistic Rennell Island to understand and value civilization’s greatest boon--privacy.

When we got back to the comparative civilization of Tulagi we found that Resident Commissioner Ashley had worried because we were overdue and had started out on an expedition to find us. He had taken thirty armed policemen aboard the _Renadi_, for the luck of former visitors to Rennell Island had given the place such an evil reputation that the Protectorate had ordered that nobody should approach it without an armed guard. Captain Ashley had put a machine gun on the _Renadi_, and Dr. Steenson had gone along with a hospital unit.

I wish Ashley had seen me rubbing noses with the chiefs when we bade farewell to Rennell....

* * * * *

(Templeton Crocker looked around the porch and said, “Good heavens, it’s daylight!” Sure enough, it was. “I’d better be getting back to the _Zaca_,” he said. “We sail at noon. But tell me one thing, Doctor. Will these queer Rennellese go on, pretty healthy and contented, just as they’ve always been? Or what?”)

* * * * *

“Something will have to be done about them,” I said, “and the thing to do is to let them alone. What worried me most was the business enterprise that the Lord of the White Sands was showing. Anything for iron. Trade the women’s services for a knife or a busted chisel. Rennell is leaping from the Shell Age into the Iron Age. They’ve never touched the Stone Age, because they hardly know what stone is. Before somebody brought in the white man’s ax they did surprisingly well with a clamshell on the end of a stick. They don’t seem to like missionaries, but they’re mad to learn European ways because that knowledge will bring more trade. Their ‘virtue’ as we call it? Well, virtue is about the same the world over. In some countries women are tabu. They don’t happen to be in Rennell, where the women are the only thing that appeals to the white man as trade. From a doctor’s angle, virtue’s great virtue is this: It’s prophylactic.

“Imported disease; that’s what threatens Rennell, sure as God made little apples. Now they’re healthier than the average in San Francisco, say. From what I could find out, their only ills have come from the few visits white men or Japanese have made there--except hookworm. I wish I knew more about that parasite on Rennell.

“They’re so susceptible to imported germs that I’ll tell you what happened. Before the _France_ came to the White Sands, remember, I examined everybody on board for the slightest trace of anything ‘catching.’ Except for the sore-eyed cook, whom we tried to keep out of the way, we were all apparently clean as a whistle. Yet we hadn’t been on the island ten days before an epidemic of head colds swept the people. They didn’t know what was the matter with them; they didn’t even know how to blow their noses.”

“Where did they pick up those colds?” Crocker asked.

“They caught them from us. Our noses and throats were full of latent germs to which we had an immunity, whereas the Rennellese had none. They wore few clothes, they slept out in the rain, they were exposed to winds and drafts, yet the common cold was an absolute stranger to them. They had had an influenza epidemic, once; the white man brought it. They had had gonorrhea, once; the white man brought that too. Once they caught dysentery, from a ship that was supposedly clean of it. Bring in more ships and Rennell will go down and out, as so many other islands have. And I don’t want Rennell to go down and out.”

“Because they’re a unique people?” Crocker asked.

“Because they’re the only living relic, that I know, of a prehistoric race, changed so little that they will make an invaluable study for scientific research. But not for casual sailors and traders. There’s nothing on Rennell Island worth trading for.... What I should like to see done is this: Have the Government put ‘NO ADMITTANCE’ on both Rennell and Bellona--except for an honest scientific expedition, coming there for no other reason than legitimate research. For those islands are nothing more or less than studies in the history of mankind.”

So Templeton Crocker went back to his ship.

* * * * *

And all this led up to my brandy-and-eggs conversation with Raymond Fosdick. In fact, it also led up to one of my most interesting adventures.

For when morning broke, after my Arabian night with Crocker, Eloisa reminded me again that he was in need of fresh eggs and that we had plenty in the hen-house. “I’ve gathered three dozen,” she said, “and you might put them on the _Zaca_ when you go down to the office.”

I took the eggs over to the _Zaca_, which was busily preening herself for a long haul. I left them with my compliments and best wishes. The _Zaca_ sailed at noon.

A few days later a messenger came over from the Fiji Club with something wrapped in the _Times and Herald_. Unwrapping, I found four bottles of 1835 brandy. There was no address on the package, and I thought there was some mistake. I asked Amos, secretary of the Club, and he said: “Well, if you don’t want the stuff, I do. But Mr. Crocker seemed to say that it was for you.”

I wrote my thanks to Templeton Crocker, and this opened up a lively correspondence. He was about the way I had been when I first heard about Rennell Island. He couldn’t drop the subject, and as months went by his keenness seemed to grow. Early in 1933, he wrote that he had made some changes in the _Zaca_ so that it would be more handy for collecting scientific specimens. He finished by asking me to go along and show him the strange country I had told him about. Of course I wanted to see Rennell Island again, but I secured an invitation from the High Commission first, then wrote Mr. Crocker, “I’ll go willingly, if you’ll spot me around where I can inspect our work in the Solomons and make a tuberculin survey.” I also suggested that he bring an anthropologist along. He found the man and added a plant collector and an entomologist to the _Zaca_ party.

* * * * *

That was the way Eloisa’s eggs came to roost, if I may scramble a metaphor. In a roundabout way they gave me a chance to revisit a spot which interested me more, perhaps, than anything I had seen in the Pacific.

## CHAPTER III

THROUGH THE SOLOMONS TO RENNELL

Let me begin with a scrap from my diary of May 4, 1933. We had been on the water three days, moving toward Vanikoro.

... We are a little crowded, but not too much. _Zaca_ is beautiful; 118 feet long, 23 feet beam, 125 tons, 22 tons lead on keel, draws just under 15 feet of water. I have had my share of fortune in vessels on survey trips and plenty of hard times ... now I blink, looking around me, and wonder if I’m awake. I should like to keep the daily menus, they are so varied and excellent. First night we had grilled steak, perfect; next night Long Island duckling, and I gorged--Christmas dinner every night. Always fresh vegetables, just like home (U. S., not Fiji). All Frosted Foods....

Roomy cabin, electric fan over bunk, reading light over bed. Two bunks, one of which I use for scientific gear, a chiffonier and two drawers, under the bunk, which Malakai and I share, as well as a roomy clothes closet with hangers etc. I share Mr. Crocker’s elaborate bathroom with Maury. We eat on deck at two bridge tables under an awning, as the mainsail is not raised.

... Was somewhat worried, coming on this trip, for fear we might have to conform to millionaire standards of dress. This would have been cruelty to me and would have hindered, as it always does, the success of the work. On some small boats I have been on trips with Resident Commissioners who felt that they must uphold good old British prestige by putting on black coats and choker collars every night; I remember one who ran out of boiled shirts and had to eat in his stateroom to conceal his shame. But Crocker out-Herods Herod. _Lavalavas_ are the order of the day, and in the evening a singlet if it is too cool. Day and evening, Crocker wears a _lavalava_ or a very short pair of shorts--nothing else but a bandanna handkerchief around his neck....

We did not lack scientific equipment or scientific brains. Mr. Crocker and his secretary Maurice (Maury) Willowes collected specimens of anthropological and marine-life interest. Norton Stuart was a botanist, and Toschio Aseida a Japanese photographer of submarine and surface phenomena. Gordon Macgregor was an anthropologist from the Bishop Museum, and our ship’s surgeon, Dr. John B. Hynes, did blood groupings on the various islands we visited. This may sound like a hero list out of the “Iliad,” and I may add Homerically, “with me always were Gordon White and my long-tried henchman, Malakai Veisamasama.” Malakai found the stateroom so comfortable that it rather surprised him. Between island visits he sprawled on his bunk, always reading. It was usually _The Martyrdom of Man_, which I gave him once for a birthday present. He carried it with him as you’d carry a Bible.

The _Zaca’s_ white crew had been mostly enlisted in California. The stewards were soft-footed and dextrous. When we sat under the awning of long, starlit evenings I had the impression of being on a crack ocean liner. We had everything but an orchestra, but there was a phonograph wired throughout the _Zaca_, and a very powerful Morse station of R.C.A.... No, this wasn’t real. I wasn’t the Lambert who had slapped mosquitoes in a Papuan whaleboat and been stranded on a New Hebrides island, waiting for anything with steam-power or gas-power or paddle-power to take him off.

* * * * *

I wanted to see the Solomon Islands again, for my inspection in 1921 had been a hurry-up affair, at the whim of Lever Brothers’ busy island inspector. My visit to Tulagi in 1930 had been mostly directed toward Rennell Island. In 1921 ill luck had kept me from seeing Malaita, the most savage spot in the savage Solomons. On the Crocker trip Gordon White and I were equipped to make tuberculin tests, for little was known of its prevalence in the group. Above all things, I was anxious to compare my new notes with my old ones. What had happened to the health of the islands I had seen twelve years ago? And what had happened to Rennell Island in three years?

In the _Zaca’s_ comfortable lounge my only worry was that I might get too fat to waddle ashore, what with Mexican beer and a snack at 11 A.M., cocktails and a snack before dinner, highballs and a snack in the evening. Being by nature a sensualist, I had to pray to my Puritan forefathers to save me from myself until our ship touched the White Sands.

Visiting Tucopia, a dot on the southeast tip of the Solomons, I met a problem almost unique in the Pacific--overpopulation. This island, too small to warrant a stop-over, was another Rennell in miniature, with the same lake in the center. And the people who came paddling out in canoes were strikingly like Rennellese, perhaps more like the tribes of Bellona--more Melanesian than either. They had the same style of tapa breechclout, the same palm-fan sticking in the back, the same way of knotting their hair. The Fijians have another island, Thikombia (Tucopia in Fijian), which lies just north of Vanua Levu. It is undoubtedly one of the old steppingstones to this second Tucopia and Rennell. The Tucopians whom we found here spoke a language with so much Fijian in it that Malakai could speak a few words with them; he said that they looked like the light-skinned tribe on Thikombia, who were supposed to have come from Futuna.

A native missionary informed us that “people were growing like weeds.” District Officer Garvey had been there shortly before and wondered what to do with a race that was increasing faster than their food grew. For this fertility the missions were responsible, indirectly; when they came they said that every man should have a wife. Formerly only one son in the family was allowed to marry, the restriction being aimed at keeping the population within the bounds of subsistence. After their Christian teachers changed the rules Tukopia’s birth crop became embarrassing.... Well, that was something I couldn’t settle for them, except to suggest more recruiting for work on faraway plantations. That wouldn’t have been so practical, either, for the Tucopian had the same savage home-love as his Rennellese cousin. I went away chuckling. Here was a native race whom missionizing had increased. The men who came to our ship had a well-fed look. They seemed to be on the upgrade, though overcrowding might endanger their future.

* * * * *

We sailed toward Vanikoro, and saw Tinakula flaming across the sea, a volcano that seemed to be in constant eruption. Black smoke obscured it, then winds would clear it so that we could look to its sharp summit; at night it was a pillar of fire. Vanikoro, which lay beyond, had a total population of ninety-five. It was a noteworthy illustration of the decay of native races. When the early voyager La Pérouse was wrecked there, the island teemed with people.

We saw the Duffs, where the dark people looked Melanesian and spoke Polynesian; Macgregor told me that they chewed their words so that he couldn’t understand them. They scorned our tobacco because it was a grade too good; it seemed that the Burns-Phillip store had sold Crocker some of the better sort of rope-tobacco made by East Indians in Fiji. The minute the natives smelled it they turned in disgust. They wanted the rank trade tobacco made in America, and you couldn’t fool them with a substitute. A disappointment to our anthropologists, when they tried to collect museum specimens on the Duffs, and got nothing....

* * * * *

We swung around to the little land I learned to love on my visit there twelve years before. Sikiana with its three charming atolls, three links in a chain. I remembered its unspoiled, laughing Polynesians, its modest, pretty girls who had draped us with wreaths of flowers. I remembered its jolly, handsome men, who had been inoffensively drunk with toddy the day we got there. I remembered the bearded patriarch we had called Old Number One; I had thought of him as one who ruled only by example in a pagan democracy which had no laws, no worries, no debts, no crimes, no serious diseases. I was full of forebodings as our ship neared a palm-fringed lagoon. What had happened to little Sikiana since last I saw it?

Two canoes came out across the reef, and I recognized an old friend, Lautaua, who had done me many favors on my last visit. We were glad to see each other, and his pidgin was garrulous, describing his trips over many waters during that dozen years. Most of the Sikiana men who had been our sailors on the Lever Brothers’ cruise had died or strayed away.

And did I know what had happened? Well, the Melanesian Mission had come to their little Polynesia. Over the ten miles of soft lagoon Lautaua told the story. How they had sent in preachers and teachers to improve them. As Missioner-in-Chief a very black boy had come from Guadalcanar. His name was Daniel Sande. At first the people would not join the Church, and many were still holding out; but the Polynesian will yield to persuasion, if only for a show of politeness. Lautaua had offended Black Daniel by moving to another island; then he got so homesick that he came back, a shorn lamb, and found four black Melanesian teachers ruling the roost for Lautaua’s proud, light-skinned neighbors and relatives. I asked Lautaua his confidential view on the new religion. He bowed his handsome head. “Master, some fellow he talk man die he come back; me tink man he die he go along ground finish. He no come back. Me no go along school [catechism]. Me no go along water behind [baptism]. Me tink Story [Birth of Christ and miracles] he altogether gammon. Mission he spoil him altogether people.”

Sikiana, where once they had danced by the light of the moon, had a look of dull propriety. Good heavens, there was a church! A conch shell sounded--and the Sikiana girls were filing in, dressed in white pinafores. Beside them marched sad-looking Sikiana men. It was edifying, it was shocking. Salvation had entered Paradise. Government had entered, too, for here was the official shack where we were to bunk and try to eat the awful messes a native cook had thrown together. Malakai took one sniff at the mound of indigestibles, then he did what Malakai would. He shouldered out the cook and took over the saucepans. For the rest of our stay there we ate wholesomely and well.

There was an undercurrent of discontent in Sikiana because a hurried Government Secretary had swooped down on them when Old Number One died and had asked in haste, “Who’s chief now?” An enterprising impostor named Tuana had presented himself and made a glib selling talk which got him appointed in twenty minutes, more or less. The Honorable Secretary went back to his boat, too full of business to wait and find out that he had broken Sikiana’s traditional line of chiefly succession. Such a miscarriage of justice is not characteristically British; but there are always puffy officials, meaning well and doing badly.

I learned about Black Daniel, who seemed to be a hard-bitten slaver in the name of the Lord. This was his day’s routine: Sound the conch at 6 A.M. for church; sound it a little later for the children’s school; sound it again at ten for the bigger boys and girls; school for grown-ups at 4 P.M., where the study was catechism; church again at 6 P.M., with much singing and a long, strong sermon. This was the week-day program. Sunday, of course, furnished a constant grist for the mill that never ceased turning. When religious duties didn’t interfere the inhabitants could work; but they weren’t working very hard. Sikiana was getting lazy.

When I had audience with Black Daniel I found him a big, smiling fellow with a boil on his nose. Several Sikiana girls were fanning away the flies; these light-skinned damsels had the look of trained nurses who didn’t much care for their assignment. Daniel had something of a Father Divine technique, a way of bursting into ecstatic patter, then coming down to practical affairs. Quite an able man, I thought. He had a record of births and deaths by age and sex, which he had kept since he came there three years ago. Also he had kept a census, very useful to me when I started to work.

Arcady had vanished under the heel of religio-totalitarianism. I wondered if the dark-browed missioners were “taking advantage” of the pretty girls around them. But I found that this was not so. The girls were looking out for that. They were too Polynesian not to shrink in disdain from black-skinned lovers. Not that their hearts were as pure as the Bishop of Melanesia might have wished. They cast yearning eyes toward our good-looking sailors; those were white men, and quite a different matter. I heard one sailor speak softly to a pretty girl named Ana, who looked nervously toward the mission. “Master,” she said, “me fright too much come along you. Big Master Stop along Top he look along night too.”

Our sailor learned, however, that these affairs could be arranged through special dispensation from Black Daniel. If he liked you, and the girl was a heathen, the church would bless the temporary mating. Daniel liked the sailor, so that was a granted privilege. However, the romance fell unripened. When the couple decided that their love was sanctified they were discouraged by a crowd which followed them constantly. It was all very funny, and tragic. I wondered how long these people would remain purely Polynesian. Their Melanesian teachers had the Supernatural on their side, and the time would come, I thought, when the breed would become very mixed.

Poor Old Number One, how his bearded ghost must have worried! A year before our visit a fanatical trader named Buchanan had run amuck and burned down all the heathen temples. Not only that, but a crew of Japanese pearl fishers had insisted on coming ashore. When the people told them that they were not welcome, they turned a machine gun on a village and forced a landing. Machine-gunning islands seemed to be a Japanese habit. They stayed long enough to fish all the shell out of the lagoon and quartered themselves in Lautaua’s house. When they left they became generous, gave Lautaua 1,500 cigarettes, a toothbrush and an old pair of swimming goggles. He was clever enough to imitate the glasses with wood and scraps of windowpanes.

Pukena, the cook whom Malakai had discharged forthwith, but who remained as humble helper, told about Tuana, the misappointed chief. Tuana was a grafter, and like many grafters, lazy. The Administration had entrusted him with medicine for the people. When the sick applied for help, Tuana would reply that his stock had all run out. In short, he was keeping the good stuff for himself and his henchmen. Lautaua, being obviously the superior man on Sikiana, should have been entrusted with these things.

We were there four days, all of us very busy except Crocker, who had a badly infected foot.

I had been carrying on wholesale injections of tuberculin, and had found that the prevalence of tuberculosis was alarmingly high. On my first visit I had had only time to make sketchy tests, but certainly the disease had gained great headway. Gordon White and I went over the whole population. Lautaua, the religious rebel, blamed the missionaries for the disease. Yet the population had made a satisfactory increase in the past twenty years; and that was hard to understand. There was plenty of malaria, and we were finding acute, unguarded pulmonary tuberculosis. Possibly the change in custom, brought in by the missions, possibly added infections which may have resulted from contact with them, or with the Japanese, might have resulted in the many acute chests we saw. Or possibly it was due to the small amount of additional clothing which had come in with the new way of living.

There had been almost no traders, and few foreign vessels came that way. But the very isolation of these atolls, plus Black Daniel’s scientific inadequacy, added to the weight of native ills. Among the plentiful mosquitoes we found the malaria carriers. One afternoon Malakai held out his bare arm and showed me a probing little insect. “She stands on her head when she feeds,” he said, “and she has spotted wings.” _Anopheles punctulatus_, sure little poisoner, conveying disease from the sick to the well. It was impossible to get anything like an adequate supply of quinine from Tulagi.

Lautaua in his own way described the symptoms and testified that malaria was an old inhabitant. Did the sickness begin with a chill? “Oh, master, plenty too much.” Realistically he acted out a malaria chill. Had it been here long? “Yes, master, fader belong me, fader belong him, all same.” Did the children have it too? “Small fellow, my wort! Him shake too much all same dis.” More synthetic chills. “Behind (after) him he hot too much; now water he come out all same rain.”

Their light contact with trading ships and their habit of using the tidewater for toilet purposes had saved them from hookworm. There were only two cases of yaws, secondary and in children. The people called it _matona_ instead of _tona_, the usual Polynesian name. They said that _tona_ was an old-timer, but had died down. I saw no evidences of it among the adults.

In lighter vein let me tell you about Black Daniel’s other boil, for he had developed a lusty carbuncle on his hip. I opened it with the cleverest instrument at hand, a razor blade; and with no anesthetic, of course. Daniel had no ambition to be a Christian martyr. It took four of his disciples to hold him down while I drained out the pus, and he called on his Saviour in the voice of a wounded lion.

His Sikiana flock was a contrast in stoicism. Their beautiful teeth were going--ill-balanced diet, probably--and in one afternoon Malakai and I extracted thirty teeth. We had only straight forceps, and it was a pretty mangling job; but we didn’t hear a moan during the whole ordeal.

Like all primitives, the people of Sikiana confused the diagnosis with the cure; remember how the Cook Islanders had thought I could make them well by putting a stethoscope on their chests? Tuberculin injections are merely given for negative or positive reactions. But to them the needle was a sovereign remedy, and they always went away smiling. Only the very young children objected when the point was jabbed under their skin. As to the others their faith was rather heartrending. It was the same all over the Solomons.

After the boil operation Black Daniel so far relented as to let his congregation dance for us, with the beautiful old-fashioned abandon--but with plenty of clothes on. It was the first time in three years that they had been allowed to revert to this pretty, jolly paganism. Before our otter boat pulled us back to the _Zaca_, Daniel and his three dusky assistants occupied four chairs and consented to be photographed. Gathered around them a group of Sikiana girls in white pinafores and white capes looked for all the world like tropical Girl Scouts. Templeton Crocker, suffering from a lame foot and feeling satirical, watched the photographic group, a drift of snow with a bucket of coal in the middle. “The Four Black Crows,” he said, thinking of a popular vaudeville team. But the holy dictator and his followers were speeding us on our way with “God be with you till we meet again.”

God be with Sikiana, I thought glumly. For twelve years that little place had been one of the pets of my memory. I decided that it would need a hustling Native Medical Practitioner, if anything was to be accomplished.

* * * * *

We interrupted our work and turned back to Tulagi. Dr. Hynes had reported that Toschio, our Japanese photographer, was so ill that he needed hospital attention. Crocker’s sore foot had caused a friendly disagreement between Hynes and me. Before he reached Suva, the _Zaca’s_ owner had scratched his foot on some submerged coral. He had pluckily said nothing about it until the infection had begun heating up. As a young graduate of New York’s Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Hynes might have been a bit more interested in major operations than in minor bruises. But I had seen many coral scratches and knew that they could, if neglected, prove as stubbornly hard to cure as a gastric ulcer.

At Tulagi--in the humble little capital, very neat and British--we ran into a mess of colonial politics. My very good friend J. C. Barley, who had won the general approval of the High Commission and had aided the natives in so many kindly ways that they thought of him as “Government,” had been sidetracked again. Captain Ashley had come back as Resident Commissioner, and that had left Barley, the obvious choice, out in his small post on Auki; Barley, who knew more about the customs, language and social traditions of the people than any white man who had ever lived on the Solomons; Barley, whose affection for the natives was fatherly, and who had devoted his splendid life to them.

At last I got around to see Captain Ashley, who had been so kind about helping me on my first Rennell trip and had sent out a relief boat to find me. What I wanted to talk about more than anything else was Solomon Island candidates for our Central Medical School. We had two native practitioners working on the group. Dr. Hetherington, the C.M.O., had only one white physician whom he could put in the field. There were a few medical missionaries, some of them very good--especially those of the Melanesian Mission, which had a leper asylum of sorts on Malaita.

How about getting some more Solomon Island students into our school at Suva? Well, the Protectorate was about broke--stony truth--and even our small tuition would be burdensome. Norman Wheatley of New Georgia had sent his two sons, Trader Kuper of Santa Ana was educating his older boy, Geoffrey, in a New Zealand school. Geoffrey seemed especially bright, and ought to make a fine N.M.P.

I reminded Captain Ashley of how I had first looked those boys over, back in 1921. Norman Wheatley, retired blackbirder, had settled sedately on Roviana Lagoon, where he had married a native woman. His early adventures should have made him rich, but a ruling vice had reduced his surplus to near the vanishing point. His vice was collecting prize-winning small craft in Sydney. All around the lagoon were his ancient yachts, racing schooners and launches, rotting away for lack of use and attention. Wheatley’s sons were pretty small then, but he had listened to me when I said that he ought to make doctors out of them.

Trader Kuper was then living on Santa Ana with his native wife, a fine woman who had posed for my camera in her tribal costume. Her two boys, the older not more than four, were running wild on the beach, absolutely naked. The mother was bare from the top of her head to the waistband of her _lavalava_; around her neck were shark’s teeth, and a long pencil of polished shell ran through the septum of her nose. Tenderly she picked the children up and told me that they were nice boys, but not strong. I had found that they had hookworm, and I delayed my departure to dose them with chenopodium. When I left I had given Mrs. Kuper instructions as to further treatment. I saw Mr. Kuper a few years later and he told me that they had grown to be fine husky kids, and he was grateful because we had saved their lives. I had reminded him, as I had Norman Wheatley, that his sons ought to go to Suva and study medicine.

Well, so young Geoffrey Kuper was studying in New Zealand. Certainly he would be an ideal candidate for the Medical School, Ashley said.

Again I heard the old story of benevolent Dr. Fox of the Melanesian Mission. Earnestly wishing to help the natives and to understand them, Fox specialized in ethnology. In order to put himself in closer touch with native family ways, he offered to change lives with Joni, one of his dark parishioners. Joni agreed to change his name to Dr. Fox; Dr. Fox to become Joni. The real Dr. Fox handed the real Joni his bankbook and so on, while the metamorphosed clergyman moved into the native house and took over all the family with all the duties, except the intimate matrimonial ones. He didn’t learn much, because the natives remained secretive. The French farce situation became intolerable when the simon-pure Fox discovered that his counterfeit had been strutting all over the island using Dr. Fox’s name and prestige so successfully that there were many newborn infants being called “Dr. Fox.” So _lavalava_ was immediately exchanged for clerical garb, and all bets were off. That was a classic yarn around Tulagi, but still good for a wicked smile.

* * * * *

We coasted down the shore of Malaita, a great hulk of mountainous woods 110 miles long, beautiful and forbidding. When I had covered the Solomons in 1921 a convenient hurricane had beaten us away from the shore. This island held a horrid fascination. Twelve years ago no white man had dared the interior jungles, and there was still little knowledge of its wild hill tribes. The splendid black Malaitamen were good workers, when you could get them. Recruiters, there to pick up field hands for the plantations, always worked in pairs; wise laws of the Protectorate compelled them to do so, for bloody experience had proved the necessity of armed caution.

The luxurious _Zaca_ skirted the savagery of Malaita, which the Spaniards called “Mala” for short; and it was “Bad” to them, as ghastly stories reveal. Over there lay Sinarango where Tax Collector Bell with Cadet Lilies and fourteen native police had been butchered in 1927. There were some missionaries, planters and traders scattered along the coastline. The spread of disease was diminishing the Malaitamen, and my object in visiting them would be to learn, if possible, the role played by tuberculosis. Also I was keen to look over the Melanesian Mission’s leper establishment, for I had been told that about one per cent of Malaita’s population was afflicted.

Around Malaita are many artificial islands, time-old and mysterious as the people who inhabit them. A long native canoe, with no outrigger, landed us on one of them, about three acres built of huge coral-chunks that had been planted on the reef and filled in with soil and rubble. Dr. Macgregor pointed out children with bright yellow hair; no, it hadn’t been sunburned to that color, or bleached with lime to destroy lice. This was natural hair. When we examined a grown girl’s hair down at the roots, where the sun could never reach it, the color was almost as yellow as straw. There were gray eyes, too, flashing out of dark brown faces. Gray eyes are often found among Polynesians who have had no intimate contact with Europeans. But these were no Polynesians. They were almost as dark as the other Solomon Islanders.

White and Malakai and I had all day ashore at Tai Harbor, lining up hundreds for tuberculin tests. I was aboard ship again when I learned that my much-admired friend J. C. Barley was at Tai on inspection. When I told Crocker about Barley my host suggested that I go ashore and ask him to dinner on the _Zaca_. That was a pleasant assignment, for I must have a talk with the man who knew his natives inside and out.

He came around the side of a leaf-house, cool, clean and physically fit. Shaking hands, I knew that he was glad to see me again, as I was to see him. Yes, the Solomons were in a bit of a jam and all that, he said, and a jolly good thing, Lambert, that you’re looking over our tuberculosis. He spoke with gratitude, as though I had been treating him personally. That was Barley all over, responsible for every man, woman and child under his care. He had been District Commissioner for Malaita--splendid job. There were over 50,000 natives on Malaita, and we must have treated nearly 40,000 of them for prevalent diseases. Not that they wouldn’t stand a lot more of it. Naturally those wild fellows up in the hills weren’t so tubercular as the coast dwellers, he said, but they’d bear looking over. The news had spread to them that the white doctors jabbed them with a needle. They were all crazy for the treatment.

Barley was going to be married; nice Australian girl--he hoped she wouldn’t be lonely out here. (As if anybody could be lonely with him.) He had just gotten back from Rennell Island, he said, and had brought Buia with him. Buia! Sure enough, there was Buia, somewhat disguised in a pair of shorts, but the same muscular hunky figure. We didn’t rub noses this time, but shook hands, European style. Buia was becoming a man of the world.

And how was Rennell? Well, said Barley, what had happened there might have sounded funny, only it was rather terrible. Too many visiting ships, of course, with Tahua’s charming girls to lure them into the White Sands. But there was something much worse. The Seventh Day Adventist outfit had gotten at them, rather. Pastor Borgas landed on the White Sands and informed the Big Masters that they had come to “teach” them. “You know,” said Barley, “how crazy the Rennellese are to learn English. They thought teaching meant just that. When the Adventists taught them to say ‘Me want skula’--meaning ‘We want a school’--they didn’t know that school was the Adventist word for batches of New Testament and vegetarian diet. Old Testament for a people living in an age that’s older than Isaac and Rebecca; vegetarian diet for a race that’s starving for meaty proteins! Well, before Mr. Borgas went home he gave strips of white cloth for Tahua and Taupangi to wear; white arm bands with ‘M.V.’ marked on them in big black letters.”

“What’s ‘M.V.’?” I asked.

“Mission Volunteer,” said Barley with a wry smile.

I let out a whoop. Imagine those archaic and bearded kings strutting around with Mission Volunteer on their arms!

But Barley couldn’t see the comic side. Neither could I after he told me the rest. “When Taupangi and Tahua found out what those cranks had been up to, they flew into a rage and vowed that no missionary should ever again come within bow-shot of their island. I say, this thing is breeding trouble. Next thing you know they’ll be killing off another parcel of Christian teachers. Then there’ll be hell to pay. I don’t want to see a punitive expedition go into Rennell Island and hang a lot of them.”

Barley seemed to be reading my thoughts when he said: “If I had my way I’d put a reliable N.M.P. or two on that island, with plenty of medicine. And I’d keep everybody else out, except scientists, maybe. You won’t find the people in as good condition as they were when you saw them last. Sea-changes are very sudden in the Pacific.”

So Barley went back with me to the _Zaca_. It was one of Crocker’s company dinners--grilled steak which had come frosted from Montana, and 1922 Perrier-Jouët. Barley was answering a shower of questions. The Malaita warriors, he said, were Proper Men, and took no nonsense from anybody. They didn’t know how to lie. When you asked them how many they had killed they either told you that it was none of your business, or candidly counted over the murders to their credit....

Under softly shaded table lamps our stewards were delicately pouring vintage wine. Right over there, blacker than the darkness, lay Malaita....

* * * * *

With Gordon White and Malakai I went to the leper colony at Quaibaita. I knew that leprosy, of comparatively recent importation, ran about one per cent on Malaita. Whenever colonists mentioned the Melanesian Mission doctors, they usually said, “Wonderful work!” I was not disappointed when I saw the mission colony, order in the midst of green chaos: a hospital and church built of concrete, and the leper institution set a little too near for safety. The Empire Leper Association subsidized them for drugs, the Protectorate furnished some medical supplies and a tiny dole for food. I was astonished at first when I found that two of their orderlies were arrested cases of leprosy; then I realized the stringent economy under which these devoted men and women must work in order to keep their mission enterprise on its feet. Educated and gently reared, they slaved out their lives in genuine Christian cheerfulness. Some of them, I fancied, had not had a square meal for years.

I had lunch with them. If they had been French priests they would have gathered a delicious meal somewhere out of the jungle, for that’s French genius. Here the missioners chatted gaily over the poor things that came on the table. I knew it was the very best they had, for we were their guests.

The doctors and the nursing sisters told me that it was hard to suit Malaitamen, when they got a notion in their heads--which was most of the time. The mission here was treating 73 lepers, but they had had as high as 147. Many of them were out-patients; that is to say they preferred to live in their own village, about a mile away. They dropped in for treatment about when they felt like it; or else just wandered away. The Melanesian Mission was trying to get a law passed that would compel lepers to stay put. Natives loved everything that was treated with the “needle,” but they couldn’t be cured with two or three injections, as they could for yaws. The leprosy treatment took a great deal of time, and after a couple of injections the Malaitaman would say to his brothers, “What the hell? This fellow’s magic isn’t working.”

All this was uphill for the brave medical missionaries. My only suggestion was that the leper establishment was too near the “clean” hospital, where they were treating a little of everything else. And it looked tricky to me, having a leper acting as head warder. The obvious thing to say was: Round them up and send them to Mokogai. But that would have been out of the question for a government whose finances were already strained. Without going into figures, it would have cost the Protectorate a large share of its revenue, if they had gone to the expense of shipping away an estimated 950 lepers. Add to that the physical impossibility of taking the sick away from regions so wild that the Government itself did not dare to penetrate; regions where fierce savages were warring, tribe against tribe, and the white man an hereditary enemy. It was just another tragedy of European rule over a native race.

Around the Quaibaita Mission Station I wish to put a bright red mark of approval. Striving against heavy odds, it has done the Lord’s work in a practical way, and every year it has shown improvement. Its workers, keeping body and soul together on forty pounds a year, reveal the missionary at his classic best: a civilizer, a healer and a defender of the helpless.

* * * * *

We had been injecting around Tai Harbor, and our technique was so popular that it drew wild men from the hills many miles away. Our needles wore out and our fingers grew stiff from puncturing the skin of hundreds who applied, clamoring for “neela” (needle). A tuberculin test, to prove anything, required two applications and two inspections, five days in all. The difficulty was to get the people back for the second injection and the last inspection, and I was fascinated by Gordon White’s orations in lively pidgin. “This big fellow doctor along Fiji, him he come dis time for giving nother kind neela. Now dis nother kind neela, him for stop dis sick along coughie where some fellow he spit blut....” And in the elaborate roundabouts he was telling them that they’d had their two injections, but must be back at the “house takis” (tax house) for the third inspection on Tuesday. The heavy rate of tuberculosis, shown in fierce reactions, made it quite obvious that Malaita needed a tuberculosis sanitarium. That, considering the Protectorate’s finances, would have been no more available than a general roundup of lepers.

Our investigations, I hope, threw some light on the prevalence of tuberculosis. Those we examined on Tai Lagoon ran over 77 per cent infection. Those we were able to get from the bush village showed 60 per cent. The very unpopular officials who had gone out to collect the head tax reported that taxpayers on Malaita had fallen from 14,000 to 10,000 in a decade. Since the Solomon Islands plantations relied on Malaita for nearly three quarters of their plantation labor, this falling off was disastrous. Run the gamut of diseases, from tuberculosis to ringworm, and you have the medical problem that faced the land-poor Protectorate. The only salvation--I must repeat myself--would be to send the largest possible number of native students to study medicine in Suva. That time was coming, I felt sure, for my School was beginning to draw a deep breath.

While we worked ashore Templeton Crocker remained a true sportsman, enjoying himself as best a temporary cripple could. For weeks he sat on deck, his sore foot propped up on a chair, and had the vicarious pleasure of hearing what the doctors and anthropologists and other -ologists had been doing on their expeditions. For an active and adventurous man it must have been torment. The foot was improving, very slowly as a neglected infection must in a damp, hot climate. Now and then, when British residents invited us for tea or cocktails, Crocker would get himself into the sedan chair Dr. Hetherington had given him, and be carried ashore. Sitting aloft with four black men lifting the poles, Crocker looked for all the world like a Roman proconsul on his way to a banquet or a temple, or wherever proconsuls went.

For hours he would sit on deck, listening to Buia’s descriptions of Rennell Island and his reasons for not liking Adventist missionaries. “Fish he tabu; meat he tabu; walk about he tabu; tobacco he tabu; altogether along dis fellow he tabu.” Crocker, a confirmed hater of tabus, was sympathetic, and liked to hear Buia declare that Mr. Borgas, who had tacked “M.V.” on the arms of Tahua and Taupangi, might have fooled those old men, but he hadn’t fooled Buia for a second. He well remembered what Mr. Hamlin and Dr. Lambert had said about them: “That mission he altogether no good along Mungava.”

* * * * *

Templeton Crocker had gone to the greatest pains and expense to organize this expedition. All along the way he had been annoyed by a quaint turn in customs regulations, which suddenly whimmed to charge duties on a little of everything. Never before had the _Zaca_ been bothered that way by a British Colony. We were out serving the High Commission by invitation and deserved the freedom of the port. However, you never can tell which way island politics are going to turn.

Those of us working ashore had our basket of troubles also, and trouble on Malaita means that you’d better run for your life.

As I have said, tuberculin tests take five days. We inject one day, then skip a day, and on the third inject the cases found negative with a stronger solution; then we skip another day and on the fifth get our final negative cases--those thought not to have an infection and never to have had one. A positive reaction, showing that a person has, or has had, tuberculosis, is revealed by a small and slightly raised pink circle around the site of injection. The confused natives thought that the pink circle was the desirable thing, and they would strut proudly away to show their friends. It was very difficult to make the final negatives understand that they had had the full works--for where was the pink spot they were after?

Well, we had been at it four days, and the course was almost over. Then who should show up but several native teachers with a note from the Seventh Day Adventist white missionary, asking us to inject his people. We knew that we wouldn’t have time to finish the five-day job, but a single injection to the new lot might prove something. Also one always wants to sustain a white man’s authority before the natives, and it wouldn’t do to refuse this request. Remember, the Malaitamen thought that our tests were a cure, for God knows what--tuberculosis or leprosy or yaws, it was all about the same, so long as they got the magic “neela.” No, one jab wouldn’t do them any harm; it might buck them up spiritually. So on that sophistry, we decided to inject the Adventist’s choice.

To complicate matters, we had been obliged to refuse injections to the multitude of natives who had come after the first day, and they were pretty sullen about it. Who could blame them, considering their long trudge over mountaintops, probably without food? They gathered around us with black scowls, inwardly wondering why if five days did a lot of good, four or three wouldn’t do _some_ good, anyhow. Then the word got around that we were making an exception in favor of the Adventist crowd--and things started to boil.

Newcomers had been flocking in daily, and in front of our “house takis” there was a jam almost as far as one could see: black, ugly faces, determined to have their share of injections, if we started another lot. We had already tested about 1,500, and eight native policemen had guarded us every minute of the time. They changed guard every hour, with impressive swinging of rifles, always with fixed bayonets. I was soon to realize good old Barley’s common sense in sending them along under John White’s direction, for John knew his job.

But here we were on a tough spot. I had promised to inject the Adventist’s natives. Looking around at the angry black men, crowding in on us, I changed my mind. Not only did we have to save our own skins, but if the mob set on us the Adventist converts would be the first to go. I had thought that the native police were a joke, until I saw them spring into line. I yelled to an interpreter, “Tell the Adventists that we haven’t got time!”

He told them. Arms flourished and waved and there was a deafening racket from a thousand husky throats. “Neela! Neela! Me want im neela!” The noise was so great that John White had to shout in my ear, “Better give it to them. Just jab them any way, never mind if it doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t treat them all, and the mission natives especially, they’ll certainly kill the lot of us.” I stood my ground with nothing more defensive than a hypodermic syringe. Maybe it was long medical discipline that made me shake my head; I wasn’t going to waste a batch of expensive tuberculin on any wholesale fake. “What have we got an armed guard for?” I asked.

Much to my surprise the native police began doing their duty. With bayonets leveled they formed a rough cordon between us and the mass of howling hill-fellows. Then we stood not upon the manner of our beating, but beat it at once, an undignified scramble into the otter boat and a frantic paddling back to the ship. A bedlam of threatening yells followed us out to sea.

When I found Crocker resting his foot on deck he asked me what sort of mob scene we had been pulling over there. I told him that it was the kind of melodrama most explorers were looking for, but I didn’t care for it. I was sweating freely, very cold sweat for so warm a day. It reminded me, I said, of what Winston Churchill once told a certain Commissioner from a certain Pacific island group, who came back to London to explain a lot of things. Churchill was Colonial Secretary then and the Commissioner was an old friend. “Winston,” said the Commissioner, “they accuse me of keeping women.” “But Charles, my dear boy,” said Winston, “why shouldn’t you?”

I was in trouble with Malaita, but why I shouldn’t be was an open question.

* * * * *

Too often on that voyage I was forced to say “I told you so,” comparing what I saw with what I had seen twelve years before. Stevenson’s “Drink and the devil had done for the rest” might have been transposed into “Disease and the traders.” Casual islands, where casual ships dropped in and the people had no moral barriers against strangers, were obviously on the downgrade. In 1921, when we had made an overnight survey around Star Harbour, my medical mind had worried over the carefree sex-generosity of the women there. It was none of my business that, according to native custom, young men hired their fiancées out long enough to earn a marriage dowry. That was the fashion, and there seemed to be no ill results--so long as they confined their promiscuity to their own tribesmen. Their freedom with visiting sailors, black, white or yellow, caused me to foresee what I found there in 1933. That horrid visitor, venereal granuloma, had come to play and stayed to kill. A Chinaman, they said, had brought it there. Life was shortening, the birth rate was almost nil. The abundant missionaries were doing what they could to curb immorality. What they could do wasn’t much. Star Harbour was too good a trading station to keep away from.

* * * * *

When the _Zaca_ lay at anchor in the colored waters of Mohawk Bay I came upon the end of a short story which had taken twelve years to tell. It was here, you remember, that back in 1921 I had given a midnight hookworm lecture, in what I thought was a mission village; after the lecture I was resting in a whaleboat near the beach when a naked man, darker than the darkness, had waded out to me and told me that he was Sam, a mission teacher; and his lively pidgin had informed me of my mistake--that I had gone to a heathen village; his was the Christian community, where I should have lectured in the name of the Lord. So I had given him a number of tins, told him what to say in his lecture, and asked him to bring me the specimens in the morning, and he had obeyed. Poor devil, like so many others, he had thought his people would be cured merely by filling the tins. He was foolish, but a true Christian.

Well, as Templeton Crocker’s luxury yacht now idled in this bay a missionary came aboard with a number of natives. One of them kept crouching close to my chair, and I recognized him. He was Sam the Christian. “So you’re still the mission teacher here,” I said. “No, master,”--softly,--“you talk along me that night in whaleboat, but me no mission.” I liked the old rascal, and spent a day with him, looking over his village and getting at the truth of his story, which was just this: When he had waded out to my boat with the Christian yarn, he had been a pagan, living among pagans; he had come to me with his pious line of talk because, he explained, the heathens never got any plums from the whites; plums all went to the missionized ones. His people had hookworm, and he didn’t care what he said so long as he got the cure.

Sam was goodfellow too much, so I gave him some more lessons in hookworm treatment and some drugs to help out. He was still a heathen, he told me, although the native teacher had marked him for an extremely hot Eternity....

* * * * *

So much for scenes revisited, and all not happy ones. We had weighed anchor and were churning out to sea, heading now once more toward Rennell Island. I had seen the mischief done in gentle Sikiana and in other unprotected places. What had happened to Rennell? Buia, coming home with us, said some disturbing things.

## CHAPTER IV

THE FATE OF A RACE

Again the great coral wall with its skimpy crown of trees; again the mysterious crack in the cliffs that marked Kungava Bay. Buia, who had acquired malaria on his trip, had been running a temperature all night. He was quite normal now, but excited. His eyes glistened, his white teeth shone as he pointed out familiar landmarks. Over there was Ungu Ungu (Head Head) point. He had a place there, but no house; the piece of land he had inherited from his father’s line. On Kanava he had three pieces of land and a fine, big house. Yes, Buia had improved a lot since last night, when he had mourned, “Belly belong me he no good kaikai belong white man. Now me no look him Kanava again.” Part of that depression was malaria, the rest sea-sickness, for the ship had rolled heavily.

Canoes began pulling out toward us. Friends were coming aboard, and the foremost among them was Buia the Bastard, full of news, because the Big Master of Mengehenua was dead. God, who was “Master along Sky,” had cursed the chief for neglecting to send him gifts of food. Another Big Master had also forgotten his God, and was pretty sick. “Sick belong wind, him he too cold.” Whether he was describing influenza or tuberculosis it was hard to say.

After we had anchored inside the reef and come ashore we were permitted to approach Tahua, whom we found seated in state on a soapbox. On behalf of Mr. Crocker I made a presentation speech and laid an adze, a string of red beads, two razor blades and a butcher knife before the Presence. Tahua said simply, “Thank you.” The men of Rennell have no taste for the echo-ringing oratory of Samoa and Tonga.

Because it was raining, Tahua took us to his “house,” merely a tiny shelter, open at one end. “House him all bugger up,” he apologized, and showed a pile of beams cleverly hewn with the axes we had left on our former trip; all ready for the grand new architectural effect he was planning, to be Rennell’s show place, and to Tahua the largest building in the world. There was a ridgepole thirty-five feet long and several curved ribs to support the sloping pandanus-leaf roof. Tahua was getting to be a very rich man.

He was nobody’s fool. When I told him about the needles we wanted to use for the good of the people he understood and said that he would summon many for the stick-medicine. Shrewdly he added that when so many came around he could put them to work building his new house. He obliged Macgregor, there to inquire into racial origins, by reciting twenty-four generations of his ancestors and scraps of mouth-to-mouth history which, I think, had been garbled by European recorders. He told us that all the people of his district were blood kin, related to him. A common ancestor had come from Uvea (Wallis Island, directly to the west) and had crossed Rotumah and the Solomons. Tahua’s history, liberally salted with myth and demonology, might have been partly authentic. Undoubtedly all the Rennellese were first or second cousins; a picture of an inbred people who were far from physically degenerate. Their tabu against incestuous unions was so strict that brother and sister were not allowed to take medicine out of the same glass.

Macgregor, who talked with Tahua whenever he could, told me that the Big Master had named a great many of the islands where his ancestor had touched on his long voyage to Rennell. This was interesting, but threw no light on the racial origin. Their language was so nearly Polynesian that Macgregor could piece out whole sentences; his Polynesian was so like their own tongue that the people thought that he must have come from Rotumah, and took it for granted that he knew much more than he did of their customs and theogony. For this reason they showed him many sacred places hidden in the bush, forbidden to all but the initiate.

Tahua was grimly silent about Mr. Borgas, the missionary who had tagged him “M.V.,” but when the inhabitants came crowding into our ship we soon found that the missionary scandal was the biggest news that had broken on Rennell since the day of the famous murder. Superficially these natives had not changed much, except that they spoke more pidgin and had somehow lost their light-fingered habit of carrying away every little thing they happened to fancy. Already the girls were approaching the personable members of our crew, and by their clamorous “Me want knifie” and “Me want akis (axe)” it was plain to see that the price of love had gone up. Razor blades were coming in, so empty beer bottles had lost their market value.

In all his wide travel Crocker had never seen anything like the Rennellese. Aside from their racial oddity, he said, they were the friendliest people he had yet encountered. I mentioned a doctor I once knew who was so darned sociable--always poking me with a toothbrush--that I learned to dislike him. Crocker didn’t understand my simile--then. Later on he did.

One big man, kneeling beside my table, talked volubly about missionary Borgas. He called him “Bawgus” as in the tone in which you’d mention some unmentionable disease. Bawgus had baited the hook by asking them aboard ship--“You like lookim along shippie?” So they looked along shippie. “Then he go ashore he putim tabu along shippie.” Mr. Borgas hadn’t offered any tribute to Tahua, either in the way of food or tobacco. The only thing he had to offer gratis was Salvation--and “M.V.” armbands.... My faith in Rennell was somewhat renewed when the kneeling man beside me said, “Mission he come, Master he finish. Big Master along Sky he finish too.” Meaning, in plain English, that if Rennell became missionized its past would vanish; and they were on the alert.

I hope I haven’t satirized the friendliness of these people. Their generosity surpassed anything I have seen anywhere, the Cook Islands not excepted. They may have seemed overeager in grasping for the things they wanted--mostly things of steel; but in their trades they gave away the best they had, and with the faith of little children. I was fairly sickened by the sight of their carefree swapping with some of our crew--precious heirlooms for a few cigarettes or a tin rattle. I saw one beautifully carved and polished ebony “Big Master’s stick”--a royal scepter to them--go to a sailor for a penny stick of rank twist. The sailor wanted the stick, and the owner just couldn’t refuse. There were many fine museum pieces frittered away like that. Why argue about the price, when visitors were so pleasant?

From a doctor’s point of view, the traffic in women was still more discouraging. Tahua, as a mark of extreme favor, offered me his daughter, although, he explained, she was promised to Buia the Bastard. When I informed him that I was married and had a “mary” of my own, he listened respectfully; I’m sure he didn’t know what that had to do with it.

For several nights the parties in the forecastle went on at a furious pace; they kept it up until Crocker showed the sailors that he was boss of the _Zaca_ and would allow no visitors aboard after six o’clock. In the riotous period that led up to the ultimatum I found one deck hand solemnly scrubbing a native beauty with a piece of brown soap and rinsing her at the end of a hose. It was probably the first real bath she ever had; I was surprised at the lightness of her skin, which would match that of the purest Polynesian.

When I had come there on the _France_, we jaunty explorers were all so dirty that we had somewhat deadened our sense of smell. But fresh from the luxurious cleanliness of the _Zaca_, I was conscious of the prevalent B.O. of Rennell. It took some tact for me to remind Buia that what he needed was a bath. He received the news amiably, dived into the bay and swam like a fish. Even without soap he lightened at least two shades, and was vain about it when I held up a mirror.

Panio, the political strong-arm, was especially aromatic; I was quite overcome by his meekness when I suggested that he follow Buia’s example. When he came out of the water, a paler and a better man, he told me that he had had some experience with talk-marks, the kind I made on the typewriter. But his words hadn’t been any good. He handed me a piece of paper which a visiting skipper had given him by way of introduction to passing ships. But when Panio had shown it to other skippers they had been cross too much. I read his paper and quite understood. It said, “To whom it may concern. Don’t have anything to do with this bloody bastard. He is a proper wrong un.” The skipper who wrote that reference was a student of human nature.

I had thought that Templeton Crocker’s firm stand against midnight visitors might have dangerous repercussions. Or at least the effect wouldn’t be very lasting. It was good for about twenty-four hours, I found; the people were kind but insinuating, and they all came back. The only way to shorten visiting hours, we learned, was to see the Big Masters; and when we managed that, the scene grew quieter--Or did it? One evening after dinner, a number of native beauties were draping their pretty figures over about everything on the ship, animate or inanimate. “Maury” Willowes, who was serving as a human coat-hanger for about six of the clinging ladies, did not attempt to brush them off as he made his _bon mot_: “Just another quiet evening at home.” And our host, who had at first declared the Rennellese among the most beautiful works of nature, sniffed a little at the prevalent native bouquet.

Next day I wrote in my diary:--

Mr. Crocker is working on the deck astern, or trying to; Panio is summoning some friends at a half-mile distance, in a voice that might blow a hole in the ship; a girl and two boys are playing mouth organs steadily in my right ear; Maury, heaven help us, is trading out baby rattles, the kind with bells on them; a man is bouncing a rubber ball, and is so awkward about catching it that my little Sara Celia could show him how. Older men are clamoring for knives and hatchets, but the ones of military age have gone crazy about musical tops.... Where was I, anyhow? Oh, yes, this morning on the beach I gave a cigarette to Teina, and he said, “You pickaninny belong me.” I suppose he was trying to say that I was his father....

Rennell Island was advancing, but in her march of progress she had taken the wrong fork in the road. A great many of the men had discarded native costume and were taking a fancy to _lavalavas_. To impress us, perhaps, they would pull _lavalavas_ over the time-honored breachclouts they called _kongoa_. Or they’d take off the _kongoa_ altogether and substitute “calicoes” for them. On Barley’s recent trip his crew had brought in several thousand cigarettes, salvaged from a wrecked Japanese vessel, and the Rennellese had taken to them like so many ducks to water. New tastes, new ways.... The growing craze for European costume was illustrated in the behavior of Mua, son of Taupangi, who followed me around the ship, archly suggesting that I give him a pair of trousers and a shirt. I tried to tell him that it would curse Rennell, if he started such nonsense.

* * * * *

What had happened to the fierce tabu on feces examinations, which had embarrassed us on our former trip? Old Tahua, in whose presence we had not dared to whisper the forbidden thing, was now strangely approachable. Perhaps an extra box of fishhooks tickled his overdeveloped acquisitiveness. At any rate, he permitted Malakai, aided by Buia, to give him our stock hookworm lecture with chart and all the fixings. Immediately he commanded that a number of young boys should report to the tent we had set up on the beach, and be properly examined. Later on he ordered out a number of women for the same inspection.

This concession was obliging to us and convenient to our work. But underneath the courtesy I felt a certain loosening of the old religious ties which had held Rennell’s proud racial identity. World without end, they had worshiped with a single-mindedness which was like that of Medieval Europe when the Church was all in all and the Pope its interpreter. Religion had come first with the Rennell folk, and had entered into every duty of their practical lives.

Outwardly they were still religious. But what undercurrents of doubt were entering the new desires and ambitions? They still seemed unquestioningly obedient to the Big Masters, who spoke with the voice of God. Did the Divine One and his lesser divinities still listen to their inner thoughts, as they had three short years ago? Their code of sins and virtues had been different from ours, but just as strict. What would happen to them when all their traditions went to the junk-pile?

As I worked in my tent on the beach, many things that I had not known before came filtering in. Dr. Macgregor told me more, for he was there to study the past and present of a strange people. Through Buia, loyal to the White Sands, I learned why I had better not go to the Lake this time. Tahua and Taupangi were in a jealous quarrel again over property rights. In the past year or so Taupangi had had an inspiration: If Tahua got iron through his possession of the White Sands, then Taupangi would have an anchorage of his own. Therefore he had made a three-mile shortcut to a place in the cliffs where it was just possible to get up and down. Here he could launch canoes and invite the crews of passing ships to come to the Lake by the shortest way; something like our road-signs, “Shortest Route to Atlantic City.” Roughhewn as the idea was, it fetched some trade to Taupangi’s district. Tahua was in a boiling rage, and the people of the White Sands well knew that the two lesser Masters who had aided in Taupangi’s forbidden trail had been afflicted with a fatal sickness which only Tahua’s God could inflict.

An embassy from the Lake visited my tent with Taupangi’s cordial invitation to come to his district with my treatments. Buia gave me a warning look, so I was obliged to decline. We were indebted to the White Sands for our anchorage and headquarters. No telling what Tahua might do if the white witch doctor should desert him for a hated rival. So I let Gordon White go to the Lake with some of the _Zaca’s_ scientists. Tahua granted them that favor, after I had offered a practical idea for his benefit. Why not join forces with the Lake people and cut a good trail across that awful eight miles of vines and coral? Make communications easy, and Taupangi would forget about his rival anchorage.... It was like asking a blue Republican to junk a tariff barrier for the benefit of mutual trade. But Tahua thought it over....

They were pouring in from every district to be lined up in our tent. While we worked at our trade Macgregor, at the other end, worked at his, and Dr. Hynes, our surgeon, studied the blood groupings of 100 people in hopes of throwing some light on their racial origin. They were almost equally divided between Group O and Group B, with almost no A’s or AB’s, a quite different finding than European grouping, which furnishes data for specialist study in anthropology; and they did not seem to check up with other Polynesian typing.

Dr. Macgregor, who was a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology and had had the superlative advantages offered by the Bishop Museum, was a young scientist with the proper equipment of learning and enthusiasm. As the line of natives passed through our tent he took head measurements and found a cephalic index of 74-75, about the same as that of the so-called Nordics. He reached the conclusion that they were not usual Polynesians in the sense that Hawaiians, Samoans, Cook Islanders, and others are Polynesians. They had many elements of Melanesian culture, such as certain points in their god-worship, and their habit of betel-chewing. They knew nothing of that Polynesian favorite, kava; and many of their words were not Polynesian at all. But physically they were not Melanesian, nor were they of the Micronesian race that I myself had seen in the Gilberts and the western Bismarcks. It was no wild conjecture to call them pre-Polynesian, of which there is still a small element in Tonga.

Somewhere in their first long voyage from Nowhere to Nowhere they had picked up certain Polynesian arts and habits: like the making of tapa cloth and the smearing of their bodies with sacred turmeric. History records that the Tongafiti, conquering fathers of Polynesia, had fallen upon Rennell Island some 400 years before; but not to conquer. The Rennellese warriors had slain all but one man. That man finally built a canoe and started for his home. The Rennellese had some knowledge of invaders very like the Tongafiti. As we saw them there were no mixed bloods--with the exception of two half-castes, probably the issue of visiting sailors.

Malakai and I, representing the medical end of the enterprise, were busy with a count of native diseases. We were saving hookworm examinations for the last and were winning popular confidence through less objectionable tests. If I had been pessimistic when I came back to Rennell, I was glad to find many of my fears groundless. There was no filariasis, nor was any evidence to be found of the anopheline mosquito; and there were no diagnostic signs of malaria. Buia actually had malaria; I knew, because I treated him for it. But he had been with Barley on Malaita, where he undoubtedly picked it up. As to tuberculosis, I found less on Rennell than anywhere else I had visited. Yaws was no menace; the local habit of isolating sufferers until the sores were healed had reduced the disease to a few tertiary cases--Buia told me that I would find much yaws on Bellona, where they did not practise the ancient quarantine custom. There was still plenty of itch on Rennell, but that too seemed to be wearing itself out.

I have described the technique of getting hookworm, but because the question was most important to me on Rennell, I hope to be forgiven for describing it again.

Little tins are given out for feces specimens, and their contents examined. If you want worms you choose the people who have been found positive through examination; positive because hookworm eggs have been found in their specimens. You dose them with the drug, say tetrachloride, then you give them a “jerry,” which is usually a five-gallon benzine tin, and tell them that all their bowel motions for die day must be deposited in the big container. A purge has been given after the tetrachloride, to hurry things up. At the end of twenty-four hours the whole stool is washed through several thicknesses of surgical gauze until only a sediment remains. This sediment is taken by tablespoonful and floated with a little water in a photograph tray, where the worms can be seen with difficulty, especially if die patient has been eating fibrous vegetables. Then he is given another saline purge and he deposits his bowel motion for another twenty-four hours. Then the same procedure is repeated. To do a good job another day’s collection should be made. This is difficult in a hospital, and much more difficult among savages. In New Guinea we had to put them behind barbed wire, in Fiji we often locked them up.

On Rennell we were not given permission to do this work until the last few days, and we only got Tahua’s consent by paying him liberally in fishhooks. The examinations were on the beach, and the subjects all girls; they had been forced to submit by the Big Master, who cannily believed that if some magic curse should fall on a few girls it wouldn’t matter. Malakai and Gordon were supposed to keep guard over these patients; but with new ones coming all the time, they were probably not very well watched. The infection was very light, and probably many of the stools missed. Later on, when we examined the material, we found no worms. The trouble was that the Big Master’s permission had come so late that a technique suited to such bizarre circumstances was impossible. The delay resulted in our frustration.

They had no conception of disease. When it came to tuberculin tests we had immense difficulty in getting them to report for more than one injection, for the Big Parade was always going on and they didn’t want to miss any of it. Time, of course, was nothing to them. That mental quirk, as well as those above noted, worked dead against us. Remember, it was a land of savages, a stark beach, no houses to speak of and an almost constant rain. Add to this the native’s superstitious shyness. Once, when I caught Buia in a very personal occupation, he almost died of fear.

I had done my best to inquire into the prevalence of gonorrhea, the old enemy of racial fertility. Examinations were, of course, out of the question--you could examine a Rennellese man only by felling him with an ax. I suspected that this venereal germ had revisited Rennell, and when I looked over our crew after departure my suspicions were justified. I could learn little from a people who in no way associated the infection with promiscuity; they regarded all disease as merely a curse following the violation of a tabu, even an unconscious violation. But what I found that our sailors had picked up from Rennell alarmed me as to the island’s future. The barriers were down, the White Sands were offering the most generous hospitality to visiting sailors. I had seen other island populations sink for similar reasons.

A nightly chore was counting the sick aboard ship. Templeton Crocker’s foot was about well; however we had persuaded him not to bruise it again in that awful overland walk to the Lake. Stuart, our botanical collector, was in bed with a severe leg ulcer. He had tramped all over Java and Borneo in the Chancellor-Stuart expedition, and now he chafed because his legs were not taking him along. Toschio seemed to have recovered from the sickness that took us to Tulagi, and otherwise we seemed fit to carry on. Except that I was suffering from a boil on my leg.

One night Buia came aboard and asked Malakai to intervene with Mr. Crocker for more food for the people who had come down to be treated. Malakai, always a sympathetic observer of the natives, said that he had watched them and they had gone all day without a thing to eat. These people were nomads, really--nomads on an island fifty miles long. When they traveled they never thought of carrying provisions. I went to Crocker, and found him generous again. In free feeds for Rennell he had already dipped pretty deep into our stock of eatables, but he managed to dig up another banquet and send it ashore. I asked Buia why the people went hungry when they could fish in the bay, and he said it was tabu to eat fish from the bay while our sewage was emptying there.

I caught Buia off his guard and told him that I had learned the names of the two Gods who ruled his island: they were the old Tetanosanga, whose girth measured ten fathoms, and his grandson Teaitutabu. Listening to the sacred words, Buia stood aghast and begged me never, never to say those names again. Only the Big Masters could speak them, and that only in a whisper. I liked Buia for his reverence, when he prayed away my rash impiety. While he prayed I felt that faith had not departed from his people, and might strengthen them to stand against the white invader, as they had stood against the Tongafiti.

Prayer was a part of their daily lives. Gordon Macgregor on his visit to the Lake saw a sacred and secret ceremony never before shown to a white man. He had asked a question, and old Taupangi went into a “sweating trance,” seeking divine guidance. His two companions held the chiefs heavily perspiring body while his eyes rolled and his head fell. They were afraid he would die. At last his assistant took a strip of tapa and bound it tightly around his waist to squeeze out the possessing spirit. Then he recovered from his trance and delivered a somewhat confused message: Possibly it would be all right, he said, for his son to go on a trip with Macgregor.

Taupangi was the only one of the five Big Masters who could speak directly to God. The others had to communicate through an intermediary. Tahua lacked the mystic power. With receptive soul he had waited all his life for God to enter him and show favor, but he died with his wish unanswered.

Religion was an everyday, every hour affair with these simple, devout people, and the way to Heaven was marked out for them. When a soul entered Paradise it was a very small soul, but it grew as a child grows, and attained magnificent size among the immortals. It was a man’s Heaven, for earth-women were hardly worth sending there, especially since Eternity was supplied with many beautiful creatures, superior in every way to the merely human female. When a Big Master died a heavy club was buried with him to protect him against devil-devils on the way to his Valhalla. The “Big Master’s stick,” his wand of office, was stuck on the top of his grave, and this marked his term of office as a spiritual interpreter; for as long as the stick lasted his earthly successor might use it as a mouthpiece to Heaven and consult with the late Big Master, and with the supreme Ngenggo, the Grandson God. When the stick rotted in the ground the deceased was no longer the heavenly interpreter, and the next in line assumed the office.

Macgregor was at last keen enough to see that my pidgin was a valuable means of communication. He found that the sacred name for their god was Ngenggo, the same as Rengo in Rotumah.[6] Rengo was another name for turmeric, sacred to the bodies of high personages. Between us we found that the Big Masters spoke indirectly to the gods, through their ancestors. As if to throw up a defense across the sacred names, they had two names at least for the two principal gods. On my first trip a Master told me that the principal god was called Tainatua, as I understood it--really Taiinggatua. Then Barley, a little later, learned that the two were Tetanosanga and Teaitutabu (the Sacred God). At the Lake, Macgregor found that Teaitutabu and Ngenggo were one and the same. He collected some wonderful material there, especially concerning religion and ceremonies, and was able to improve on it through his wide experience in Rotumah and the Tokelaus. Incidentally Macgregor saw a two-headed stick used as an object of worship.

As we worked out the puzzling pantheon, Tetanosanga (another name for Taiinggatua) was grandfather to the god Teaitutabu (otherwise Ngenggo). They presided over the world, as Rennell knew it, and Ngenggo never left his home in the skies. His grandfather, however, roamed the earth and reported happenings to Ngenggo. The Grandson God was the most powerful of the Sky Masters, and Buia said, “Suppose him he talk-talk he sabe make you die quick.” While Ngenggo stayed at home the Old One went everywhere, saw and heard everything, and if there were those who ignored divine laws, Ngenggo punished them. Not only could he kill men, but he could demolish trees, islands, anything. There were prayers to the gods before every simple meal. There were ceremonies of food presentation to the gods, too involved to describe in anything but a book on anthropology. But if the regular tribute of food to a god was neglected, the offender would surely sicken and die.

Buia told me of Charley Cowan’s ship which had anchored at Taupangi’s Lake anchorage. Charley, Buia said, gave the ship to Taupangi, and Taupangi in turn gave it to the Big Master along Skies. Then the divinity replied that Cowan might go on using his vessel, provided that he came back at intervals to Taupangi’s anchorage. The Big Master warned him not to take it to Tahua’s beach, but Cowan on his next trip went to the White Sands. As a result of this disobedience, Buia said, Taupangi “talked along” the watchful Grandson God, and as a result both Cowan and his partner died. (As a matter of fact, these men did die, to my knowledge.) It was _post hoc_ rather than _propter hoc_; but try to make a Rennellese believe that Taupangi didn’t pray them to death! Buia was afraid for the _Zaca_ if it called at Taupangi’s anchorage for Macgregor and White....

Nothing was attempted and few thoughts conceived without first seeking the advice of the gods. The people even consulted their ancestors through a bamboo stick dug into a grave. I once caught the tough Panio using this sort of spirit-telephone.

Gordon White, coming back from Tenggano with the usual tatters and coral scratches, reported that the Lake People had not depreciated much in health. He said that my old chum Taupangi grieved that I had not come up to live with him for the balance of my life. The _Zaca’s_ party at the Lake had dined with the Big Master every day, and were interested to find that somebody had taught him to eat with a fork and drink tea out of a china cup. He liked plenty of sugar in his tea and stirred it for five minutes, with his fork. They took movies of the harvest festival, and Gordon noticed what a change had come over the scene since last we saw it. There was no high fence around the grounds, and women were allowed to look on. Another old tabu was fading out.

Not to be outdone by his hated rival, Taupangi had loosened up on the hookworm tabu; but his people were still so queer about being examined that our party got no good specimens. There was an epidemic of head colds, so frequent that our outfit was now catching the germ from Rennell--a reversal of our first experience there.

When Macgregor came back to the White Sands the majority of the Lake population followed him, crazy to see the _Zaca_. Gordon White tried to bribe them to stay home, offering toy balloons and tin trumpets, but these things bored them. They were out for iron, and intended to get it. Taupangi overcame his grouch against Tahua (who would allow him nothing better than a leaky leaf-shelter when he was on the beach) and joined the exodus. So did Tekita and Tamata. Only Mua remained as intermediary; although he was the Big Master’s son and heir he hadn’t had enough of God’s authority to coax the people up to Gordon’s tent, so it had become a matter of visiting every leaf-shelter in the place and giving tests. Tuberculosis didn’t seem alarming. Wanderlust was the prevailing ailment. Mua, Tekita, Tamata, everybody who could get a word in edgewise, had tried to wheedle Gordon into taking them away on the boat. If Buia had traveled and learned about the great world, why shouldn’t they? These simple folk, to whom Rennell had been all in all, were growing restless, discontented with this frugal island which had once satisfied their every want--because they had never learned to want the unnecessary. A self-containing social structure, an unquestioning faith in divinities who could give and who could take away, scanty food which they gained by wholesome labor and gratefully thanked God for.... That was their plenty. But to human nature, plenty is too often not enough. Perhaps that is the real Martyrdom of Man.

* * * * *

Little Bellona Island (Mungiki) lay twenty-five miles over there, and I was anxious to survey it again, and to show it to Crocker’s expedition. The Big Masters of Rennell had explained carefully why Mungiki had a richer soil than theirs. In days of old, the semi-mythical Ko Fiti had been driven out of Rennell, but before they left they had done a spiteful thing; they had scraped the good topsoil off Rennell and dumped it on Mungiki.

Our _Zaca_ moved across the short stretch of sea. In sight of Bellona’s forbidding cliffs I sent a short radio message to Eloisa; a demonstration of science in the midst of savagery.

A man came out in a canoe and gave his name as Samoana, which was pure Samoan for Guardian of the Sea. He guided us to a beach which had changed so in three years that I hardly knew it. Great storms had washed it clean of sand; now it was a forest of sharp coral points. When I sat down on the softest lump I could find, I was immediately surrounded by a half-hundred fierce faces; threatening fists were full of bows, arrows and spears. A man who came out of a cave seemed to own the beach, and I asked him if we might pitch our tent there. No, he said archly, if we set up a tent (“big calico”) we might take a notion to stay. A poor start, but with the help of Buia I managed to persuade him that we were moving on in four days. When I asked for the chiefs to come to me--a policy I adopted on Bellona--Samoana went away, then came back to report that Ponge, the Big Master, sat with three lesser Masters, presiding at a great festival. He couldn’t possibly come, as he was very tabu; his face was blackened, which was the deepest of all tabus.

Buia brought in the three lesser Masters, who surprised me with their willingness to have the people inspected. And of course it would be all right to have the big calico on the shore--if we didn’t stay too long. When I told them that I had left much of my equipment in a big calico on the White Sands, with the assurance that nothing would be stolen, the three Masters promised me that my goods would be respected. And they kept their word. Even on Rennell I had found that the people were learning the difference between _meum_ and _teum_. Sleeping on that beach would be about as comfortable as a Hindu fakir’s bed of nails, and Bellona’s geological freaks made water available only by catching it in coconut shells or the funny wooden bowls they used for that purpose. The Bellonese, who were the gentlest people in the world in spite of their savage look, seemed to subsist almost without water. A little coconut juice satisfied bodies that had adjusted themselves to conditions.

I loaded the three Masters on the small boat and we presented them with candy and tinned meat. Crocker turned on the phonograph, with startling effect. They all began to shake and shiver; Buia’s cousin Takeika rose nervously and tried to take the machine down to his canoe. We had to tell him that it was very tabu for anybody but Crocker, who was Captain to them--the highest title they could understand. We didn’t turn the record on again. They were very curious about the two little fishes which Buia had tattooed on my left ankle. They didn’t know that my ankle was still sore where a needle (made from a sliver of human bone) had gone in, or that my leg was sensitive from a couple of buried boils, which I had carried with me from Suva and hadn’t given a chance to cure. They smacked their lips and rolled their eyes, marveling at the tattooed fishes, symbols of Rennell.

They seemed to think that the Rennell people put on airs. Macgregor found that Bellona gave a soft sound to _ng_, as in “sing,” where Rennell hardened it to _ngg_, as in “finger.” Probably considered an affectation, like the English broad _a_....

Malakai and I, setting up a tent on the beach, found that the petting habit on Bellona was slightly worse than that of Rennell. People surrounded us like sticky flies. Two or three would run their hands down my shirt collar, to see if my worshipful belly was real or just padding; two or three more would be lifting up my trousers to marvel at my white ankles, and the tattooed fishes. That massage, with inquisitive and dirty hands, went on for four days. It went hardest with Crocker, who had more respect for his personal dignity than some of us. He was getting used to being called Captain--on Rennell he had tried to insist that his name was Owner, but that hadn’t made sense to the native. Captain meant Boss, and you couldn’t go any higher than that.

At last we went to Big Master Ponge, since he was too sacred to move from his seat of dignity. Every time my sore leg came down I suppressed a moan, and wondered why I had ever left Suva in such condition. Whenever the choking scrub along the way opened up a little I had pleasant views of the neat, thatched houses. They looked very pretty at a distance, but when I went into some of them I found only dirt floors, with hardly a mat to squat on--and all the time dirty natives were patting my hands, pawing my shoes, stockings, every inch of me.

Big Master Ponge had invited us to a dance, and that was the reason for those weary three miles. As we had done in Rennell, we crawled on our stomachs under the low eaves and faced the Presence on all fours. And there was the great Ponge, seated on his dais and looking for all the world, as Maury said, like a Chinese mandarin. But a mandarin doing a black-face act, for his cheeks, nose and forehead were thick with tabu soot. He shook hands all round and listened carefully when I told him why we had come, and how Crocker had invited him to visit the _Zaca_. Macgregor talked, and presented him with a cane-knife--and I hoped he’d use it to clear a path through that awful scrub. In behalf of his Master Tahua, Buia gave him an American ax. By way of ecclesiastical blessing Ponge pronounced us “good fellow too much.” I didn’t wait for the dance, but limped back over the terrible trail. I had business awaiting me on the beach.

I looked over the people that filed through my tent and was surprised to see how much clearer skinned and robust they were than the inhabitants of the White Sands. They appeared cleaner, but they smelled a little worse than the Rennellese. I saw some hideous cases of yaws, and remembered what Buia had said: The Bellona folk did not quarantine it. In fact the Rennellese quarantine was the only one I ever saw among primitive people.

Bellona called it _caho_, and when I asked in the presence of the crowd where _caho_ came from, they answered to a man that Dr. Deck’s missionaries had brought it. Dr. Deck had botched his expeditions sufficiently, without this. Even though Deck’s excursions might have brought some of it, it was just a case of yaws meet yaws, I thought. If the people of Bellona were Polynesian, this was the only Polynesian spot on the Pacific where the disease was not called _tona_ or some name much like it. Their ignorance of the word suggested that they had been pushed out of some Western Polynesian group before they had had a chance to come in contact with the Tongans; for yaws is a curse that does not die out of itself, and if they had come to Bellona after meeting Tongans, they would have carried the Tongan name _tona_.

Macgregor, taking anthropological measurements, found them physically identical with the Rennellese--probably the relics of a pre-Polynesian race. I found that they needed a doctor for yaws, and not much more; otherwise they would be a thousand times better off if no white man’s foot ever again touched their coral-scragged beach. Isolation had made them happier than the Rennellese, I thought. Five ships had touched at Rennell Island in three years, and more were coming. Bellona had only seen two in that time, and those two had been given a cool reception. An object lesson in self-preservation.

It seemed strange that they had more iron tools per capita than the Rennellese, until I heard that Bellona was arrow-maker for Rennell, and demanded her pay in iron. The chiefs might have been sharp traders, but one of the Masters was pretty dull when he gave Crocker a royal treasure out of respect to his rank as “Captain.” The gift might take rank with Charlemagne’s scepter for its antiquarian value and its rare material. It was a king’s mace, a shaft of wood with a knob of stone on the end. To Rennell and Bellona real stone was worth its weight in diamonds, for there was absolutely none of it between the beetling coral cliffs. The piece that tipped this relic might have come from Tucopia in olden times, or from undreamed-of distances. It was the last king’s mace on either island, and there are only four in the world. The other three are in museums: at Brisbane, Cambridge University, and the British Museum.

Macgregor had tried sleeping in the tent on the beach, but had given it up for uncanny reasons. He had set up an army cot, got into it--and found that two local chiefs had decided to sleep on the coral floor right under him. In the middle of the night his cot began to shake, and he found the worried chiefs rousing him. “Master,” they said, “you must go at once. In our dreams God spoke in our heads asking, ‘Who is this that dares sleep above me?’” Macgregor didn’t argue the point, but went.

On Bellona there was one big native who seemed to double for Panio as local nuisance. He had bothered me a great deal when we were there on the _France_ expedition. Now he was on and off the _Zaca_, strutting like a magpie and yelling his slogan in my ear: “Gimme, thank you! Gimme, thank you!” I called him Mr. Gimme and tried to laugh him off, which was pretty hard to do when I was giving injections on the beach with him clinging to my elbow. Our last afternoon at Bellona I told Maury Willowes how I should love to plant my foot on Mr. Gimme’s sciatic nerve, and Maury grinned, “Why don’t you?”

We were safely near sailing time when Mr. Gimme came at me again and had hardly opened his mouth for the familiar slogan when I put my walking stick against his mid-section and firmly poked him halfway down the accommodation ladder. He plunked into his canoe and his look was demoniacal as he yelled his farewell curse: “Gimme, thank you!”

There were no reprisals. Peaceably the three kings came aboard to shake hands all around and receive their final gift of hardware. They were very cordial, glad that we were going so soon. I admired their self-protective attitude, and hoped that they wouldn’t weaken, as Rennell was weakening. They were fine people, and I didn’t hold Mr. Gimme against them. There is at least one Panio in every neighborhood that I know of.

* * * * *

Before the _Zaca_ pulled away from the White Sands and headed toward Tulagi I had a farewell glimpse of a people who were turning too soon towards ideals which could never work anything but harm for them. Over on the beach Tahua was bossing a construction gang. They were putting up the frame of his house, a big house, a fine house, a house that would make Taupangi feel pretty small. Keeping up with the Joneses, and a lap ahead of them.... When Taupangi came aboard to rub noses and wish us all back soon, he reminded Gordon White that he had given him a present of fine mats--but he was keeping them for him up at the Lake, so that Gordon would be sure and return there with more medicine. Competition was making old Taupangi canny as a Scot. Many of the natives, who stayed with us until the ship’s propeller turned, came in fashionable _lavalavas_.

Buia remained aboard until we were rounding Unga Unga, then a canoe picked him up. Buia, I am afraid, was getting a touch of bighead. He was too intelligent to become another Panio, but his reputation as a cruise conductor had done him no good. Crocker had been annoyed with his way of walking in on every party and taking possession. I was more relenting, for I had a real affection for this heir to a Big Mastership, and knew that he might rule with wisdom, if only he were let alone to serve his native God. To him we were something to be admired and imitated, and he had sought to adjust himself as best he knew how. Hadn’t they all?

He paddled away in his canoe. The _Zaca_ turned out to sea; Rennell Island became a faint blue shadow in the distance. I wondered what could be done about these unique people, infinitely valuable to scientific study. It was something like an emergency case; but in the wide Pacific you can’t send a fast ambulance to emergency cases. Relief comes slowly, biding its time for the Government to make up its mind, for competent medical men to take over the work, for boats to sail, for treasuries to cover the necessary expenses. Sometimes years pass between visit and visit--especially to a small world like Rennell Island, which needed protection far more than it needed medicine.

* * * * *

At last, graduate N.M.P.’s were sent to Rennell Island; they went one at a time for a six months’ service, fully equipped, but alone. An outstanding one was Eroni, a full-blood Fijian who gained a nickname: “the only white man on Mungava.” Patient and responsible as only a Fijian can be, he went barefoot over every coral snag and bog on the island. Conscientiously he treated everything they had. Once he saw the natives catch a shark according to custom; they wrestled with it in the water, bound it with ropes and hauled it in. One man had his hand bitten off, and Eroni saved him with a tourniquet. He was surprised to find that the Rennellese themselves had always known how to apply a tourniquet. Eroni was ever ready for emergency calls as well as methodical mass treatments.

But one medical man, work as he might, could not enforce that ounce of prevention which, on Rennell, would have been worth many pounds of cure.

Before the High Commission in Suva I tried to drive home the necessity of government protection for these defenseless people. The waters should be patrolled and mischievous ships kept away. Medical authority should be carefully admitted, and a properly hand-picked anthropologist. At the very mention of the latter profession I met opposition. A number of vicious playboys who masked as “scientific investigators” had put anthropology in bad odor. It used to be that everybody’s hat was off to every wandering bluffer who claimed to hold a key to the mystery of man’s origin. Too many of these fellows had overstayed their time--usually on islands where women were the prettiest. One “anthropologist” had just been ordered off the Pacific; he had been charged with violating two little girls. So the High Commission, although they quite understood my attitude, rather thought that I should take the matter up in London. The snag was somewhere in the Colonial Office, they said.

Here are a few lines from a letter I wrote His Excellency, the High Commissioner; just an item in the literature that passed back and forth in my long plea for the Rennell Islanders:--

Spiritually they have a gentle religion in which there is no skepticism and no cruelty. Socially it would be hard to convince me that these savages are not more highly advanced than we are. There is almost a complete absence of crime. Morally they have a code which suits them, and to which they adhere exactly. They themselves say that they do not want government, missions or doctors....

The High Commissioner’s reply, in part:--

The Bishop of Melanesia has suggested that he should be allowed to select young men from Rennell, train them as preachers, and send them back. What is your view of this proposal?

My answer in brief:--

... Unfortunately, when anyone’s ideas on any subject differ from those of a missionary, he is immediately put down as anti-missionary, if not anti-Christian. The only question on which all of the Mission Societies will unite is opposition to any attempt to limit in the least degree, for any purpose whatsoever, the extension of mission work. On all other questions they are drawn up in armed camps against each other. I am not anti-mission in any particular, and any reasonable man must be pro-mission, if he is acquainted with the history of mission efforts in the Pacific, where they have been the great humanizers and educators of the native races. However....

In 1936 the Foundation’s business took me to London, where I told my story to three famous anthropologists: Elliot-Smith, Haddon and Malinowski; their sympathy was all with my plan to protect the two islands, Rennell and Bellona. The important man to see was Sir Thomas Stanton, Briton’s Chief Medical Officer. Sir Thomas was easy to meet and to talk to. He was one of the Central Medical School’s enthusiasts. When I had finished my work in Fiji, he suggested, why couldn’t I go to the West Indies and organize an institution on the Suva plan? And I was delighted to hear that he had about decided to promote my friend, Dr. McGusty, to the post of the High Commission’s C.M.O. Nothing could be better luck for the Pacific, and I am proud if I put in a good word for a good man. I hope I had a share in his appointment.

My main proposal, aside from a plan to protect Rennell from mischievous influences, was to have a thorough anthropological survey made there. I suggested that the Bishop Museum of Honolulu take charge of this, for it had been founded in memory of a high-born Hawaiian lady, and her husband’s wealth had made it pre-eminent in Polynesian culture. Dr. Peter Buck, a Maori, was curator; the Museum could furnish just the talent we needed.

I was referred to the Colonial Office, where I struck the mysterious snag. Possibly the British objected because the Bishop Museum was an American institution; if so, they were stretching a point, for its leader was (and still is) a New Zealand Maori.

More likely it was the Church that stood in our way. When the news spread that I thought the old-time religion of Rennell was good enough for the people, and that the missionaries had only brought murder, disease and discontent to the little island, the Bishop of Melanesia sent a thundering message, declaring that he could “permit no boundaries to the Empire of Christ.” Possibly the Adventists were putting in an oar, too; for I had heard one of them say in objection to the exclusion of his faith: “For we bring to the Rennellese God’s greatest gift, the Bible.” And there was another who said, “I would feel that I must go, even if I knew that as a result every one of them would die.”

Governments and missions have been too often slandered, I think, because they have failed to accomplish miracles. In the Pacific they have been called upon to face hell and high water, literally, and my hat is off to their many achievements for the good of humanity. But I left London with the bitter knowledge that I had encountered the blind side of Christian officialdom--the sort of bigotry which means lack of understanding.

Perhaps I carried my message a year too late. As Barley said, “Sea-changes are very sudden on the Pacific.”

Four years after the _Zaca_ cruise I received reports from Eroni, saying that gonorrhea had spread from the White Sands to remoter districts where white men had never gone. Malaria was everywhere--and I had found no trace of it when I surveyed the island in 1930 and 1933.

Outwardly the natives were prospering. The chiefs were building more and better houses with the handy tools for which they had traded their racial integrity. In 1920 when George Fulton’s ship went there to recruit, he had seen no houses at all; a healthy, contented people were sleeping in caves or in the open. Now Rennell Island was having a building boom, and her population was going steadily downhill at the beck and call of every trading stranger.

* * * * *

About 1937 Dr. Crichlow made a survey there, and his worried findings came to me roundabout, in a letter from the Solomons. Everything that I had feared had come to pass. Gonorrhea had increased so that not a child had been born on Rennell Island in the past eighteen months.

I lost all desire to go back. I didn’t care to see a splendid and unique race dying on its feet.

## CHAPTER V

SUCH A LITTLE SCHOOL

I don’t think that I am a sentimental man. I shouldn’t be, for my work has not been along sentimental lines, and daily routine should have tried all the sugar out of my system. But when the _Mariposa_ pulled out to sea I seemed to be pulling against it, every inch of the way. The races I had worked among for twenty-one years were not mine. Yet I had a foolish feeling that they were my people. I had been with them so constantly; even during my short leaves in the States they had seldom left my thoughts. A public health physician is no missionary. He does not starve for a Cause. He is well paid for his services, and if he is honest he does his level best to earn his wages. Looking back toward the last dot among the outlying Fijis, I hoped that I had earned my pay.

My older daughter Harriette, who was born in Mexico and whom Eloisa had carried as a baby into every tropical port where we could make another temporary home, was now grown. Sara Celia, born in Fiji, would be nine pretty soon. After all Eloisa had gone through--and she had gone through a great deal, practically and cheerfully--she didn’t look her age, they told me. I was too near-sighted to tell very accurately, but somehow I knew that she didn’t look her age.

My sight had very definitely failed, and that was what caused my retirement in June, 1939. The faulty vision which had bothered me in my student days was now far beyond a point where it could be corrected. I should have retired a year before I did, but one all-important thing held me in Suva--the Central Medical School.

* * * * *

“Such a tiny little school!” a very great lady had said, wasting a patronizing glance on the small buildings and a knot of students going into class. I had had no time to tell her that this little school had cost one man seventeen years of ambitious planning. Webb Waldron, when he was all too kind to me in his write-up in _Harper’s Magazine_, had called it “unique in the world’s educational institutions.” He had done me honor overmuch, as Robert Emmet would have put it; but I was vain enough to believe that he had come nearer the truth than the very great lady.

As my days in Suva were coming toward an end my trusted champion the _Times and Herald_ also did me honor overmuch in obituary tones. “Dr. Lambert brought to his work in Fiji, and in other adjacent groups, a personal enthusiasm that seemed to grow the longer he stayed.... He appeared to accept all the health problems of the Pacific as a personal challenge to S. M. Lambert. Many of these problems have either been solved or are in process of solution, and we ... have been given strong reason to hope that the natural problems arising through the contact of white civilization with native races need not necessarily mean the gradual decay of these native races....”

Well, I wasn’t dead yet. Although I had caught some of the diseases I treated, I had recovered. No crocodile had eaten me, no snake or cannibal had done me harm. In all my years down there I had had but one accident: a Ford door closed on one of my fingers, and I lost a nail.

I was still sufficiently alive to wish that I could stay longer and drive home other nails which I had been hammering at for many years. The day before I left, Sir Maynard Hedstrom, who had supported me in everything, pointed to the School and said, “Next you know, Lambert, they’ll be putting up a statue to you.” I said, “I don’t like statues. But if I rate one, I hope it will be of solid brass and show me wearing a pair of wrinkled shorts and carrying an armful of specimen tins. No, in a year or so if anybody says ‘Lambert’ they’ll be asking ‘Who?’ I’m not worrying about a sculptor. What does worry me is the chance of some political thimblerigger coming along to undo everything we’ve done.”

* * * * *

I spoke with healthy pessimism, and only half-believed my warning. The Central Medical School had been going for a little over ten years, and seemed to have stemmed the tide. It was one of the three pet ideas which Montague and I had hatched back in 1922: a model leper colony at Mokogai, an advanced Medical School for natives, and a Unified Medical Service to cover every island group in the Pacific. Two of these pets thrived and grew to maturity. The Mokogai colony came in with a rush of enthusiasm in 1923, and building began almost at once. The School required seven years of wire-pulling before it began to operate at the beginning of 1929. Up to then there had been but a poor little makeshift, backed by the only funds the Fiji Government could afford.

I have told you of my disappointment in the buildings when the school first opened. The Principal had to run his office in the physiological and chemistry laboratory, which we also used for a classroom; lectures on pathology were about ruined by the horrible overcrowding in the postmortem room, which was a little death trap. The dormitory for men was so inadequate that we had to limit students and hold the scholastic course down to three years.

Then came more ambitious planning, and a long tussle with Bacteriologist John Campbell, who insisted on a pathological laboratory that would cost £5,500 and upward. Dr. Heiser visited us in 1934 and saw our plans for the structure, 70´ × 33´ with floor space for a postmortem theater that would seat the whole student body; this building would be adequate for research work all over the South Pacific, and serve as a teaching institution for our N.M.P.’s. In 1934 the Foundation granted the money for this improvement. On my return from a three weeks survey in New Zealand I had brought back plans, drawn up by their experts, so that we could include a biochemical laboratory in the plant. Dr. Macpherson, our newly acquired bacteriologist, had meanwhile decided with Mr. Campbell that another building must be added and that most of our old equipment must be junked--these items would come to around £2,500 more.

Dr. Heiser had stipulated that the Colony should bear the cost of equipment. Fiji’s wisely economical Chief Medical Officer, Dr. McGusty, thought that £500 would cover everything. Campbell and Macpherson finally convinced him that four times that amount would be needed, and they were right, I thought. I was more or less a referee in this argument between one Irishman and two Scotchmen. But we finally got our beautiful laboratory for research and for practical instruction in preventive medicine.

These facts and figures are just to show, in brief, the time and the effort it cost us all to bring things to anything like a satisfactory conclusion. In 1935 Mr. E. J. Theodore, an Australian mining man, gave £5,000 for a children’s ward in the Hospital. That was a generous gift. But in my absence somebody decided to place the addition right next to our Central Medical School, so near that the noise would interrupt lectures; the idea behind it was to create a nuisance that would compel us to move the School off the Memorial Hospital grounds.... The politicos had been playing with our plan ever since we began building.

It required the long arm of Sir Murchison Fletcher, Fiji’s fair-minded and progressive Governor, to scotch the plot. In 1936, when I went to London to confer with Sir Thomas Stanton, Britain’s Chief Medical Officer, Stanton must have heard from Fletcher, for he asked me if I was satisfied with the location of the children’s ward. I said, “No!” explosively, and Stanton cabled Fletcher not to do anything about that building until I got back and talked to him. Fletcher, aside from being my good friend, was an excellent bridge player and one of the best losers I have ever sat against--a rare virtue in the Colonies where winning any game from the Governor “isn’t done,” or is done at the risk of his friendship. It didn’t take long for Fletcher to settle the matter of that spite-building, and in our favor.

* * * * *

The third of the schemes which Montague and I had formulated succeeded “in effect” in 1927. That was the Unified Medical Service for the South Pacific. We got another half-loaf there; the other half was lost through Montague’s sense of honor, combined with the hen-minded jealousy of Fiji’s very little Colonial Secretary.

My ruling ambition, all the time I was down there, was to tighten up the loose and scattered medical authority on all the island groups. The only hope was to centralize power, or nothing would ever get done. We had centralized it in the Mokogai leper colony, an unqualified success. We had centralized it more and more in the Medical School, where the same professional education was being given to natives from the four comers of Oceania. Suva had grown to be the South Pacific’s medical center, and the one logical thing was to vest the whole public health authority in Fiji’s Chief Medical Officer.

That seemed simple, for the Colonial Governors were behind us. Then politics came in through the door and common sense flew out of the window. My plan was to put Fiji’s medical chief at the head of this wide service as Central Medical Authority with additional pay of £300--little enough, especially when you take into consideration his increased duties, which would involve personal visits of inspection to all the island groups. The Foundation agreed to pay fifty per cent of this sum for a period of four years.

All set to go. But were we? Dr. Montague’s honor chided him to a decision that he would accept no money that was not paid to him by the Empire that he served. Sir Eyre Hutson, then Governor, agreed that the High Commission Group would pay it all; but Montague objected that he did not deserve the extra stipend, as I would be doing practically all the work. We were stuck on that point. The annual pay of £300, added to Montague’s salary of £1,100, would have been an inducement sufficient to attract an excellent man. But to ask anything like a first-class physician to devote all his time and energy to the Unified Service for £1,000 a year was simply out of the question.

When Montague retired, I raised the question again, and struck an obstacle no larger than a gallstone, and quite as tormenting. It was the little bureaucratic mind of Fiji’s Colonial Secretary, who sat around all day worrying for fear that somebody in the Government would be making a halfpenny more than he did. You know the type. There’s one--at least--in every American county courthouse. Mr. Colonial Secretary sat brooding, “Ha! If that rule goes through, the C.M.O. will be topping my salary!”

Well, it didn’t go through. During my London visit in 1936, I discussed the deadlock with Sir Thomas Stanton. He said, “It’s a splendid idea, and it would take hardly any new machinery to put it over. It has my hearty approval.” But Fiji’s Colonial Secretary belonged to another branch of the service, over which Stanton had no power. Suva’s petty politician held a strategic corner where he could pop a pinch of sand into the wheel. Unfortunately all my suggestions have been pigeonholed.

In 1927 the Unified Medical Service had been voted in--on a small scale. It was devised to control the High Commission groups only; five in all. New Zealand, who had endorsed the idea from the first, was clamoring to come in. But our Colonial Secretary couldn’t see it that way. Somebody would be getting too much power, with the run of all those islands. Therefore New Zealand was out.... All so like a chapter from the history of New York’s Republican Party--or Democratic.

In spite of this I found myself appointed to the sonorous position of Deputy Central Medical Authority, under the Chief Medical Officer as Central Medical Authority, who controlled the health work of the five groups. As he had never visited all these groups, and I had, I was kept quite busy as his adviser. In 1934 the Medical Authority went into fuller effect, so that the Chief could make the rounds and study conditions at first hand. The other day Dr. McGusty, now Chief Medical Officer, wrote me that these visits had become a part of his routine.

Here is something from my files. It is headlined “Memorandum for Dr. McGusty.”

Based on personal experience with administrations in the South Seas since 1916, I regret to record that nowhere in the world have I found so large a percentage of doctors who discredited the medical profession and the various governments that employed them. Poor organization is another important factor.... I have been greatly interested in the efforts of (Governor) Sir Murchison Fletcher to bring about more effective aid. The plan to amalgamate the medical services of Tonga, Gilbert and Ellices, Samoa and other groups with Fiji is an important step to make the service more attractive and draw to it the type of man and woman who may be counted upon to bring about a vast improvement....

This document, in its original, was signed, “Victor G. Heiser.” When last heard of, however, the local Colonial Secretary was still pouring sand into the dynamo.

* * * * *

Facts, figures, politics--those were all long rows to hoe. Now back to my School--I still call it mine, although it has passed into other hands. When you watch young people grow in body and intelligence you seem to grow with them. Despite my work in other fields, I was very close to them all for ten years, marking their improvement and their deficiencies. We had to make allowances for the first batch that came to us when we opened for business; they had been sent rather helter-skelter, but did surprisingly well under the circumstances. Because there were far more applicants than we could handle, we stiffened the entrance examinations all along the line. No more sentimentality in the choosing, and no political favoritism. We opened with forty boys, but with increased accommodations we soon had fifty. When we considered taking care of sixty there was a nervous murmur in Suva: “Pretty soon we’ll be overrun with N.M.P.’s and not need the School any more.” That was ridiculous, for the increase in graduates was far behind Fiji’s increase in population. Not to mention the needs of other island groups, clamoring for more places. I was always afraid that the School would be voted out of existence, for some unreasonable reason like the one I have mentioned.

Australia never sent any students from Papua or New Guinea; they still maintained that these natives were too “backward.” I had worked in the jungle with Papuan and New Guinea boys, and I knew that they were no more backward than the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides, who were represented with us from the first. I still feel that Australia, with her tremendous problem, will never make any progress with native health until she establishes some institution similar to the one in Suva--which is out of the question now, because they haven’t the proper set-up. Sydney has an admirable school of tropical medicine and hygiene--for whites. It lacks both the clinical material and the stuff to cope with natives, and native conditions. Once in a great while this school will take in a black boy, merely to exhibit him as a curiosity.

Perhaps I am a co-educationalist; I have never settled that point with myself. But I feel very sure that no race advances very far unless its women advance with it. On the strength of that theory I made every effort to improve the condition of native student nurses. When the European nurses of the War Memorial moved to larger quarters I was glad to see the native girls housed in the abandoned building, a great improvement on what they had had.

Steps had been taken toward their advanced education. Before admission the young girls were given a course in the Methodist mission school, largely to teach them the rudiments of English. A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship sent a European nurse to the States to educate her in the modern theory and practice of training nurses. She returned in 1940 to open a school for native nurses, which would synchronize theoretical instruction with practical work in the hospital. Thus they would attain as high a rating in their profession as the N.M.P.’s in theirs. In outlying Fijian districts it was the policy to send out two native nurses with each N.M.P., to take care of two very important items: infant welfare and obstetrical cases.

I was pleased by the many marriages of these young women and our practitioners; they were usually happy. I fondly believed that two equal minds, mated in a common interest, would have all the advantages from the start. I was seldom disappointed. In the field the young wife was her husband’s busy partner. If she retired to her village to settle down and have babies, she brought modern methods into her neighborhood.

For many of the boys the English language was a stumbling block, especially at first. The Polynesian students both spoke and wrote it well; New Zealand had taken care of that. But the Melanesians were another matter; during the first years of the School they came to us with nothing better than a smattering of English. We corrected that in time by requiring a preliminary course in English for all candidates. Even then they were handicapped, and it was interesting to see the Melanesian patience with which they slowly struggled through the mystery of our grammar, until they could rival their Polynesian classmates.

As underclassmen the boys from the Cooks and Samoa, to whom English was a second language, worked on the inferiority complex of Fijians and Solomon Islanders. Then as years went on, we watched the Melanesian lads begin to pull up. No, sir, they weren’t going to let a lot of blithering Polynesians beat them at any game. They pored over books, they wrote reams, they spoke English among themselves and corrected one another’s compositions. Sir Maynard Hedstrom was offering a senior year gold medal for excellence in Public Health studies. The Polynesians were bright enough to win it more often than not, but as upperclassmen they had to put up a lively fight to outdo the Melanesians. The earnest and industrious black fellows clawed their way to the top, every hour of that four-year course.

Here’s a classroom scene, picturing the competitive spirit:--

[_Numa, a Cook Islander, is pointing at a skeleton and asking questions. He addresses Daniele, from the New Hebrides. Daniele is blue black, but not negroid. His eyes are circled with white and his white teeth glisten as he tries to concentrate on something he knows perfectly well, but can’t express in English. Or if he can express it, it will come hard. He has to mine it out. Daniele is the one I liked to put on the front seat and rag, knowing that he would agonize over the answer, but would finally get it right._

NUMA: How many bones in the human hand?

DANIELE: Eight. (_After an inner struggle._)

NUMA: Right! (_Daniele shows a thousand dollars’ worth of perfect teeth._)

[_Numa turns to Mu, who is not very bright for a Samoan._

NUMA: What bones are affected by a Colles’s fracture?

[_Mu groans and hesitates. He won’t give up, but Numa is tired of waiting, so he passes it to Tatoa, a dark, chunky Gilbertese who usually knows the answer._

TATOA: The radius ulna.

[_Sounds of approval from the whole class, and a rather shocked expression because Mu knows so little._

As an example of the steady, capable Fijian mind I think I should select Sowani, born a chief and mentally so well endowed that he became probably the outstanding one of the old School’s graduates. He served in the Gilbert and Ellices for some thirty years, and had been stationed there for a long time when I first met him. European doctors might come and go, but most of the Europeans wanted Sowani when they were sick. During the First World War he was made Acting Senior Medical Officer, the highest medical position in the Group. The Government appreciated his services by giving him a salary and allowance which permitted him a European standard of living. About the time I left Fiji he retired on a pension and was decorated by the King, quite a distinction for a native boy. When I made my survey he had completed his 20,000th operation for glands in the neck; his surgery was beautiful. Incoming Senior Medical Officers in the G. & E. were squeamish about being successors to the dark-skinned Practitioner. When patients called for him in preference to the white doctors, poor Sowani would remain the pattern of etiquette. “Mr. So-and-So had called for you, Doctor,” he would say; but when the white physician called, the patient was disappointed. One candid and sick Australian said, “Get out, you Son of Something! It’s Sowani I want.” Sowani was always to be counted on. He was a Fijian.

When I looked over the classes in our growing school, with no intent to play favorites--for I think I know the contrasting virtues of these two fine races--I could not help but see that in practical application the Fijian was far superior to the Samoan and the Cook Islander. The latter were brilliant in theory, but set a Fijian to reasoning a thing out for himself and his conclusions were more apt to be right, for the slow logic of his mind was almost Scottish. Principal Clunie and I watched the work of one plum-colored Fijian named Ravuki. Ravuki wasn’t worth his salt, at first, and was too lazy to put on his own _lavalava_. But in his senior year he developed a burst of speed that was quite astonishing. He fairly shone in the preventive medicine course. He blazed his way forward at such a pace that he threatened the performance of Alo, a Tongan boy who had been the School’s wonder and had walked away with all the prizes. In the final examination Ravuki seemed to have the edge on Alo. I was afraid that my affection for Fiji had biased my judgment, so I ordered a second examination and called in two European physicians to sit with me as referees. This time the Fiji boy was so good that he was still talking when the two other judges made up their minds that he had won hands down.

Ravuki became one of our most successful N.M.P.’s, and like most Fijians, almost tragically conscientious. Right after graduation he was sent out to the jungle to control a typhoid epidemic. In his work our prize pupil picked up a typhoid germ--and was so ashamed of it that he refused to visit the School, all the time I was there.

His upper-class rival, Alo, had a much more romantic story when he went into practice. Principal Clunie--and a “damn good man” as we say unofficially--was something of a prize winner himself. He started with the rank of tutor, and before he was through with it Australia gave him a gold medal for his work among native races. Well, if I unconsciously played favorites with Ravuki, Clunie was much inclined toward Alo, and had such faith in his ability that he gave him special favors in surgery. Alo got to be as good a surgeon as you could ask for anywhere.

He was so capable that the C.M.O. of Tonga let him do surgery there. When Alo was put in charge of the Haapai group, the medico of the Vavau group was much annoyed, for all his surgical work began going to Haapai. The young Practitioner had set eyes on a pretty girl of a noble Haapai family, and was in despair because his sweetheart’s parents objected to his humble lineage. All the traders and other Europeans were in sympathy with the Romeo and Juliet situation, and from one of the sympathizers Alo borrowed a sea-going launch and filled it with gas. This was on Sunday night when all good Christians were at church. Very conveniently the girl stepped out of church and into the boat. When her family came out to give chase they found that all the launches in the dock were out of commission. Somebody had drained off the gas and crippled the engines.

The job of selecting boys for our School was never an easy one. Different races and different environment had to be taken into consideration. In Fiji we advertised for candidates, and the competitive examinations included the three R’s, plus a certain knowledge of English. We had to compromise between the over-young and the over-old. Boys from fifteen to sixteen would graduate too young. Those of twenty had been out of school too long. In the matter of sending incompetents, I had to visit several island groups and lecture the Europeans on their duty to keep up the standard. This brought about the rigid tests we required, and with satisfactory results. Two visiting English medical professors pleased me by saying that our boys in daily recitation compared favorably with students of the same grade in the University of London’s Medical School.

The matter of habit and custom had to be attended to. We had to treat them all as equals, and strike some common denominator. The lads from the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides--before well educated half-castes came to us--had never eaten off a table or sat in a chair. Their _milieu_ was the floor. To give them credit in the eyes of the sophisticated Polynesians we must teach them certain rudimentary table manners. The Samoan and Cook Island boys, on the other hand, often showed up at the Grand Pacific Hotel’s dances in tail coats and stiff shirts.

This was something of a situation, in the School’s first years. Our Polynesians weren’t quite at ease with their low-browed associates. Then, to their credit, they began to see what it was all about, and things straightened out to a generally loyal corps spirit. We saw the danger of over-Europeanizing them; for they must not return to their homes and be discontented with island ways. We always put more stress on cleanly, sanitary habits than “fussy fixin’s” like tablecloths. Some of our students who had been too Europeanized by New Zealand before they came did not turn out so well. They knew so much already that they saw no necessity to work for what they got. It was another case of the hare and the tortoise; or, more properly, the hare became the tortoise and loafed on the job.

There was one of our Cook Islanders whose scholastic record was so unusual that the Administration there wanted to send him to London to complete his education, until I seriously objected. Such a precedent would fill the School with jealous discontent. The Cook Islands, I found later, had spoiled the boy so badly that he acquired vicious habits. He had enough character to reform himself, but not until his Practitionership was taken away from him.

His was an exceptional case.

* * * * *

My volunteer marriage bureau for Practitioners and native nurses became an unqualified success. In Fiji the quality of nurses was improving all the time, and before long an especially pretty one was a marked girl the minute she got her diploma. There have been many such marriages, and there would be still more if it were not for the native missionaries, who are cutting ahead of our boys. In Samoa, where the New Zealand system turns out Polynesian nurses who are sweet as sugar and smart as chain lightning, it is almost taken for granted that an N.M.P. will lead one to the altar, or make a brave try at it.

A cross-eyed Samoan named Tongamau, one of our brightest and best, married a native nurse. Both he and his young wife had specialized on infant feeding, so after the baby was born and had attained a few months’ growth Tongamau took him off breast-feeding and decided to bring him up entirely on native food. On that basis the Tongamaus worked out a whole formula of infant diet and composed careful instructions for preparing the ingredients, the change and weight of meals from week to week, and so on. Tongamau’s account of this successful experiment was first printed in our school publication _The Native Medical Practitioner_ and was widely reviewed in standard medical journals.

N.M.P. Okeseni also married a native nurse, and his article in the same publication reveals another Practitioner’s cleverness in the use of materials at hand. (Okeseni, by the way, is the Samoan pronunciation of “oxygen.”) Okeseni’s essay is entitled “Coconut Fiber Used in Ligatures,” and says, “... I was thinking ... that the fibers of the husk could be used instead of silkworm gut; for they are protected from any outside contamination....” He employed them successfully in many operations.

Any copy of the _Practitioner_ is worth looking over for interesting articles, written in businesslike professional English. “General Practice in Native Villages of Fiji,” by N.M.P. Ieni; “Foodstuffs in the Gilbert Islands,” by Third-Year Student Arobati Hicking; and there’s one called “Medical Work on Rennell Island” by N.M.P. Hughie Wheatley which I especially remember. He is the half-caste son of Norman Wheatley, the yacht-collector; and Hughie’s article tells how he adopted a four-months-old Rennellese baby whose mother was too feeble to nurse it; he saved the child with a diet of native food, somewhat after Tongamau’s formula.

I have watched the lives of all my boys, going out into the world. There was Tau Cowan, a half-British Cook Islander who married out of his profession. The girl he picked was a daughter of the King of Rarotonga; she had been beautifully educated in New Zealand, and has made him a good wife; Tau has become one of our outstanding graduates.

John Numa, on the other hand, found his wife in an insane asylum. She was far from crazy; in fact she was the native warder’s daughter. It was the warder’s reason that was endangered, for John’s courtship was so hot and heavy that I was called in, and a minister was immediately summoned. Some of the whites wanted to make a scandal out of John’s behavior--which was not scandalous according to the native code--but the couple went to the Cooks, where Mrs. Numa was a great social hit and became the successful rival of a lady who had long ruled the roost, a half-caste official wife. John Numa made an outstanding survey of the leper situation on Penrhyn.

* * * * *

We went in for athletics, of course, and a school band. Ielu Kuresa, a Samoan, organized the band, and as he conducted the popular tunes his pale scholar’s face was filled with the spiritual earnestness that finally led him to his death. Mesalume, the husky Fijian, was a Lau boy, and a contrast in character. We taught him to box, and when he was matched with Helu, a Tongan about twice his size, Mesalume put him out in the third round with a stiff one on the chin. This Fijian was a natural athlete, and the mainstay of our football team.

Ielu and Mesalume--contrasting types of contrasting races, they met the same end in the line of duty.

I have a sort of father’s affection for the natives of all the groups, but my admiration always turns back to the Fijian, a tower of strength, who never lets you down when you need him. I have seen so many of them go out into the field and do far more than their share, far better than their competitors,--dignified, ethical medical men.

Mesalume had great force of character, and an intellectual independence. Once I had to intervene when he got into an argument with an Australian nurse in the War Memorial. The delicate point was that Mesalume was right, but a colored boy was not supposed to have an opinion of his own. It took diplomacy to get him out of that mess. His reaction was very Scottish. “I still think so,” he told me in confidence.

Early in the School’s career we organized their teams, intramural affairs. True, it was not American football, but the more open Rugby. With the gusto of old gridiron experience, I saw that their play could be just as rough as ours. Men like Mesalume played for the glory of Fiji, for the Fijian is “unco’ proud” of his strength and skill. The only disharmony that ever arose in the Medical School was when the boys were choosing players; the Polynesians all ganged up against the Fijians, and vice versa, most definitely. When we crystallized into a unit we played against the Police Team, the Agricultural Department and about six other organizations. The pick of our boys got the “shield,” and some were chosen for the much coveted All Fiji Team. The chosen ones were Fijians, with no exception. And Mesalume, of course, was one of them.

In a series of inter-island battles the All Fijis met the famous New Zealand Maoris, who had bowled over about everything they had met, wherever Rugby was played. When Fiji met Maori it was a different story, “all blood and guts,” as an Australian critic expressed it. Our native boys had the advantage because they could kick barefoot--wonderful, how they could do it. They would come on the field in the regulation Rugby uniform, but after the first scrimmage the air would be full of shoes and stockings--the Fijians were rushing into battle as their cannibal grandsires did, with naked toes and tiger hearts. Then larger objects would come soaring out of the huddle; the bodies of Maoris, falling with a deadly plunk. In reprisal the flying Maoris would come back with a thud that was like a convulsion of nature. Their convulsion was more deadly in the last game of one series. We of Fiji were small-minded enough to say, “Well, let ’em have it this time. The officials were all New Zealanders, and they couldn’t let their champions go home again with nothing to show for it.”

Pride of race takes some queer turns. The one Negro in Fiji was a coal-black American who said, “Yassa, I was de first white man on the Mba River.” Pride of race was rampant in Peti, one of our Samoans, who never failed to boast of his American blood. His grandfather was a Negro sailor. On the strength of this distinction he won the hand of a well-born Fijian half-caste and took her back to Samoa. He was another one who did great credit to the School.

Our Fijian N.M.P. Eroni came from Lau, where the people are fair-skinned as Polynesians. When he worked alone on Rennell it was quite understandable that he should have gained the reputation of being the first “white man” who had penetrated half the island. Eroni’s success among white residents of the Solomons was so great that one lady wrote to a Sydney paper to thank him for saving her life and her sister’s. Such achievements are a commonplace in Fiji; Britishers in the back country argue about the attainments of an N.M.P. as we people at home discuss the family doctor.

* * * * *

One of these days, a Fijian basso will sing Otello’s role in the Metropolitan Opera House. If you have ever heard their deep, true voices you will agree with me. And if you have ever watched the action of their mighty thews on the playing field, you may well believe that a world’s heavyweight champion will also emerge from one of these dark islands. So far, however, they have much to learn. I read of one who went to London to meet a middleweight; but since the sports columns are not featuring him, I think he may not have done so well.

There is a gigantic fellow named Ratu Mbola who has degenerated into a half-Europeanized show-off, and throws out his chest when the boats come in in hopes that somebody will buy him a drink. To distinguish himself from the common herd he wears golf socks, and tennis shoes, and carries a fly-brush over his shoulder. “Bar Fly” is the name both he and his brush have earned.

In days gone by when Jack Johnson became champion of the world by defeating Tommy Burns in Australia there was rejoicing in every Fijian village. “One of our race has conquered!” was the cry. At that time Ratu Mbola was in his prime, a muscular chief of Mbau. On the way home from his defeat Tommy Burns stopped off at Suva and the hushed word went through the villages, “He’s running away from the black man who beat him!” So Ratu Mbola came forth as a local black hope, and challenged Mr. Burns. The evening of the fight the arena was packed with natives who thronged in to see a white man crumple under a volley of Fijian blows. But somehow Tommy didn’t crumple. He played cat and mouse for two rounds, pretending to be groggy from Mbola’s blows. In the first minute of the third he got tired of making false passes and floored Mbola with one heartbreaking uppercut. The referee did not render a decision. He didn’t have a chance. Mbola went through the ropes on all fours, and when next seen was running down the street, waving his boxing gloves.

* * * * *

All of this was quite unfair to the Fijian. It was like taking him to the piano and asking him to play a Bach fugue. Mesalume, as an athlete and professional man, was of a quite different pattern. We sent him to the New Hebrides, a field that would try the soul of any man. His reports came in; he was administering medicine in feverish jungles that had been beyond the reach of government officials. He was treating thousands for every disease under the tropical sun. Mr. Paton, always the stanch friend of my N.M.P.’s, took him in when he could and worried because the boy was so overworked.

Suddenly Mesalume’s reports stopped coming in. What had happened to him? Then a letter from Mr. Paton:--

... Mr. Siller, an Austrian, at South West Bay, Malekula, had blackwater fever. Dr. Mesalume treated him, and thought that he was on the mend. But Mr. Siller died next day. Dr. Mesalume contracted blackwater fever. Mr. Corlette was most kindly and attentive, but Dr. M. died. We are all deeply grieved. He was always so willing and keen to help.... I remember what pride he had in his Medical College, and I think that he would have increased its usefulness.... He earned the respect of the natives, so that the nearest village of Tatau had made a yam garden for him, without pay....

I went to the New Hebrides and found the place where he had died on duty, in a remote corner of the jungle. Mesalume, like all the men of Lau, had a passionate love of home, and this was so far away, so completely lonely.... Wild black faces had stared in at the window, wondering what he was saying in his delirious ramblings. Blackwater fever might have killed him; nobody really knew. I did the sentimental thing, I suppose, when I asked the Condominium Government to mark his grave. They put up a handsome concrete block with some of his history on it and the epitaph, “He Died in a Foreign Country.” Yes, he had given the best he had to save life, and when his time came he had died the death of a lonely dog. I had always thought that something like that would happen to me. But, God, here I am!

After this death we could have got a dozen to go up there and take his place. That’s the Fijian for you.

* * * * *

Ielu, his Samoan classmate, was another story, just as tragic. When he died on duty Dr. Heiser said it was one of the greatest losses imaginable for the Pacific. Ielu had worked for his own people with the fiery zeal of a priest. Through all his training in the Medical School he sweated his way upward with one ambition: to go home and bring help to his own Samoans. His tall, slender figure was forever bending over books, his luminous brown eyes drinking in the useful facts that would contribute to his future. He was monastic in his self-effacement. He should have been a lonely type, but underneath his detachment there was a warmth which made him popular with his classmates, and he became a leader in student activities.

Well, he went back to Samoa, and I was a bit nervous about what might happen to him. The Mau Rebellion was in full swing, and with his zealous temperament I was afraid that he would be in it up to the ears. Instead of that, he became the bellwether that kept the sane ones in line. He was there as a doctor, and never for a moment did he forget his duty to the Medical Administration. I have one vivid memory of Ielu in action. It was on a Samoan back porch, none too roomy at best, and the patient’s relatives were crowded around the table with the usual prayers and palaver. Dr. Hunt, the C.M.O., was with me to watch the operation, which was for an elephantoid scrotum. With people threatening to jog his elbow, with relatives yammering in his ear, Ielu handled his instruments with concentrated exactitude. When it was over and Ielu was washing up, Dr. Hunt said softly, “I wish I could get as good a job as that in the Apia Hospital.”

In March, 1936, an epidemic of influenza broke out in Upolu and Ielu came down with it. He was always working on the hairline of his strength; and with the emergency of the epidemic he was called from his sickbed to give aid. He put in days of long hours before his exhausted heart gave out. He died in Dr. Pat Monaghan’s arms. The Samoan obituaries did not need to tell me that they had lost a surgeon who was on his way to greatness. A Samoan student, writing about him in our _Native Medical Practitioner_, told the simple truth when he said, “He died in harness.... He was kind to the human race and all loved him.” The Samoan Administration established the Ielu Kuresa Gold Medal in his memory, and generously marked it _For the best Fijian of the year_. That was their gratitude to us for giving them Ielu.

* * * * *

The passing of these brave and devoted men still touches me so deeply that I seldom speak of them. Another one who died is still more tragic to me, for that death was not so long ago. Last summer a letter from Fiji came to me at my California home. It was from Malakai and told me that Vakatawa, who had been my assistant, had committed suicide. I couldn’t understand it. Vakatawa had stood like a rock and worked like a hero in every assignment I had given him. An expert on tuberculosis, he had examined all the chests in the Colos, and his reports were works of art in their scientific accuracy. He had his sense of humor, too. Once I sent him on a survey over a far corner of Viti Levu, and he came back with nothing but a tattered _lavalava_ and his boxes of equipment. It turned out that a fishing party from Mbengga had met him on the coast and stripped him of every rag he had on; they gutted his suitcases, relieved him of five pounds cash, left him naked on the beach. Pretty rough work, but it was an old-time custom when the people of Mbengga met the people of Lau, and vice versa. Vakatawa had fought so hard for his microscope and other scientific items that they decided to let him keep them. Quite unembittered, he had borrowed a _lavalava_ and come home smiling. When I said, “I guess I’ll go out and survey Mbengga myself,” Vakatawa chuckled, “Better not, Doctor. They’ll strip you too, because you’re with me.”

Those who knew him well said of Vakatawa, “He has the mind of a first-class white man.” That remark was a bit patronizing, but it expressed the general confidence in him. He had gone very deeply into the study of magic, and to his reports I owe a great deal of what I learned about _draunikau_ and the ritual of the seven curses.[7]

Did Vakatawa end his life as the result of some magic wish? That was out of the question. Time and again, he had outfaced the witch doctors with practical lessons in modern medicine, and he was too well-loved among the villages for anybody to put a curse on him. I have looked into Vakatawa’s case as best I could from where I sit and where he lies, and I think I know the reason why he locked himself in his room and put a razor blade across his wrists. Always a sensitive man, he had a sensitive man’s high temper, which his racial courtesy seldom allowed to get the better of him. But that hot temper got him into some sort of brawl, and after it was over he felt that he had disgraced himself and had not lived up to his responsibilities as a Practitioner. He was inordinately proud of his profession, and when his brooding mind told him that he had let the School down, he decided that there was no use living any longer.

I give Vakatawa an honored place among those who died in the line of duty.

* * * * *

Our little School has grown, and is growing. My constant hope is that its roots have gone so deep into the soil of Fiji that no political whim or Anglo-Saxon prejudice shall ever blast it in some clumsy attempt at transplanting. Already we have sent out well over a hundred competent medical men; not many, perhaps, in the millions of ocean miles which their work must cover. But their efficiency shows in the general improvement in health wherever they have operated.

To the outsider it may seem a bit incredible that the descendants of cannibals--and the majority of them are just that--should be devoting their young talents to saving life, where their ancestors were bent on destroying it. But to me the protean change is a very logical thing. The cannibals were anatomists, and their gruesome habits made them familiar with the set-up of the human body. Just as Roman surgeons studied the victims dragged from the arena, so the wiser of the anthropophagi observed and learned. Neither ways were pretty roads to knowledge, but strange things have happened in the Martyrdom of Man.

As I lectured the students in the postmortem theater I often paused in interest at the skill of this one and that, plying the knife. No one of them had ever seen cannibalism in practice; but ancestral voices, turned friendly and benevolent, seemed to be telling them what to do.

I have a photograph which I took down in Santa Ana, Solomon Islands. It is of a brown woman, practically nude, with shark’s teeth around her neck and a long clam-hinge sticking through her nose. I think I’ve told you how I took this picture of Mrs. Kuper, the trader’s wife. She was holding up one small, naked boy, and another stood at her side. I have another picture; it is of a good-looking boy, very collegiate in a tweed suit and striped necktie. He would be hard to recognize as the naked child in the first picture.

Geoffrey Kuper’s father was sufficiently well-to-do to send him for study in New Zealand. He graduated from our Central Medical, class of ’38, and Sydney gave him a prize “for the most distinguished scholar of the year.” Before he took up his duties as N.M.P. in the Solomons, he dropped in on his old school-friends in Auckland. A reporter got hold of him and Geoffrey told of the first scholastic prize he ever received, an honorary belt which his mother’s tribe gave him as an introduction to manhood. It was a hard initiation. For six months he had stayed in the ceremonial house, among the ancestral canoes and family skulls. Priests came to his pagan retreat to instruct him in tribal duties, which included house-building and the preparing of a yam and dalo garden.

Then he was put in a fishing canoe where the priests angled until they caught a great bonito. It was the boy’s task to wrestle with the fish and hold it until it ceased to flap. Boy and fish were taken to the pagan altar where priests squeezed the bonito’s gills and let drops of blood fall into the initiate’s mouth. At the end of the long ceremony Geoffrey was taken to a high tower and allowed to throw food down to the admiring populace. “That part was fun,” he said.

A graduate Practitioner, Geoffrey had been away from his mother’s tribe so long that he had forgotten her inherited language. But his father, a very progressive European, wanted his son to have the best of our civilization. He was right, I think, for Geoffrey is doing fine work in the Solomons.

## CHAPTER VI

IN RETROSPECT

As the Pacific’s halfway house, Suva has become more and more of a stopping-off place for the great and the near-great. Royalty, inquiring novelists and scientific bigwigs have come in the regular way, by sea. The first visitor from the sky was Kingsford-Smith, and because he must have trees cut down from the parade ground to make a safe landing, Suva was in a dither. The residents loved those trees so fondly that they didn’t start to fell them until after they learned that the aviator’s plane was well on its way from Hawaii. Then down they came, and when the giant bird roared in it was probably the high moment in Fijian history.

English princes and royal dukes weren’t exactly a commonplace. Their comings and goings threw the colony into a patriotic frenzy. Before the then Prince of Wales decided on “the woman I love” Suva all but gave him a coronation. The Duke of Gloucester’s visit in 1935 caused a social upheaval among the natives, who were preparing a colossal dance in his honor. Many of the boys, in imitation of European styles, had been cutting off their great bundles of hair. The master of ceremonies gave it out that no dancer would be eligible unless he wore the high, round hairdress of classic Fiji. One of the high chiefs of Mbau, whose hereditary privilege it was to act as cupbearer in the kava ceremony, defied the rule and came to the dance in his college cut. He was incontinently rejected. The Duke had two Scotland Yard men with him, but that didn’t interfere with his efforts to be democratic. He was especially fond of the bacon-and-egg parties common in young Suva society after the ball; these were at about dawn, when the Duke’s watch-dog equerry was sound asleep. After many stiff-collar affairs in the larger colonies Gloucester found his release, I think, in Suva’s simple, kindly hospitality.

His voyage was bothered, however, by people who were less considerate of royal democracy. As _H.M.S. Australia_ was leaving Samoa, the little yacht _Seth Parker_, owned by an enterprising radio star, sent out an S O S. When the _Australia_ came about for rescue work the yacht announced: “Open your wireless set and you can hear a broadcast all over the U. S., saying that the Duke of Gloucester has come to the rescue of the _Seth Parker_.” Another coy one followed: “Won’t the Duke come up on the bridge so that we can take his picture?” Gloucester’s sulphuric words must have raised a storm, for an hour or so after the royal cruiser went her way a hurricane blew up, and the battered _Seth Parker_ sent out another S O S, a real one this time. Dutifully the _Australia_ turned back again, and stood by for two days until a vessel from Pago Pago came and picked up the offensive little yacht.

Before the present King and Queen of England even dreamed of wearing crowns they paid us a visit as Duke and Duchess of York. We met them on two occasions, an official ball at Government House and a more informal affair in the Grand Pacific’s ballroom. The Duke of York said that his father had visited Fiji and had drunk the kava which they “spit in the bowl.” So that party with old Thakombau was family history. The Duchess was what we Americans call a “nice girl,” and her poise never seemed to get in the way of her good humor. I liked the way she handled a young cadet, whom the occasion and the champagne had somewhat exhilarated. It was contrary to custom, but he wanted to win a bet when he asked her for a dance. She said, “Sorry, my card’s full.” Well, so was the young cadet; he took another drink and asked her again. Again she was sorry. Next afternoon he woke with a headache and moaned, “Lord, what did I do?” His pals were all too ready to tell him, and with flights of imagination. He prepared himself to be cashiered, but nothing happened. It would be romantic to say that the Duchess intervened in his behalf. I doubt if she remembered his name.

When the School was well started and I could spend more of my time in Suva’s civilized environment I occupied a crossroads position where I met many, going and coming. Earl and Lady Beatty were guests at Sir Harry Luke’s dinner party, and I was much flattered when I found that the Earl knew quite a lot about the School. This contact was more impressive, perhaps, but less engaging than the one I made when the yacht _Caroline_ came in and her owner asked me to come aboard with some medical advice. The owner was Douglas Fairbanks, and the tall, blond lady with arched eyebrows was his future wife, Lady Ashley. I remember him as a charming, unassuming host with the finest yacht I have ever visited--the _Zaca_ not excepted. It was air-conditioned, so that the temperature in a dozen luxurious staterooms could be lowered to taste. Fairbanks said that he slept under blankets every night in the tropics. Suva, always broad-minded about the holy bond, made quite a fuss over them, and Ratu Sukuna gave them a native dance. “Doug” wanted me to go with him on a voyage to Singapore, but I had other irons in the fire.

Early in 1938 (I think it was) I was off on field work when somebody tapped on the screen porch of our house and Eloisa went out to see who it was. A beefy gentleman looked through the wire and wanted to know if Dr. Lambert was home. No, said Eloisa, but wouldn’t he come in? “My name’s Morgan,” he said, and stayed for tea. It didn’t require a signed photograph for Eloisa to recognize him as J. P. Morgan. In fact I had rather expected him one of these days, as Heiser had written me, saying that when Mr. Morgan showed up I might outline a trip for him through the islands. He stayed for a couple of hours, talking about Fiji and the School and our work in the Pacific.

Later I couldn’t resist the temptation of writing him a letter, which began something like this:--

Dear Mr. Morgan:--

For years my brother Fred and I have had a standing family joke. When either of us started on a trip we would say to the other, “If J. P. Morgan calls up before I’m back, tell him I won’t sell under fifty.” I’m afraid you’ve turned the tables on us....

Such meetings, even if they were only by proxy, made bright passages in the doctor’s notebook.

One of life’s greatest moments for me was Richard Crooks’s concert in Suva, given for the benefit of our School’s athletic fund. I cherish this program among my fondest possessions, for on the cover it says: “RECITAL: RICHARD CROOKS.... IMPRESARIO: DR. S. M. LAMBERT.” I wasn’t chosen for my musical genius; somebody argued that as it was for the School, and as I had wangled Mr. Crooks into the generous gift of his voice, I ought to furnish the American ballyhoo for an American singer. For a day I knew how Gatti-Casazza must have felt all the time.

Suva had a right to be music-hungry, for Crooks was only the second opera star who had stayed there long enough to sing, and instrumental performers had fought shy of us. Our single connection with the musical great was our former Government printer, Johann Sebastian Bach, inheritor of an illustrious name. When Paderewski came to Suva he didn’t play his piano; in fact he just got off the boat and got on again. In Suva royal visitors have ceased to be a novelty. But Richard Crooks was of the Metropolitan Opera!

When the job of taking care of him fell to me I rather dreaded it, fearing that I had to deal with some sort of seraph. However, he turned out to be much more human than many grocers I have known. Lunching with us, he said he never ate much before concerts; but when Eloisa’s special crab casserole came on he helped himself twice and sighed, “That’s the best crab I ever ate.” Watching him eat, I was afraid that his voice would suddenly go back on him. When I brought him to my home from his hotel my Buick had had a puncture--and singers are highly sensitized. It didn’t seem to faze him. Then we were off for the concert hall--and the Buick had another puncture. I think about that time he was telling me that the Firestone Tire people were paying him $3,000 a broadcast. Apropos of punctures, perhaps.

The seraph sang; Handel, Haydn, Stradella, Moszkowski--I remember the composers, for I still keep that program. While Suva sat spellbound he topped the performance with Lehar’s “Yours Is My Heart Alone,” and the impresario was too emotionally touched to count the profits, which turned out to be something over £100. Many have been generous to our School, but his generosity came in the form of beauty, which made it doubly precious. He sang for me again in 1939, on his way to Sydney. When he repeated “Yours Is My Heart Alone” I was glad that my eyes were hidden behind tinted spectacles. That was my swan song in Fiji; I was going away in a few weeks.

* * * * *

A misunderstanding prevented my visiting Tahiti, which would have fascinated me as a study of what not to do with a native people. The French are notoriously poor health administrators, and Tahiti has long been a model example of disease breeding among a dwindling population. I know nothing about it at first hand, but from what I have been told there is little hope for the remaining Polynesians there.

Perhaps this sounds pessimistic. The public health worker has often been called the Cinderella of the medical profession; he must get used to adversity, and his story too often ends before Prince Charming comes along. I have no complaint to make on that score. The work has never been drudgery, and the long waits for results have been rewarded according to my personal merits--and demerits. In medicine there is no such thing as the Perfect Result. We leave that to the Pelmanites.

I am no Cinderella, but I am worried because my readers may think of me as a sort of medical Cassandra, moaning doom for the Pacific peoples. If that is your impression, I feel that I must say a word to change your minds before I leave you.

Too many cocksure lecturers and writers have made a free-handed flourish from Borneo to Tahiti and proclaimed, “The people are dying off.” And they have referred to the main killers--alcohol; imported disease; food and clothing; the wreckage of their ancient habits with no wholesome and attractive substitutes to take their place.

All too true of the past, and mildly true of the present. I have told you how I watched the New Hebrides decline under a vicious form of colonial government, and how Rennell Island was blighted for lack of protection; and how the natives of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea, must inevitably fall off in numbers and weaken in physique unless their case is handled with more honesty and intelligence than the home Government has seen fit to give it.

All this is on the dark side of the canvas. Let’s look at the brighter picture. I quote myself, from an article in the _Pacific Island Monthly_:--“The problem of depopulation of natives in the Pacific need no longer exist. The formula for turning declining into increasing populations has been devised and put into operation by British Administrations in Central Polynesia, in Polynesian New Zealand, in British Micronesia (the Gilberts), and in Melanesian Fiji. American Samoans are increasing under the operation of the same general formula.”

THE FORMULA: Native doctors and nurses to care for current illnesses and educate their people in the prevention of disease, especially in soil sanitation and pure water supplies; attention to infant and child welfare; reliable census-taking to check results--all under the supervision of competent European physicians and nurses. Add to this a careful study of native customs on the part of civil administrations, so that they may learn respect for the more wholesome of the folk ways that have given life’s zest to the people.

Where this formula has been applied native populations have increased, and are continuing to increase. It has only failed where it has been pigeonholed by incompetents.

The work down there is unfinished, and may remain so until the horn of Judgment awakes some of the living dead. I have been only a very minor spoke in the Rockefeller Foundation’s great wheel of health, which moves with the Earth’s axis. I should like to see the task completed over that 6,000,000 square miles of island-sprinkled sea where I made the doctor’s rounds; but I know that Methuselah couldn’t live long enough to supervise that task. I only know that wherever we worked with progressive governments the vital statistics began to swing upward, however slowly and whatever the temporary setbacks. I have spoken little of the Maoris of New Zealand, for my only work there was concerned in making surveys. But as an example of the above formula, well carried out, let me say that the Maoris of New Zealand have almost doubled their numbers in twenty years. The Cook Islands have done fully as well. And there’s Western Samoa, which has outlived the filthy horrors of the Mau Rebellion, and has come back. The Fijians, too, have risen from the epidemic of 1918, which threatened their extinction. In the black islands of the Solomons nobody knows whether the birth rate is keeping pace with the mortality. We have treated these people on a grand scale and results are being shown in the generally improved condition of plantation labor; tuberculosis is still the reigning terror, and that’s a difficult enemy to cope with. In the Gilbert Islands the brown Micronesians are most certainly reviving; our N.M.P.’s have been working there for years.

Nineteen years ago, when I voyaged hurriedly through the Solomons on the way to my destiny in Fiji, I was already experienced enough to draw my fixed conclusion: Depopulation follows the visitor. The immortal Captain Cook guessed this over a hundred and fifty years ago. A century ago keen observers like George Turner marked the locust swarm of imported diseases, eating their way along the islands. But later, investigators broached a comfortable theory that the natives had begun to die off before the white man came. Nonsense. White men, in the malign form of looters and slavers, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese, were there two hundred and fifty years before Cook came.

When I first saw the Solomon Islands they served as a type example. In the northwest islands near New Guinea, where shipping, trading, recruiting and missionizing were plentiful, the disease rate was high. As we traveled to the southeast into areas less accessible to visitors the so-called “native diseases” steadily diminished. Twelve years later showed me the change: The Southeast was sick from tuberculosis, dysentery, pneumonia and venereal, which strangers had carried there and spread among non-immune natives. I have mentioned the incidence of these seemingly unaccountable plagues, burning like fire in dry grass. The old-time voyagers, who did their share to spread infection, have noted the evil effects. These things are still going on in the remote corners of the Pacific.

The recruiting of contract labor was once a curse, but more enlightened government has turned it into something of a blessing; wise labor laws have made it so that a worker usually leaves the plantation with his health better than when he came. The New Hebrides, where French planters serve drink, drugs and firearms to their native helpers, is an exception.

There is a school of thought which points to the “decay of custom” as depopulation’s main cause. The native has ceased to take interest in a warrior’s physical well-being. The missions have discouraged those picturesque ancient ceremonials which were the background of tribal life. The Rivers Theory argues that boredom creates a psychic depression which actually decreases reproductive power; that it also encourages abortion and infanticide amidst the cry, “Why grow slaves for another race?” Undoubtedly this theory works out in some regions I have seen, where Christianity has been an ineffective substitute for the war club and the tribal dance. The warrior grows flabby. His wife, a squaw, slaves on.

But the main cause of depopulation in the Pacific, let me repeat, _is the introduction of diseases to which the natives have no immunity_. Even in the heart of Papua, where the Fathers of the Sacred Heart performed practical miracles among ferocious mountain cannibals a hundred miles from the coastline, working a non-malarious soil that produced bountiful nourishment, I heard the death-knell. I can’t forget how I heard Father Fastre’s bemused voice speaking under the moon: “Doctor, when I first came here I could stand at my doorway and see ten thousand people.” Where had they gone? The nearest village was four hours away, and from where he gazed the good priest saw only moonlit ghosts.

Cannibalism and head-hunting were rough blessings, because they quarantined tribe against tribe. Cannibalism is a shocking habit, as Herman Melville, if I remember correctly, pointed out, adding, “I ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so far exceeds in barbarity that custom [hanging, drawing and quartering, perhaps] which only a few years since was practiced in enlightened England?” I am not pro-cannibal, but medically speaking I can see how well it worked to keep the other fellow in his place.

* * * * *

And what of it? asks Mr. Homebody as he walks toward the old parking lot off Main Street. How in the world will it affect me or the boys around American Legion Hall if those sun-kissed yahoos on the Isle of Gumbo do happen to curl up and die? Head-hunters are all right in side-shows, but they don’t affect business on Main Street.

Main Street is the very point, Mr. Homebody. I once told you how far-off contagions might someday travel to your front door and disturb your parochial calm. But here’s another side of it--something which might upset your business, because you’re a partner in world business, whether you know it or not.

The European seized the Pacific, and that’s an old story. In spite of the horrible example of bombing and burning which European civilization is showing today to the uncivilized, the settled holdings of various national governments over a quarter of the globe’s surface, the Pacific, must remain _in statu quo_. Unless it does, you will hear something you will not like, Mr. Homebody. The _status quo_ over that vast empire is all-important, and it cannot be maintained unless the white man takes up his burden and carries it through.

Why? Because tropical products have become world business. The lands down there, including immense Australia, vast New Guinea and big New Zealand, make up a territory comparable in size to our Western Hemisphere. The failure of mines, plantations and fisheries on one side of our quarrelsome Earth cannot fail to react banefully on the other side. Copra, hemp, cotton, sugar, gold, spices, fruits, pearls, innumerable varieties of oils and drugs which have been discovered, or will be, are only items among the tropical products which have entered the international market. They are burdening ships in enormous quantities, and the tonnage will grow greater, unless....

If native labor fails, Oceania’s production will fail. Healthy, contented native labor is indispensable to the producer. The importation of Asiatics will not answer the question. Regard the Fiji Government’s experiment with East Indians, who are today outbreeding the Fijian, and have brought him no benefits. Observe Japan’s taking-over of the Marshall Islands, and the subsequent infiltration of yellow men all over the Pacific. These strangers came because the native was too sick to work the land. The oriental’s peaceful penetration is already doing mischief down there; he brought with him a set of political and social ideas which inevitably hook up with his homeland prejudices, and extend into every intrigue of _Weltpolitik_. He has nothing in common with the simple islander whom he is pushing aside.

What will come of it all? Supply and demand are cruel partners. The planter must work his plantation, the shipper fill his ships; and if there is not enough healthy native labor to do the work, then send away to Shanghai or Bombay for what you can get. These fellows may not last long, either, but they will stay long enough to disturb the economic balance. South Sea industry will grow anemic, an easy prey to whatever Axis happens to be grinding blood out of the human race.

That, Mr. Homebody, will mean another war; and even if you are a year or two too old for military service, your Main Street will rumble with the jar of an economic balance overthrown. Before that breaks right in front of your office building, maybe you will agree with the Rockefeller Foundation’s theory of economics. Keep the native alive, restore his health, give him enough European knowledge to fend him against the evils of Europe, then he will go happily ahead cultivating the soil for the world and himself.

* * * * *

Perhaps in these pages I have dwelt too much on the savagery of certain backward tribes. Have I said enough about the self-sufficing social pattern which these so-called barbarians had built around themselves before the pale invader came to fuddle them? Have I said enough of the ideal family life and wise social laws that prevailed over old Polynesia? It needed no British or American schoolmaster to teach them the kindness and neighborly generosity that are the aim of higher civilization. They had these things, which are at the heart of social happiness.

Definitely, I am not a Cassandra. The islander, I feel, will survive to achieve great things in a brave new world. Already he has contributed to science and statecraft, and in some cases has dominated in a business world which yesterday was a closed book to him. He will make his way in the arts, literature, music, painting. He had been misled and fooled for generations, but his intellect is overcoming an inferiority complex which the pale overlord once foisted on him. Island governments have become humane and understanding, more missionaries are letting fanaticism yield to common sense. Utopia is always a long way off, but I’ll risk a prophecy. Guide the native with sympathetic intelligence, and the time will come when he will cease to be our pupil. He will become our teacher. Not in the science of war, God deliver us, but in the more difficult art of living together in harmony and peace.

* * * * *

So the Lamberts have bought a house in California. Eloisa tells me that she will soon have the best rose garden in Walnut Creek. We are a bit too far inland to see the Pacific; but I can feel it, over in the west. Fiji doesn’t seem so far away.

THE END

INDEX

Abel, Victor, editor _Pacific Age_, 139, 140

Admiralty Group, 86

Ahuia, 20, 22, 33-36, 38, 44, 52, 56, 72

Aitutaki, 257, 263, 265

Antunez, Col., 8

Aseida, Toschio, 316, 344

Ashford, Col. Bailey K., 12

Ashley, Capt., 286, 287, 311, 323, 324

Atchin, 223, 227, 239

Atiu, 261, 262

Babcock, Dr., 5

Bach, Bill, 166

Bamus, 63

Barber, Dr. Marshall, 85

Barley, J. C., 106, 115, 323, 326, 327, 332, 339, 355

Beach, Byron, 67, 71, 78, 79, 82, 83, 88, 101-104

Beatty, Earl and Lady, 378

Bell, Skipper, 86, 87

Bellamy, Dr., 70

Bellona Island, 308-310, 347-353

Bertie, Mr., 18

Big Nambas, 222, 226, 227, 231

Bioto, 45, 46

Blackwater fever, 75

Boera, 28, 29

Boismenu, Bishop, 40

Boyd, Dr., 85

British High Commission, rule of, 115-117

Bryan, William Jennings, 9

Buck, Dr. Peter, 251, 355

Buia, 326, 330, 334. _See also_ Rennell Island

Bunting, Bob, 67

Bushman’s Bay, 229, 232, 233, 246

Buxton, Dr. P. T., 220, 233, 234

Campbell, John, 359

Cannon, Dr. Walter B., quoted, 148-150

Carbon tetrachloride, Hall experiments, 134-136; Lambert experiments, 136-144

Carrol, Sir James, 250

Carson, Skipper Billy, 71

Central Medical School (Suva), opening, 269-276; expansion, 357-360; work of, 362-376

Chabot, Father, 50, 51

Chaulmoogra oil, for leprosy, 99, 263

Chenopodium, administering, 95, 96; intramuscular and intravenous injections, 99, 100; a disappointment, 112

Clarence, Duke of, in Fiji, 154-156

Connelly, Mr., 39, 43-49, 52

Cook, Capt., 382; quoted, 29

Cook Islands, 249-251, 382; medical survey of, 252-269

Corlette, Ewan, 239, 240

Corney, Dr., 275

Crichlow, Dr., his survey of Rennell, 356

Crocker, Templeton, 284, 285, 291, 296, 297, 302, 307, 311-316, 318, 321-323, 326, 327, 330, 332, 337-339, 343, 344, 349, 352

Crooks, Richard, 379, 380

Crosby, Commander Paul, 218

D’Arbousier, M., 223

Darling, Dr. S. T., 304, 305

Deck, Dr. Northcote, 286, 293, 306, 350

Deva Deva, 51-56

Dilava mission station, 50, 51, 54

Dilkusa Mission, 139

Dopima, 61-63

Duffs, the, 318

Dysentery, epidemics of, 52

Egan, Martin, 128, 157, 158

Ehrlich, Professor, 30

Elephantiasis, 84; manifestation, 168, 169; in Ellice group, 169, 170

Ellice Islands, 164, 165, 170, 171, 177-180; elephantiasis in, 169, 170; leprosy in, 176

Ellison, Dr. E. P., 251, 253, 266

Fairbanks, Douglas, 378, 379

Fastre, Father, 54-56, 383

Fiji, 114-117; racial decline, 125-127; natives, 128-130; sanitation, 131-133. _See also_ Suva

Fijians, 382; characteristics of, 128-130

Finney, Dr. Mac, 169

Fleming, F. J., 246

Fletcher, Sir Murchison, 360, 362

Fooks, Kenny, 60-62, 82, 83

Fosdick, Raymond, Lambert interview with, 279-283

Fox, Dr., of Melanesian Mission, 324, 325

Fulton, George, 65, 66, 105, 106, 356

Funafuti, 170

Gaile, 59, 60, 86

George, Prince, in Fiji, 154-156

Gilbert Islands, 164-166, 171, 177-180, 382; elephantiasis in, 170; leprosy in, 176

Gloucester, Duke of, 377, 378

Goaribaris, 20, 21, 31, 60-62

Gonorrhea, in Rarotonga, 254-256; on Rennell Island, 343

Gorgas, Gen., 4

Graciosa Bay, 107

Grimble, Arthur, 177

Hall, Dr. Maurice C., 100, 140, 231; experiments with carbon tetrachloride, 134, 135, 137, 142-144

Halloran, Lieut. Comm. P. J., 220

Hamlin, Hannibal, 286-291, 294-300, 307, 308

Hedstrom, Sir Maynard, 117, 120, 270, 358, 364

Heinrich, Brother, 41, 42, 57, 58

Heiser, Dr. Victor G., 3, 4, 10, 11, 16, 124, 200, 266, 273, 359, 373; his treatment of leprosy, 99, 263; in Fiji, 131; memorandum to McGusty, 362

Hermit Islands, 86

Hetherington, Dr., 323, 330

Hillman, Capt. Teddy, 14, 38

Hombrom Bluff, 23

Honman, Col., 74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 91, 92, 95-99

Hookworm, history and treatment, 11-13, 342; in Papua, 16-18; in Ninigo group, 84; in pigs, 137n., 183; in Tonga, 182, 183; in New Hebrides, 226; tetrachlorethylene treatment, 231, 232. _See also_ Carbon tetrachloride; Chenopodium

Hughes, Billy, Prime Minister, 74, 78-80

Hutson, Sir Eyre, 124, 157, 211, 270, 271, 361

Hynes, Dr. John B., 316, 323, 341

Irwin, Wallace, 157

Jerope, interpreter, 83, 84, 87-89, 92

Jewel, Mr., 18

Kaimare Houses, 62, 63

Kendrick, Chris, 14, 20, 24, 31, 32, 77, 115, 131-133, 137; his reports, 82, 83

Kingsford-Smith, at Suva, 377

Kirschbaum, Father, 102

Koch, Dr. Robert, 75

Koiaris, 24

Kungava Bay, 288, 294, 335

Kuni people, 49-53

Kuper, Geoffrey, 324, 376

Kuria, 173-176

Lakatoi, 60

Lala, Ratu, 159-161

Lambert, Fred, 9

Lambert, Dr. S. M., interview with Heiser, 3, 4; education, 5-7; failing eyesight, 6, 7; Mexican experiences, 7-9; in North Queensland, 10, 11; first survey of Papua, 16-18; statistics of Papua survey, 72, 73; hookworm lecture, 92-94; mileage for New Guinea campaign, 102; summary of South Sea experience, 110-112; collection of hurricanes, 113, 114; joins British Medical Association, 125; Foundation’s attitude toward, 273; interview with Fosdick, 279-283; formula for checking population decrease, 381; summary of work in Pacific, 382-386

Lambert, Mrs. S. M., 72, 76, 101-103, 113, 269, 285, 313, 314, 356, 379, 386. _See also_ Tays, Eloisa

Lambert family, 5

Leprosy, cure and prevention, 99, 111; in G and E group, 176; on Cook Islands, 262-268; Melanesian Mission colony, 325, 328, 329. _See also_ Mokogai

Lewis, Meade, 8, 9

Ligouri, Mother, 41

Little Nambas, 226, 231

Loudon, Mr., 18

McAlpin, Archie, 20, 22-26

McErlane, W. J., 83

Macgregor, Dr. Gordon, 316, 318, 325, 336, 340, 341, 344-347, 349-351

Macgregor, Sir William, 275

McGusty, Dr., 125, 355, 359, 362

Macpherson, Dr., 359

Mafulu, 54, 55

Magdalena, Sister, 41

Magic. _See_ Witchcraft

Malaita, 281, 282, 316, 325, 327-334

Malakai, Native Practitioner, 120-123, 131, 164, 166, 222, 233, 234, 239, 253, 316, 319, 321, 326, 339, 344

Malaria, precautions against, 64, 75; in Ninigo group, 84; in the Americas, 84, 85

Malekula, 222-232, 236, 239, 240, 242, 246

Malo, 224

Manus, 86

Maoris, of New Zealand, 249-252, 382

Mariner, his _Tonga Islands_ quoted, 195-197

Marlow, Dr. Frank W., 6, 7

Matevan Plantation, 232, 246

Mathews, Dr., 16

Mauke, 257, 259-261

Mau Rebellion, 202, 204-206, 211-214, 218, 219

Melanesian Mission, in Sikiana, 241, 242, 318-321; its leper establishment, 325, 328, 329

Mexico, Lambert’s experiences in, 7-9

Minty, Dr., 181, 182

Mission of the Sacred Heart, 39-42

Missionaries, Pacific, 68, 69, 241-244

Mohawk Bay, 107, 108, 333, 334

Mokogai, leper colony, 119, 120, 266-269, 358, 360

Mondos, 56, 57

Montague, Dr. Aubrey, 118-120, 125, 135, 138, 139, 253, 267-269, 271, 275, 283, 358, 360, 361

Morgan, J. P., 379

Morin, Father, 56

Motu, characteristics, 17, 60

Mungiki. _See_ Bellona

Murdock, District Commissioner, 173-175

Murray, Gov., of Papua, 15-17

Mutilation, native dread of, 97, 98

Nambas. _See_ Big Nambas; Little Nambas

Neosalvarsan, cost of, 116, 117

Nesbitt, Tom, 18

New Britain, 87, 88

New Guinea, 74; medical service, 76, 77; military administration, 77-79, 86; German planters, 78, 79; abuses in, 81

New Hanover Group, 86, 87

New Hebrides, 222-248, 383; pig ceremonies, 222, 223, 228-230

New Zealand, Maoris of, 249-252

Ngata, Sir Apirana, 250, 251

Nicholson, Dr., 236

Ninigo, 84, 85

North Queensland, 10, 11

Nukualofa, royal operation at, 181, 182; stone relics, 192, 193

Obregón, Gen., 8

Okaka, 54

Onua, 242-244

Orr brothers, 38, 39, 43, 46

Paganism, Polynesian symbols of, 193

Pago Pago. _See_ Samoa, American

Palmerston Island, 265, 266

Papua, 3, 4, 10, 13; arrival at, 14, 15; organizing work, 15-20; hookworm in, 16-18; sanitation, 21; ghosts, 22-26; first surveys of disease, 27-36; a trip to the interior, 37-58; contrasts, 59-72; statistics of survey, 72, 73

Parker, Pastor, 225-227

Paton, Rev. Frederick J., 242-244, 246, 247, 372

Peletier, M., 244, 245

Penrhyn Island, 262, 263

Phelps, Commander, 220

Pidgin English, 90-94

Pig ceremonies, in New Hebrides, 222, 223, 228-230

Pomare, Sir Maui, 251-254, 259, 262-264, 267-269

Pope, Ratu, story of, 156-159

Popolo Mission, 54-56

Port Moresby, 10, 14-18

Purari Delta, 60-64

Quai, 35, 38, 56

Quaibaita, leper colony, 328, 329

“Queen Emma’s Kingdom,” 87

Rabaul, 75, 76

Rarotonga, 253-256

Reef Island, 107

Rennell Island, 65, 66, 105, 106, 281, 284-308, 310-313, 335-356; racial origins, 341; health survey, 342, 343

Richardson, Maj. Gen. Sir George, 192, 201-204, 210, 211, 213

Ritchie, Dr. T. Russell, 204, 205

Rivers, W. H. R., his _History of Melanesian Society_, 225n.

Rockefeller, John D., 247, 248; a pidgin portrait of, 92, 94

Rockefeller Foundation, 85, 124, 214; and tetrachloride treatment, 139, 140, 143; attitude toward Lambert, 273, 274

Rodwell, Sir Cecil Hunter, 117

Root, Dr. Francis, 64

Rossier, Father, 46, 47, 51

Rotumah, 167, 168

Rubber plantations, of Papua, 31, 32

Salote, Queen, 268, 271. _See also_ Tongan Islands

Samarai, 64, 65

Samoa, American, survey of, 215-221

Samoa, Western, 382; seeds of revolt in, 202-204, 211-214; Government, 204, 205; medical problems, 205-211, 214, 215

San Cristoval, 107

Sande, Black Daniel, 318-322

Sanitation, in Papua, 21; in New Britain, 88; Fiji, 131-133; Samoan, 215, 217, 220; in Cook Islands, 258, 259

Santa Ana, 107

Santo, 224, 225, 233

Savaii, 206

Sawyer, Dr. W. A., 10, 37, 72, 273

Sefton, 18, 20, 24, 25

Seymour Bay, geyser field, 67, 68

Sikiana Group, 108-110, 318-323

Smith-Rewse, Mr., 223, 225, 226, 230, 236, 237, 241

Solomon Islands, 105, 106, 316-334, 382, 383

Stanton, Sir Thomas, 354, 360, 361

Star Harbour, 107, 333

Steenson, Dr., 6, 281-283, 311

Stiles, Dr. Charles W., 12

Strode, Dr., 161

Strong, Dr., 21

Stuart, Norton, 316, 344

Sukuna, Ratu, 156, 159

Sunners, R. V., 83

Suva, 114, 115, 117; hospital, 117, 118; famous visitors, 377-380. _See also_ Central Medical School; Fiji

Syphilis, and yaws, 29-31, 47

Syracuse University, faculty, 6, 7

Tabatauea, 171, 172

Tahiti, 380

Tahua. _See_ Rennell Island

Tai Harbor, 329

Tanna, 235, 236

Taupangi. _See_ Rennell Island

Tays, Eloisa, 6. _See also_ Lambert, Mrs. S. M.

Tays, Eugene, 6

Tepusilia, 59, 60

Tetrachlorethylene, 142, 231, 232

Tetrachloride. _See_ Carbon tetrachloride

Thakombau, Fiji king, 129, 130, 155, 156

Theodore, E. J., 359

Thompson, Capt. Andy, 256, 257

Tinakula, 317

Tobacco trade, in the Pacific, 19

Tongan Islands, 181-201

Trobriands, 68-71

Tuberculosis, on Tai Lagoon, 329-332

Tubous, 186

Tucopia, 317

Tully, Bill, 14, 82, 107, 162, 231, 239

Unified Medical Service, 360-362

Vaitupu, 171

Vakatawa, Benuve, 152, 153, 374, 375

Vanikoro, 317

Vanua Levu, 128

Vila, 223, 233, 237

Vincent, Dr. George, 94

Viti Levu, 128

Vulcan Island, 76

Waite, Dr., 3, 4, 10, 11, 16

Waldron, Webb, 357, 358

Western Samoa. _See_ Samoa

Wheatley, Norman, 324

Whipworm, treatment for, 99, 100

White, Gordon, 281-283, 287, 288, 293, 295, 296, 299, 307, 316, 321, 326, 329, 341, 346, 347

Willis, Dr., 13

Willowes, Maurice, 315, 338, 339, 351

Wilson, Dr. Basil, 141, 142

Windsor, Duke of, 157

Wisdom, Gen. E. A., 75, 79, 81, 96, 101

Witchcraft, and modern medicine, 147-163

Yaws, characteristics, 29-31; treatment, 97, 116, 281; in Samoa, 205, 215; in Tanna, 235, 236

York, Duke and Duchess of, 378

Yule Island, 37-58

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Recent Wassermann tests on the Maoris of the Bay Islands, New Zealand, have revealed 13.05 per cent syphilitics. There is no yaws in New Zealand.

[2] Pronounced “Mokongai,” and would be so spelled, except for the typographical feat described on pages 129-130. In most Fijian words I have used the correct Fijian spelling instead of the fantastic anglicized form.

[3] Some months later I did penance for that moment’s slip in courage. A learned man who had studied tropical medicine in London announced that the human hookworm could infect the pig and be carried by him. This was a serious claim, likely to upset all calculations; especially since he declared that he had proved his theory on a South Pacific island. I wanted to find out for myself, so I went to a friend whose wife had a pet pig that she had raised on a concrete floor to avoid that curse of Fiji’s swine growers, intestinal parasites. I examined the pig, found it negative, then hog-tied it and laid it, several times, on a bed heavily infested with human hookworm larvae. It got a severe “ground itch,” first symptom of infection. In due time I did a postmortem on the animal and found many abscesses in the liver and kidneys, but no worms in the intestines--fair evidence that human hookworms do not infect pigs.

Then I did the experiment in reverse: got a pig that was extremely heavy with pig hookworm and tied a poultice of the hatching material on my arm. Result: “ground itch,” but no infection. Showing, at least, that pig hookworm couldn’t thrive in a tough bird like me. I cut open this tender young pig, and a good look at its wormy insides sickened me. As a martyr to science I only suffered through my pocket. The lady had been saving the animal for Christmas dinner, and she charged me five pounds for it.

[4] The word is pronounced _ndraunikau_, the Fijian _n_ being sounded before the _d_, as usual. For convenience I spell it _draunikau_.

[5] _The History of Melanesian Society_, by W. H. R. Rivers, describes the fantastic genealogical tabus on marriages inside the family line.

[6] Rotumah is one of the steppingstones of the ancient Polynesian Invasion, over 1,000 miles from Rennell. See Part Two, Chapter II.

[7] Described in Part II, Chapter I.

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Bold type is shown thus: =strong=.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.