Part 1

[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 149.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

NOTES ON THE NEW HEBRIDES.

There is a wide contrast between the Hebrides of Scotland and the New Hebrides of the Western Pacific; but both have come into a good deal of prominence of late—the one in connection with the crofters, the other in connection with the French. It is of the New Hebrides we propose to say something.

The group of islands forming part of Melanesia to which the name of New Hebrides has been given extends for about seven hundred miles. The most northern of the group is about one hundred miles from the Santa Cruz Islands, and the most southern about two hundred miles from New Caledonia. Espiritu Santo is the largest and most northerly of the group, and is about seventy-five miles long by forty miles broad. The next largest island is called Mallicolo, and is fifty-six miles long by twenty miles broad. The entire land area of the group may be taken as about five thousand square miles; and the population of the whole group has been estimated variously from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand. But whatever the total population, the peoples probably sprung from one original stock, although they have drifted far apart in the matter of language. There are said to be no fewer than thirty different languages in the New Hebridean group—all having a certain grammatical likeness, but quite unintelligible to the other islanders. The difference is not merely such as exists between Scotch, Irish, and Welsh Gaelic; it is a more marked division of tongues.

The inhabitants vary nearly as much as their languages. Although distinctly Papuan, there are traits and traces of Polynesian intermixture and even of separate Polynesian settlement. Thus, on Vaté, the men are taller, fairer, and better-looking than those on some of the other islands, the more generally prevailing type being one of extreme ugliness and short stature. They all are, or have been, cannibals; but on Aneityum they are now supposed to be all Christianised.

Aneityum, or Anateum, or Anatom—for it is spelt in all three ways—is within two hundred miles of the nearest point in New Caledonia, and within five hundred miles of Fiji. It has a spacious, well-sheltered harbour, which is easy of access, and is throughout well wooded and watered. The general character of the island is mountainous; and there is an agreeable diversity of hill and valley, the mountains being intersected by deep ravines, and cultivated spots alternating with barren tracts. The principal wealth of this island is in its timber, of which the kauri pine appears to be the chief; but there is also a good deal of valuable sandal-wood. Some years ago, an attempt was made to establish a whale-fishery off the shores of Aneityum; but we have not heard with what result. The length of this island is about fourteen miles, and its breadth about eight. The climate, although damp, is not disagreeable, and is not marked by great variations. The thermometer seldom goes below sixty-two degrees, and never below fifty-eight degrees; but, on the other hand, it never goes above ninety-four degrees, and seldom above eighty-nine degrees in the shade.

Aneityum deserves especial mention because the whole population is understood now to profess Christianity. That population in 1865 was stated by Mr Brenchley to be two thousand two hundred, and it has not probably increased much, if any, since then. Previous to 1850, the natives of Aneityum were as degraded and savage as on any island of the Pacific; but two missionaries who settled there about the date mentioned began to work a steady and continuous change.

The Aneityum people do not live in villages, but separately in the midst of their cultivated patches, which are divided into districts, each containing about sixty. The government is in the hands of chiefs, of whom there are three principal, each having a number of petty chiefs under them. But their power appears limited.

Aneityum, like the other islands of the New Hebrides, is of volcanic origin, and it is surrounded by coral reefs. No minerals have been found; and in this connection it is worthy of remark that Australians insist that there is a much closer natural affinity between the New Hebrides and Fiji than there is between the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, which is an island rich in minerals. Mr Brenchley enumerates the principal indigenous products of Aneityum as bread-fruit, banana, cocoa-nut, horse-chestnut, sago-palm, another species of palm bearing small nuts, sugar-cane, taro—the staple article of food—yams in small quantities, sweet-potatoes, and arrowroot. Of fruits, &c., introduced, the orange, lime, lemon, citron, pine-apple, custard-apple, papaw-apple, melons, and pumpkins, have succeeded. The cotton plant had also been introduced, and promised well; and French beans were grown for the Sydney market. There are more than a hundred species of ferns on the island, and more than a hundred species of fish in the waters surrounding it. But the fish are not all edible, and besides being different from, are inferior to those found in the northern hemisphere. The birds are not very numerous; but butterflies and insects abound, in the case of the latter the list being lengthened by the importation of fleas by Europeans. Among themselves, the natives barter fishing-baskets, nets, sleeping-mats, hand-baskets, pigs, fowls, taro, and cocoa-nuts. With foreigners, they barter pigs, fowls, taro, bananas, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, &c., for European clothing, hatchets, knives, fish-hooks, and so forth. Their weapons are spears, clubs, bows and arrows—the spears being rude and very crooked.

Of Tanna, another of the southern division of the group, many interesting notes have been left by Mr Brenchley and Dr Turner. It is about forty or fifty miles from Aneityum, and has a somewhat narrow anchorage, called Port Resolution Bay. On the west side of this bay there is a large and preternaturally active volcano, which pulsates in a regular sequence of eruptions at intervals of five, seven, or ten minutes, night and day, all the year round. The regularity of the eruptions is supposed to be caused by the influx of water into the volcano from a lake which lies at its base. Tanna is nearly circular, and between thirty-five and forty miles across. It is covered with lofty hills, bright with verdure.

Mr Brenchley stated the population at fifteen to twenty thousand; but Dr Turner placed it at only ten or twelve thousand; and Turner, who resided for some months on the island, is likely to be nearer the mark. The people are of middle stature, and of a copper colour naturally, although some of them are as black as New Hollanders, through artificial dyeing of their skins. They are rather better-looking than average Papuans, but make themselves hideous with red paint. The men frizzle their hair, which is oftener light-brown than black in colour; the women wear the hair short, but ‘laid out in a forest of little erect curls about an inch and a half long.’ They pierce the septum of the nose, and insert horizontally a small piece of wood; and in their ears they wear huge ornaments of tortoise-shell. They do not tattoo. The women wear long girdles, hanging to the knee, made of the dried fibre of banana stalks; and the men wear an unsightly waistcloth of matting. Their weapons are clubs, bows and arrows, and spears, with which they are very expert, and they always work and sleep with their weapons by their sides. They are, in fact—or were, when Dr Turner lived among them—a race of warriors, for the tribes were incessantly at war with each other. ‘We were never able,’ says Dr Turner, ‘to extend our journeys above four miles from our dwelling at Port Resolution. At such distances we came to boundaries which were never passed, and beyond which the people spoke a different dialect. At one of these boundaries, actual war would be going on; at another, kidnapping and cooking each other; and at another, all might be peace, but, by mutual consent, they had no dealings with each other.... When visiting the volcano one day, the natives told us about a battle in which one party which was pursued ran right into the crater, and there fought for a while on the downward slope inside the cup!’

The climate of Tanna is damp for four months of the year, when fever and ague are common; but it is agreeable during the remainder of the year; and the average annual temperature is about eighty-six degrees. The soil, on account of the volcanic origin, is extremely fertile, and there are a number of boiling springs.

Erromango, to the north of Tanna, is celebrated for its massacres of missionaries and white settlers, and it was here that Mr Williams was murdered many years ago. This island is covered with dense vegetation down to the very water’s edge. It contains a great deal of fine timber, such as sandal-wood, kauri pine, &c. The population was estimated at about five thousand by both Mr Brenchley and Dr Turner. The people are very much like the Tannese, but are without any settled villages or considerable chiefs. The Erromangan women tattoo the upper part of their bodies, and wear leaf-girdles hanging from waist to heel; but the men prefer nudity. Neither infanticide nor euthanasia seems to prevail here, but the sick are not particularly well cared for. Dr Turner traced a belief in witchcraft and some belief in a future state. The spirits of the dead are supposed to go eastward, and some are thought to roam about in the bush.

Vaté or Sandwich Island, still to the north, is another interesting member of the group. It has attracted many Australians and others, who have attempted settlements, but not, we believe, with success as yet. Dr Turner calls it a ‘lovely island’—although, whether it compares with the island of Aurora, one of the most northerly of the group, which Mr Walter Coote says is a perfect earthly paradise, we cannot tell. Vaté, at anyrate, is very lovely, and seems to be of coral formation. Its size is about one hundred miles in circumference, and its population perhaps, ten thousand—although Dr Turner said twelve thousand. There is no general king, but a large number of petty chiefs. The people are more fully clothed than those of the other islands we have referred to; they do not tattoo—they only paint the face in war; they wear trinkets and armlets; and they live in regular villages. There are several dialects, but not such diversity as in Tanna. They do not fight so much as the Tannese; but have clubs, spears, and poisoned arrows. Infanticide, unfortunately, is prevalent, and seems to be the consequence of the practice of the women having to do all the plantation and other hard work.

In Vaté, they have no idols, and they say that the human race sprang from stones and the earth. The men of the stones were _Natamoli nefat_, and the men of the earth _Natamoli natana_. The native name of the island is Efat or Stone—which has been corrupted into Vaté. The principal god is Supu, who created Vaté and everything on it; and when a person dies, he is supposed to be taken away by Supu. Ancestor-worship is also practised, and the aged were often buried alive at their own request.

The island of Vaté is high above the sea, of an irregular outline, and distinguished by some fine bold features. ‘We could see,’ says Mr Brenchley, ‘high mountains, whose summits seemed clad with verdure, while the thick woods towards their base formed, as it were, a girdle which spread downwards as far as the beach.’ Ashore, he saw high reed-grass, wild sugar-canes ten feet high, and vast plantations of banana and cocoa-nut. The soil is of remarkable fertility; but the island is subject to frequent shocks of earthquake, sometimes very violent. The climate is damp, but not unhealthy. Of the natives, we have read differing accounts, one describing them as among the best, and another as among the worst of New Hebridean aborigines, with a remarkably developed and insatiable craving for human flesh. The happy mean is probably near the truth, that is to say, they are neither better nor worse than the rest of their race, and are very much as the visitor makes them.

BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.

BY FRED. M. WHITE.

IN TWENTY CHAPTERS.—CHAP. XII.

Coolly, as if the whole transaction had been a little light recreation, and untroubled in conscience, as if the fatal card had fallen to Maxwell by pure chance, instead of base trickery, Le Gautier turned his steps in the direction of Fitzroy Square. It was a matter of supreme indifference to him now whether Maxwell obeyed the dictum of the League or not; indeed, flat rebellion would have suited his purpose better, for in that case he would be all the sooner rid of; and there was just a chance that the affair with Visci might end favourably; whereas, on the other hand, a refusal would end fatally for the rash man who defied the League. Men can face open danger; it is the uncertainty, the blind groping in the dark, that wears body and mind out, unstrings the nerves, and sometimes unseats reason. Better fight with fearful odds, than walk out with the shadow of the sword hanging over one night and day. The inestimable Frenchman had seen what defiance to the League generally came to; and as he reviewed his rosy prospects, his bright thoughts lent additional flavour to his cigarette. Nevertheless, his heart beat a trifle faster as he pulled the bell at the quiet house in Ventnor Street. Adventures of this sort were nothing novel to him; but he had something more at stake here than the fortunes of the little blind boy and the light intrigue he looked for. Miss St Jean was in, he found; and he was shown up to her room, where he sat noting the apartment—the open piano, and the shaded waxlights, shining softly—just the proper amount of light to note charms by, and just dim enough to unite confidences. As he noted these things, he smiled, for Le Gautier was a connoisseur in the graceful art of love-making, and boasted that he could read women as scholars can expound abstruse passages of the earlier classics, or think they can, which pleases them equally. In such like case, the Frenchman was about to fall into a similar error, never dreaming that the artistically arranged room with its shaded lights was a trap to catch his soul. He waited impatiently for the coming fair one, knowing full well that she wished to create an impression. If such was her intention, she succeeded beyond expectation.

With her magnificent hair piled up upon her small shapely head, and its glossy blackness relieved only by a single diamond star, shining like a planet on the bosom of the midnight sky, with a radiant smile upon her face, she came towards him. She was dressed in some light shimmering material, cut low upon the shoulders; and round the corsage was a wreath of deep red roses, a crimson ribbon round the neck, from which depended a diamond cross. She came forward murmuring a few well-chosen words, and sank into a chair, waiting for Le Gautier to recover.

He had need of time to recover his scattered senses, for, man of the world as he was, and acquainted with beauty as he was, he had never seen anything like this before. But he was not the sort to be long taken aback; he raised his eyes to hers with a mute homage which was more eloquent than words. He began to feel at home; the dazzling loveliness threw a spell upon him, the delicious mystery was to his liking; and he was tête-à-tête.

‘I began to think I had failed to interest you sufficiently last night,’ Isodore commenced, waving her fan slowly before her face. ‘I began to imagine you were not coming to take pity on my loneliness.’

‘How could you dream such a thing?’ Le Gautier replied in his most languishing voice. His pulses began to beat at these last words. ‘Did I not promise to come? I should have been here long since, but sordid claims of business detained me from your side.’

‘It must have been pressing business,’ Isodore laughed archly. ‘And pray, what throne are you going to rock to its foundations now?’

Had Le Gautier been a trifle less vain, he would have been on his guard when the conversation took so personal a turn; but he was flattered; the question betokened an interest in himself. ‘How would it interest you?’ he asked.

‘How do you know that it would not? Remember, that though I am bound by no oath, I am one of you. Anything connected with the League, anything connected with yourself, cannot fail to interest me.’

The words ran through Le Gautier’s frame like quicksilver. He was impulsive and passionate; these few minutes had almost sufficed to seal his thraldom. He began to lose his head. ‘You flatter me,’ he said joyously. ‘Our business to-night was short; we only had to choose an avenging angel.’

‘For Visci, I suppose?’ Isodore observed with some faint show of interest. ‘Poor man! And upon whom did the choice fall?’

‘A new member, curiously enough. I do not know if you are acquainted with him: his name is Maxwell.’

‘May he prove as true to the cause as—as you are. I have never had the fortune to be present on one of these occasions. How do you manage it? Do you draw lots, or do you settle it with dice?’

‘On this occasion, no. We have a much fairer plan than that. We take a pack of cards; they are counted, to see if they are correct; then each man present shuffles them; a particular one represents the fatal number, and the president of the assembly deals them out. Whoever the chosen one falls to has to do the task in hand.’

‘That, I suppose, must be fair, unless there is a conjurer presiding,’ Isodore observed reflectively.—‘Who was the president to-night?’

‘I myself. I took my chance with the others, you must understand.’

Isodore did not reply, as she sat there waving her fan backwards and forwards before her face. Le Gautier fancied that for a moment a smile of bitter contempt flashed out from her eyes; but he dismissed the idea, for, when she dropped the fan again, her face was clear and smiling.

‘I am wearying you,’ she said, ‘by my silly questions. A woman who asks questions should not be allowed in society; she should be shut away from her fellow-creatures, as a thing to be avoided. I am no talker myself, at least not in the sense men mean.—Shall I play to you?’

Le Gautier would have asked nothing better than to sit there feasting his eyes upon her matchless beauty; but now he assented eagerly to the suggestion. Music is an accomplishment which forces flirtation; besides which, he could stand close to her side, turning over the leaves with opportunities which a quiet conversation never furnishes. Taking him at his word, she sat down at the instrument and commenced to play. It might have been brilliant or despicably bad, opera or oratorio, anything to the listener; he was far too deeply engrossed in the player to have any sense alive to the music. Perfectly collected, she did not fail to note this, and when she had finished, she looked up in his passionate face with a glance melting and tender, yet wholly womanly. It took all Le Gautier’s self-command to restrain himself from snatching her to his heart in his madness and covering the dark face with kisses. He was reckless now, too far gone to disguise his admiration, and she knew it. With one final crash upon the keys she rose from her seat, confronting him.

‘Do not leave off yet,’ he urged, and saying this, he laid his hand upon her arm. She started, trembling, as if some deadly thing had stung her. To her it was a sting; to him, the evidence of awaking passion, and he, poor fool, felt his heart beat faster. She sat down again, panting a little, as from some inward emotion. ‘As you please,’ she said. ‘Shall I sing to you?’

‘Sweeter than the voice of the nightingales to me!’ he exclaimed passionately. ‘Yes, do sing. I shall close my eyes, and fancy myself in paradise.’

‘Your imagination must be a powerful one.—Do you know this?’

Isodore took a piece of music from the stand, a simple Italian air, and placed it in his hands. He turned over the leaves carelessly, and returned it to her with a gesture of denial. There was a curious smile upon her lips as she sat down to sing, a smile that puzzled and bewildered him.

‘Do you not know it?’ she asked, when the last chords died away.

‘Now you have sung it, I think I do. It is a sentimental sort of thing, do you not think? A little girl I used to know near Rome sang it to me. She, I remember, used to imagine it was my favourite song. She was one of the romantic schoolgirls, Miss St Jean, and the eyes she used to make at me when she sang it are something to be remembered.’

Isodore turned her back sharply and searched among the music. If he could only have seen the bitter scorn in the face then—scorn partly for him, and wholly for herself. But again she steeled herself.

‘I daresay you gave her some cause, Monsieur Le Gautier,’ she said. ‘You men of the world, flitting from place to place, think nothing of breaking a country heart or two. You may not mean it, perhaps, but so it is.’

‘Hearts do not break so easily,’ Le Gautier replied lightly. ‘Perhaps I did give the child some cause, as you say. _Pardieu!_ a man tied down in a country village must amuse himself, and a little unsophisticated human nature is a pleasant chance. She was a little spitfire, I remember, and when I left, could not see the matter in a reasonable light. There is still some bitter vengeance awaiting me, if I am to believe her words.’

‘Then you had best beware. A woman’s heart is a dangerous plaything,’ Isodore replied. ‘Do you never feel sorry, never experience a pang of conscience after such a thing as that? Surely, at times you must regret?’

‘I have heard of such a thing as conscience,’ Le Gautier put in airily; ‘but I must have been born before they came into fashion. No, Miss St Jean, I cannot afford to indulge in luxuries.’

‘And the League takes up so much of your time. And that reminds me. We have said nothing yet about your insignia. I may tell you now that it is not yet in my hands; but I shall obtain it for you. How bold, how reckless you were that night, and yet I do not wonder! At times, the sense of restraint must bear heavy upon a man of spirit.’

‘Thank you, from the bottom of my heart,’ Le Gautier fervently exclaimed. ‘You are too good to me.—Yes,’ he continued, ‘there are times when I feel the burden sorely—times like the present, let us say, when I have a foretaste of happier things. If I had you by my side, I could defy the world.’

Isodore looked at him and laughed, her wonderful magnetic smile making her eyes aglow and full of dazzling tints.