usually wide for a bush-track, island among savages smeared surrounded by the laughing, shouting, delighted natives, the wildly flaring torches of the women ahead and around us, and, surrounding all, the thick mystery of the dark woods. Tom had charge of the "house b'long miss-naree," and on arrival we were shown into it a plain wooden-framed house, containing strong camp furniture. Supper was prepared in no time, and eaten in even less. It had been a hungry day. By ten o'clock we were all fast asleep, while outside there was blowing a sudden tropical squall, with an unusually fierce torrent of rain, the pelting of which on our corrugated iron roof made us weary seamen, remembering wet decks and anxious nights afloat when such squalls go sizzling by, wake merely sufficiently to bless the inventor of houses, and to rejoice that the land whereon they stand has been made so fast that it cannot be moved. At daybreak a loud and angry booming close at hand throbbed into our slumbers, and roused us all with beating hearts. It was the noise of drums. We opened the door and looked out upon the raindrenched but now calm and bright morning, with the sun just rising on a fine day. The drumming ceased, and presently a clamour of voices reached us, as of a crowd of men all talking at once. I thought anxiously of war-drums, of an angry council of war on this remote but thinly with a coating of Christianity, and as I thought thus the babel ceased, and there came to our ears a singing, mysteriously familiar, yet unfamiliar, in time that was unfettered and syncopated, in tune that was untempered and full of demi-semitones, agonisingly sharp, or excruciatingly flat, yet occasionally true -yes-by degrees it came to me, it was the poor tortured "Old Hundredth." Four or five verses went by, and then a prolonged "A-a-men" trembled away into silence. Let us hope that that "great Amen" is lost for ever, anyway. I do not want to hear it again; no, not even "in Heaven." Reassured by the well-known air, when at last I had recognised it in its jazz setting, I walked down to the schoolhouse whence the sounds had proceeded. Its position had been pointed out to us in the dark the night before, and now in daylight it appeared as a large, open-sided, thatched shed floored with coconut leaf mats, in which the whole village, to the last child, was engaged at morning prayers, led by Tom on a sort of raised platform at one end. Each person had a Bible, or a prayer-book, or a hymn-book, and young men and maidens, old men and children, to say nothing of old women too, each one was reading aloud from whatever book he or she possessed at the very top of his or her voice. These were the "confused sounds without" that had followed the early drumming, and had caused some moments of anxious wondering. As to the drums, it appeared that they had "taken the Book" as well as the rest, and had now been diverted from heathen duties into being a peal of bells to call good folk to church. Every village has a set of drums, originally for war purposes, for signalling, or for dances, and they come in handy for this entirely foreign purpose. But I daresay that the drums themselves, remembering the echoes of the good old, bad old, high old times, find their present use a bit too much like tubthumping, and think it is fully time they began to decay away. I spent nearly a month on Tongariki, with weekly visits to the ship to report progress and to replenish my stock of "kaikai b'long white man "; but as a fact we lived largely on fresh food bought from the natives-vegetables, fowls, even an occasional sucking-pig or a kid of the goats; and there was fruit, such as bananas, pawpaws, and bread-fruit for the picking. Led by Tom, and followed by a strong gang of workers from the village, we climbed the steep peak of the island. Arrived at the summit, axes were handed out, akkus b'long man'wa'," to the much amused natives, and before our faces had ceased to stream, or our lungs to draw steadily, the splendid trees that covered every foot of the land would 66 be creaking and bowing and falling over in every direction, the topmost ones on the branches of the next tier below them, scattering disregarded orchids and mosses and ferns everywhere round. Amidst the crashes of falling timber, and rejoicing shouts from the axe-men, the sea horizon suddenly became visible and the surrounding islands of the group, both those already visited, and known by their red-and-white flags as being under our subjection, and the others, still decently covered by the virgin bush of some centuries of growth. Besides hill-climbing for theodolite work on the cleared summits, there was even more exhausting climbing with sextants and other paraphernalia round the coast-line of the island. In most places the coast was fronted by towering volcanic cliffs 500 feet high, with a with a narrow beach at the foot, thickly strewn with enormous boulders of black lava fallen from above. Round and through the intervals between the boulders the surf boils and swishes, and getting past them was often perilous, as well as being most exhausting. Here and there along the bases of the cliffs there was foothold for a fringe of trees, and, disturbed by our noisy scrambling, myriads of flying-foxes, suspended in sleep under the branches after a thick night of fruit robbery and debauch, would unhook themselves, and flop blindly overhead, wheeling collector follows his collection and screeching. at the end of the commission, he must be prepared for disappointment. The precious and difficultly obtained spears, clubs, poisoned arrows, carved idols, and painted skulls, at first objects of horrified interest to his untravelled relatives, will now be found to have become objects of loathing and of terror, exiled to lofts or cellars, and covered with dust, which every one is afraid to wipe off "for fear of getting poisoned" or for other squeamish reason, even that possibly of insulting a South Pacific ghost. No longer "curios," they will have arrived at the stage when they are referred to by once proud mothers as "rubbish sent home by the boys," and accordingly have been relegated to the lumber-room. The young collector will therefore find it more satisfactory to send his treasures, properly labelled, straight to a museum. There they will be perennially appreciated and displayed; there they may be hideous, and it will be gladly endured. They may be poisoned, and the curator will cherish them the more. They may be indecent (as is frequently the case), and yet they will bring neither shock nor even ribald amusement to the cold mind of Science. Though the work was stiff and strenuous, the time ashore on Tongariki was pleasant enough. I have a passion for curios," and the island proved to be a very prolific huntingground. When taking the Book by the inhabitants put an end to warfare, their hatchets were not buried, but were stowed away, together with spears, clubs, shell-axes, and other delights in the thatch of the owner's house. After a little one knew exactly where to look for them, and how much "trade" should be paid for them. My collection made at that time, ghosts of a dead savagery, have now, after a purgatorial interval, achieved their heaven in a museum. That is the true destiny of "curios," but the realisation of this fact does not immediately dawn on the young collector. When his cabin has become so choked with clubs that he is obliged to sleep on deck, and when the spaces between the beams overhead in the ward-room have become so crammed with long spears that meals are no longer endurable owing to the still adherent native smells, and the million cockroaches that come to live among the wooden weapons, the natural impulse is to pack them all up and send them" home." Perhaps he may have hopes that they will be welcomed there and hung up as an adornment in "the hall." If so, when the The school-house stood in the midst of a semi-wild garden of coleas, crotons, and dracænas, and its interior was decorated in the best white-man style, with garlands of coloured leaves and with masses of scarlet hibiscus blossoms. About three hundred people trooped into the house before us, all in their best cal'co: the men shortly, yet decently, in plain white or plain red the charts. It is twelve miles long and two miles wide, and its three green hills are all of them over 2000 feet high. Ten years before the date of our survey it had achieved renown as the most "dangerous island of that part of the New Hebrides. Conditions were now exactly the other way; and when Mr Michelssen, the missionary, who had lifted these people out of savagery, invited us to witness the in- waist-cloths; the ladies, on stallation of a new chief in one of the districts of the island, we accepted without a qualm. Chieftancy in the island, he told us, was hereditary, and they have the very sensible custom that when a chief feels he is getting too old for his job, he first instructs his successor in his duties and then resigns, and hands the government over to him before he, the old chief, dies. On this occasion, however, the chief had died suddenly, leaving as his successor a boy far too young to be in charge of the district, and a "regent" had been appointed. It was to witness the installation of this regent that we were invited. Makáti was the name of the village at which it was to take place, and we arrived from the ship at about 11 o'clock, to find all the people collected outside the school-house. This was a large thatched native house, furnished with rows of thick, clumsily hewn planks as benches, and having a raised space at one end, where the actual ceremony was to take place. other hand, in long "shimmies," blazing from neck to heel with the wildest floral fancies of Manchester. A dusky shade behind the rather too transparent feast of colour proclaimed to the observant that a compromise between fashion and temperature was effected by frocks et præterea nihil. One young lady, evidently a returned "Queenslander," proudly exhibited the modes of a bygone day, for she was tightly corsetted and largely embustled, the latter extension being a quite unnecessary amplification of the already sufficient gift of Nature, while on her head was an enormous straw hat, obtained who knows how, brilliantly and artificially beflowered. There were five of us from the Dart, and to each of us was allotted as a partner a chief from one of the other districts of the island, and as soon as all the company was settled in their places we entered the schoolhouse in pairs, in procession. We walked hand in hand, and it felt as if one was taking some one into din ner. I could not help thinking watch the opening of this how, not so long before, the mound, which turned out to old chief, whom now I was "taking in," would have taken me into dinner in a more intimate and conclusive fashion. 66 We took our allotted seats while hymns and prayers were sung and said respectively, and then came the coronation." This was simple but effective. The young man who was to be the new chief was led (very shy) into the middle of the platform before all the people, and the missionary asked if there were any dissentients from the choice of this man as regent. None. None. Then a finelooking old savage who represented the dead chief came forward. He touched his eyes with his hand, and placing it on the new chief's head said, "Be thou Ti Makáti. God help you." Makáti was, as I have said, the name of the district; and henceforward the new chief would be known by his territorial title, and would not resume his own name until relieved in the chieftancy. After this the newly made chief and all the others of the island stood in a circle with joined hands, and the missionary standing in the middle said a short prayer. That was the end of the ceremony. Handshaking and congratulations all round followed, and then came the banquet. On our arrival we had noticed a large mound of earth outside the schoolhouse, which seemed to be steaming slightly. We white people were now led forward to stand round and be an earth-oven. A hole about four feet long and two or three broad had been excavated in the ground and filled with grass and wood as fuel, interspersed with large lumps of stone. The fuel was lighted and the fire kept going until the stones were red-hot, when the fire was removed and the stones arranged over the bottom of the pit. Large green banana leaves were then laid thick on the stones, and on top of them a sucking-pig and several fowls, each wrapped in a pudding of pounded yams, coconut, and taro, known by the well-invented name of "lublub." More leaves were laid over the top of the puddings, and over them again a thick layer of earth. Then water was poured into the oven through chinks at the sides, thus producing a sort of fierce Turkish bath around the leaf-wrapped food. I do not know how long it took to cook, but the excellence of the result was beyond all praise. We were exceedingly hungry, and when a portion for each of us had been laid out on a banana leaf on the ground, we were glad to be told not to wait for knives and forks. Without shame or hesitation we were just in the act of "laying in " to our portions, when Mr Michelssen, who was standing near, hurriedly said grace, thus saving the white faces of us wicked sailor men, who had entirely forgotten that |