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is a relic of a sanitary law? After a good spell we got up to go, and walked through some luxuriant growth to a handsome (for them) village, where a fine clear bit of ground served as the village square, under the shade of splendid banyans. Here we eat cocoanuts, my big knife in great request to open them, and had a dance, the same as yesterday, on board. They seem to have but one form. Nothing can be much lower than these people; their houses are but 5 ft. 6 in. under the ridge pole and filthy. Their faces filthily smeared. They can only count to five, have no manufacture whatever; even their bows and arrows and clubs are miserable, and their ornaments wretched. They have no desire for clothes apparently, except coloured handkerchiefs. The article which takes most trouble to make is, I suppose, the kawass, or throwing stone, about a foot long and of the thickness of a thick round ruler. I saw no tools, and suppose that they have been superseded by European ones.

Hence to a green, warm lake, of rather stagnant water; the path lay through an unequalled valley for ferns; lovely maiden-hair trailed up and down over stems of trees, twenty and thirty feet from the ground. I think some I got were handsome. Here we had another halt, and thirty or forty bathed again; hence to the beach was an hour's smart walk, and was mainly by the path by which we had come out. My boat was on the beach, and I was on board by 5.20. Hay and a party of ten cooks and stewards, &c., had been out and got all the way to the crater and back by 5.30, guided by a half-caste Fijian, whom they found, and who boasted that he could go in safety all over the island. When all our party had got on board, I found that two lads were missing, and immediately sent to Mr. Neilson to ask his influence and assistance in finding them, arranging at the same time a party, of a lieutenant, sub-lieutenant, two midshipmen, two gunners' mates, and twenty-four men, to go in search, under myself. Happily at about 8 o'clock they turned up by a canoe. They had loitered after the lake to buy cocoa-nuts at a village, and there took a wrong track, then thinking it wrong, turned to the village, and

got "Mr. Hankin," as he is called, a man who was on a Mr. Hankin's plantation, in Queensland, and who speaks English, to bring them down. I had kept back Washerwoman's present, but now sent it to him, and gave Mr. Hankin a big knife. Went to bed thoroughly content, leaving orders to weigh in early dawn.

April 25th.-Weighed at 6.15 A M., and steamed out of Port Resolution; then made sail to a light trade, going close in shore and getting a fair view of the slopes of the volcano. The abundance of cocoa-nut trees is marvellous, and they are all growing on rich volcanic soil. The nuts are not large. Cook's pyramid has been destroyed. On rounding a point, saw a fore and aft schooner, which proved to be the "Chance." Mr. S. and the labour agent came on board, and I learnt from them, that Jones, alias Tatchell, on Ross Lewin's estate, had killed a woman (a native), by shooting her. They said that the native labourers from Api had told them, but that Jones had said nought about it, though he had been on board. This vessel had a license from

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Maryborough for sixty-eight men, and had got twenty-seven. They said that the natives on this side of Tanna were eager to go away, as the hurricane had left them badly off for food. Fullerton boarded her, and all was as correct as paper could make it. We made sail at 9 P.M., and ran round the N. E. point. This is lovely. Rounded green hills 1200 feet high have their hollows filled with timber, and are bounded by perpendicular cliffs 130 feet high, which everywhere have undercliffs and cliffs filled with vegetation. All this is coralline rock, and on the face of the cliff are worn regular beaches,* forty feet from the sea, and again at twenty feet; no doubt this marks upheaval; at points of lower land it is thus:

of ages.

and this has been the work From the N.E. point onwards, we passed half a mile off shore, and the natives lit fires, and coo-ied, and waved to us with poles, flags, and branches, to come in. It was a pretty and interesting sight. On the east side all is steep, but on the west, and from the north-west point, the land begins to slope more gently away. I was bound for Sangalie, Mr. Ross Lewin's place, and descried it standing on an eminence, about 400 feet

* See previous page.

high, and a mile or so back from the beach. The ground seemed well cleared to seaward of it, but a belt of flat land with trees intervened between the foot of the hill and the shore. Here again is an evidence of upheaval. Arrived off the point which seemed likely to be the landing-place, I sent in Reade with orders to examine the natives, and then to charge the man with killing the woman. I landed soon after; Messer and Corrie both went in case of its being necessary to exhume and examine the body. On landing in a beautiful cove, between shore reefs of dead uprising coral, we found some native Tannese, who were more wretchedly dressed than any we had seen before. They had no musket, but each had a bow, a kawass, or a stone only. I went towards them, and they ran away. I called Faki-eri ("my friend,” in Port Resolution idiom), which one or two understood apparently, and then at last one came and begged tobacco, and took my hand in fear and trembling. We walked over a shore, flat, full of vegetation and creepers, like the Taviuni land. Then a steepish path, over what I should say was not good land, on which cotton has been grown, and which is now being turned into corn land. The homestead is very nice indeed, and so are the labourers' huts; a good weatherboard house, a good cotton house, and good corn houses; nice reed fences all round a famous yard of poultry; a capital horse saddled, and all thoroughly well kept and in good order, as neat as anything which I have seen in Fiji. A large acreage, perhaps eighty acres, was under Indian corn, and there was nothing else growing. The labourers were all in white sulus.†

*

Reade sent for the labourers, and examined them; and then got from another overseer the fact of the man having killed the woman Leclonga in the night. He then charged the man with having done so, who instantly declared that he should have gone on board the ship to give himself up, but that he had been out in the bush giving medicine to a sick friend, and had but just

* Fiji.

+ Cloths round their loins.

come back. He then made a statement to the effect that the woman had seized the muzzle of his rifle, and that it had exploded, and that she died three hours after from a wound caused by the explosion. This was written down, and signed by the man, and witnessed by two of the officers. The fact was, that he shot the woman, he doesn't know how, in a drunken brawl. I ordered him to be taken off, and he at first wanted to ride down, and was greatly put out at being told to walk as a prisoner. Mellor had made a big fire on the beach, which we lighted.

April 26th.-The man's traps were ordered to be sent off that night (the ship had meanwhile anchored by my orders), but they did not all come, so I waited till next morning, and sent on shore to hurry off the remainder; and weighed, finally, at 8 A.M. fell very light indeed, though in a squall we ran nine knots, and did not get up with Erromango till 5 P.M., and then boarded the May Queen close under the land.

Erromango shows the fact of its being an area of elevation, even more than Tanna. Five distinct and wide terraces are seen all along the south coast.

* This man was tried for murder at Sydney, but acquitted for want of evidence.

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