(Montague Island), and were all murdered and eaten but this one, who got a canoe and paddled back to Havannah Harbour, and asked to be taken in.

Mr. Young brought me some very good plants. I got all hands on board, and weighed while it was light, at 4.15, and nearly lost the wind. However, it continued; and we crept alongside, and to an offing.

May 1st.-Tacked at 4 A.M., and stood to south-east, and at daylight found two schooners communicating with their boats. Fired two guns, and they hoisted ensigns, and bore down and . found one to be the "Jason," whose captain produced a log of May 1st. "Morning broke fine and clear. Noon, weighed, and stood over towards Nguna." I sent Elwyn to ask him what day it was; upon which he stuck his hands in his pockets, and said, "Why, Saturday, May 1st." "Then how," said Elwyn, “do you make this out, when it isn't noon yet?" "Why," he said, "you don't know the difference between civil and astronomical time. I can keep what time I like on board my own ship." The agent was away under the land of Nguna; the other vessel was the "Sybil," of Maryborough.

After dismissing all these people I stood in between Nguna and Vaté as far as was safe, as the wind was light; then went in my galley with Messer and Stanley, taking the two natives. The Pentecost men had pointed out the north end of Nguna as the place where they were set upon. The master of the Sybil had told me that he had picked up a boy who had swam to him from the rocks of Nguna three days ago, and believed him to belong to Ambrym, which he says the natives call Burap. By 10.15 we reached Mr. Milne's (the missionary) house, small but well built on a concrete foundation, in a nice garden fifty yards from the beach, quite pretty. The name of that part, or village of Nguna, is Bali. He had heard of the landing and killing of these boys of Pentecost, and had no doubt that if killed it was for the sake of eating, and not to punish them for stealing bread-fruit; and he said, that though the people near him would not eat men, those at

the other end would do so directly. A lot of savage-looking rascals had followed us from the boat to the house, and sat there listening. I asked Mr. Milne to let them know what we were talking about; and they declared that they never eat men, that what happened at the other end of Nguna they knew very little about. One carried on a conversation by signs with my Pentecost man, whose name, by the way, I found to be Bulibasi, ending by biting at his own wrist, with upraised eyebrows, as a sign of interrogation; and on receiving an affirmative sign of upraised chin from the latter, putting on a look of well-assumed repugnance. The mouth and wrinkles on the nose would have made a splendid article for Darwin in his "Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals;" and the wrist too-a juicy, succulent part, just above the wrist. Two or three fellows spoke English, so I suggested that two should come to act as my guides and interpreters to the north end, which I now found was called U-tan-lan, the windy place, or the land (tan) of wind (lan)? a mile and a half from the beach, and in a high position. One said he was sick; another, that he couldn't; and a third said that he was afraid, fairly; so he then sent for his teacher, a native of Pele, who came, and proved a jolly, round, plucky individual, and said at once that he would go. Mr. Brady, from Havannah Harbour, was here; and so I sent back Mr. Young's Aoba boy, who had served as interpreter between me and the Pentecost man, by him. The missionary says he has no fear or trouble with the natives now; but that, though they are ready to come and sit in the verandah and talk about pigs and yams, directly he begins to talk about religion they steal away one by one. He has no convert but the teacher in Pele. Here io is yes, as in Fiji; and banomai is

natives. Just as we were going Mrs. Milne brought in a man who said that one of the lost boys was at a village called Vanua-tap. We agreed to call for him.

Going down in the galley, by advice of our interpreter, we called in under the village of Malamé, to send a man thence to Vanua-tap. Both of these villages were on the top of the cliff, which is here steep from the water's edge for 200 feet or so.

Soon after, calling in at Vanuatap, the boy came down, accompanied by half the village-a little thin wretch, tottering, with a stick, and with an ulcered leg. As soon as he saw his comrade he was delighted and went forward, and began chatting, and got into the boat very content to be with us and to go to his own land. I gave the chief and each fellow with us a lot of cloth to pay them for their services and for coming with us and taking care of the boy. We got back to the ship at about 2, and steaming to northward, anchored in the bay of Na-ora-matua, or northwest bay, at 3.15, in thirteen fathoms coral and pebbles of broken coral. I went away at once with six men, Messer and Stanley, armed with revolvers, ordering Reade to follow with a cutter's crew, also armed in the same way, in half an hour's time. We plunged into a good but narrow path, rising on a gentlysloping volcanic slope, immediately from the beach. The vegetation most lovely and luxuriant. We saw the smoke of the village of U-tan-lan, not far below the grassy hill-tops, and halfway up to the summit of the extinct crater of Tavana-kić, facing the round hill of Tavanilan. About half-way the natives had built a neat little rest-house for Mr. Milne, half European. Somewhere here Ross Lewin had had a plantation, and I found a coffee-plant with berries on the path, and a native, who spoke English, told us that there were onions in the neighbourhood. From this point the ascent was steeper, and we came on patches of cultivation-poor patches-dry taro, yam and banana. saw no papau. By-and-by we came to a level platform-the Malavaran, or dancing ground, as much as 80 yds. long by 40 yds. wide. On the nether side, or brink, stood a row of

I

handsome old casuarinas, evidently planted purposely, and in a line. (Why should they not be as sacred as oaks ?) In the middle of the ground was a group of native drums, or lallies, which are erected, round which they dance, calling on their ancestors, and striking the chief or ancestor whose effigy is stuck up. Most curious and picturesque.

We only paused a moment, then went on to the village, which is 200 yards above, and so placed among the boulders of volcanic tufa that it might well be defended; the last part is steep and straggling, and most muddy-stiff, deep, black, volcanic soil. The crotons, dracænas, hibiscus and ferns wonderfully luxuriant. Presently we were on the village-house platform, which has a fence, and many of the people were there; women, too, behind the trees, looking on. I found the chief and shook hands, and the interpreter began his story. The men looked rather fine, and bigger than Vaté men; but great brutes and rascals, I should say. My interpreter had evidently sold himself to these fellows, and was intending to make all square. He said what I had to say in very few words, having told a long story first in his own tongue,

and from his own head, and then replied for them. "He say, canoe come, seven or eight men. Canoe break, men run away bush. He no kaikai* him. He say, long time before he no kaikai man. See he build house for Missi Milne. You see him." All of which was undoubtedly lies; but there was no help for it, after some cross-questioning, but to say, in a fatuous way, that man-eating was a very bad thing, and to go away to look at the surroundings. There were three old skulls, and fourteen lower

human jaws, near the end of the hut. No end of bones of turtle and pigs and fish hung from long strings in the hut, and pigs' jaws all round the fences. I never saw a more curious and picturesque place, or one with so decided a flavour of heathendom. The whole thing gave spur to imagination: the idea on which we came, the way of picking up our guides who joined us, one at Malamé and one at Vanua-tap, the cries of the latter, calling to his friends of the village as we went up, " A-u-A-u-Au-u. Laiapoi. Laia-poi. Laia-poi!" And then the huge ferns and other growths all combined to make one remember it. Standing, too, at my point of view there was a vista to the right in which stood a lovely red or purple brown croton, backed by a hibiscus in full

*Eat.