The natives of the New Hebrides are Melanesians of mixed blood, and vary much in different islands. On Efaté and some others Polynesian immigration has produced a taller, fairer and less savage people. In some parts, as on Aoba, isolated Polynesian communities exist. But the general type is Melanesian: black skin, woolly hair, low, receding forehead, broad face, flat nose and thick lips. The natives decorate themselves with nose-rings and ear-rings and bracelets of shells. The men are constantly fighting; their weapons are bows and poisoned arrows, often beautifully designed, clubs of elaborate patterns and spears. Their houses are either round huts, or rectangular with pitched roofs resting on three parallel rows of posts. The villages are scrupulously clean and neat, ornamented with flowering shrubs, crotons and dracaenas, and are often fortified with stone walls. In character the New Hebrideans are ferocious and treacherous, though most of their unhospitality and savagery is to be traced to the misconduct and cruelty of traders and labour agents. The women occupy a degraded position, and in some islands widows are buried alive with the bodies of their husbands. There is a great belief in sorceries and omens; but prayer and offerings (usually of shell money) are addressed mainly to the spirits of the (recently) dead, and there is another class of spirits, called Vui, who are appealed to when incorporate in certain stones or animals; of one of two such the divinity is recognized generally. By the villages a space shadowed by a great banyan tree is often set apart for dances and public meetings. A certain sanctity attaches also sometimes to the Casuarina and the Cycas. An important institution is the club-house, in which there are various grades, whereon a man’s rank and influence mainly depend, his grade being recognized even if he goes to another island where his language is unintelligible. In like manner a division into two great exogamous groups prevails, at all events throughout the northern islands. It would therefore seem that the present diversity of languages in the group must be of relatively recent origin. These languages or dialects are numerous, and mutually unintelligible, but alike as to grammatical construction, and belonging to the Melanesian class.
History.—The Portuguese Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, sighting Espiritu Santo in 1606, thought he had discovered the great southern continent then believed to exist, and named it Australia del Espiritu Santo. Louis de Bougainville visited the islands in 1768, and Captain Cook, who gave them the name they bear, in 1774. The subsequent visits of several explorers, the exploitation of the sandal-wood and other products by traders and the arrival of missionaries helped to open up the islands and to give them a certain commercial importance by the middle of the 19th century. Trade was mainly with New Caledonia, and France was thus indicated as the dominant power in the New Hebrides; even British planters pressed France to annex the islands in 1876, but in the following year some of the missionaries urged the same course on England. In 1878 the islands were declared neutral by Great Britain and France. The presence of British and French settlers under independent authority led to unsatisfactory administration, especially in regard to the settlement of civil actions and jurisdiction over the native population. As to the establishment of commercial supremacy, French interests clashed with Australian, and in 1882 M. John Higginson of New Caledonia (d. 1904) consolidated the former by founding the trading society which afterwards became the Société française des Nouvelles-Hébrides. In 1886 one of the most serious of many native outbreaks occurred, necessitating a French demonstration of force from New Caledonia. An Anglo-French convention of the 16th of November 1887 provided for the surveillance of the islands (protection of life and property) by a mixed commission of naval officers. The Anglo-French agreement of 1904 had a clause providing for an arrangement as to proper jurisdiction over the natives and for the appointment of a commission to settle disputes between British and French landed proprietors. In this and the following year there was much unrest among the natives, and a joint punitive expedition was necessary.
Strong feeling was aroused meanwhile in Australia owing to the disabilities suffered by British settlers in the islands. British annexation, or at least a division of the group into British and French spheres, was urged. But on the 20th of October 1906 a convention was signed in London, confirming a protocol of the preceding 27th of February, and providing that “the group of the New Hebrides, including the Banks and Torres Islands,” should form “a region of joint influence,” in which British and French subjects should have equal rights in all respects, and each power should retain jurisdiction over its own subjects or citizens. The claim of other powers to share the joint influence was excluded by the provision that their subjects resident on the islands must be under either British or French jurisdiction. A British and a French high commissioner were appointed, each assisted by a resident commissioner; provision was made for two police forces of equal strength, and the joint naval commission of 1887 was retained for the purpose of keeping order. The high commissioners were given authority over the native chiefs. A joint court was established, consisting of two judges, appointed respectively by Great Britain and France, and a third, to be president, and not a British subject or French citizen, appointed by the king of Spain. Its jurisdiction covers civil cases (including commercial suits and those respecting landed property), native offences or crimes against non-natives, and all offences against the provisions of the convention. The sale of arms and intoxicants to natives is forbidden; and the convention regulates the recruitment of native labour. Provision was made for community of interests in regard to public works, finance and the official use of the English and French languages. The creation of municipalities on the application of groups of not less than thirty non-native residents was provided for, municipal votes being given to both sexes. The convention provided against the establishment of a penal settlement and the erection of fortifications.
This convention was bitterly criticized in Australia on the ground that many of the provisions which nominally established equality between British and French would operate in practice to the advantage of the French; and there was no little dissatisfaction on the ground that the Australian government was neither represented at the preliminary conference, nor fully consulted during the negotiations.
See Parliamentary Papers, France, No. 1 (1888 and 1906); and “Correspondence relating to the Convention . . .” (Cd. 3288), (1907).
NEW IBERIA, a city of Louisiana, U.S.A., capital of Iberia
parish, on the Bayou Teche, in the southern part of the state,
about 125 m. W. of New Orleans. Pop. (1890) 3447; (1900)
6815 (3309 negroes); (1910) 7499. It is served by the Southern
Pacific, the Franklin and Abbeville, and the New Iberia &
Northern railways. Lumber, sugar, cotton and rice are produced
in the neighbourhood. At the village of Avery Island,
about 10 m. S.E., there are deposits of rock salt. The
municipality owns and operates the waterworks and the
electric lighting plant. New Iberia was laid out in 1835 and
was chartered as a city in 1839.
NEW JERSEY, one of the Middle Atlantic states of the American Union, lying between 41° 21′ 22·6″ and 38° 55′ 40″ N. lat., and 75° 35′ and 73° 53′ 39″ W. long. It is bounded, N., by the state of New York; E., by the Hudson river, which separates the state from New York, and by the Atlantic Ocean; and S. and W. by the Delaware Bay and river, which separate
New Jersey from Delaware and Pennsylvania. All the boundaries except the northern are natural. New Jersey has an extreme length, N. and S., of 166 m., an extreme width, E. and W., of
57 m., and a total area of 8224 sq. m., of which 710 sq. m. are
water-surface.
Physiography.—There are within the state four distinct topographic belts—the Appalachian, the Highlands, the Triassic Lowland and the Coastal Plain. The folded Appalachian belt crosses the N.W. corner of the state, and includes the Kittatinny Mountain and Valley. The mountain has a north-east-south-west trend, crossing the Delaware river at the Delaware Water Gap and continuing S.W. into Pennsylvania. In width the range varies from 4 or 5 m. in the N. to about 2 m. in the S. Its western foot lies along the Delaware river, which for some distance flows parallel with the range, and has an altitude of about 400 ft. above the sea at Port Jervis, where it enters the state, and of about 300 ft. at the Water Gap, where it leaves it. Where the crest of the ridge enters the state its elevation is 1539 ft.; at High Point, 114 m. S.W. the ridge attains a height of 1803 ft., the highest point within the state. A short distance S.W. of this point, in a depression in the mountain crest, is Lake Marcia, at an elevation of 1570 ft. Beyond Culver’s Gap the mountain again narrows to a ridge, and for a portion of its length it is double-crested. On the eastern side the slope is so abrupt as to make ascent difficult and at places impossible, but the western slope, on account of a dip of the rock to the N.W., is more
