While in the south of New Guinea the natives are in the stone age, these people have not got beyond the period of shell implements. They could hardly be made to understand the use of a tomahawk, and were frightened by striking a match.
The Rook-Islanders seemed never to have seen a white man. Smoke coming out of the mouth of an officer with a pipe greatly surprised them. A chief on being brought up to a looking-glass was struck dumb. The exhibition of a cat caused great excitement, which was immensely increased by showing them a sheep. They are a light-colored, tall, good-looking race, who express great repugnance to cannibalism. They build good houses and temples, have well laid-out villages, and possess large highly painted canoes ornamented with carvings. They practice circumcision, and an incised figure of an alligator adorns the entrance to their temples. Their reception of my companions and myself was courteous and friendly in the extreme. One of the officers of her Majesty's ship Dart was a good conjurer, and the delight with which the disappearance of a coin through the bottom of a tumbler was hailed by the natives was intense.
A few observations on the condition of the Southwestern Pacific may not be out of place. I believe that the members of even the most savage tribes desire to be on friendly terms with white men. There are some tribes who, in pursuance of the barbarous custom of taking heads, will make unprovoked attacks on white visitors. But they are comparatively rare exceptions. I fear that most of the so-called "outrages" are to the natives what the retaliatory action of ships of war is to us. We regard the latter as the proper punishment of an offending tribe; and the islanders look upon the killing of a white man—if any white man has done them an injury—as much the same thing. Events have proved that the old practice—for years given up by us, but still followed by some European nations—of the wholesale punishment of the people of an island charged with an "outrage" does nothing to improve relations with the islanders. The plan of punishing only the really guilty has been far more successful, and when that is imiversally adopted the friendliness of our relations is sure to increase.
The diminution of population is one of the mysteries of the Pacific. It has perhaps been arrested in Feejee. Time will show if the stoppage is permanent. On the small Wallis Island under the Catholic, and Niué, or Savage Island, under the Protestant missionaries, the people increase; elsewhere, whether Christian or savage, they diminish. It is common for natives to speak of the greater numbers of their tribes in former days, and there is evidence to support their assertion. Can it be that the islands of the Pacific have been the seats of a succession of races, all of which have at a certain period in their history declined and disappeared, and that our acquaintance with the present inhabitants only began when the declining stase had been reached? The
