OUR LITERARY CORNER.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15751, 18 November 1916, Page 7

OUR LITERARY CORNER.

TRAVEL NOTES. TUB GILBERTS AND THE ELLICE ISLANDS.

(grZCIALLT WBirTEN TOR "THE rHESS.") (Bt Pkofessoe J. MACitnxA-v Brown, LL.D.) If anvone wishes to >oo what coral islands and atolls are at their best, he cannot do bettor than visit this, the most recent of British colonies. "With the Marshalls to the north of them, they stretch f'« m south-cast to northwest over close on two thousand miles. There is not a scrap of cither volcanic or sedimentary rock in this long sweep 0 r oc<?an; nor is there any non-coralline island within seven hundred miles of any of them except Bo turn ah, some two hundred miles to the south-west of the EL'ice group, and Kusaie, of the Carolines, some four hundred miles to tho irest of the Marshalls. The Gilberts, in the centre, lying right across the equator, are farthest of all from anything mountainous; they arc more than thousand miles from the Solomons to the west, and the Fijis to the southeast. One can steam for weeks without seeing anything higher above the fcurfaec of the ocean tnan the coco an ul palms, that clothe the flat islets. The groups arc separated by about two hundred miles, and the islands in each group by from thirty to nearly ninety Diiles fi*om each other, LOTUS-LAND. ' The result is that tho south-east trade winds, which blow equally from to nine months of the year, have uninterrupted passage, and the voyager can be sure of a delightful climate with a temperature seldom higher than 7o degrees, and on land, if he stays on the tfind-side, he can always keep cool and •free from flics and mosquitoes. Although during a large part of my voyage I was in tho neighbourhood of the equator, I ..was uniformly free from all the usual fthpleasantnesses of a tropical jourtk e y, With good steamers more fitted jH>r passengers from hygienic -and olfac■lofy points of view than I travelled in, 4||r can (imagine 'ho finer winter resort Jjfor Australasians who abhor cold, than mibe Gilberts; the seas are comparatrrely smooth, as they lie in the zone of;equatorial calms, and though the islands are as like as the proverbial two peas, there is much variety in the natives and their customs, and villages. I feel no surprise at the number of Europeans who, having come to thorn by accident or choice, or in pursuit of health, have settled down, as permanent residents. The natives, though generally stalwart and muscular in:physique, manly in character, and tolerant and sociablo in ways of life, ' have no violent passion for work; there I is-a dreamy air about the villages, and 'f. ill-years that are not troubled with drought —a not uncommon occurrence in • tK'e doldrums —there is no anxiety about fpod. Were it not for the recurrent period of rainlessness, there could be no nearer approach to' the realisation of lotus-land than these islets. The northernmost of tho group, like tho Marshals to the north and the Ellice • Islands to tho south, are little troubled with droughts; they need, therefore, }jare no thought of tEe morrow, and the result is that their people have apparently more of the lotus-eating passion. in their blood, a less sturdy phy- ■ ' sjque, and a greater sparseness of chil- __ dren than the .central and southern Gil- > Bertese, who live right on the equator, in-the zone of calms; most of the sailors and copra-workers on the steamers are from this region or from the northernmost of: the Ellice Mands, which wo not quite out of the belt of droughts. Lotus-eating, or in Australijraese, loafing, may have its advantages 18' a Utopian dream or a paradise belynnd life, in acting as a stimulus to irtirk; in, actual working order it is the surest-prescription for stagnancy, sterility, and racial annihilation. 3>roughts are the salvation. of these equatorial ; GUbertese. Again and again, I met or "heard of Europeans, generally remittance men, some -well-born and welleducated, who had sought this lotusland, and my impression jvas that they, nnaffectyd by the droughts as they were, t had fallen" to the level" of a. pig ; the exception was rare and striking. Perhaps this is the,meaning of the enchantments with which Circe porcified ■■■[■ the sailors of Ulysses on her island, and penned them up in her pigsty. Yet tho Europeans who were there for work, . the- officials, the missionaries, the copra •gents and storekeepers, were as vigor- \ ©os and healthy as the best in the tem- , |>eratci 'zones. -RACIAL DECAY. _. "Tie population is manifestly decreasing,*, cxcept in tho islands stimulated to \ iqtivity, by drought. On. Apemama, 4 the less droughty islands, Kirby, ' had been on the island three years, My. collected on it six to seven thousani'Svamors "belonging to it and the neighbouring islands, and', that _ a population of about 30,000. Yet 1 in? tie'whole group of about a dozen • Jfilan'ds, some much larger than Apeauuna, there are only 27..000. Even in v 1811, rwfcen the Wilkes Expedition went i|; the practice of abortion, in to keep down the numbers of .1. eachi family to two or three, was - Hot only allowed, but encouraged, ex•i. «]»£ .in:.the well-watered North. As I . 80C^,- a3 *he second child was born, as a role some expert old woman was brought in to render conception impossible ©r fruitless. Syphilis, introduced the whalers who used to frequent ' thase.-waters, and its indigenous mimic, are vigorous allies in the gradual 1 obliteration of this fine race, though •*frarsan and its modifications are doing much to check their ravage?, espc- , cially those of the latter disease', Lep-

a native form, is also responsible i much disfiguration of the faces we . Bee. But the disease that is doing . SWatest havoc amongst the islanders is

consumption, and its chief point of atVtho glands of the neck. An at- .. is made in the splendid hospitals p. *Jj*t"the Administration has established •O'to arrest it by excision of the offend-

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER. NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

ing tissues: Suani, the clcver Fijian surgeon, who is in command of the central hospital in Tarawa, had performed more than a hundred operations of this kind this year when I saw him in Juno. I have heard many blame the missionaries for the great increase of the disease ; they encourage, it is said, the natives to wear -upper body clothing at ail times, and when this gets wet they still wear it, and catch cold; but J called their attention to the fact that a ;poncho-like mat, with a hole in it for the head to go through, was 3 part of aboriginal clothing in this group, as in the Carolines and in Tahiti, long before Europeans came into the Pacific.

THE POXCHO OF THE PACIFIC. Whether this holed shoulder-garment of the Pacific has any genetic relationship to the ponchos of the Pacific coast of South America and the gerape of the Pacific coast of Central America, is an ethnological question •worth discussing; for there is no climatic reason in any of these regions for wearing any gar.Tnenfc on the upper part of the* body. Anyone who is acquainted with the GUbertese and the Tahitians and physiognomy will at once reject the idea that ifc was introduced by immigrants from America, so un-3fongoloid a' o their features and their hair, though it might not be so readily rejected in the Carolines and the Marshalls, where the Mongoloid slit eyelid and even the oblique eye are not infrequent along with prevailing lankness of hair. The other direction of migration from Tahiti is much the more likely. ' PuACIAL ELEMENTS TN THE ELLICE GROUP. The origin of the Gilbertese and the I'jliicc Islanders, like that of iho people ci the Caroline and Marshall Islands, a far more difficult problem than that of the Polynesians, difficult though that ls " There is only a slight element of ucgxoidism splashing the broad Caucasian ism of the last, an element that would be most easily explained by the polygamy of the chiefs and their piratical raids int9 Melanesia. In the Gilthere is scarcely a trace of laegroidism, and any +hat exists might be explained by the raids into the Ellice ■Group, where there is manifest a good deal more than a trace in the frequent spindle legs of the women and the less frequent corkscrew appearance of the hair. Though the language of the Ellice Islanders is clcarly of Samoan affinity, and thero are traditions of their having come from Tokelau, of the Union Group, which was peopled from Samoa, there are other affinities that need explanation ; and some of these may be explained by the tradition I gathered m tho group that centuries ago there had been Tongan raids; for Tongan oceanic canoes were built -in Fiji, where there were the forests Tonga had not, and wore often manned.with Fijians, who, though not oceanic learned much from their Polynesian leaders. The-Fijian features and.hair are to be found in the Ellice Islands, especially in tho south. But there is another racial element in. the south that is not so easily explained; it is one marked by the egg-shaped head; the back of the head is quite flat and the top rises to a rounded point at the back, exactly like the head of the Tomman islanders in the south of Malekula of the New Hebrides; but there it is moulded, into this shape by bandages in childhood and youth. There is no artificial deformation in the Ellice Croup; but the relationship of the two might be explained by a successful raid and settlement of the egg-headed Ellice Islanders on Malekula. This element disappears as we go north through the group. But the great bulk of tho people are more Polynesian than anything else; though there are few of great stature, such as one finds in every Polynesian or Polynesianised community. Polynesian features and traits are to be seen everywhere, but not the Polynesian force of character or dignity and reserve of manners. A Samoan lady in Funafuti pointed out to me the extraordinary contrast and degeneracy in this respect. And in' my voyage through the group I found their relentless obtrusiveness distinctly embarrassing; perhaps it is due to the exceeding smallness of the community on each island, seldom more than two or three hundred, and the rarity of visits from the outside world. "Whenever I sat down they would gather by the spore close to me, and stare at me by the hour, with that callous, microscopic gaze which we bestow on mere protozoa or museum specimens. On somo of the islands, as for example on Nukuwhetau, a swarm of children, from six to sixteen years of age, stuck to me all day like flies. A few of them could talk English, however, and I was a hie to get much entertainment out of their piersistency. Several of them hd& blonde hair and light complexions; two of them were, from their freckles and blue eyes, manifestly half-European; but I ascertained their fathers were dead. One of the fathers,,l wa« told, was "Ser English," and the other was "Chollev" ; no amount of questioning could bring any change in the rinmcs or addition to them. The other lighthaired boys, I was assured, were wholly indigenous in ancestry, and I could well accept th-3 assurance, so distinct were they Irom the half-castes. And in other islands, as for example in Nukulailai, I saw blonde natives of pure native parentage and ancestry.

GILBERTESE UACIAL TRAITS. It wss not so in the Gilberts. I seldom or never saw any approach to blondism even in the children there. But there was plenty of other Caucasoid features in the physique of the Gilberteee. Their hair, though glossy black, was generally wavy and fine; their noso was often straight, oftone'r aquiline, and, as they grew old, Roman, tho iips were rarely thicker than those of Europeans, their eyes were full and open, and their forehead bold and large. Most of them had the 6tout, stubby legs of the Polynesian, and his broad, muscular chest. The faces of the younger women were often handsome and attractive, and so, too, though not 6o often, wore those of the younger men. Taken as a wholo they were by no means so tall on the average as tlie people of any one of the Polynesian groups, but their bodies were as wellbuilt and stalwart, and amongst the younger chiefs and native magistrates, thero were many as tall as the tallest Polynesians, and of as dignified a mien. As'they grow older they get stout and unwieldy, probably because karewe. or tho native cocoanut-molasses enters so 'largely into their food. It is on this that the young girls are fattened up by their mothers, whilst also being kept out of the sun, in order to make their complexion fair, before they are brought out for inspection and choice at the great rnoias or dances in the mania'p,'or huge vaulted council and guesthouse. Fatness and fairness are the chief marks of beauty, as of aristocracy, in tho Gilberts as in Polynesia, a clear indication of characteristics of the last conquerors and of their leisured life.