BLACK FREEMASONS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3796, 14 September 1883, Page 4

BLACK FREEMASONS.

Two years ago I was on the north-cast coast of trail or Isabel Maud, Solomons. We ware anchored hero a few days, but the natives were wild and shy, and wo had at first Homo difliculty in communicating; but after a day or two they ramo freely on board, but refused to recruit. I was pressed to land, but declined. I had not been ottered betel nut, and as a rule I don't go ashore in the Solomons unless 1 have eaten it. I noticed that many of the principal men on hoard wore wigs, and some were young" fellows. This puzzled me. We had no interpreter at first; none of us understood the local dialect. At last we got a lad who spoke pigeon English. I asked him about the wig men. lie said wearing the ■wig" was a badge of a secret society. They ruled the roost in the neighborhood—bigwigs in more senses than one, in fact. He ■was not one himself; wished ho was. It cost a lot of money and pigs to bo If any outsider interfered or attacked one of the wig men all the rest rallied to his assistance, and the chief himself was afraid of them. In the evening I saw eight or ten of these wig fellows eating betel nut in a circle on the deck. I sat down next an old fellow and joined the party. lam a member of a' society that shall bo nameless, and proceeded quietly to make the usual signs and symbols; every eye in the circle was fixed on mo as I did so, every jaw stopped wagging, but no result immediately followed, and I felt considerably disappointed; after a bit, however, an old fellow handed me, in a friendly way, his betel nut and lime box, the sign of friendship, and my jaw wagged along with them ; another suddenly pulled off his big wig, and crowned me with it, and all the circle nodded and grinned at me. Presents of tobacco followed, and a trip ashore was proposed ," I agreed. When I entered the town, called by the way Sana, great was the excitement, and yelling, and astonishment on seeing me bewigged. I was received with the greatest politeness in every house I entered. The exeptioual deference I owed to my head-dress. After this the villagers became very friendly, and next clay my friends the bigwigs gave us six or seven boys, and appeared really sorry when we left three or four days after. I always, while there, went in my wig, which is most ingeniously platted together of long human hair, and the boys from that town on board were always quite friendly, generally looking to mo for any little thing they wanted ; but I could glean nothing about the bigwigs from them. On seeing a local white trader afterwards, he said, on being spoken to on the subject, I had .stumbled on a mob of "black masons." I have my wig yet and intend keeping , it, and laugh as I think of my wild black friends on a fierce cannibal island in the Solomons. —From the Age.