QUAINT ISLANDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22210, 10 September 1935, Page 12

QUAINT ISLANDERS

LIFE AT THE SOLOMONS MANY OLD CUSTOMS SURVIVE The simple life is led by the natives of the Solomon Islands. Eating, sleeping. smoking, chewing betel nut, with perhaps .in occasional spell in the garden, make up their daily round. This was the picture drawn by the Very Rev. Father J. M. Aubin, S.M., when visiting Christchurch last week, accompanied by Father D. Coicaud. Father Aubin will he consecrated Bishop by Archbishop O'Shea on September 29. The native population of the islands is close on 100,000 and many quaint customs survive, the march of civilisation having scarcely touched them. With the fall in the price of copra many of the traders have left the islands, and the white population is not more than 400. There was no need for the natives to work, said Father Aubin, who is a Frenchman. Their principal food consisted of yams, taros, sweet potatoes and fish, with the monotony varied by wild pig on special occasions. The villagers cultivated sufficient ground to keep themselves in food, and when one area was worked out it was left to run wild and another piece of ground burned off and planted. Being a tropical country, the growth was prolific and the natives never lacked necessities, but their standard of living was poor. Polygamy was still practised, but it -was largely a matter of what a man could afford. A wife cost the equivalent of about £4O in native money—strings of shells —an amount which again was shared by the wife's relatives. .The bride and bridegroom might not have seen one another np to the time of their marriage, but generally they settled down to a more or less happy existence. Father Aubin has boon in the Solomon Islands for 27 years and Father Coicaud for 25 years There are 16 priests and 20 nuns in the vicariate. The first bishop was Bishop lOpalle, who was consecrated in Rome in 1845, but murdered by natives in the same year.