Following the Trades

Southland Times, Issue 21997, 22 April 1933, Page 15

Following the Trades

A Holiday in the South Pacific

By

Gordon J. Reed.

The morning we landed at Bushman’s Bay, was dirty and wet, with heavy tropical rain obscuring the high hills of Malekula. Our steamer lay off shore and the passengers landed from the launch. In spite of the rain it was warm and humid and some of our people from the ship were soon swimming around. It was, of course, a hard coral bottom and you have to be careful swimming in these parts lest you get a nasty scratch from the reef. They say coral wounds are difficult to heal. We landed at a pretty little semicircular bay with bush growing just at the back of it. There was a loading shed just where we got ashore and already there were some of the district residents going through the mail bag and ransacking the pile of letters and papers from it, searching for their own particular packages. When you look at the various ways, some of them irregular to ths extreme, whereby the great institution, the mail, reaches its destination, you must concede that there seems to be a fair bit of good luck about it all.

There are some natives wandering around at the landing, apparently boys from the mission station some way inland. They have some native curios they are trying to dispose of, mostly grass mats. There was one long grass skirt of an enormous girth, evidently meant for some particularly generous tourist of rotund proportions or for the mother of the whole tribe. Oftentimes we were told, some of the Little Nambas came from the interior out to the coast and by chance might be seen on a day the steamer called, but in this particular day, there were none there, and it was quite impossible to go inland and visit any of their villages. Our own native labourers were by this time engaged in getting goods ashore and in loading copra into the surf boats. A walk along the coast brought us to the residence of Mr. Fleming, a sometime New Zealander, who has had this plantation at Bushmans ’for a. long number of years. We had met him on landing and found that he had decided with his daughter to come down to Sydney by that particular steamer. At a short distance from the plantation house was a grave where Mrs Fleming was buried. There were horses and cattle running in the plantation paddocks, but the wet day made tramping along the tracks under the coconut palms a very unpleasant business. Little To Do Ashore. Away down a pathway under the palms, a mob of wild looking cattle blocked our way. There was no particular reason why we should continue on, but one of the party was determined that he should go on for a little way and so he plugged on by himself. I don’t think he got past the cattle, but as he was coming back he was suddenly startled by a noisy thud, and there a big coconut had landed with a really good wallop just on the ground an inch or so past his head. I think that put the “wind up” him thoroughly and he soon returned to the fold. But there wasn’t really very much to do ashore; it was just a case of standing under the trees with the rain coming down pretty heavily and making everyone more or less miserable. There were quite a number of young girls congregated at the landing, local residents who had come considerable distances with the prospect of some social intercourse during the time the boat was at the Bay. It seems that whenever the boat does come, she usually stays for the night, thus giving the opportunity of having a dance aboard. The local folk find this an opportunity not only of meeting themselves, inasmuch as they often live considerable distances apart, but also the opportunity of meeting passengers from overseas and people from other parts of the group. They seemed to be just a wee bit disappointed that day, when they found that the steamer was not going to stay as long as usual, but was getting away about noon. We met a Swiss resident on the steamer. He had brought his daughters from some good distance away just to have the day at the boat. I suppose they were expecting, like the other young folk from the district, that they would have a dance that night aboard, but unfortunately it didn’t happen along. This Swiss gentleman had been to various French Pacific territories in his time, but he informed us that nowhere were conditions any worse at the moment than in the New Hebrides. He must have come for miles from his own place through rain sodden jungle tracks to come to the steamer and he hadn’t chosen a very pleasant sort of day for it either. They told us that there is a good deal of cotton being grown in the group as a crop between the coconut palms. They get about four years trade use from the cotton trees, but by that time the young coconut will have become too big to permit of the cotton getting its proper growth between them. This New Hebrides cotton is different from the American cotton. The American variety produces an annual crop, but the island type seeds in February and bears in August or September. It grows in any cleared country and is particularly grown after the jungle has been cleared with a view to starting a coconut plantation. But the bottom has dropped out of the cotton market just as out of everything else. ■ The planters got £3 10/- a ton for cotton last year; they were expecting £5 a ton this year, but in the past it has been as high as from £25 to £45 a ton. The cotton grown during the past year was sufficient, moreover, to carry on for this year. In the coconut plantations they run a good number of cattle too. These beasts develop into decent looking animals and help to supply the native labour as well as the plantation house itself with plenty of fresh meat.

Malekula. Malekula is a big island, the second largest in the group. It is about 46 miles long and in parts 28 miles across. There is a long central range, the highest peak being Mount Pinot (2600 feet high). On the east coast there are some good bays round which a number of planters have settled. The west coast is wild and unbroken and scarcely settled at all. The main landing places are Stanley Harbour, Bushmen’s Bay and Port Sandwich. There hasn’t been a great deal of exploration done in the island and the interior is almost untouched. It is said that every native in these parts is armed with some old fashioned firearm traded in years ago by recruiters and labour men. Although there are all sorts of prohibitions on the supply of ammunition to natives, still they seem to be able to convert all sorts of scrap metal into thoroughly efficient bullets. Well, the time soon came for our departure from Bushman’s Bay, and shortly after noon we were standing out to sea again. For a few hours we skirted along the coast of Malekula and only realized in daylight what a high wooded island it is. Towards the north the high country gradually merges into low undulating slopes covered with dense native grass. Away on the other side of these slopes, is the home of those notorious fellows we should have liked to see, the Malekula wild men. They tell us that in those high hills are numerous native villages. Each village has its own peculiar trail leading to the sea. Sea water is precious to these people; they want the salt for all sorts of purposes. And so well worn narrow paths have by process of time been made through the jungle down to the coast. Woe betide the native from a village trespassing unless by consent on another village’s coast road. There’s sure to be a regular dust-up if they do. When the natives do reach the coast, they transport the salt water in bamboo containers, long lengths of bamboo tree. Each man can carry five or six of these bamboos. Folk tell us that the native tracks are made beautiful by the hibiscus growing at the sides of them. As we coasted along, we saw the sails of a trading boat off the north end of the island. You don’t see much traffic in these parts, and any passing boat at all is a matter of interest. The long flat slopes of Northern Malekula were sinking away in the distance. Some of these hills look like splendid park lands. There are patches of brush making the even looking slopes of dense native cane. It would be a pretty difficult matter indeed making your way through that country. One of these northern ranges looks as if it were wholly cultivated. But that is a snare and delusion and all you will find there are a few scattered native villages. We inquired what number of people would inhabit these native villages and were told that a village of 300 people would be a big place. Usually the numbers would be 50 to 200 people. The Price Of A Wife. Those native tracks they told us of were intriguing sorts of places. They conjured up pictures of silently moving natives quietly walking along the dark and gloomy clearings keeping a wary eye for some unexpected stranger. Did they meet a native with a red hibiscus stuck in his big black locks, that was the war sign and a sure mark of danger. Possibly these same fellows wear a peculiar flower when they go a-courting. And a sorry sort of business marriage and giving in marriage must be in these parts. The price of a wife must cause a good deal of calculation to the prospective husband. So many pigs is usually the valuation of the opposite sex. But if a fellow were in love with a chief’s daughter then he would have to collect a good number more pigs than if he were simply marrying a commoner. The natives prize the curved tusks of the pigs very highly. They act as means of barter. You see splendid examples of these big curved boar’s tusks in these parts. The pig in the New Hebrides plays just as interesting a part as it does in so many of the South Sea Islands. The natives have them in all their villages, and the pig seems more important than the children. In fact, the pig is largely connected with some of the native ceremonials. They told us that the pig, although not native to the group, must have been there long before Captain Cook ever came round the Pacific. If it were not so how would the pig enter so largely into the native ceremonial? There are no animals actually native to the group. In connection with the ceremonial in which the pig takes part, the natives have some curious customs. In the northern islands, they knock out the opposing eye teeth. As a result, these big curved tusks I have spoken of grow. These curved circular tusks are used largely in the ceremonials connected with chieftainship. An ambitious native adds to his political rank by killing or possessing a certain number of these curved tusks. With the appropriate use of these tusks a good deal of ritual is connected. The selection of the pigs used in the ceremonies is also a matter for the experts. Not every young pig will do. As in other natural species, you will find hemaphrodite pigs. These are assigned for something wholly different from the ordinary pig. But there is none of this in the southern parts of the group where pigs are used only for food. It is only in the northern islands that the tusked pigs are held in such esteem. Even there, they are not actually worshipped, but there is no doubt but that they form a big item in native ceremonies. Plenty Of Dogs. In these native villages I have been speaking of, you will also see plenty of dogs. Nor are these weird looking mongrels wholly for show or simply to keep a watch around the house. They on occasion go to the cooking pot to form a choice article on the menu of some native establishment. The natives here, as elsewhere in the South Seas, will eat anything—any stray cat will have a sorry time if he gets in the way of some hungry native. It will soon form a very tasty foundation to some stew. The dogs develop into a sort of nuisance, killing and stealing fowls if they feel so inclined. But the native gets his revenge on the dog by killing and eating him in turn —and so having poultry and dog combined. It is said that the flesh of the dog is quite palatable and is very white —ugh! Sounds like some of those poor old Chinese pictures you used to joke about with boiled dog being the whole point of the story.

(To be continued.)