15

A.—4.

" The inhabitants of the island are, taken altogether, the finest race of men, so far as muscular development goes, I have ever seen. They are almost a race of giants. I believe nine out of every ten would measure 6 feet or more high, and their breadth is proportionate to their height. "As a race the Ellice Islanders are very quiet and peaceable. Quarrels are rare, and ordinary disputes are settled by the authority of the king or chiefs. On some of the islands wars are unknown. An old man on Vaitupu brought me a hatchet made out of the back of a turtle, and I asked if it had ever been used in war. He replied that he h&d never heard of war art Vaitupu. " Gilbert or Kingsmill Group. " This group of islands lies between the parallels of about 4° N. and 2° 36' S. lat., and 172° and 178° E. long. There are, I believe, sixteen islands in the group, nine to the north and seven to the south of the equator. " Arorae (Hurd Island), in lat. 2° 36' S., and long. 177° E.—This island is from three to four miles long. At one end it is not more than half a mile across, at the other end it appeared from the ship to be a mile and a half broad. I was told there is a small lagoon at the wider end, but I had no time to visit it. Erom the number of houses, which are almost continuous for two and a half or three miles, one would suppose the population to be very great; but we only saw about four hundred, although we walked nearly the whole length over which the villages extended. The small number of people in comparison with the number of houses was soon accounted for. They had been taken away by what the natives themselves described as ' the men-stealing vessels. 1 We could not find out the number who had been ' stolen,' but some said there were ' many taken, and few remaining.' When we landed we found the people armed with knives and hatchets, while one man shouldered an old firelock, and had a revolver stuck in his belt. Our vessel was at first supposed to be a ' man-stealing ship,' and the poor creatures had determined to defend themselves against their ' civilized' assailants. As we were approaching the shore in our boat a canoe met us, and we informed the men of the object of our viaiu. One of them had been to a Christian island, and knew there was no harm to fear from a missionary ship; so the canoe preceded our boat to the shore, and carried the news of our peaceful and friendly intentions. " Tamana (Eotch Island), in lat. 2° 30' S., and long. 176° 7' E., was the next island at which we called. It is not more than two and a half or three miles long, and from one to two miles wide. There is no lagoon. The island is well supplied with cocoanut palms and pandanus, and, although it was suffering from drought when we were there, there seemed to be no lack of food. Good water is procured in abundance by sinking wells in the centre of the island. Many of the people were away working at their plantations when we were there ; but I estimated the number of those we saw at about 600. All the males were naked, as on Arorae. We found a very bitter feeling existing against 'men-stealing vessels,' and especially against those from Tahiti. " Onoatoa (Francis Island), in lat. I°s6' S., and long. 175° 44' E., was sighted before dark on the same day (October 19), and we were off one end of it early next morning. This is an atoll, with a number of islands partially surrounding a lagoon eight or ten miles across. Besides this large lagoon, there are several small shallow lagoons in various parts of the larger islands. Where we landed there was very little soil. The cocoanut and pandanus trees grow out of the sand, but on other parts there is more soil, and the people said they had plenty of food. When we were there they had been several months without rain, and the vegetation was very much parched up. "Peru, in lat. 1° 18' S., and long. 176° E.—This is an island Several miles long, and varying from half a mile to a mile or more wide. It is not an atoll like most of the islands we visited, but there are several shallow lagoons in it, some very small, surrounded by the land, and dry at low tide, others larger and open on one side to the reef which runs round the island. The island itself is formed of successive ridges of sand, broken coral, and shells. These ridges are most of them from 30 to 50 feet across, and the hollows formed between them are generally from 4 to 6 feet in depth. For some distance, at that end of the island which I examined, they run across, and in the middle they run parallel with the sides of, the island. The whole extent examined presented the same appearance, and the ridges were so regular that they gave one the idea of being artificially formed. The waves must exert a mighty force during heavy weather to form these extensive ridges. There is little doubt but each ridge is the result of a single storm. I have already referred, in the notice of Atafu, in the Tokelau group, to a similar ridge of smaller dimensions which was thrown up during the present year; and I have seen several small islands of broken coral and shells, which were formed on the reefs in Samoa during a hurricane of a few hours' duration. "The productions of Peru are in every respect similar to those of other islands in the group. The natives appear to value the pandanus even more than the cocoanut palm. They consume immense quantities of the fruit raw; and the variety which they cultivate in the Gilbert group (which is much superior to that found in the Ellice Islands, and immeasurably superior to the kind cultivated in Samoa), produces a very palatable fruit. The women prepare a kind of cake by baking the fruit till it becomes soft; they then pound a large number together in a fine mat, and spread the prepared pulp in cakes two or three feet wide by six or eight long and one-sixth of an inch thick. The whole is then dried in the sun, and made into a roll like an ancient manuscript. This keeps for a length of time, and tastes something like old dates. "Peru was the last island in the Gilbert group which we visited. We had information from Tapeteuea (Drummond Island), the nearest island to Peru, that the Sandwich Island missionaries were already there; and we concluded that they had also occupied another island to the north of Drummond Island, but on the.^outh of the equator, about which we had no information. Only one other island remained, viz., Nukunau (Byron Island), which lies considerably to the east of Peru. As this was directly to windward of us, and would have been a dead beat, we made no attempt to go there this year."

I,—The Islands generally: Mr. Seed.