1S41.] POPULATION. 403 



' elastic, the sky is rarely mottled with clouds, and 

 showers and sunshine agreeably alternate; with each other. 

 In consequence of the equability of the climate, the inhabi- 

 tants enjoy remarkable health, and suffer from but few 

 diseases except those of a cutaneous character. 



Rats in great numbers infest the islands. The other quad- 

 rupeds are a few dogs and cats. No land birds were seen by 

 the American vessels, but white terns, golden plovers, noddies, 

 curlews, turnstones, and tropic-birds, are very common. 

 Whales, sharks, Crustacea of different kinds, hicke de mer, 

 and numerous edible fish of the smaller varieties, abound in 

 the vicinity of the group, and all are eaten by the inhabitants. 

 Whales are often killed when they get aground on the shoals 

 by the natives with their spears. Sharks are caught by drop- 

 ping pieces of bait alongside a canoe, and when they rush for- 

 ward to seize them, throwing a noose over their heads. Small 

 fish are taken with scoop-nets, seines, hooks and lines, and 

 traps made of withes and resembling eel-pots ; and they are 

 also driven in shoals into large stone weirs or pens. 



These islands are densely populated ; the whole number of 

 inhabitants being estimated at sixty thousand, of which 

 Drummond's Island alone contains about ten thousand. Their 

 dialect differs essentially from that of the Samoan Group, but 

 preserves many of the peculiarities of the great Polynesian 

 root from which the various tongues are derived. Their 

 features are small, but strongly marked, and indicate clearly 

 their Malay origin.* They are of middle size, the men rarely 



* The natives of these islands have a tradition that the first inhabitants came 

 from Harness, or Baneba. an island said to lie to the south-west, in two canoes ; 

 that they were subsequently joined by other persons, arriving from Amoi an 

 island lying to the south-east, also in two canoes ; and that after they had lived 

 together in harmony for one or two generations, the male members of the two 

 parties had a quarrel, in which those who had arrived first were successful and 

 killed offall their opponents after which they made wives of their women who 

 were better looking and had fairer coa.plexions than the others. Amoi is sup- 

 posed by Captain Wilkes. (Narrative, vol. v. p 8-3.) and with good reason to be 

 the Samoan Group; and he conjectures that Baneba may re er to Boneba or 

 Ascension Island, one of the Caroline Group although its position does not 

 correspond with the assigned locality. Bidera and Bouka, of the Solomon Archi- 

 pelago, at the south-west, and Banda and Borneo (the latter not unlike Barness), 



