202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



had her head shaved with a knife of bamboo, of course without soap 

 or any facilitating lather. 



In the New Hebrides the villages are always invisible from the 

 water. Each village as a rule consists of a set of different hamlets 

 or collections of huts. The houses in the various islands differ greatly 

 in architecture, but I always found them beautifully neat and clean. 

 The dead are usually buried at the door of the hut. On Ambrym and 

 some other islands the young unmarried men in a village always sleep 

 in a large house specially set apart for them. 



In general it may be said that all the Melanesians who have not 

 been converted to Christianity are cannibals. It is not, however, to 

 be supposed that human flesh is their ordinary diet. It is probable 

 that none partake of it often, and that large numbers have only rare 

 opportunities of doing so. They are almost invariably ashamed of 

 cannibalism, and will generally conceal their indulgence in it or dis- 

 continue it if a white man comes to live among them. 



"Wars are nearly perpetual, and the non-Christian natives invariably 

 go armed. I have been among natives whose custom it was not to 

 lay aside their weapons even to eat, but keeping them in their right 

 hand to take their food in the left. The spear, the bow and arrow, 

 the club, and the tomahawk are all in use in the New Hebrides, but 

 there are many fire-arms in the hands of the natives. The Tanna men 

 have a high rejmtation for boldness, and even in ordinary intercourse 

 they have a more independent bearing than most of their neighbors. 

 Native wars are not usually very sanguinary ; at least, pitched battles 

 are few. The savage art of war consists in murdering stragglers and 

 making forays to kill women and children, burn down villages, and lay 

 waste plantations. 



Nothing struck me more than the great intelligence of the natives 

 of Oceania in general and of the Melanesians in particular. Within 

 the limited sphere of their acquirements whatever they do they do 

 thoroughly. 



The Melanesians of the Solomon Islands arc less known than their 

 neighbors of the New Hebrides. The climate of the group is less 

 favorable to white men. 



The Solomon-Islanders are in general an aquatic people. Their 

 canoes, except as New Ireland and New Britain are approached, have 

 no outriggers. They are of graceful shape, of large size, built up of 

 pieces, and with scams "payed" with a sort of vegetable pitch. The 

 villages are usually near the water's edge and unconcealed by trees. 

 The use of fire-arms is still not very common. But on some islands, 

 notably Guadalcanal-, they are expert bowmen. The Savo men make 

 clubs covered with straw plaiting of singularly fine texture and taste- 

 ful pattern. Some of the spears are of prodigious length, and are 

 tipped at the cud with a human bone cut into a multitude of sharp 

 and brittle points, which break off in a wound and are said to cer- 



