September, 1902.1 197 



marriage of three of the dusky belles of the village. Preparations 

 for the wedding feast were there, in the shape of huge piles of coco- 

 nuts and yams, some of the latter almost as big as a man's body, aa 

 well as several porkers, tied down to poles, and protesting loudly 

 against their impending fate. The natives were perfectly friendly, 

 and the chief readily told off a couple of men to conduct us to the 

 top of the volcano, our guide from the mission-house having bolted as 

 soon as he saw the crowd. The forest ceased about half-a-mile from 

 the village, and we entered on a wide plain, quite bare, except for a 

 few scattered Pandani, and deep in loose, reddish ashes, with steam 

 escaping from numerous crevices and small circular apertures or 

 *' fumeroles." Out of this plain rose the steep terminal cone of the 

 volcano, composed of loose cellular scoria and abundance of the 

 filamentous lava known as " Pele's Hair," and we gained the edge of 

 the crater, 1,100 feet above the sea, without much difficulty. The 

 sight amply repaid us for our long and hot walk, the crater being 

 some 250 yards in diameter, and at least 500 feet deep ; at the bottom 

 several glowing openings like furnace-mouths could bo seen, one of 

 which threw up a continuous shower of large masses of bright red-hot 

 and very fluid lava, with a deep bubbling roar, to a height of quite 

 30 or 40 feet. This was interrupted, at intervals of about ten minutes, 

 by a tremendous detonation in which fragments of red-hot stone, 

 some of them as large as a man, were thrown far above the rim of 

 the crater ; most of these fell back into it again, but it would have 

 been very dangerous to stand on the leeward side, to say nothing of 

 the sulphurous vapour, which was very copious and pungent, even to 

 windward. The volcano was said to be at this time in a very quiet 

 state, but the explosions arc often heard at Aneityum, 50 miles away, 

 and even sometimes at Port Fila, distant 150 miles. On the very edge 

 of the crater 1 caught a stray specimen of the pretty Danais hebridina, 

 Butl., its delicate green colour somewhat faded by the sulphurous 

 fumes, but it will serve as a souvenir of my visit to Mount Tasowa. 



Returning to Noumea on June 24th, we started on another 

 cruise to the New Hebrides on July 10th, and reached Port Inyeug, 

 in Aneityum, on the following afternoon. Much of the timber here 

 had been cleared away for the supply of a sawmill, now abandoned, 

 and its place was taken by dense thickets of weeds, often higher than 

 one's head. In a short walk I found Danais pel ilia (the only time I 

 saw this species in the New Hebrides), and rather fine forms of 

 Hypolimnas Bolina and Melanitis Leda ; and bottled a few CoJeoptera 

 (Uloma, Piqulus, a nice little Pselaphid, &c.) from under rotten logs 



