16 MEMOIBS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 



SOME NOTES ON THE ASSASSINS' BATONS 



OF MALAITA. 



By Douglas Rannie. 

 (Plate IX.) 



Malaita, the largest and most densely populated island in the British 

 Solomon Group, is one of the few localities at the present time left unexplored. 

 Truly wonderful rewards await the scientific explorers who have the courage to 

 face and overcome the difficulties lying in the path of those who would penetrate 

 and probe the mysteries of these superstitious, wild, savage, and murderous people 

 who dwell in the dark forests and mountain retreats of that beautiful island. 

 A hundred miles long and twenty -five across, the island appears from the sea to 

 be one vast forest, which, clothing the sides of a thousaud hills, rises to far-off 

 mountains. Through the jungle and glades of this dark forest there swarms a 

 silent, desperate, cruel, and treacherous people. They kill and are killed, and 

 feast on human flesh. 



The bush people and mountaineers for generations past have waged a 

 deadly feud with the coastal tribes, and stray trespassers on one another's terri- 

 tories, if surprised, meet with instant death, or, if captured alive, with a lingering 

 death of torture. At stated times, by mutual consent, hostilities are suspended, 

 and the sea-coast and country parties meet on neutral ground set apart as market 

 places, where their women exchange and barter their varied produce and 

 commodities, under the protection of armed guards of men from both sides. 



The mixture of races on Malaita is also indicated hy the variety of weapons 

 and implements used in warfare and hunting, as well as the ornaments adopted 

 for personal adornment. Whereas in most islands throughout the Solomon Group 

 the natives confine themselves to particular kinds of lethal weapons, discarding 

 all others, the Malaitans employ all the offensive weapons commonly used by all 

 races inhabiting the neighbouring and adjacent islands, such as clubs and wooden 

 swords of various designs, together with spears, bows and arrows, slings and 

 stones, as well as daggers made from wood, shell, and bone. Many of their 

 arrows and some of their spears, in workmanship, are peculiar to Malaita, but 

 most of the other weapons have their counterpart in different islands. But the 

 baton-shaped implements shown in the illustration of some of the specimens in 

 the Queensland Museum are peculiar to the southern district of Malaita only. 

 They are known by repute but never seen in any of the northern or central 

 parts of the island, and they are quite unknown in any other part of the Pacific. 

 On the south-east coast of the island they get the name of ' ' Hau, ' ' and on the 





