534 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 



One had lived some years in Samoa, and spoke the language fairly welL 

 Another had resided for some time in Tonga, and a third had lived in 

 Fiji, and as I was acquainted with all these languages I found these men 

 very useful indeed as interpreters. All the men were very much dis- 

 figured by the custom, which I have already described, of slitting each 

 nostril, in which they inserted on special occasions a large pendant made- 

 of tortoise-shell. The men seemed to have two distinct kinds of tatoo- 

 ing which, I am inclined to think, were distinctive badges of their 

 respective totems, but in conjunction with this they seemed to tattoO' 

 just as their fancy dictated. Some of the men had beards, but the 

 majority had very little or none at all. The women all had their hair 

 cropped very close. The men had the same wavy black hair that the 

 Samoans had, and in many instances they wore it just as the old heathen 

 Samoans used to do. We heard of several castaways having arrived in 

 the group, the most recent of which appeared to be a large number from 

 the Gilbert group, but after residing some time, I believe, were killed 

 by the natives. We saw no weapons of any kind amongst the people, 

 and I remembered that my old friend Captain Ferguson told me that 

 when the James Burnie was captured at this place, some years pre- 

 viously, the mode adopted by the natives was that at a given signal 

 each man seized one of the officers or crew and either pushed or dragged 

 him overboard and so drowned him. The people, as I have stated, 

 and it will be confirmed by a comparison of the words given in the 

 Appendix, are Polynesian ; but there is, I think, a strong Micronesian 

 admixture, and to this I attribute the fact that the Le ua Niuans use 

 the native loom for the manufacture of their mats, and these, so far as 

 I know, are not used in any purely Polynesian group. 



We did not go on shore at Pelau, as we expected to call there on 

 our way back to Numanu (Tasman Group). We left on Monday, 

 June 23rd, and had a fine light wind on starting. Just as we went 

 through the passage our interpreter, " Bob," and the other Lord Howe 

 man made a sacrifice to the "" devil," or deity Aukao, who presided 

 at this end of the lagoon. This was done to ensure a fair wind and a 

 smooth passage. Aukao must, however, have been easily propitiated, 

 for the offering consisted only of two pieces of cocoanut husk and three 

 pairs of cocoanut leaf fronds plaited. Bob cast the offering out, with 

 a few propitiatory words addressed to Aukao, and they all seemed to 

 have great belief in the efficacy ot the act. 



We went out through a fine passage, and had a good quiet run to 

 Numanu. We entered the lagoon at 1 p.m. It was a fine atoll, like 

 an elongated horseshoe in shape, with the entrance through the reef 

 at the open end. There was no entrance all round the circular part. 

 It was very wonderful to see these atolls in the m.idst of the wide open 

 sea, with deep blue water right up to the great breakwater of coral 

 which encloses the comparatively shallow lagoon inside. The reef 

 was dotted over its whole extent with islands and islets, all of which 

 were evidently growing in size year by year. Each island had a bank 

 of pure white sand at each end, showing newly made land. In some 

 cases two or more islets were nearly united, and others showed that they 



