16 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



intricate evolutions are carried through to the accompaniment of the 

 music of drums and clapping of hands and the yelling and singing of 

 the dancers. These public festivals are held in a place set apart, in 

 the middle of which there is a sacred tree, generally a banyan or pine- 

 tree. 



Another peculiar belief is in the power of tabu. If a chief or any 

 one tabu or consecrate something to a certain purpose, the one who 

 breaks the tabu is sure to suffer for his sacrilege. 



The above sketch of the character of these people does not apply 

 to all the islands. In some of them the people have been changed 

 from warlike cannibals into peaceful tillers of the ground and followers 

 of other peaceful vocations, and the morality of some of the islands is 

 now as marked as the former degradation. All agree that this result 

 has been achieved by the efforts of the self-sacrificing missionaries 

 who braved the rage of the cannibals and overcame the almost insur- 

 mountable difficulties in their way of christianising these islands. As 

 well as the natural difficulties which faced them they had to encounter 

 the determined opposition of unscrupulous traders, who did not hesi- 

 tate to initiate these already degraded people into new vices. The 

 drum and image which you have seen are the last of their kind made 

 on the island of Erromanga, and this fact is sufficient to indicate the 

 result of the work of the brave men who carried the light of our 

 civilisation into this darkest of earth's dark places. 



