16 GOVERNMENT. 



diti'erent ])lace.s on the coast where he intended to land. But it was 

 to no purpose. Taki saw the ruse, and taking it in good part re- 

 marked to Captain Macdonald that he had apparently a large 

 number of natives trading for him. Waiting patiently until some 

 unfortunate bushmen ventured down on the reefs to fish, the Wano 

 chief surprised them, slaughtered many and carried the living and 

 the dead in triumph to his village. When Mr. Bi'enchley visited 

 this village in H.M.S. "Curacoa" in 1865, he saw evidence o£ a head- 

 hunting foray, in which probably Taki had taken part in his youth- 

 ful days. The skulls of 25 bushmen were observed hanging up 

 under the roof of the tambu-house, all showino; the marks of the 

 tomahawk.^ In our time, this chief conducted his forays less openly, 

 and I saw no evidence of his work in the tambu-houses of his village. 

 The practice of head-hunting, above referred to, prevails over a 

 large extent of the Solomon Group. The chiefs of New Geoi-gia or 

 Rubiana extend their raids to Isabel, Florida, and Guadalcanar ; and 

 thus perform voyages over a hundred miles in length. Within the 

 radius of these raids no native can be said to enjoy the security of 

 his own existence for a single day. In the villages of Rubiana may 

 be seen heaps of skulls testifying to the success of previous expedi- 

 tions. Ca])tain Cheyne, when visiting Simbo or Eddystone Island 

 in 1844, found that the natives had just returned from a successful 

 expedition, bringing with them 93 heads of men, women, and children. 

 In these expeditions, he says, they sometimes reached as far as 

 Murray Island which lies about 135 miles to the eastward.^ Their 

 reputation, however, had extended yet further, since D'Urville, who 

 visited Thousand Ships Bay in 1838, tells us that the Isabel natives 

 knew the land of Simbo and pointed to tlie west to indicate its 

 direction.^ The Rev. Dr. Codrington, in referring to these head- 

 hunting raids,'* remarks that the people of the south-west part of 

 Isabel have suffered very much from attacks made on them year 

 after year by the inhabitants of the further coast of the same island 

 and of neighbouring islands, the object of these attacks being to ob- 

 tain heads, either for the hbnour of a dead or living chief or for 

 the inauguration of new canoes. He observes that a new war 

 canoe is not invested with due mana, i.e., supernatural power, until 



1 " Cruise of H.M.S. ' Curacoa ' '.' (p. 2C7) ; by J. L. Brenchley, M.A. 

 - "A Description' of Islamls in the "Western Pacific Ocean" (p. 66), by Andrew Cheyne, 

 London, 1852. 



5 " Voyage au Pole Sud," Paris, 1843 ; torn, v., p. 31. 

 * Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. x., ii. 201. 



