-28 GOVERNMENT. 



.at war with the natives of Suwai, but maintains friendly communi- 

 cation witli Daku, the chief of the village of Takura, and with 

 Magasa the chief of the harbour of Tonali. Whilst spending a night 

 at Sinasoro with Lieutenant Heming and his party, I with the rest 

 had to share the tambu-house with a party of ten natives from 

 Takura. They had come across for pigs and taro. The natives of 

 the adjoining coast of Bougainville, possessing a different language, 

 are not able to make themselves understood by the people of the 

 Straits except by interpreters. T have seen one of these natives 

 just as little able to make himself understood by the natives of Faro, 

 as if he had been suddenl}- removed to some very distant country 

 instead of only 30 miles away. 



I have previously referred to the close friendship which usually 



prevails between the inhabitants of the islands of Bougainville 



Straits, linked together as they are by inter-marriages and by. the 



possession of a common language. But in the calmest seas there 



are occasional storms ; and I will proceed to relate an extraordinar}'' 



chain of events which came more or less under our observation 



whilst in this portion of the group. Shortly before our return to 



Treasury in April, 1884, there had been a terrible domestic tragedy, 



which at one time threatened to embroil all the chiefs of the .Straits 



in actual war. It appeared that Kopana, the eldest son of Gorai 



had, in a fit of temporary madness, shot one of his wives dead with 



his rifle, the unfortunate woman being a daughter of Mule, the 



Treasury chief. On hearing the news, Mule at once crossed over to 



Alu to exact vengeance on Kopana ; but Gorai would not permit 



him to harm his son ; and it was arranged between the two chiefs 



that Mule should be allowed to shoot one of the other wives of 



Kopana, as the price of blood. Early one morning the Treasury 



chief, armed with his snider rifle, took his way in a canoe up a 



passage I had often traversed in my Rob Roy, and surprising his 



selected victim at work in a taro patch, he shot her dead. At the 



same time he wounded her male attendant, an elderly native named 



Malakolo, the bullet passing through the left shoulder-joint from 



bcliind. When I saw this man six or seven weeks afterwards, he 



was f^st recovering from the injury, although with a useless limb. 



Kopana, who is a headstrong son and beyond his father's control, 



naturally resented this act of Mule, and appears to have meditated 



a descent on Treasury. Collecting his followers and the remainder 



<if liis wives, ho disappeared on what was given out as a tortoise- 



