50 governmp:nt. 



'JVo Treasuiy war-canoes, it appears, attempted to jand at 

 Tuliiba Islet one evening, where the crews were going to encamp for 

 the night. Ostensibly the Treasury men were on their way to 

 Bougainville to buy spears ; but since they were led by Olega, the 

 brother of Mule and the fighting-chief of the island, it is probable 

 that they were intending a descent on Alu from this islet of Tnluba. 

 When the Treasury men discovered Kopana's party were already 

 there, the fighting at once began. During the conflict, for which 

 the Alu natives were ill-prepared, seeing that they were largely 

 -coraposerl of Kopana's wives, one of the Treasury canoes was dashed 

 to pieces on a reef and all the occupants were thrown into the 

 water. In this unequal contest, the Alu natives , had a man and a 

 woman killed and a man and a woman wounded, both the women 

 being wives of Kopana. In addition four other of Kopana's wives 

 were captured by the Treasury men, who returned to their own 

 island in the remaining canoe with a loss of four men wounded, of 

 whom one subsequently died. 



The unfortunate wives of Kopana had indeed borne the brunt 

 from the very beginning. Within two months, three of them had 

 suffered violent death, one of them was wounded apparently beyond 

 recovery, and four had been carried off prisoners to Treasury. 

 The singular feature of this breach between the Treasury and Alu 

 natives, was that the animosity of the former was directed against 

 •Gorai's eldest son and not against the old chief, his father, who did 

 not think it incumbent on him to interfere except for the purpose 

 of pacifying the two parties. 



I visited the two wounded brought back to Alu. Five days had 

 already elapsed since the fight, and I found the wounds of both in 

 a horrible condition. The wife of Kopana had a severe tomahawk 

 wound of the thigh just above the knee, smashing the bone and im- 

 plicating the joint. The man had a rifle-bullet wound through the 

 fleshy part of the thigh and a pistol-bullet wound in the opposite 

 groin. Nothing had been done in either case, and after the lapse of 

 five days in a tropical climate, the condition of the wounds could bo 

 scarcely described. I was allowed to do but little, and considered 

 recovery in cither case most improbable. Both, however, recovered 

 to my great astonishment. I found afterwards, on visiting the 

 wounded at Treasury, that one man had been shot throug-h the 

 -elbow-joint by one of his own part}^ 



The subsequent events in cimnection with this outbreak of 



