GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLEY. 7 



agent for Messrs. John S. De Wolf and Company, of Liverpool, 

 he never had as much as a scrap of tobacco stolen from him, 

 although his trade goods were piled up indiscriminately on the 

 floor of his house, which had neither doors, locks, nor a bolt of 

 any kind. In this, however, the Nanomagans are peculiar the 

 other islanders are not so particular."* " There is a lagoon here, 

 centre very deep, sides very muddy," writes Dr. Gill in a MS. 

 account of a visit to this island in 1872, which he has kindly 

 allowed me to peruse. Wilkes, however, denied it a lagoon, and 

 none is shown upon the Admirality Chart (South Pacific, No. 766, 

 Ed. 1893). 



" NIUTAO, Lynx or Speidenf Island is an atoll about three and 

 a half miles in circumference, and has two small lagoons. It is 

 said to have had its origin with other islands in two ladies, the 

 one called Pai and the other Vau. They came from the Gilbert 

 Islands with a basket of earth, and wherever they threw it about 

 the islands sprang up. Other traditions say that the people came 

 from Samoa in two canoes which drifted thither. The one went 

 to Vaitupu and the other to Niutao."| "This island," Moresby 

 informs us, " differs from the others of the group in having no 

 guarding reef, and no companion islands near it. It stands 

 alone in the ocean, scarcely raised above its level, and is simply 

 a huge flat-topped coral rock, two and a half miles by one and 

 a half in extent, which rises perpendicularly from fathomless 

 depths, and is only saved from being washed over by the sea 

 by a narrow shore reef, on which the great surf expends itself. 

 We pulled to the edge of the boiling surf and met canoes, 

 which landed us without a wetting, and were received on the 

 beach with the most intense curiosity by the natives, who 

 had never seen a man-of-war before. They are a well-looking, 

 dark, straight-haired race, and number four hundred and seventeen 

 souls, a large population for so small an island, but their food is 

 abundant, an unlimited supply of cocoanuts, fowls, pigs, flying- 

 fish, skipjack and sharks Their mode of 



procuring water is curious. They cut the coral rock to a depth 

 of twenty feet, and make an opening wide at the top and 

 narrowing into three small holes below, which fill with a brackish 

 water as the tide rises. They have not any other supply, but 

 do not need it as they have an unlimited supply of cocoanut 

 milk." 



* Becke loc. cit. 



t So named by Wilkes, 



of the " Peacock." " Niutao," says Gill (Jottings, p. 1), signifies " baked 

 cocoanut." 



'ilkes, who sighted the island in 1841, after the pur 

 " Niutao," says GDI (Jottings, p. 1), signifies " bal 



t Turner loc. cit. p. 287. 

 Loc. cit., p. 79. 



