142 Notes on the Customs of Mota, Banks Islands. 



division of the community into exogamous intermarrying classes, which I am 

 persuaded will sooner or later he recognised as the first step towards the for- 

 mation of the gens. But the natives of whom Mr. Codrington tells us appear 

 to have been "shunted off/' as it were, to a line very different from that 

 along which so many other tribes have advanced. I venture to hazard the 

 conjecture — which, however, must be taken for no more than a conjecture — 

 that the cause of this divergence may be looked for in the unexpected pre- 

 sence among them of what is undoubtedly a real currency. This seems to 

 have created among them a sort of plutocracy, tempered by the ready use of 

 the " bow and poisoned arrows," which may be looked upon as the protest oi 

 commune against aristocratic pretensions. But how did they come by their 

 money, and their interest of cent, per cent. , so upsetting- to one's pre-conceived 

 notions that usury, like the gallows, is a mark of civilisation? Their money 

 differs, I believe, from that which is called "cowry money" elsewhere. (I 

 send herewith a sample from New Britain, which is said to be identical with 

 that current in the Banks Islands.) 



There seems to be no distinction of birth whatever, and nothing like 

 hereditary rank in the Melanesian Islands, excepting in the Polynesian 

 colonies which are scattered here and there in those seas. Herein they differ 

 widely from the Fijians and others, among whom there are serfs, commoners, 

 and nobility of various grades up to the great chief, who is so high born as to 

 be god born. 



The Melanesian secret societies are especially interesting, and will richly 

 repay investigation. At the risk of excitine: a little harmless ridicule, I ven- 

 ture to express an opinion that we m^y yet find traces of Free Masonry among 

 savage tribes. Victorians, at any rate, will remember how Stuart the ex- 

 plorer, in his diary, which was published in the Melbourne Argus (1862 or 

 1863), declared that a blackfellow in the far interior made him a Masonic sign, 

 to which he responded with the happiest effect. Masons who read that 

 account would see at once that there could be no possibility of mistake on 

 Stuart's part — that either the signs were actually exchanged, or Stuart went 

 out of his way to palm off a deliberate lie upon the public. I leave those who 

 knew that gentleman well to decide as to which of the two alternatives is the 

 more probable. There is, perhaps, no subject on which it is easier to raise a 

 laugh of derision than this; but if we can find in savage and barbaric tribes 

 the successive stages of progress which connect the old commune with the 

 Roman gens and the Aryan household — and these we can most assuredly find 

 — I see nothing to laugh at in the conjecture that we may discover among 

 them some earlier form of an institution of such undoubted antiquity as Free 

 Masonry. 



I have not touched upon the subject of language in this paper. It is far too 

 wide a subject to be dealt with here ; and it is, moreover, outside the one special 

 line of research which I have followed for many years amid surroundings and 

 under auspices more than ordinarily favourable to its prosecution, and on 

 which alone I may venture to speak with some little modest approach towards 

 authority. Quite enough, however, has come under my notice to show that 

 the Pacific Islands beyond Polynesia afford an especially valuable field to the 

 philologist. Though there are great differences of language and custom, and 

 even of physique, yet, as Mr. Codrington remarks, "the common substratum 

 of race and language from Fiji to New Guinea is unmistakable, and it crops up 

 in one word and another and in one custom and another continually." 



This, however, does not indicate intercourse between the people of the various 

 islands and groups of islands. In some cases the closest alliance of language 

 is found in two islands far distant one from the other, while between them there 

 are many others which at first sight appear to be hardly allied to them at all.* 

 "Words," Mr. Codrington writes; " are very little guide in tracing connection 

 by intercourse. The way they lurk beneath the surface, and show themselves 

 here and there throughout Melanesia, and indeed from New Zealand to 

 Madagascar, through all the islands, does not point to communication between 

 the people, but to a common original element. Bishop Patteson used even to 

 declare that Japanese is a Polynesian language." 



* This is the case also with the languages of some of the Australian tribes. 



