304 



A NATURALIST'S WANDEBINGS 



not knowj but in their branches I espied the beautiful scarlet 

 Lory {Eosreti'eithta), \\]iie\i^ though it had been long known from 

 these islands, I was jx^rhajis the first European to see alive in 

 its own country, and certainly the first to shoot there. Dnring 

 the same walk we were sm-prisod to hear from a cocoa-nut tree 

 near the village a most singular bawling, or caterwauling, 

 which I thought must proceed from one of the children at 

 play, but which I at last perceived to be i>roduced by a new 

 species of Honey-eater (Phihmon)f whose voice became familiar 

 to us as the earliest and the latest sounds of the day. These 

 observations raised high hopes in my breast as to what I yet 

 might discover, for the species I had seen were almost all new. 



The next sight was less exhilarating — on a tree-clad 

 elevation the half-burned and recently deserted village of 

 Eidol ; and from the branch of a high tree before us a human 

 arm, hackc^d out by the shoulder-blade dangled in the breeze, 

 and at no great distance further were recently-gibbeted human 

 heads and limbs. 



A state of war, we found, existed between, on the one hand, 

 the villagers of Eidol burnt out by the Kaleobar people, 

 leagued with Waitidal on the north- w^estern corner^ which had 

 taken them in, and with Kitabel, our village; and on the 

 other hand, those of Kaleobar, one of the largest villages on 

 the island situated on the north-eastern comer, which was 

 leagued with Keliian and with Lamdesar, two other villages 

 on the south-eastern coast. Frequent raids had been made 

 recently by these villages on Eitabel, the wife of whose chief 

 had recently been picked off from the outside of the palisade 

 by a lurking Kaleobar marksman, while many of the villagers 

 showed us their recent wounds received in an attack made a 

 few weeks before our arrival. The bamboo spikes in the 

 ground round the village were set to prevent such clandestine 

 approaches. During the day they were removed from the 

 paths which led to their fields and wells, and at sunset, when 

 the last man had returned to the village, the pathway was 

 carefully reset, and the gateway barricaded for the night; it 

 was the duty of the ftrst goer-out in the morning to open 

 the gate and remove the spikes. In this affray it was that 

 the unfortunates, who owned the dismembered limbs we had 

 seen, w^ere captured. These grim mementitf'S did not inspire 



