26 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
people from the Gilberts ; but how they came 
to be on Nui they cannot tell. To show the 
sharp line of racial distinction between the 
natives of Nui and those of the surrounding 
islands, it may be mentioned that the transla¬ 
tions of the Old and New Testaments, 
published by the Boston Board of Missions 
for the use of the people of the Gilbert 
Islands, are used by the natives of Nui, while 
in every other island of the Ellice Group the 
Samoan version is alone understood and read. 
And although they can communicate with the 
inhabitants of the rest of the group in a peculiar, 
bastard patois, and of late years have inter¬ 
married with them, they always will be Gilbert 
Islanders, and preserve their vernacular and 
other racial characteristics. 
Nanomaga, the Hudson Island of Commodore 
Wilkes, is the smallest of the group. It is 
barely a mile and a half long, and not one in 
width, yet supports a population of six hundred 
people. The writer, who in 1870 spent a year 
on the island, can bear testimony to the kindly 
nature and honesty of its people. During all 
the time he lived there as agent for Messrs. 
Tom De Wolf and Co., of Liverpool, he never 
