20 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
under their cruel taskmasters on the gloomy 
Chinchas. In 1873 it was the writer’s lot to 
meet, in the Caroline Islands, with one of the 
two survivors of this dreadful outrage. By 
some means he had escaped in an English guano 
ship to Liverpool, and then, after years of 
wandering in American whalers among the 
islands of the Pacific, he settled down among 
the natives of Las Matelotas, in the Carolines, 
thousands of miles away from his birthplace; 
and although sorely tempted to accept the offer 
made to him by our captain of a passage to 
Nukulaelae, the Matelotas people refused to let 
him go, as he had married a girl of the island 
and had a family. (.Apropos of these Peruvian 
slavers, it may be mentioned that a few months 
after their visit to Nukulaelae, joined by another 
barque, they made a similar descent upon the 
people of Rapa-nui—the mysterious Easter 
Island—and secured three hundred and ten 
victims.) At present the population of Nuku¬ 
laelae is about one hundred and fifty, all of 
whom are Christians. Like all the other islands 
of this group, the population is showing a slow 
but certain increase. 
Within a few hours’ sail lies Funafuti, an 
