136 
FROM HONG-KONG TO YOKOHAMA . 
us, covered with fresh green foliage down to the water s edge, were but the projecting portions 
of a long crescent-shaped coral-reef which skirts the north-western end of the mainland. Not 
having received any name from their first discoverer, D Entrecasteaux (1792)1 our surveying 
officers named the reef after him, while the spacious harbour inside the reef was called Nares 
Harbour, in honour of our former captain. The chain of small islands situated on 
D’Entrecasteaux Reef was distinguished by the names of the members of the Civilian 
Scientific Staff, and in this manner the writer of these pages became the titular owner of 
one of the Admiralty Islands; and it turned out that he had drawn a prize in the lottery, for 
Wild Island proved to be one of the inhabited islands of the group, and, being situate at the 
entrance to Nares Harbour and close to our anchorage, we had frequent opportunities of 
visiting it. As we were proceeding along the outer edge of the reef, we saw a number of 
canoes under sail approaching through the surf. When close to us, the natives within them 
lifted up their arms, holding in their hands plates of tortoise-shell, as if anxious to 
commence trade forthwith. We did not stop, however, and, the canoes following in her 
wake, H.M.S. “Challenger” entered Nares Harbour in seeming triumph, attended by this 
novel escort. 
We soon noticed a marked difference between our new friends and the natives of 
Humboldt Bay, not only as regarded their physical appearance, their favourite weapons and 
ornaments, but in their conduct towards strangers. Although somewhat shy at first, we 
ultimately persuaded them to come on board, and, excepting one or two critical moments when 
a conflict seemed to be impending, our relations during our stay, from the 3rd to the 10th 
of March, continued on a most amicable footing. All day long the ship was surrounded by a 
swarm of canoes, and 
the noise of the shout¬ 
ing, although each side 
hardly understood one 
word of the other’s 
language, was deafen¬ 
ing. A circumstance 
that struck me par¬ 
ticularly was that, like 
the birds, the islanders 
appeared at sunrise and 
disappeared at the com¬ 
ing on of night. At early dawn we saw them fishing on the reefs, getting a supply for the 
day’s dinner—they were essentially a race of fishermen, capital navigators of their long, 
strongly-built canoes, most expert divers and swimmers—and after sunset nothing more was 
seen or heard of them, except on one or two occasions when the distant sound of their drums 
betokened some high festival. As in Humboldt Bay, no woman or girl, of whom they seem 
very jealous, was ever seen on board a canoe ; but on shore the females moved freely about, 
