Sept. 6, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
297 
On the 9th of March we arrived at Manila, 
and there the captain made up his mind to fit 
out the vessel for a voyage to the “Fogee” 
Island in search of a cargo of Beach le Mar 
tortoise shells, etc. 
In the prosecution of this voyage he sailed 
from Manila on the 12th of April, eleven days 
late. Passing Ives Island and Wallace’s Island, 
he, on the 9th of May, made six low islands, 
called Los Matieas, where the natives came off 
to trade with him, but finding they possessed 
nothing worthy of his notice, his stay with them 
was short. 
They indicated to him that further north 
he would find a large quantity of the article of 
which he was in search—Beach le Mar. Shaping 
his course in that direction he passed a group 
of islands, called by the natives “Tama Pam” 
meaning Rock Ribbed. Then we passed another 
group, denominated on the chart “King Wil¬ 
liam’s group,” and the islands of Mondeverde- 
saut, meaning “Evergreen.” 
The captain had but little intercourse with 
the natives of these places, excepting on the 
occasions when they were gathering cocoanuts. 
The men were remarkably robust and tall, some¬ 
times by their conduct leading him to apprehend 
that they had hostile intentions. They were 
really a perfectly peaceable race, and had no 
war weapons about them. The principal chiefs, 
however, noticing how anxious the white men 
were to obtain cocoanuts, forbade the women 
from gathering them while the sailors stood 
near. 
On the 22d of May an incident occurred to 
which we should have attached no importance, 
but which has been carefully noted down among 
the remarkable events of the voyage. A little 
bird, as black as ink, came on board the schooner 
and could not be induced to leave her. Some 
of the men, with the credulity common to sea¬ 
men, thinking it was a bird of ill omen, wanted 
to kill it, but the captain, pleased with its per¬ 
fect tameness, determined on preserving its life. 
On the following day the islands to which 
the name of the “Massacre Islands” was after¬ 
ward given, were discovered, and the little bird 
immediately flew to the land. Numerous, no 
doubt, have since been the regrets of the sea¬ 
men on board that the bird was allowed to es¬ 
cape,' for to it strangely enough have many of 
their subsequent misfortunes been attributed. 
On the 23d of May the schooner was in sight 
of six islands, all small, with a reef of rocks 
running from one to the other, through which 
here and there was a small channel about one 
hundred yards in width. The islands appeared 
fruitful, and several large canoes were seen in¬ 
side the reef, and plenty of Beach le Mar of 
excellent quality being found there, the captain 
determined on endeavoring to procure a cargo 
of that commodity at that place. After anchor¬ 
ing and making other necessary preparations, 
part of the crew were sent ashore on the 26th, 
for the purpose of clearing away the trees and 
bushes and building a house .where the Beach 
le Mar when taken might be cured and rendered 
fit for transportation. 
It is perhaps necessary to state here that 
Beach le Mar is a fish, of which the Chinese 
are particularly fond, and for which they pay 
a high price. 
The natives had come off to the schooner 
in several large canoes, bringing with them cocoa- 
nuts and shells. They were negroes of large 
stature, and some of them appeared to possess 
considerable acuteness. No white man had ever 
been seen by them before; they thought the crew 
of the Antarctic were painted white, and en¬ 
deavored by rubbing to bring their own skins 
to the complexion of ours, and they rubbed so 
persistently and so hard that many of them 
raised blisters on their cuticle. 
The ideas of these natives were confined 
to the little group of islands on which they lived. 
They had, however, some imperfect notions of 
another group at some distance from them, and 
from those they presumed the schooner had 
come. 
We abstained from noticing the surprise 
they exhibited in seeing their visitors. The con¬ 
duct of savages in similar circumstances is prob¬ 
ably always alike, and there are few of us who 
have not at some time or other dwelt with deep 
interest on the details of the first meetings be¬ 
tween civilized and uncivilized man. 
The boat’s crew had taken the forge ashore 
and set it up. The natives stole some of the 
armorer’s tools, which induced the captain to 
send another boat with a crew well armed, and 
they compelled a restoration of the things stolen, 
but the natives now appeared hostile; they drew 
their bows and stood ready to discharge their 
arrows. The crew then determined on seizing 
the person of the head chief, which they effected, 
and carried him on board with many of the 
natives. The chief in the evening, however, 
jumped overboard and swam ashore, and in the 
course of the night the others followed his ex¬ 
ample. 
O11 the following morning the crew went on 
shore to work as usual. At 8 o’clock they re¬ 
turned to the schooner to breakfast, leaving 
three men on shore to watch their tools. Thirty- 
three of the natives collected around these men 
and were on the point of commencing an attack, 
which they only desisted from on seeing that 
the boat had come back from the vessel and 
reached the shore. At mid-day a number of 
canoes put off from the other islands. The cap¬ 
tain being apprehensive of hostilities, reinforced 
the hands on shore till they amounted in num¬ 
ber to. twenty-one. Boats were also sent by him 
to the officer commanding them, and he was par¬ 
ticularly cautioned to be on his guard, a caution, 
however, which he disregarded, for shortly after 
the natives made an attack on them from the 
wood. Two of the crew who were in the jolly 
boat had just time to shove off. When out of 
the reach of the arrows, they laid by and took 
on board three of the crew that had saved them¬ 
selves in the water. The whale boat dispatched 
by the captain with ten armed men, on hearing 
the war whoop of the natives, saved two more 
of them; the remainder were all massacred with 
the exception of one whose fate we shall here¬ 
after mention. 
Captain Morrell with a diminished crew 
found it impossible to prosecute the objects of 
his voyage, and he therefore determined to re¬ 
turn to Manila to obtain a reinforcement of men. 
He arrived there on the 25th of June, and hav¬ 
ing shipped fourteen more men, sailed again on 
the 8th of August. On the 13th of September he 
once more reached the islands where he had lost 
so many of his crew, and which from that cir¬ 
cumstance he called Massacre Island, but he had 
no sooner come to an anchor than he was at¬ 
tacked by the natives who approached the 
schooner on all sides’ in their canoes. 
A brisk fire from the crew, however, com¬ 
pelled them to retreat. Shortly afterward a 
small canoe put off from the shore, in which to 
the great joy of all on board the schooner, they 
found one of their old crew, Leonard Shaw, who 
at the time of the massacre had hidden himself 
in the weeds and escaped. 
Shaw had remained concealed fifteen days, 
subsisting on only four cocoanuts, when he was 
discovered by the natives and severely wounded. 
From this man Captain Morrell learned that 
the skulls of thirteen of his men that were killed 
were hanging at the chief’s door, and that a few 
days before his return to the island the natives 
had consulted together on killing and eating 
Shaw himself, but delayed it in consequence of 
the absence of others of their chiefs. They after¬ 
ward sent him on board with proposals it was 
supposed of a pacific nature. 
Shaw, while on this island, was employed 
by the natives in manufacturing knives out of 
the iron they had obtained from the vessel. He 
was badly treated by them, they giving him 
hardly enough to live upon, probably to keep 
him in such a feeble condition that he would 
not have the strength to escape. He represented 
the whole of the island as under the sway of 
one chief, who ruled with absolute power. Each 
of the other islands also had a subordinate chief 
with many others dependent upon him. He says 
he could discover among them no trace of re¬ 
ligion and no appearance of anything like a 
reverence of a superior power, in which respect 
they were more fortunate than any other mor¬ 
tals I ever heard of. 
The chiefs indulged in polygamy, having so 
many wives that they called them all by one 
title; that is, “Comforter,” and they killed their 
wives without any scruple on the least sus¬ 
picion of infidelity. Shaw believed they killed 
all the children except those of the chief, he hav¬ 
ing perceived no other among them. 
Their huts are made of bamboos, and the 
leaf of the cocoanut trees, on the fruit of which 
and bananas and fish they entirely subsist. The 
islands are entirely covered with wood, a few 
foot paths only running through them. The huts 
are built in small clusters on the sea coast for 
the convenience of fishing. 
We had one other encounter with the 
natives. Captain Morrell, in order to protect his 
men at work on shore, caused a battery to be 
constructed on the top of two large tiees about 
forty feet from the ground, and mounted it with 
four brass swivels. Sixteen of his best men 
were placed in it with muskets and provisions, 
but it was hardly completed when the natives 
came down in large numbers and attacked the 
men below, when the fire from the battery to 
their great surprise opened upon them and com¬ 
pelled them to retreat with severe loss. 
No exertion of the captain could pacify the 
natives. They continued to persevere in their 
hostilities, notwithstanding the great loss of 
lives they sustained, and the burning of their 
huts, and eventually compelled him to give up 
the hope of obtaining a cargo of fish from the 
reef of rocks which bounded their shores. 
[to be continued.] 
In changing address, the old as well as .the 
new should be given. 
