PARENTAGE OF THE JARGON. 7 
Luck, as in all hunting, entered into whaling. If a ship were too 
long empty her skipper would seek to pick up a dollar as honestly as 
seemed convenient. Forsaking the whale for the season it had seemed 
to forsake him, the whaler would hunt a lading of sandalwood, for 
which he could obtain a fabulous profit in Canton. In the China 
ports he might even load for home with a cargo that promised a good 
return on the voyage. In time sandalwood attracted many adven- 
turous seamen as a trade to prosecute, an industry offering the 
richest rewards. The tree was found growing in untouched forests 
on many islands, and none was too remote to escape the trader. This 
led to a shore sojourn, a closer association with aboriginal races; it 
was in this new condition that the jargon was found to be a necessity 
of communication. The sandalwood is now extinct, not a sapling 
escaped this ransacking, not a tree was held sacred for the per- 
petuation of its kind. But the speech which grew out of its exploita- 
tion endures and has been found adaptable to the needs of newer 
commerce. 
After the sandalwood trade came the béche-de-mer fishery. This 
involved much closer association with the islanders. The master of 
a vessel engaging upon that trade landed, here and there where the 
reefs were promising, one or more of his men to conduct the fishery 
and to smoke the animals so that they might be marketable. Whether 
one man was landed or a companion shared his loneliness, these 
adventurers had to establish communication with the savage folk 
among whom long months were to be passed before the ship would 
return for their takings. 
With these outposts of civilization shedding a murky ray upon the 
simple night of savagery and drawing dark stains upon it should be 
associated the beachcomber. . 
Whatever his lapses from rigidity of morals, whatever his slips in 
deportment, the béche-de-mer fisher, when the reefs remained produc- 
tive, the copra trader which he has become under modern conditions 
(for conditions do change even in the South Sea), these solitaries 
at least professed industry even though it were harshly vicarious. 
They had work to do; there was at least the semblance of the expec- 
tation that they might earn their return to better conditions. The 
beachcomber was in far other case. He was runagate, deserter; a 
score of such dingy men have told me ‘‘the ship lay off this shore 
and I just jumped her.”’ 
How can we, churched and policed, how can we comprehend the 
impulses? Here the ship, the weariness of coarse foods, the hard 
task, the constraint of duty, the first mate; over the rail a cable’s 
length or two or three of soft shimmer of water, warm and buoyant; 
beyond the slope ever green; at the shore the soft susurrus of the 
fronds of the swaying palms, the distant forest canopies laced with 
