212 “YACHTING IN MELANESIA. 
has pictures showing John Williams at Eromanga clad in silk hat and 
frock coat. ‘The modern missionary’s dress is of a peculiarly non- 
descript character. One remembers visiting a man-of-war in the 
Solomons and looking rather like a beachcomber than a mission priest, 
a battered straw hat, no coat, shirt torn, skin burned as brown as any 
native’s, white trousers the worse for wear, and no boots on simply 
because there were none to put on; all were worn out with the rough 
travelling. We had just returned from a trip round Malaita (240 
miles) in a whaleboat. 
Some of the most pleasant natives one has known have been pro- 
fessional murderers, men who made their money by killing; they quite 
appreciate the value of Christian work among their neighbors. Most 
of the popular ideas as to cannibalism take their origin from descrip- 
tions of old Fijian habits or in a measure from the present-day prac- 
tices of certain African peoples, but cannibalism was never universal 
in Melanesia; in many of the islands, and even in parts of islands where 
it is known to be practiced, it is regarded with great abhorrence. Those 
of them who do eat human flesh eat it as a matter of course, associate 
it with no superstitious rites or ceremonies, and simply eat it because 
they learned the practice from their forefathers. The good old idea 
of the lurking savage going about with his chops watering, seeking whom 
he may devour, has no foundation in fact, and all writers of fictionhave 
in the main abandoned it now under the light of ethnological research 
and with a better knowledge of the habits and customs of people. It 
may safely be said that the natives in Melanesia do not kill men purely 
for the sake of eating their flesh. Stories of ogres are common enough 
in the islands, men and women who have developed an inordinate taste 
for human flesh, but the ordinary native in a cannibalistic district makes 
no distinction between human flesh and pork; it is simply flesh meat. 
The first Southern Cross of the Mission was built at Blackwall by 
Wigram’s. She was a schooner of 65 tons. Miss Yonge had sug- 
gested, when Bishop Selwyn visited England in 1853, that funds should 
be raised for a ship among the readers of “The Heir of Redclyffe,”’ 
then just published. Mrs. Keble and some friends raised the required 
sum and gave it to the Bishop. The Southern Cross sailed in 1854 
from London on the same day that Selwyn and Patteson left England 
in the Duke of Portland. On arrival in New Zealand the ship was 
utilized for a trip to the South Island, and in 1856 Patteson made his 
first voyage to Melanesia in company with the Bishop. After the 
wreck of this vessel in 1860 on the Hen and Chickens, the schooner 
Zillah was chartered for the Melanesian voyages. She was slow and 
unsuitable, after the smart and speedy and comfortable(?) Southern 
Cross, and Patteson said that she was guiltless of making 2 miles an 
hour to windward in a wind. 
