Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific. Felix Speiser

to imagine as void of feeling and incapable of thought. But a word breaks the spell, intelligence gleams in his face, and what, so far, has seemed a strange being, belonging rather to the lower animals than to human-kind, shows himself a man, and becomes equal to ourselves. Thus the endless, inhospitable jungle, without open spaces or streets, without prairies and sun, that dense tangle of lianas and tree-trunks, shelters men like ourselves. It seems marvellous to think that in those depths, dull, dark and silent as the fathomless ocean, men can live, and we can hardly blame former generations for denying all kinship with these savages and counting them as animals; especially as the native never seems more primitive than when he is roaming the forest, naked but for a bark belt, with a big curly wig and waving plumes, bow and arrow his only weapons. When alarmed, he hides in the foliage, and once swallowed up in the green depths which are his home and his protection, neither eye nor ear can find any trace of him.

      A DANCING-TABLE ON DANCING-GROUND NEAR PORT SANDWICH, MADE OF CORAL PLATES.

      But our ideas change when we enter his village home, with its dancing-grounds with the big drums, the sacred stone tables, idols and carved tree-trunks, all in a frame of violently coloured bushes—red, purple, brown and orange. Above us, across a blue sky, a tree with scarlet flowers blows in the breeze, and long stamens fall slowly down and cover the ground with a brilliant carpet. Dogs bark, roosters crow and from a hut a man creeps out—others emerge from the bush and from half-hidden houses which at first we had not noticed. At some distance stand the women and children in timid amazement, and then begins a chattering, or maybe a whispered consultation about the arrival of the stranger. We are in the midst of human life, in a busy little town, where the sun pours through the gaps in the dark forest, and flowers give colour and brightness, and where, after all, life is not so very much less human than in civilization.

      Then the forest has lifted its veil, we have entered the sanctuary, and the alarming sensation of nature’s hostility is softened. We white men like to talk about our mastery over nature, but is it not rather true that we flee from nature, as its most intense manifestations are oppressive to us? Is not the savage, living so very close to nature, more its master, or at least its friend, than we are? We need space and the sight of sun and sky to feel happy; the night of the forest, the loneliness of the ocean are terrible to us, whilst to the native they are his home and his element.

      It is evident that under our first strong impression of the native’s life we overlook much—the filth, the sores, the brutality of social life; but these are really only ripples on an otherwise smooth existence, defects which are not less present in our civilization, but are better concealed.

      The next day we followed the coast of Malekula southward. There are immense coral reefs attached to the coast, so that often the line of breakers is one or two miles away from the shore. These reefs are a solid mass of cleft coral stones constantly growing seaward. Their surface is more or less flat, about on a level with the water at low tide, so that it then lies nearly dry, and one can walk on the reefs, jumping over the wide crevices in which the sea roars and gurgles with the rise and fall of the breakers outside. These ever-growing reefs would surround the whole coast were it not for the fresh water that oozes out from the land and prevents the coral from growing at certain points, thus keeping open narrow passages through the reef, or wider stretches along the coast free from rocks. These basins form good anchorages for small craft, as the swell of the open sea cannot cross the reef; only the entrances are often crooked and hard to find.

      Our captain brought us safely into a quiet lagoon, where the yacht lay in deep green water, smooth as glass, while beyond the reef the breakers dashed a silver line across the blue ocean.

      Of course we immediately went shooting on the reef. I did not have much sport, as I could see nothing worth shooting, but I was much interested in wading in the warm water to observe the multiform animal life of the reef. There was the “bêche-de-mer,” the sea-cucumber, yellow or purplish-black, a shapeless mass lying in pools; this is a delicacy highly valued by the Chinese and therefore a frequent article of exportation. The animals are collected, cut open, dried and shipped. There was the ugly muræna, which goes splashing and winding like a snake between boulders, and threatens the intruder with poisonous looks and snapping jaws. Innumerable bright-coloured fish shot hither and thither in the flat pools, there were worms, sea-stars, octopus, crabs. The wealth of animal life on the reef, where each footstep stirs up a hundred creatures, is incredible, and ever so many more are hidden in the rocks and crevices.

      The plants that had taken root in the coral were mostly mangrove bushes with great forked roots.