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fruit, taro, yams, kumeras, bananas, sugar cane, &c. They also use fish, fowls, and pigs. In New Caledonia they boil and eat locusts in great quantities. To these they are now adding maize, pumpkins, melons, the papaya apple, and other exotic productions. In New Caledonia there are no pigs; they have little wood adapted for fencing, and the pigs destroy their plantations, so that till some new arrangement can be introduced, they must dispense with this common animal.

Their principal occupation is clearing, fencing, and cultivating their plantations, which they keep with great care. They practise irrigation to a great extent. In Aneiteum we saw canals cut along the sides of hills more than a mile in length. Their skill in the arts is very limited. In the New Hebrides, they excel in the making of mats, baskets, armlets, and in the constructing of fences. In the Solomon islands, they are most distinguished by the lightness and elegance of their canoes; by a tasteful carving of wood, and inlaying of it with mother-of-pearl, and by forming various ornaments of shell. In New Caledonia they manufacture coarse earthen pots for the cooking of food, similar but inferior to the earthenware made by the natives of the Fiji islands — thus furnishing one proof of relationship or common origin between the natives of those two groups. The largest canoes and the best houses are found in New Caledonia. The houses are constructed of a wattled frame, and thatched with grass; the walls are round and the roofs conical; in appearance they are like corn ricks; in the other islands, they are simply oblong roofs, some small, others very large. At Port Sandwich, in the island of Malicola, we found in every village, so far as we were allowed to examine them, images as large as life, dressed as men, and apparently looked upon as sacred, but their precise object and use we could not discover. The images seemed to be made of some kind of native cloth, stuffed with some firm but plastic substance; the figure was well formed, and the face was painted somewhat like an Egyptian mummy. We found three or four in the sacred house of each village. Adzes of green stone, the same as that found in New Zealand, are plentiful in New Caledonia; bracelets, curiously wrought of small bone rings, are made in most of the islands. Tatooing is not practised by them.

War appears to be universal. The Missionaries in the New Hebrides have ascertained that the natives are occupied fighting for ten months in the year. We found more or less of it almost everywhere. They blacken their faces when engaged in war; but in native warfare, carried on with native weapons, there is little loss of life; if one man is killed on either side, the battle usually terminates for that day; they meet, however, day after day for battle, although often no engagement takes place. The losing party after a battle are careful in examining whether any one has infringed any of their appointed observances. Husbands are not allowed to cohabit with their wives during war. Of the native war weapons, some are common to all the islands, such as clubs of different forms; others are restricted to particular groups. In the New Hebrides their missiles are principally spears; in the Solomon group, bows and arrows; and in New Caledonia, sling-stones: these are generally ground to nearly the size and shape of pigeon eggs. The natives are most expert both in using their respective weapons, and also in evading those thrown at themselves. One of Captain Cook’s officers found Homer’s description of the throwing of the spear illustrated and confirmed in every point by what he saw at Tana. If the New Caledonians are not equal to the famous Balearic slingers of antiquity, or to the left-handed Benjamites, who could sling stones to a hair-breadth and not miss, they at least remind one of David’s five smooth stones from the brook, and his shepherd’s bag. Each warrior carries a small bag containing a few stones, either selected for being smooth, or made smooth by art; and they are such correct marksmen that they will strike down a staff at a considerable distance. They have no such thing as a pah, or fortification of any kind; nor do they appear to practise strategy in war like the New Zealanders. The club has in many places been superseded by the tomahawk. Fire-arms are also finding their way among them. Since the natives of the Isle of Pines obtained fire-arms they have gone over and nearly depopulated the south end of New Caledonia.

Throughout all these groups dancing appears to be a principal amusement. In the New Hebrides, for two months at one season of the year, the natives meet daily about mid-afternoon and continue dancing till day-light next morning. In returning from the volcano in Tana, we came upon a dancing party, from four to five hundred in number. They were assembled in an open circular space, shaded by spreading banian trees, to celebrate the ripening of the bread fruit and the removal of the tapu from the trees. It might be regarded as a kind of ‘harvest home.’ About one-third were dancing, and the rest, for the time, spectators. The figure of the dance was circular; the men were in the centre, and the women, two deep, formed a ring outside. They closed to the centre and then extended, then coursed round and round; and when the excitement was raised to the highest, with a simultaneous shout they all suddenly stopped; and after a short interval the same party proceeded as before. The dancing was a continuous earnest leaping or jumping, rather than a series of elegant artificial or acquired movements. Instead of the ‘light fantastic toe,’ it was the heavy thumping heel. The women had their faces besmeared with a black pigment; their heads were decorated with feathers; they were dressed with flowing petticoats of the dracaena plant, surmounted behind with monster bustles of fern leaves, and each one carried a club or a spear. The men were besmeared with a red ochre, and almost every dancer wore one or two rows of white shells on the arm.