rattling of which while they were dancing supplied the place of music. The array of clubs and spears and the warlike appearance of the dancers might have suggested to some minds the idea of the ancient pyrrhic or the modern polka, in its primitive Hungarian form, but the white teeth and eyes shining through ochre and pigment, the perspiration flowing down their faces, the fantastic dresses of the women, and the all but complete nudity of the men, and the savage shouts and yells of both sexes, reminded one more of a dance of demons and witches,—but ludicrous rather than terrific,

"Of withered beldams auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags would spean a foal."

Dancing, like war, is practised by civilized as well as savage nations; but it does not appear to be one of the procuring causes of their civilization.

At Faté and Malicola, in the New Hebrides, every family, or every few families, have a cluster of drums. These are made from trees hollowed out like a canoe and fixed into the ground, rising about six feet high. The opening on the side of the tree is as narrow as it can be made to allow the wood to be scooped out of the centre. These drums are in general ornamented with rude carvings of various kinds; and from ten to twenty of them are fixed in a cluster a few feet apart from one another. They emit when struck a hollow funeral sound, and are employed to furnish music at their dances and on other occasions. At the Solomon and other islands we found a long curved pipe or flute. In New Caledonia they beat sticks on one another as an apology for music. The natives of Aneiteum sing beautifully, greatly surpassing anything I have heard among the New Zealanders.

In the New Hebrides the drinking of kava prevails. In Queen Charlotte’s and the Solomon Islands the betel nut is chewed, and the teeth of the natives are universally black. In New Caledonia and in the New Hebrides tobacco is fast coming into general use, but the taste for alcoholic liquors has not yet been acquired.

In the New Hebrides, and I presume also in the other islands, there are great feasts on particular occasions; but at these, as in New Zealand, it is rather the receiving than the eating of food. It is one chief or tribe making a large present to another. This mode of feasting is extremely unfavourable to industry and economy, as those who are most industrious and the greatest producers are expected, if not obliged, to contribute most to the feast.

For some years past, in most of the groups, the sandal wood trade has been the principal traffic. The beche-le-mer, a large black sea slug, has also been collected in large quantities, dried, and sold to the traders, and by them, with the sandal wood, sent to the China market. Yams, pigs, and other native produce, are supplied to traders and whalers in exchange for tobacco, edge tools, clothing, and trinkets. Many of the natives have gone on board trading vessels and proved good seamen. The missionaries find that they make good and active servants.

The natives appear to be healthy. They are well formed, vigorous, and robust. In the New Hebrides especially, they have beautiful white well-set seams of teeth. We saw occasionally cutaneous eruptions of a slight character among them, and one or two cases of elephantiasis. In Faté we saw one case of idiocy, that of a young woman. In New Caledonia we saw more disease than in the New Hebrides, although the former is a more healthy climate for Europeans and foreigners than the latter, there being no fever and ague in New Caledonia. Hernia and hydrocele were common. One case of hernia I saw as seemed to be as marked as that of Gibbon’s. Ulcerated noses and faces were very common in New Caledonia; but whether connected with venereal diseases or not seemed uncertain. Influenza and other epidemics prevail among them occasionally, and prove more or less fatal. The number of children appeared larger in proportion than I have seen in New Zealand, but the number of old persons seemed to be small.

Their traditions are much the same as those in the Eastern Pacific. I speak principally of Aneiteum, where, the missionaries having mastered the language, a key has been obtained to unlock this depository of knowledge. They have the same traditions respecting the creation, the deluge, and some other great facts of universal history;—that the island was fished up by one of the gods, who afterwards made a man and a woman, from whom the inhabitants were descended,—that in consequence of the wickedness of the people the gods were angry, and one of them sent a flood, which drowned all the people except a man and his wife that were saved in a canoe. A native was one day listening to an oral translation of the flood, made by one of the missionaries; he appeared particularly attentive, and at last said to the missionary, "Stop! that is almost the same as our account;" and, after detailing their tradition, he added, "but your forefathers having written an account for you, while ours only told it to their children, yours must be more correct than ours."

In Aneiteum the natives believe in and worship superior beings called Natmasses. Their mode of worship is thus: they select long-shaped stones, from three to eighteen inches long, and pile them up under a banyan tree. They suppose that the spirit of the divinity resides in each of these stones. There is generally a small chip broken off one corner of the stone, at which the spirit goes in and out. Offerings of food of various kinds are presented before these piles of Natmasses, on which, in some invisible way, they are supposed to feed. They have an order of priesthood, but it is usually held by the chiefs, who thereby increase their influence. A future state of rewards and punishments is believed in; but heaven partakes much of the character of earth—the cocoa-nuts and the bread-fruit are finer in quality and so abundant in