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I had spent a very happy month at Mota when the vessel returned from Norfolk Island both with Mr. Codrington and Mr. Then followed a fortnight's cruise in the New Hebrides, and now with exactly fifty Melanesians on board from divers islands, we are on our way to Norfolk Island. We have fourteen girls, two married, on board, and there are ten already at Norfolk Island.
I was nineteen weeks in the islands met with no adventures worth mentioning, only one little affair which was rather critical for a few minutes, but ended very well and in some of the Solomon Islands made more way than heretofore with the people. We have 134 Melanesians here and a baby.
Codrington could take that entirely into his own hands. I might spend a month or two there, and confirm Melanesians and Norfolk Islanders, and quietly fall into a less responsible position and be a moveable clergyman in Fiji or anywhere else, as long as my strength lasts. 'Norfolk Island certainly was rather my resting-place.
But the essential idea of Mungan-ngaur, and Baiame, and most of the high gods of Australia, and of other low races, is that they never died at all. They belong to the period before death came into the world, like Qat among the Melanesians. They arise in an age that knew not death, and had not reflected on phantasms nor evolved ghosts.
Some months later all that wild scenery was destroyed by an earthquake, which caused many land-slides and spoilt the cascade. Following the roaring river, jumping from one block of stone to another, we soon reached our camp, a large gamal. As we were nearing the coast its arrangements were adapted to the customs of the tall Melanesians.
Something," you say; "perhaps in time showing the Governor that the Melanesians are not so very wild." But it is another Governor; and so far from the Melanesians being wild, it is expressly on the ground that the example of the school will be beneficial that I am asked to go! 'Tell all who may care to know it about our St. Matthias' Day, I must give myself the pleasure of writing one line to Mr.
Hundreds of canoes lay twenty deep along both sides of the Arangi, and each boy, with his box and bell, was clamoured for by scores of relatives and friends. In such height of excitement, Van Horn permitted no one on board. Melanesians, unlike cattle, are as prone to stampede to attack as to retreat. Two of the boat's crew stood beside the Lee-Enfields on the skylight.
The three women and the two babies were disposed of in separate houses, but their husbands, with thirty-nine other Melanesians, four Norfolk Islanders, two printers, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Patteson, made up the dinner-party every day in the hall of St. John's College. 'Not a little happy I feel at the head of my board, with two rows of merry, happy-looking Melanesians on either side of me!
The cold had set in severely enough to make it needful to carry off his 'party of coughing, shivering Melanesians' before Easter, and the 'Southern Cross' sailed on the 18th. Patteson took with him a good store of coffee, sugar, and biscuits, being uncertain whether he should or should not again remain at Lifu.
Instances of this fusion or confusion of magic with religion have already met us in the practices of Melanesians and of other peoples. The same confusion of magic and religion has survived among peoples that have risen to higher levels of culture. It was rife in ancient India and ancient Egypt; it is by no means extinct among European peasantry at the present day.
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