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One would have thought we were on our voyage home, so near did it seem to us, though there were yet three months for us on the coast. We left here the young Englishman, George Marsh, of whom I have before spoken, who was wrecked upon the Pelew Islands. He left us to take the berth of second mate on board the Ayacucho, which was lying in port.
Among these islanders the women do not merely bestow life on the people, they also work to obtain that which is most essential for the preservation of life, and therefore they are called “mothers of the land.” Now, considering this honour paid to the Pelew women, it is clearly impossible to regard their work in cultivating the taro as a sign of their subordinate position in the social order.
For further examination of this question of the supposed passivity of the woman in courtship, see The Truth about Woman, pp. 65-69, 251-257. Terminating this short digression, I return to my examination of the peoples among whom the family is especially maternal. The Pelew Islanders of the South Sea have customs in many respects the same as those of the Khasi tribes.
The letter was published for the information of the friends of George, and Captain Low added that he left him at Manilla to go to Oahu, and he had heard nothing of him since. George had an interesting journal of his adventures in the Pelew Islands, which he had written out at length, in a handsome hand, and in correct English.
"There is New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Friendly Islands, the Societies' Islands, the Marquesas, Tahite, and the Pelew Islands; but each navigator gives them a new name, so that it is hard to say which is which; all you can do is to say that there is an island in latitude so and so and longitude so and so, but the name is almost out of the question." "And the natives?"
Not a few ceremonies observed at cutting down haunted trees are based on the belief that the spirits have it in their power to quit the trees at pleasure or in case of need. Thus when the Pelew Islanders are felling a tree, they conjure the spirit of the tree to leave it and settle on another.
Passing by the north of the Philippine Islands into the Pacific, she steered to the southward until she sighted the Pelew Islands, about eight degrees north of the equator. As they are surrounded by a reef, she did not stand close in. Several well-built canoes, however, came off, manned by the dark-skinned race who inhabit the group.
To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe! Ib. ix. 157.
We landed Nerida at Yap, in the Western Carolines. A year afterwards, when I left the PALESTINE, I heard that Packenham had given up the sea, was trading in the Pelew Group, and was permanently married, and that his wife was the only survivor of the ill-fated ALIDA. A Tale Of Easter Island
Take alone the titles that these Pelew islanders give to their women, as Adhalál a pelú, “mothers of the land,” and Adhalál a blay, “mothers of the clan.” The testimony of those who know their customs is that the women enjoy complete equality with the men in every respect. Mr. Kubary affirms the predominance of female influence in all the social life of the clan.
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