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Updated: May 26, 2025
Times had been troublous in other respects at Talamacco; the natives, especially the Christians, were fighting, and one Sunday they were all ready, looking very fierce, to attack each other with clubs and other weapons, only neither side dared to begin. I asked them to do the fighting out in the open, so that I could take a picture of it, and this cooled them down considerably.
Late at night we arrived at home once more. Some days later I left Talamacco for Wora, near Cape Cumberland, a small station of Mr. D.'s, Mr. F.'s neighbour. What struck me most there were the wide taro fields, artificially irrigated.
The primitive population has disappeared completely in some places, and is only to be found in any numbers far inland among the western mountains. The situation is a little better in the north, where we find a number of flourishing villages along the coast around Cape Cumberland. The nearest village to Talamacco was Tapapa.
The two varieties, however, are much intermingled, and the resulting blends have mixed with the Polynesian-Melanesian type, so that the number of types is most confusing, and it will be hard to determine the properties of the original one. Finding little of interest in the immediate surroundings of Talamacco, I determined to make an excursion into the interior of the island. Mr.
The women wear a bunch of leaves in front and behind. The weapons are the same as elsewhere, except that here we find the feathered arrows which are such a rarity in the Pacific. It is surprising to find these here, in these secluded valleys among the pygmy race, and only here, near Talamacco, nowhere else where the same race is found.
Only to the north of Talamacco there are a few villages, in which the remnants of a once numerous population, mostly converts of the Presbyterian mission, have collected. It is a very mixed crowd, without other organization than that which the mission has created, and that is not much.
The Marie-Henry was bound for Talamacco, in Big Bay, and took the Rev. Father and myself along. One of the passengers was Mr. F., a planter and trader in Talamacco, and we soon became good friends with him and some of the others. Mr. F. was very kind, and promised to use all his influence to help me find boys.
I had always suspected the existence of a race of pygmies in the islands, and had often asked the natives if they had ever seen "small fellow men." I had heard stories of a colony of tailed men near Mele, and that, near Wora, north of Talamacco, tailed men lived in trees; that they were very shy and had long, straight hair. The natives pretended they had nearly caught one once.
The weather was bad, and we had to tack about all night; happily, we were more comfortable on the big schooner than on the little cutters. At Talamacco Mr. F. offered us his hospitality, and as it rained continually, we were very glad to stay in his house, spending the time in sipping gin and winding up a hoarse gramophone.
At Wora I found that my host had returned to his station near Talamacco. So I returned to Talamacco by boat; the earthquake had been very violent there, and had caused the greatest damage, and I heard that all the new houses of the Messrs. Thomas at Hog Harbour had been ruined.
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