Читать книгу Wild Life in Southern Seas - Becke Louis - Страница 8

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Every now and again the Australian colonies are disturbed by a rumour that the present Anglo-French convention for the “control” (whatever that may mean) of the New Hebrides is about to terminate, and that one of the best and most fertile of the island groups in the South Pacific will be annexed by France, which is hot to possess them. Perhaps the inception of this rumour may be due but to the nearing prospect of Australian Federation, which would necessarily revive in the public mind the fact that a few years ago two French men-of-war landed some hundreds of soldiers, virtually took possession of the whole group, and were only withdrawn on the united protest of the Australian colonies to the Imperial Government. From that time began the present dual control—i.e., the patrolling of the group by ships of war of both nations—and a very unsatisfactory arrangement it has proved. Five years ago, the late Governor of Fiji, in his capacity of High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, when questioned as to the claims of the British settlers in the New Hebrides, and to the possibility of the group being annexed by either Power, said, “I cannot tell how the matter will be settled. Both France and England want the New Hebrides; each nation is determined that the other shall not get it. In the meantime things must, of course, go on as they are doing.” And things have been going on very unsatisfactorily, in the opinion of the men who have made the group what it is—the English settlers, traders, planters, and merchants. It is not my purpose, however, to enter into the rival claims of the English and French residents, but to give a brief description of the islands themselves. Yet one thing may be said, and that is this: The group was opened up and surveyed by British ships; British and Australian money has done a great civilising work there; the men who first discovered them to commerce were Englishmen; the natives are ardently desirous that England should annex their islands; and their occupation by France for the extension of her malign convict system will constitute a menace to the Australian colonies, leaving alone the danger to them which the possession of such a magnificent base as these islands would give to a Power who may some day be at war with England. But now as to the group itself.

Next to the Fijis and the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides are the finest cluster of islands in the South Pacific; and were British settlers in the group freed from their present harassing disabilities in the way of employing native labour to work their plantations it would leave Fiji far behind in the development of its abounding resources. It possesses magnificent harbours, forests of timber awaiting the axeman and saw-miller, land suitable for coffee and cotton, and other tropical products, a climate that is no hotter than that of Ceylon or Samoa, and a native population which, within two years after the declaration of British sovereignty, would, owing to the influence of the English missionaries in the group, be as amenable to the precepts of civilisation as the too-highly Christianised people of Tonga and Fiji, where to-day a man’s life and property are as safe as if he lived under the shadow of Westminster.

The largest island of the group is Santo— the Espiritu Santo of Quiros, who in a memoir to his Royal master, Philip III., spoke of it as “a very great island: a country of the richest fertility and beauty. It is to my mind one of the finest in the world, and capable under colonisation of becoming one of the richest places in the Southern Hemisphere.” Its length exceeds eighty miles with an average of thirty-two in width, and within the great sweep of the mighty barrier reef that encloses it are some scores of clusters of low-lying islands of purely coral formation, densely covered by groves of coco-palms, and inhabited by a numerous population of strong athletic savages of Melanesian blood, whose earliest recollections of white men date from the old colonial days, when the group was visited by sandal-wooding ships from Sydney and vessels engaged in the colonial whale fishery. The present race that people the mainland are, no doubt, new comers within the past three hundred years, for on several parts of the islands there are traces of occupation by an earlier race: detached pillars composed of large stones, long stretches of broken walls indicating walled towns, and fragments of rough masonry cemented with a chunam of coral lime and river sand. Much of Santo is covered by noble forests of timber, and the littoral is of remarkable fertility. The inhabitants, though nearly all thorough savages, have a better reputation than most of the people inhabiting the larger islands of the group, and the record of white men who have lost their lives in the group is low on Santo.

An island with an evil reputation in the past is Tanna, for the inhabitants are savage and treacherous, and though there are English traders living among them in security, the Tanna people have perpetrated some fearful massacres upon vessels engaged in trading and recruiting native labour. The whole island is a magnificent panorama of tropical island beauty, thirty-five miles long by eleven in width. Towards the southern end the land trends away in a gradual slope from lofty mountains, densely wooded and enveloped in mist and clouds. The low-lying coast lands are of surpassing fertility, and millions of coco-palms encompass the shores, while about the thickly populated villages are carefully tended plantations of sugar-cane, bananas, pineapples, yams, taro, and other tropical vegetables and fruit. An old New Hebrides trader captain estimates the population of Tanna at 8,000, and believes it could support 30,000.

Mallicolo—a favourite recruiting ground for the Fijian and Queensland vessels employed in the labour trade—is about fifty-five miles in length, with an average width of twenty miles, and is covered with magnificent forests from its littoral to, the very summit of the range that traverses the island. That the timber of Mallicolo is valuable for ship-building purposes Australian trading captains well know, but until the group is annexed by either France or England there is but little prospect of its forests being exploited in a systematic manner. The island is intersected by some splendid streams of water; and although malarial fever is prevalent at certain seasons of the year, the climate on the whole may be considered healthy. It is a favourite rendezvous for both the English and French war-vessels engaged in patrolling the group, and is also frequently visited by trading vessels from Sydney and those in the service of the French New Hebrides Company—an association that while possessing a considerable amount of purchased land in the various islands is merely kept going by a subsidy from the French Government.

Aneityum is a high and mountainous island with but a narrow belt of low-lying land running round its coast, but it possesses some splendid forests. A saw mill, owned by an Australian firm, has been established here and some excellent timber has been produced for local purposes—house-building, ship-building, etc. This island is but twelve miles in length and about six in width. The natives are all (alleged) Christians and number about 2,200. They were the first to come under missionary influence, and are a peaceable, law-abiding race. They are, of course, of Papuan blood, and of a very dark colour, with woolly or frizzy hair like that of most Fijians. No harbours for large vessels are available, but the steamers of the Australasian New Hebrides Company and small sailing craft find anchorage under the north-west end of the island during the strong south-east trade winds.

The seismic forces of nature are much in evidence in the New Hebrides group. On Tanna there is a volcano on the south-east end of the island that is frequently in a state of commotion. Viewed from seaward on a dark night it presents a weird and awe-inspiring spectacle. Rumblings, groanings, and dull roaring sounds emanate from its interior, and the noise of its restless convulsions can be heard at Aneityum, nearly fifty miles distant. The volcano itself presents an impressive sight even in daylight, rising as it does to a thousand feet, the grim reddish-brown of its perfect cone affording in its barren sides a startling contrast to the amazing wealth of verdure that, despite its fierce eruptions, prevails everywhere around it. The mighty forces that lie in its heart are seldom quiet; and at short intervals a straight column of smoke, dark, heavy, and pall-like, shoots upward, till, as it ascends, a canopy is formed. This, in the course of half an hour or so, expands and unfolds itself till it resembles a gigantic aërial mushroom. Then it gradually disperses; hollow groanings and deep rumblings follow, and then, as the black sulphurous smoke changes to a pale blue, there again comes a sudden convulsion, and a fresh pillar of inky smoke shoots high in the air.

Erromanga will always be associated with the name of John Williams, the pioneer missionary to the South Seas, who was there murdered with his colleague, Mr. Harris, in 1839. In later years four other missionaries yielded up their lives to the savage inhabitants, the last being Mr. Gordon, who was killed there in 1872. At the present time the Erromangans are, with the exception of the people of the little island of Tongoa, the most thoroughly Christianised inhabitants of the group.

At Vaté, the entrepêt of the whole group, is established the principal trading centre of the New Hebrides, and here live the greater portion of the English and French settlers established in the group. Vaté is thirty-five miles long by eight broad, of moderate elevation, has some noble harbours, a fertile soil, splendid banana plantations, and, in a small way, is the Ceylon of the South Seas.