As soon as the 'Southern Cross' had carried Bishop Harper back to Lyttelton, the Melanesian voyage was recommenced, this time with a valuable assistant in Mr. Benjamin Dudley. Mrs. Selwyn was again dropped at Norfolk Island, and five young Pitcairners were taken on board to serve as a boat's crew, and also to receive instruction.
This was a more extensive voyage than the first, as more time could be spent on it, but there is less full description, as there was less time for writing; and besides, these coral islands are much alike. Futuma was the first new island visited:-
'The canoes did not venture to come off to us, so we went ashore in the boat, Bishop and I wading ankle-deep to the beach. Forty or fifty natives under a deep overhanging rock, crouching around a fire, plenty of lads and boys, no women. Some Tanna men in the group, with their faces painted red and black, hair (as you know) elaborately frizzled and dressed with coral lime. The Futuma people speak a different language from those of Anaiteum, and the Tanna people speak a third (having, moreover, four dialects of their own). These three islands are all in sight of each other. Tanna has an active volcano, now smoking away, and is like a hot-bed, wonderfully fertile. People estimate its population at 10,000, though it is not very large,- about thirty miles long. At Futuma, the process by which these coral islands have been upheaved is well seen. The volcanic rocks are lying under the coral, which has been gradually thrust upwards by them. As the coral emerged, the animal went on building under water, continually working lower and lower down upon and over the volcanic formation, as this heaved in its upward course the coral formation out of the sea.'
Erromango was occupied by the Scottish Mission, and Mr. Gordon was then living there in peace and apparent security, when a visit was paid to him, and Patteson gathered some leaves in Dillon's Bay, the spot where John Williams met his death sixteen years before, not, as now was understood, because he was personally disliked, but because he was unconsciously interfering with a solemnity that was going on upon the beach.
At Fate Isle, the people were said to be among the wildest in those seas. When the 'Royal Sovereign' was wrecked, they had killed the whole crew, nineteen in number, eaten ten at once, and sent the other nine as presents to their friends. Very few appeared, but there was a good 'opening' exchange of presents.
A great number of small islets lie around Fate, forming part of the cluster of the New Hebrides, The Bishop had been at most of them before, and with a boat's crew of three Pitcairners and one English sailor, starting early and spending all day in the boat, he and Patteson touched at eleven in three days, and established the first steps to communication by obtaining 127 names of persons present, and making gifts. These little volcanic coral isles were all much alike, and nothing remarkable occurred but the obtaining two lads from Mai, named Petere and Laure, for a ten months' visit. Poor fellows, they were very sea-sick at first, and begged to go home again, but soon became very happy, and this connection with Petere had important consequences in the end. These lads spoke a language approaching Maori, whereas the Fate tongue prevailed in the other isles.
At Mallicolo, on August 20, a horrible sight presented itself to the eyes of the two explorers when they walked inland with about eighteen most obliging and courteous natives-an open space with four hollowed trunks of trees surrounding two stones, the trees carved into the shape of grotesque human heads, and among them, a sort of temple, made of sloping bamboos and pandanus leaves meeting at the top, from whence hung a dead man, with his face painted in stripes of red and yellow, procured, it was thought, from the pollen of flowers. There was not enough comprehension of the language to make out the meaning of all this.
Ambrym, the next island, was more than usually lovely, and was destined to receive many more visits. The women made their approach crawling, some with babies on their backs. Whitsuntide, where the casks had to be filled with water, showed a great number of large, resolute-looking men, whose air demanded caution; 'but,' says the journal, 'practice makes perfect, and we get the habit of landing among strangers, the knack of managing with signs and gesticulations, and the feeling of ease and confidence which engenders confidence and good-will in the others. Quarrels usually arise from both parties being afraid and suspicious of each other.'
Leper's Isle owes its unpleasant name to its medicinal springs. It is a particularly beautiful place, containing a population of good promise. Three landings were made there, and at the fourth place Patteson jumped ashore on a rock and spent some time in calming the fears of a party of natives who had been frightened in their canoe by the boat under sail overtaking them. 'hey fingered bows and arrows, but only from nervousness,' he says. However, they seem to have suspected the visitors of designs on their load of fine taro, and it was some time before the owner would come out and resume it. On all these isles the plan could as yet only be to learn names and write them down, so as to enquire for acquaintance next time, either make presents, or barter them for provisions, discover the class of language, and invite scholars for another time.
So at Star Island three or four natives said, 'In ten moons you two come back; very good, then we go with you.' 'I think,' Patteson tells his sisters, 'you would have liked to have seen me, standing on a rock, with my two supporters, two fine young men, who will I trust go with us next time, my arms round their necks, and a fine background of some thirty or forty dark figures with bows and arrows, and two or three little rogues, perched on a point of rock above me, just within reach, asking for fish-hooks.' He says it in all simplicity, but the picture presupposes some strength of mind in the sisters who were to appreciate it.
Few natives appeared at Espiritu Santo, and the vessel passed on to Oanuta or Cherry Island, where the Bishop had never been, and where a race of dull, good-natured giants was found. The chief was a noble- looking man with an aquiline nose, and seemed to have them well under command, and some of the younger men, who had limbs which might have been a model for a sculptor, could have lifted an ordinary-sized Englishman as easily as a child. They were unluckily already acquainted with whalers, whom they thought the right sort of fellows, since they brought tobacco and spirits, did not interfere with native habits, nor talk of learning, for which the giants saw no need. The national complexion here was of a lighter yellow, the costume a tattooed chest, the language akin to Maori; and it was the same at Tikopia, where four chiefs, one principal one immensely fat, received their visitors seated on a mat in the centre of a wide circle formed by natives, the innermost seated, the others looking over them. These, too, were accustomed to whalers, and when they found that pigs and yams in exchange for spirits and tobacco were not the object, they were indifferent. They seemed to despise fish-hooks, and it was plain that they had even obtained muskets from the whalers, for there were six in the chiefs house, and one was fired, not maliciously but out of display. The Bishop told them his object, and they understood his language, but were uninterested. The fat chief regaled the two guests with a cocoa-nut apiece, and then seemed anxious to be rid of them.
The Banks Islands, as usual, were much more hopeful, Santa Maria coming first. Canoes came round the vessel, and the honesty of the race showed itself, for one little boy, who had had a fish-hook given him, wished to exchange it for calico, and having 'forgotten to restore the hook at the moment, swam back with it as soon as he remembered it. There was a landing, and the usual friendly intercourse, but just as the boat had put off, a single arrow was suddenly shot out of the bush, and fell about ten yards short. It was curious that the Spanish discoverers had precisely the same experience. It was supposed to be an act of individual mischief or fun, and the place obtained the appropriate name of Cock Sparrow Point.
It was not possible to get into the one landing-place in the wall round Mota's sugar-loaf, but there was an exchange of civilities with the Saddleites, and in Vanua Lava, the largest member of the group, a beautiful harbour was discovered, which the Bishop named Port Patteson, after the Judge.
The Santa Cruz group was visited again on the 23rd of September. Nothing remarkable occurred; indeed, Patteson's journal does not mention these places, but that of the Bishop speaks of a first landing at Nukapu, and an exchange of names with the old chief Acenana; and the next day of going to the main island, where swarms of natives swam out, with cries of Toki, toki, and planks before them to float through the surf. About 250 assembled at the landing place, as before, chiefly eager for traffic. The Volcano Isle was also touched at, but the language of the few inhabitants was incomprehensible. The mountain was smoking, and red-hot cinders falling as before on the steep side. It was tempting to climb it and investigate what probably no white man had yet seen, but it was decided to be more prudent to abstain.
Some events of the visit to Bauro are related in the following letter to the young cousin whose Confirmation day had been notified to him in time to be thought of in his prayers:-
'Off San Cristoval: October 5, 1857.
'My dearest Pena,-It was in a heathen land, among a heathen people, that I passed the Sunday-a day most memorable in your life-on which I trust you received for the first time the blessed Sacrament of our Saviour's Body and Blood.
'My darling-,as I knelt in the chiefs house, upon the mat which was also my bed-the only Christian in that large
