[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

30 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

like Paradise or entirely dull and inhospitable. What
had been thus far a pleasure trip, a holiday excursion,
turned suddenly into a business journey, and this
change in our mood was increased by a slight illness
which had attacked the Resident, making the jovial
gentleman morose and irritable.

The stay in Epi was rather uninteresting. Owing
to the dense French colonization there the natives
have nearly all disappeared or become quite de-
generate. We Spent our time in visits to the
different French planters and then sailed for Male-
kula, anchoring in Port Sandwich.

Port Sandwich is a long, narrow bay in the south
of Malekula, and after Port Vila the most frequented
harbour of the group, as it is very centrally located
and absolutely safe. Many a vessel has found pro—
tection there from storm or cyclone. The entrance
to the bay is narrow, and at the anchorage we were
so completely landlocked that we might have imagined
ourselves on an inland lake, so quiet is the water,
surrounded on all sides by the dark green forest
which falls in heavy waves down from the hills to the
silent, gloomy sea.

Immediately after Our arrival my companions went
pigeon-shooting as usual ; but I soon preferred to join
the son of the French planter at Port Sandwich in a
visit to the neighbouring native village. This was
my first sight of the real, genuine aborigines.

No one with any taste for nature will fail to feel
the solemnity of the moment when he stands face to
face for the first time with primitive man. As the