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

12 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

The number of natives in the New Hebrides and
Banks Islands amounted, according to the approxi-
mate census of the British Resident Commissioner in
I910, to 65,000. At a conservative estimate we may
say that before the coming of the whites, that is, a
generation ago, it was ten times that, 226. 650,000.
For to judge from present conditions, the accounts of
old men and the many ruined villages, it is evident
that the race must have decreased enormously.

LANGUAGE

The languages belong to the Melanesian and
Polynesian classes. They are split up into numerous
dialects, so widely different that natives of different
districts can hardly, if at all, understand each other.
It is evident that owing to the seclusion of the
villages caused by the general insecurity of former
days, and the lack of any literature, the language
developed differently in every village.

On some islands things are so bad that one may
easily walk in one day through several districts, in
each of which is spoken a language quite unin-
telligible to the neighbours; there are even adjoining
villages whose natives have to learn each other’s
language; this makes them fairly clever linguists.
Where, by migrations, conditions have become too
complicated, the most important of the dialects has
been adopted as a kind of “lingua franca.”

Under these circumstances I at once gave up the
idea of learning a native language, as I never stopped
anywhere more than a few weeks; and as the