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

208 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

After I had exhausted the surroundings of Dip
Point, I marched along the coast to Port Vato, where
I lived in an abandoned mission house, in the midst
of a thickly populated district. At present, the
people are quiet, and go about as they please; but
not long ago, the villages lived in a constant state of
feud among themselves, so that no man dared go
beyond his district alone, and the men had to watch
the women while they were at work in the fields, for
fear of attack. The sense of insecurity was such
that many people who lived in villages only twenty
minutes’ walk from the coast had never seen the
ocean. The population as a whole enjoys the state
of peace, which the missionaries have brought about,
though there are always mischief-makers who try to
create new feuds, and there is no doubt that the old
wars would break out anew, if the natives were left
to themselves.

These disturbances were not very destructive in
the days of the old weapons; it is only since the
introduction of firearms that they have become a real
danger to the race as a whole. They even had their
advantages, in forcing the men to keep themselves in
condition, and in providing them with a regular
occupation, such as preparing their weapons, or
training, or guarding the Village and the women.
With the end of the feuds, the chief occupation of the
men disappeared, and but few of them have found any
serious work to take up their time. Thus civilization,
even in its role of peacemaker, has replaced one evil
by another.