[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
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xxxii INTRODUCTION
which he spent here he became, apparently, proï¬Åcient in the
local dialect, and obtained most of his information through its
medium. He then went northwards to the districts of Lamburnbu
and Lagalag and here too he acquired a. working knowledge
of the language. From here he entered the territory of the Big
Narnbas, but his stay in this district was brief, for these natives
were still deï¬Ånitely opposed to European interference, and the
authorities were afraid lest a white man living alone in this
part of the country might not be safer Their decision was
undoubtedly a great disappointment to Deacon, but even during
his short visit he acquired very valuable information about certain
aspects of Big Nambas culture.
In order to appreciate how much Deacon achieved during
his year in Malekula, something must be said of the conditions
under which he worked. The climate of the island is, of course,
tropical, and has the usual attendant ills of malaria-infected
mosquitoes. For such handicaps he was, however, prepared;
what he had not expected was the sorry plight of the natives.
More will be written later of the depopulation which has been
going forward in this island apparently since the advent of the
white man, but it must be stressed here that, far from ï¬Ånding a
living society, Deacon found at South—West Bay only relatively
few survivors of several districts. He was therefore unable here
to study the social, economic, and religious life of a living com-
munity, but had to acquire his knowledge of what that life
had once been by means of the tedious and not wholly reliable
method of questioning the older men. In the north-west the
culture of the people had suffered less severely, but even in this
part of the island they were diminished in numbers and their
social life was almost certainly but a shadow of what it bad been
in days gone by. How keenly Deacon felt this can be seen from
his letters, in one of which he wrote: “ I may say fliat work
here [South-West Bay] is really archaeology. The place is on
the verge of complete depopu1ation—chieï¬Åy dysentry, consump-
tion, fever, Spanish influenza, measles, and whooping cough,â€ù
and again in another, “ The death-rate everywhere is terriï¬Åc.
Work is largely a race between speed of note-taking and speed
of diffusion of epidemics, etc. Spanish influenza has appeared
again, and whole villages are lying prostrate with it. The whole
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