[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
20 MALEKULA by the Burns Philp boat, ravaged the whole district a few years ago, hundreds dying. The mortality from whooping cough and measles is also very high.“ Again he writes of the same district in the May of the sarne year :-— “Intensive study here is impossible—there is no intensive lite. . . . You have scarcely an idea of the terrible depopulation here during the last ten years. Layard told me that according to King, the late commissioner, there was a virile mummyfying popula- lion ‘ here. Well, the total number of survivors of the Wi emp district . . . is twenty-two, from/My clans within living memory ; the gong rhythms ‘ of twenty-six of the clans were remembered by one adult, but not old, survivor, so that they were all existing say twenty years ago at the most. Ot the twenty-two, eight are women. As for a ‘virile rnummyiying population ', I very much doubt whether a single ‘mummy ’ has been made in S. Malekula for several years. . . . The more or less coastal district, Seniang, has 125 adult inhabitants, and that is where I have done most work. There has been a constant gravitation from the interior to the coast, so that there is now not a single village remaining in the whole of Wilemp and Nahate districts, whereas upwards of sixty existed some years ago. One dysentry and Spanish influenza epidemic, Boyd the missionary calculated, reduced the population by 62 per cent. The Spanish influenza of post-war days simply wiped out whole villages. "The only remaining ‘heathen’ are drunkards. . . . For some reason alcohol seems absolutely to knock the bottom out of a native. Many a time I have come to it place in the morning to ï¬Ånd everyone in a sort of senseless coma, capable only of ï¬Ålching anything you give them the chance to. You go into the men’s houses to try and ï¬Ånd masks, etc., and all you ï¬Ånd are empty gin bottles. As tor the Christian converts, they form a small band, corresponding in function and temper to the (idealistic) social revolutionaries of the Bakunin type lu Europe ;—they are out for the destruction and reconstruction of native society. Depopula- tion and alcoholism sum up the situation." In other parts of the island conditions seem to have been little better, for, some months later, when he was working in 1 This ~ mhmmyiyim; population“ refers to the people ht the !0uth~West aiiiiihm of Malekfllfl who lSQd Q0 make etï¬Ågies 01 the men who died. After the FUNERAL these were kept iii the men‘: club-house IS memorials hr the deceased. Such cï¬Åigics, which are commonly but wrongly termed " mummies BIS called iii the mime language mmlmmp. For B ull description oi them ind oi the W2)‘ ih which they are made, S06 below, Chap. xvru.-c. H. w. 1 The Malï¬Åkullfls have large Wbï¬Ådefl gangs made from hollowed tree-trunks. on which they beat out complicated rhlythrns, by means of which simple messages can be sent iroxn village to village. ach Eli-I1 has its OWE distinctive rhythm hy which it and its members can be indicated. For 1 hill account oi these 5» below, Chap. xvu.-c. I-I. w.
