THE ISLANDS OF THE WESTERN PACIFIC.*
BOOKS of travel in the South-Sea Islands have abounded of late in both English and French literature, and the beautiful, remote, savage, sunny isles are almost exhaustively known to us from every point of view. Nevertheless, this posthumous volume of the late Mr. Breuchley'a " jottings" is not superfluous, because, though only a small portion of its contents is quite novel, it abounds in the observations of an accomplished naturalist, and is enriched with numerous illustrations of very unusual merit. Mr. Brenchley travelled far and wide with M. Jules Remy, and was his collaborateur in the authorship of one of the earliest and, in our opinion, quite the best of the books on California, the Rocky Mountains, and Salt-Lake City,—a work which, we learn from the preface to this volume, did not secure the circulation it deserved. He was an indefatigable traveller ; he said of himself that he was born with a " passionate love of wandering," and he was fortunate enough to be able to indulge it during twenty- two years of a life which lasted only for fifty-six. His cruise in the Curacoa, with Commodore Sir William Wideman, among the Archipelagoes of the Western Pacific in 1865, was a mere episode. Sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he • Jottings during the Cruise of H.M.S. "Caracas," among the South Sea-Islasdsin 1865. By Julius L. Brenchley, M.A, F.E.G.8. London : Longman, Green, and Oo
welcomed all sorts of hardships, ran all sorts of risks, exposed him- self to all varieties and extremes of climates, and " was always at home and happy, whether in the cities or the deserts, traversing the plains or climbing the mountains of distant lands." One of his latest and most hazardous journeys was the expedition to the Taupo Lake in company with the late Lieutenant Meade, who related its details with such spirit in his Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand. Soon after he went on his cruise in the Curacoa, then on to China, and finally he made his way back to Europe by the Great Desert of Gobi, Siberia—in the depth of winter—and Russia. If he had jotted all his journeys, and all the jottings had been as good as these, the literature of travel would have been deeply indebted to him ; but Mr. Brenchley, the editor of this posthumous work tells us, " was more interested in collecting material objects, illustrative and commemorative of his varied travels, than in devoting himself to literary descriptions of them."
The works of Sir Charles Dilke, Lord Pembroke and M. Garnier have supplied us with information on most of the points touched upon by Mr. Brenchley in his South-Sea travel, down to a later date, especially in the case of New Caledonia, which has been exhaustively treated by the scientific commission " autour du monde ;" but this book abounds in interest for the reader with a taste for natural history. The writer has all the accuracy, with- out the too common aridity of the collector ; he is minute and picturesque, sympathetic and amusing. It is difficult to sustain interest in the successive tribes of savages among whom his in- vestigations extended—they are so very much alike in their aboriginal state : but Mr. Brenchley introduces us to certain in- dividuals who, like Mr. Mackenzie's Dlohatzekele, are quite ex- ceptional persons, and must have produced an extraordinary effect upon surrounding society, whether black or white. Foremost amongst these is the once ferocious Fijian, King Thakumbau, of Nobau. We do not know whether this tamed savage still lives, but in Mr. Brenchley's time he fully bore out Captain Erskine's description of him :—" Of large, almost gigantic size, his limbs were beautifully formed and proportioned, his coun- tenance, with far less of the negro cast than among the lower orders, agreeable and intelligent ; while his immense head of hair, covered and concealed with gauze, gave him altogether the appear- ance of an Eastern sultan. In spite of the scantiness of his attire, —the evident wealth which surrounded him showing it was a matter of choice, and not of necessity—he looked every inch a king." Of scrupulously cleanly habits, and very particular in his eating, in his amended condition, it is clear that King Thakumbau badly needed to be either converted or killed, when the former alternative befell him. Nothing more frightful than the acts of murder and cannibalism habitually performed by this gifted potentate in his unregenerate days are to be found in the annals of savagery ; and Mr. Brenchley comments upon the change which turned the terror of his countrymen into a professing Christian, with a humorous simplicity. " With a countenance not only void of ferocity," he remarks, but expressive of good-humour, and with a character which has shown itself consistent with the require- ments of civilisation, it is difficult to conceive that Thakumbau
should once have been a cannibal a outrance, and in the habit of indicating with his club the bodies suspended by their feet in the royal larder which were to have the honour of being served up for his repast." In contrast with this picture, the condition of the Fijians in 1865, and still more at present, according to the latest advices, is one of the most wonderful instances of progress to be found in the history of the world.
The chapters devoted to the islands which compose the group known as the New Hebrides are remarkably interesting ; they are chiefly concerned with the natural features and the luxuriant productions of the islands, which are exceedingly beautiful, pre- senting landscapes much more striking than even those of Fiji. To the visit of the Curacoa to Banks' group a melancholy interest attaches, for at Varna-Java, called Port Patteson, in honour of the judge of that name, his son, the ill-fated missionary bishop, and the Commodore, joined and accompanied the exploring party into the interior of the island. The soil is everywhere of marvellous fertility, the vegetation is most luxuriant, and a beautiful drawing gives an idea of wonderful forest beauty. They were piloted by the bishop through the Solomon group, in one of which, Uji, they came upon a public hall or council-house, con- taining some very curious specimens of art, at once grotesque, ingenious, symbolical. They brought away an ornamental tie-beam, now in the Maidstone Museum, which is covered with strange devices, and reproduced in the frontispiece to this volume, with the real colours. On one side the ornaments are in relief ; they
consist of seven birds, alternately light and dark, supposed to represent frigate-birds, and eight brown fish, of which two are sharks and six bonitos. The ground exhibits a singularly well- executed zig-zag pattern, tinted white, red, and black, with sundry other ornaments ; " the whole," says Mr. Brenchley, " evincing a remarkable appreciation of symmetrical arrangement and capacity for executing it." The reverse is more curious, because illustra- tive of one of the customs of these islanders, of whose religious beliefs or notions it is very difficult to arrive at any knowledge, and also suggestive of the dangers with which they have to struggle in their strife for subsistence :-
" The reverse represents four highly ornamented canoes manned, one of them bottom upwards and part of the crew upon it struggling to keep off the sharks, several of which are busily engaged in devouring such of their less fortunate companions as have been unable to regain the canoe. The groundwork is black, and the canoes, fish, men, &c., are engraved upon it, and painted white, relieved here and there with red and black. Among the fish regaling themselves on the remains of the bodies which they have partially devoured are to be found more than one species. The groundwork is divided into two compartments, ornamentally separated from one another, each containing two canoes. In one of the canoes of either group is to be seen a raised platform, the one in the right group bearing a bowl, the other in the left group being without one. It has been surmised that there is hero a reference to a. custom among those islanders of propitiating the sharks by an offering in the shape of a libation, and that the canoe not upset or attacked has performed the ceremony."
This specimen of intelligence, and the elaborate ornamentation of the council-house from which it comes, are the more remarkable, because the natives of Uji are, though not ferocious, entirely savage.
Mr. Brenchley goes deeply into the Missionary question, and while recognising the preponderance of honesty and sincerity among the missionaries, he points out very forcibly that a higher class of men are needed for the work to be done in the South-Sea Islands. In the concluding pages, written shortly before his death, he says :—" The action of the missionaries would be much more beneficial if with their zeal they combined knowledge, if they were men of more cultivated intellects, and of a greater social refinement, in one category of which, that is manners, they are often much inferior to those they teach, and thereby abridge their own influence." No doubt this is perfectly true, but the work must be done with the available workmen, and from nothing short of an outpouring of the Apostoilc spirit can we hope to procure highly-educated gentlemen to go out as missionaries to the South- Sea Islands.
It is a remarkable literary defect of this work that the narrative in its course does not impress the world with the facts which the author sums up in its conclusion. In the former the lover of natural history predominates, in the latter the observer of men speaks ; so that the reader is rather taken by surprise when he finds the result of Mr. Brenchley's cruise in the Curacoa described as " an en- gaging spectacle of these island communities, exhibiting incontestable evidence of their power of spontaneous development, made mani- fest in their social organisation, their creditable agricultural industry and skill, their progress in certain industrial arts, their peculiar ceremonies of public consultation, the decorum, and even refinement of their manners, and above all, in their capacity for absorbing the instruction and influence of a more advanced civilisation."
The Natural History notices, comprising the second portion of Mr. Brenchley's work, are illustrated by beautiful drawings of the brilliant birds, the strange fishes, reptiles, and insects, and the exquisitely delicate, lovely, and various shells of the Western Pacific Islands.
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