10,000 Leagues Over The Sea by William Albert Robinson

Author:William Albert Robinson [Robinson, William Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Sailing, Adventure, Islands, Polynesia, Memior, History, My
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

New Hebrides chief and wife

The drums of Malekula

Golden skinned Kitavans came to beg tobacco

Trobriand village where trial marriage prevails

CHAPTER XIII

FOR four days we sailed without sighting land after leaving the primitive New Hebrides and covered 400 miles with continually shifting breezes, squalls and calms. The live-stock—chickens and a pair of very small sucking pigs—which we had acquired by barter from the natives of Santo, gradually diminished and we lived high. After the first day the sky was constantly overcast and we ran on dead reckoning only, wondering what the currents were doing with us. Then, on the morning of Saturday, May 24, the sun shone forth and gave us a position line that ran bang through the middle of Santa Anna, our destination.

So we altered course and followed the line, and at eleven o’clock that morning we saw the twin islands dim on the horizon ahead and simultaneously the wind drew around so that instead of running off with spinnaker set we were beating to windward. We made the little outposts of the mighty Solomons that night, however, and anchored in the lagoon of Owa Raha (Santa Anna) just after a gorgeous sunset on Bauro’s massive mountains across the burnished-gold strait. We had no chart of the island, so followed the reef looking for a pass. It was a wide and deep one, letting into a spacious lagoon, deep to the very beach, where we found about five fathoms near shore. A native village hid among the palms and canoes lay drawn up on the sand. Two or three came alongside filled with very pleasant, handsome natives, quite Polynesian in appearance instead of black as we had expected.

The natives were quite loaded with ornaments, armlets of thick solid white shell worn above the elbow, nose rings and pins, fantastic combs in their hair, and necklaces of various sorts made with shell, tusks, teeth, tortoise shell, seeds and so on. The great variety of materials used in personal decoration surprised me. The scanty costumes were of plaited coconut fibre, leaves and grasses, and cockatoo and parrot feathers.

The canoes were entirely different from anything I had seen, with both ends arching high above the paddlers’ heads in a graceful curve. Throughout the South Seas we had seen dugout outrigger canoes. These had no outriggers, nor were they dugouts. They were made of thin planks ingeniously fastened with vines and sennet, light, flexible, and fast. At each extremity the craft were ornamented with shells or tassels and inlaid with mother of pearl. The frames and thwarts were beautifully carved and great pains had been taken in the construction. The paddles were short, narrow, with a pointed blade that served equally well as a spear.

That night we had an exciting moment in the black of a heavy rain and wind squall from the land. There had been rain all night but no wind to speak of. We slept securely. Suddenly something awakened both of us and we heard a strange rumble close at hand. The reef muttered under our very stern and our anchor chain hung straight down.

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