Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/529

514 away with us, he might never be able to revisit his friends and native island. Still he would go and did go, intimating that he would moi moi (sleep) in the ship. The men contributed various articles of clothing, and in a few minutes his kit was complete, and he was quite at home, becoming a sailor at once instinctively. He could go aloft, reef, &c., with the best of them. Six months afterwards we fell in with the Bishop of New Zealand, and handed over our new friend to him, much against his will. A year afterwards the writer of this article fell in with him again, when the Bishop looked in at Sydney on his way North with his freight of black pupils. I asked the Bishop to allow me to take Mesty on shore with me for the night, and then learnt something of his previous history. By this time he could speak English accurately, and could write and read well. On asking him why he had insisted upon leaving home, he burst out laughing and told me that his big brother, who was the chief of that part of the island, had “licked” him the morning we visited the place, and so he determined to run away and leave him. He told me that at his return his friends would look upon him as a much greater man than his brother, in consequence of his travels in distant countries, and he was not in the least afraid to return. He became one of the Bishop’s most useful pioneers, and I hope has never regretted the step he took in resenting his brother’s beating.

A few words respecting the fauna, &c., of the islands, as well as the dress, manners, and customs of the natives, will conclude this chapter.

In New Zealand and the other islands referred to, there is not a single venomous reptile of any kind whatever, the only indigenous animal being a small Kangaroo rat. The famous Aracauria—the Kauri of New Zealand—we found in New Caledonia and Vanikolo. In spite of the volcanic formation of the islands, they are covered with a dense vegetation, a great variety and profusion of ferns, and magnificent forest trees of various kinds. They are well within the Tropics, lying between latitudes 9° and 20° 30′ south. In New Caledonia, latitude 20° to 24° south, the gum-tree of Australia flourishes to a great extent.

The dress throughout the islands varies but little, a broad or narrow band across the loins making all the difference, where there is a dress at all. In the New Hebrides it is impossible to describe it, the attempt to make decent appearance in society being the most ludicrous thing ever witnessed.

In Fati, the women wear a broad belt of matting, made from the inner rind of some tree, with some little attempt at ornament in