Part 15 (1/2)

My native companions during my excursions rarely returned to their homes without bringing back an opossum (_Cuscus_). Usually this animal was caught without much trouble, as it slumbers during the day and may be then surprised amongst the foliage of the tree where it finds its home.

Sometimes, however, when the keen eyes of my natives discovered an opossum amongst the leafy branches overhead, we were enlivened by an exciting hunt. On such occasions, one man climbs the tree in which the animal is esconced whilst three or four other men climb the trees immediately around. By dint of shouting and shaking the branches, the opossum is started from its retreat, and then the sport commences. This clumsy looking creature displays great agility in springing from branch to branch, and even from tree to tree. Suspended by its prehensile tail to the branch above, the _Cuscus_ first tests the firmness of the branch next below, before it finally intrusts its weight to its support. It runs up and down the stouter limbs of the tree like a squirrel; but its activity and cunning are most displayed in pa.s.sing from the branches of one tree to those of another. At length, scared by the shaking of the branches, and by the cries of the natives who have clambered out on the limbs as far as they can get with safety, the opossum runs out towards the extremity of the limb, proceeding cautiously to the very terminal branchlets, until the weight of its body bends down the slender extremities of the branch, and it hangs suspended by its tail in mid-air about ten feet below. The gentle swaying of the branches in the wind, aided probably by its own movements, swings the opossum to and fro, until it approaches within grasp of the foliage of the adjoining tree.

Then the clever creature, having first ascertained the strength of its new support, uncoils its tail. Up goes the branch with a swish when relieved of its weight; and in a similar manner the opossum swings by its tail from the slender branches of the tree to which it has now transferred its weight. Finally the opossum reaches the ground, where its awkward movements render it an easy capture. It is then tied to a stick and carried home alive on the shoulder of a native.

The _Cuscus_ is a common article of food with these islanders; and in some islands, as in Simbo or Eddystone, it is kept as a pet by the natives. Out of seven opossums that were kept as pets on board the ”Lark,” all died within a few weeks, being apparently unable to withstand captivity. Most of them, however, were young. The cause of the death of one of them was rather singular. Immediately after its death the skin of the animal was literally covered with small ticks about the size of a pin's head and distended with blood, whilst the body presented the blanched appearance of an animal bled to death. It had been ailing for a day or two before and was incessantly drinking all liquids it could get, even its own urine: but the ticks had not been sufficiently numerous to be observed; and in fact they appeared to have covered the animal in the course of a single night. As I was informed by the natives of Simbo, these animals subsist on the shoots and young leaves of the trees: on board the ”Lark” they cared for little else than bananas. They make a curious clicking noise when eating, and often hold the substance in their fore-paws. When taken out in the day-time from their boxes they were half asleep, and at once tried to get out of the bright light into the shade. In the night-time they were very restless in their prisons, making continual efforts to escape between the bars, and as soon as they were let out they moved about with much activity. The older animals are sometimes rather fierce. One of them which belonged to the men used to spend a considerable portion of its time up aloft; and, when in want of food, it would descend the rigging and go down to the lower deck. Their naked tails have a cold clammy feeling; and with them they were in the habit of swinging themselves from any object. When the _Cuscus_ was about to be taken up by its master, it moored itself to the nearest object by means of its tail. It always descended a rope head first, but kept its tail twined round the rope during its descent so as to be able to withdraw itself at once if necessary, the tail supporting the greater portion of its weight.

Although the natives, who accompanied me in my various excursions, usually displayed their skill in following a straight course through a pathless wood where they could only see a few yards on either side of them, yet on more than one occasion they were, to use a nautical phrase, completely out in their reckoning, and I had to bring my compa.s.s into use and become the guide myself in order to avoid pa.s.sing the night in the bush. When in the interior of the north-west part of Alu accompanied by Gorai, the chief, and a number of his men, I was astonished at the readiness with which, in the absence of any tracks, they found their way to the coast. Gorai led the way; and on my asking him how he managed to know the right direction in a thick forest with neither sun nor trade-wind to guide him, he merely remarked that he ”saveyed bush,” and pointing with his hand in a particular direction, he informed me that ”Mono stopped there,” Mono being the native name for Treasury. There was a little uncertainty among the natives as to whether the old chief was guiding us aright; but there was no hesitation on the part of Gorai, whose course as tested by my compa.s.s was always in the same direction; he, however, disdained the use of the compa.s.s and ultimately brought us back to the coast. When pa.s.sing through a district with which he is but little acquainted, the native frequently bends the branches of the bushes as he pa.s.ses, in order to strike the same path on the way back. He must be frequently guided in his course through the forest by noticing the bearing of the sun and the swaying of the upper branches of the trees in the trade-wind, guides which were often employed by myself when alone in the bush: but when, as not uncommonly happens, there is such a dense screen of foliage overhead, that neither the sun nor the upper branches of the trees can be seen, he must employ other means of guidance. Rude tracks, usually traversed the least frequented districts of the islands which we visited; and their persistence appeared to be sometimes due to the fact that they were used by the wild pigs.

Fallen trees commonly obstruct the most frequented paths in the vicinity of villages: and there they remain until decay removes them, for the native has no idea of doing an act for the public weal: with him, in such and kindred matters, what is everybody's business is n.o.body's.

Captain Macdonald, in his capacity as a chief in Santa Anna, adopted the serviceable method of employing natives, who had committed petty offences, in making good walks in the vicinity of the houses of the white residents. The example however was not followed by the natives for the approaches to their own village of Sapuna. Being quite content with their narrow footpaths, they probably could not understand that whatever contributed to the public good was also to the advantage of the individual.

CHAPTER IX.

PREVALENT DISEASES.

I HAVE previously remarked that in these islands the duties of the sorcerer and the medicine-man are frequently combined. The same man, who can remove a disease by exorcism and by ill-wis.h.i.+ng can bring sickness and death upon any obnoxious individual, may also be able in the estimation of the people to procure a fair wind for an intended voyage, or to bring about rain in a season of drought. I had more than one opportunity of satisfying myself of the fact that the medicine-man often trades upon the credulity of his patients, and that he is himself aware that all his charms and incantations are mere trickery. In Santa Anna his services are often employed to procure the recovery of a sick man, and by some form of incantation he pretends to appease the anger of the offended spirit to whom the illness is attributed. Captain Macdonald, who has long resided in this island, informed me that when on one occasion he had relieved by medicine the sufferings of a native who had in vain employed the exorcisms of the village physician to effect his cure, the success of his treatment did not detract in any way from the reputation of the medicine-man, who, having informed himself of the progress of the patient, after Captain Macdonald had given his remedy, foretold his recovery and took to himself the whole credit of the cure.

In the island of Ugi chunam (burnt lime) is one of the domestic remedies employed in sickness, being rubbed into the skin of the patient by his friends. The chunam of some men is supposed to be more efficacious than that of others, and messengers may be sent from one end of the island to the other to procure it. One of our Treasury natives, who was employed on board, had a reputation as medicine-man. His method of treatment in the case of one of his own comrades consisted in tying a particular leaf around the limbs and joints to localize the pain, and in striking the affected part with the same leaf. On one occasion this man was himself laid up with a large abscess in the b.u.t.tock, which he attempted to cure by tying a strip of the leaf around the thigh and by placing another for a few moments over the seat of the abscess. He would not let me do much for him; and from absorption of the purulent matter into the blood, a number of abscesses began to form in other parts of the body which brought him into a serious hectic condition. The poor fellow's cries of ”Agai” ”Agai,” corresponding to our exclamations of pain, made me feel acutely for him; but he placed little faith in our offices, his great desire, as intimated by his frequent cries of ”Feli” (Fire), was to be placed beside a large wood fire. He was sent on sh.o.r.e and given in charge of his wife on our arrival off Treasury. When I landed to see him a few hours after, I found him with his wish at last gratified; there he lay beside a roasting fire, the very last condition that seemed likely to promote his recovery. However he slowly regained his health, and I did what I could for him in buying sago and other articles of food from his own people who were not very ready with their supplies for the sick man.

This brings me to the subject of the indifference often displayed towards the sick and invalids. The natives view these things in a very matter-of-fact way. On more than one occasion when in the house of sickness, the son or the brother of the sick man has remarked to me, in the coolest manner, ”Him too much sick. I think by-and-by finish;” and it is astonis.h.i.+ng to hear of the manner in which they allow the sick to s.h.i.+ft for themselves. In the islands of Bougainville Straits the very aged, who are unable to get about or to be of any service to themselves, are placed in a house in which they are left alone although supplied with food; and there they remain until they die. Two old and decrepit men, who were both fast hastening to their ends, being the subjects of chronic lung affections, were placed together in a house in Treasury where they were supplied with food but rarely if ever visited. They were placed there to die as the relations informed us; and there they remained day after day until the end arrived. Mr. Stephens told me that in his island of Ugi, if a cocoa-nut is placed by the side of the sick man, his friends consider they have done all in their power. No attempt is made to alleviate pain, or to soothe by companions.h.i.+p the tedious hours of the sick. He lies deserted on his roughly plaited mat of palm-leaves, in his wretched home where the sunlight rarely enters; and there he awaits, perhaps without regret, his approaching death. When consciousness leaves him, his friends regard him as already dead, attributing the spasmodic breathing and the convulsive efforts of the dying man to the agency of some evil spirit.

The influence of superst.i.tion probably explains the indifference which prevails as to the welfare of the sick and aged. Those afflicted with such an infirmity as blindness are kindly treated by their fellows. I was particularly struck, whilst looking on at a feast in the village of Treasury, by the attention that was paid to the wants of a young blind man who sat aloof from the rest. He was blind from his birth, and I particularly pleased him by sitting down beside him and giving him a stick of tobacco.

In the case of those who have received some severe injury, such as a gunshot wound, considerable care is shown by the friends in their welfare. I saw much of the natives who were wounded during the hostilities carried on between the natives of Treasury and the Shortlands, and was astonished at the ease with which they recovered from apparently hopeless injuries. My experience goes to support the opinion laid down by Professor Waitz in his ”Anthropology of Primitive Peoples,”[149] that the healing power of nature is greater among savage than among civilized races. The principle of non-interference was literally carried out in defiance of the laws of hygiene and of the experience of modern surgery. After the unfortunate conflict on the islet of Tuluba, off the west coast of Alu, I visited the wounded man and woman who had been brought back to their homes. I found the woman lying in a dingy little house in which I had to stand still for a few minutes before I could see my patient. Five days had elapsed since the fight; and the condition of a wound, which has been left alone for this period in a tropical climate, may be well imagined. She had received a severe tomahawk wound just above the right knee, smas.h.i.+ng the bone and implicating the joint. The parts were much swollen and there was profuse suppuration. No attempt had been made to wash the wound, and in consequence it stunk horribly. A few pieces of split bamboo, less than a foot in length, were lashed in a slack fas.h.i.+on around the joint by means of rattan; but they could have given little or no support. Under the couch, which was merely a layer of poles raised about a foot from the ground, were placed hot stones wrapped up in leaves, from which the warmth ascended to the injured limb which was left uncovered and exposed to the flies and other insects. The poor woman was moaning terribly; and her cries of ”Agai” were painful to listen to, especially as I was permitted to do but little. They would neither wash nor cover the wound, and persisted in keeping up the hot air treatment by means of the hot stones wrapped in leaves, which were placed under the couch. I p.r.o.nounced her recovery as hopeless; and was after a time obliged to discontinue my visits, upon being told by one of the medicine-men that as he could make her well, my presence was not required. I never saw the woman again, but sometime after I learned that she was nearly well.

[149] English edition: translated by J. F. Collingwood: London, 1863: p. 126.

The man who was wounded at the same time had received a rifle-bullet through the thigh without injuring the bone, and another through the groin. I found his wounds in the same horrible condition, with the wound of exit in the thigh as large as my fist. Nothing whatever had been done except placing hot stones in leaves under the limb on the ground beneath; and nothing more was done. There the man lay for several weeks with his wounds unwashed and exposed to the air. In course of time he recovered. One of the Treasury natives had been shot by one of his own party, the rifle-bullet pa.s.sing through the right elbow from behind, and apparently disorganising the joint. I saw him a month after he had received the injury, lying in a very emaciated condition on his couch, with the wounded limb stretched out beside him quite unprotected and displaying an extensive flesh-wound in front of the joint. The hot-stone treatment had been the only one employed. In another month or five weeks he was up and about, but of course with a useless elbow. One of the Alu natives, who had been shot through the left shoulder from behind by the Treasury chief, had nearly recovered when I saw him six or seven weeks after, although the arm was useless.

Reflecting on the hot-stone treatment which the natives employed for these severe injuries, I came to think that it was really efficacious.

They said themselves that the hot air eased the pain, and this was probably effected, as I hold, by the warmth relaxing the parts after suppuration had begun and thus a.s.sisting the escape of the purulent discharges. The surgeon of our own time may take a hint from this practice of the Solomon Islander. It would certainly scarcely accord with the principles of modern surgery if a gunshot injury of one of the larger joints was to be treated in one of our general hospitals by being constantly kept in a current of heated air, uncovered and even unwashed.

The experiment, however, would be worth a trial in cases where amputation is unpracticable and where death is the probable result.

It is a common saying amongst white men who have had to deal with these natives, that when a man makes up his mind to die he a.s.suredly will, even although apparently in robust health. Such cases are not unusual on board labour-s.h.i.+ps on their way to the Queensland and Fiji plantations, and they may be regarded as of the nature of nostalgic melancholy or home-sickness. It is in truth hard to imagine the train of thoughts which must pa.s.s through the simple mind of a native when his island-home disappears below the horizon, and he is borne away to a strange land from which, it may be, some of his acquaintances have never returned.

Even the attractions of the box of trade that his servitude will earn may be insufficient to keep down the undefined apprehensions which fill his breast; and the knowledge of the impossibility of seeking his friends or his island again for what must appear to him an indefinite period may only serve to strengthen his longing for home. Here we have that disease with which the army surgeons of Europe were familiar, and which has been most recently exhibited amongst the Italian troops stationed at Masowah on the coast of the Red Sea. It is that ”strange disease” which Dr. Livingstone so pathetically describes in his ”Last Journals,” as affecting the victims of the slave-trade in the lake region of Africa. I remember on one occasion, when visiting a labour-vessel that had arrived in Treasury Harbour, my attention was drawn by the mate to a native of New Ireland who had eaten little for some days and was looking over the side of the s.h.i.+p towards the sh.o.r.e in a depressed and moody manner. I saw that the thoughts of the poor fellow were in reality far away; and I pa.s.sed on to see some of the other sick men. The next morning this New Ireland native was missing, and in the evening his body was found washed up on the beach... . I would refer my readers to some interesting remarks on this subject from the pen of Mr. Romilly,[150] whose official experience in the Western Pacific enables him to write with authority. The Solomon Islanders, according to this author, are less affected by this disease than those of other groups; whilst the New Hebrides natives appear to be most subject to it. Not only do natives often die of nostalgia before they are landed, but many die from this cause after their arrival in Fiji; and the only way to cure those affected is the one least likely to be followed, that is, ”to send them home.”

[150] ”The Western Pacific and New Guinea.” London, 1886: pp.

16,177.

In the eastern part of the Solomon Group, one commonly meets natives limping along with large ulcerous sores on the soles of the feet, seated usually near the base of the toes. They are often caused by stepping on the sharp corals when fis.h.i.+ng on the reefs, or by splinters of wood piercing the skin of the soles of the feet when walking in the bush. As a rule, the native pays no attention to these sores, and from neglect the ulceration extends both on the surface and to the deeper tissues, exposing the tendons and the metatarsal bones. Ultimately some or all the toes may be lost, and an unshapely clubbed foot arises from the subsequent contraction of the cicatrised surface. At other times, where the ulceration has been superficial but has extended between the toes, adhesion and perfect union of the lateral surfaces of the toes ensue, and a continuous covering of skin bridges over the intervening s.p.a.ces.

Mr. Nisbet, the government agent of the labour-schooner ”Redcoat” from Fiji, showed me a Solomon Island native with a foot of perfect form but with apparently no toes. A continuous covering of skin covered the whole foot like a thin sock, and the toes were only recognisable by the touch.

The man appeared to be but little incommoded by this obliteration of the toes. Among the natives of New Britain, as we learn from Mr.

Romilly,[151] ”the toes are not unfrequently joined together by a tough membrane,” a defect which does ”not seem to impair their activity.” This evidently results from superficial ulceration in the manner I have above described.

[151] ”The Western Pacific and New Guinea.” London, 1886, p. 21.

These ulcerous sores, if left exposed to the irritation of sand, dirt, and flies, may last for years and may ultimately cause death. Dr.

Livingstone in his ”Last Journals” (vol. ii. chaps. 2 and 3) speaks of the ulcers of the feet from which many of the slaves die in the region west of Tanganyika. They eat through everything muscle, tendon, and bone, and often lame permanently. ”The wailing of slaves tortured with these sores is one of the night sounds of a slave camp.” These ulcers, however, as they affect the Solomon Islanders, have a natural tendency to heal. When staying with Bishop Selwyn at Gaeta in Florida, I accompanied him on his morning round of visits to his patients, most of them being the subjects of these large ulcerous sores on the feet and legs. He tells me that with rest and cleanliness they soon take on a healing action. Carbolic oil was the application he used, and it seemed well suited for these discharging, loathsome sores. Several of the men of the ”Lark” were laid up with these ulcers of the feet for many weeks.