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coolie labour a humane state of life. Mainlanders differ hereditarily from islanders. Indian coolies have laboured from year to year, from generation to generation, in their own land, and know quite well what they are doing when they sign a five years' engagement. They bring their families; they comprehend settling in a foreign land; continuous work is not an agonizing slavery to them, they thrive under it.

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One by one my old fellow-passengers have dropped off. New ones have come on board, but cannot fill their place. I feel cold towards the strangers, and make little progress in acquaintanceship. The casual, who joins near the end of a voyage, is generally looked on as an interloper. "Who is he? What does he come among us for at this late period? I wonder if he will be in my cabin. Bother him!" represent the British feeling, only half concealed. I have often been tickled by the repellant English stare of passengers in possession, leaning over the bulwarks, as I, alone at an out-port, mounted the ladder from a small boat.

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The "commercial" was the first to go. Dawfort caught the 'Frisco boat at Samoa. The moth-catcher was left behind against his will, ostensibly, but looked so happy standing on a wharf, as we eyed him through the glass, that we are not sure to this day whether he were late on purpose, or only of confirmed habit. Ortenham engaged a native guide at Suva, and crossed to the other side of Veti Levu, where is reported good duckshooting. Mr. Müller has long gone.

The last I saw of him was at night, in a small island.

He disappeared down a green avenue, carrying a lantern and a heavy bag of silver coin. Only Sandilands, Blackmore, and I of the original company are left. We get quite sociable, and make of ourselves a sort of rampart against the "strangers."

Blackmore actually thaws in manner, and becomes less secretive. We find him playing, and playing well, on the piano, whereas when our juvenile accompanists to boisterous chorus were wrestling painfully with the score he gave no sign, and hugged his accomplishment to his secret heart. We also find, by accident and to his annoyance, that he speaks French and German fluently. He is, however, still unmeasured in his criticism of everything Colonial. The English news in our papers specially excites his ire:-"Surely New Zealanders don't really like to have their paper filled with the gossip that John Jones, of Wellington, called on the Agent-General, and then went to spend a few days with his aunt in Buckinghamshire;

or that Mrs. Brown, of Auckland, felt the cold in Yorkshire, and wore a muffler! Surely they would rather learn the doings of the men who are at the making of contemporary history: Gladstone, the Emperor of Germany, even McKinley-eh?”

"Certainly not!" I reply stoutly, though in my inmost heart knowing he has me again in a tight place. I think of the number of Joneses and Browns there are to only one Gladstone!

Our friend even became confiding and sentimental towards the last. Just as I had got my only portmanteau ready, and was stepping on to the gangway-the first to go ashore at our destination—Sandilands, carrying several small leather bags, and assisted by the steward with more strapped bundles of eccentric shapes, came hurriedly up, looking quite excited, a broad smile on his ruddy, clean-shaved, good-natured face:-"Do you know w-what? At last I have discovered something that Blackmore admires !"

"No! What is it?" I eagerly ask.

"The black smoke coming out of the funnel. He says it is s-plendid, and he never tires looking at it. I d—didn't contradict him!"

"Good! You intend going home via Sydney, do you not?"

"Yes, after a fortnight or so."

"I go back to New Zealand, but some day we may meet in London."

"I trust so. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

H

CHAPTER VIII.

THE COOK GROUP.

"For my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, before I die.

It may be I shall touch the Happy Isles."

AVING thus far pictured islanders under purely native, yet

civilized, rule in the Friendlies, under the protection of England, Germany, and America in Samoa, and under English Government in Fiji, bringing to bear upon the subject a life-long knowledge of their New Zealand kinsmen, I begin to understand better my dusky friends, the Maoris of the Pacific, and to feel for them a growing affection and pity. And as I warm to my work it is borne in upon me, by the very experience and analysis of the knowledge gained in the writing of this book, that my study is unsatisfying, until I can complete the whole circle of conditions and contrasts by showing, farther, how the islanders thrive up to date under the protection of New Zealand in the Cook Group, and under Republican French Government in the Society and neighbouring islands.

So I have thrown down my fountain-pen and put my incomplete chapters away in a drawer, and here I am again on board a New Zealand steamer, undertaking a voyage of 5000 miles merely to write two chapters on the Cook and Society Groups. Well, all I can say for myself is that Tahiti1 alone is worth coming 2500 miles to see; so if the chapters be a failure from a literary point of view, I, individually, am a gainer; for the French South Pacific colonies, dependencies, and protectorates, which consist of the Society, Marquesas, Paumotu, and Gambier Groups, and numerous scattered islands, form, perhaps, the most beautiful-certainly the richest-most lavishlyendowed by nature, and most important groups in these seas; and the inhabitants show signs of having originally been far and away the finest, most lovable, of all.

1 Pronounced Tahāiti.

Hypercritical people will tell me that aborigines cannot be understood except by living for years among them and mastering their language. It may be, therefore, that some enthusiast of that opinion will, through reading this book, become so irritated by my "errors and omissions" as to attempt such a course. But I fear-so rapidly are they growing and changing under white impulse--by the time he has mastered the languages and customs of the whole of the South Pacific Groups these will have so altered that his knowledge will be ancient history, that his work will be cold and stale, and that he will have to begin all over again! I must be content to add to my knowledge of New Zealand Maoris a superficial knowledge of their South Sea progenitors, and serve up my work "all hot."

The Cook Group is comparatively insignificant. A study of it is interesting, principally so far as it bears on the claims put forward by New Zealand, whenever a chance offers, of special aptitude for governing, or annexing, or protecting Pacific islands, as, for example, in the cases of Samoa and Norfolk Island. The Society Group is much more fascinating; but as the steamer on this second trip touches at the Cook Islands first, I shall leave Tahiti and its fascinations to another chapter, and confine myself just now to giving an account of the passage to the "New Zealand Protectorate," and what I saw and learnt there.

Leaving Auckland in July, 1896, by a larger than usual steamer, put on specially for excursionists, we are this time entirely a party of "Colonials," only seventeen all told. The fame of this new route has not yet reached many European ears, and consequently I must confess that, though loving the brighter, freer manner of my own people best, I miss the acceptable leaven of English thought and habit. Unfortunately there is no smoking-room. All who travel much by sea can realize what discomfort this means, for they know how a cozy smoke-room draws men together and makes them sociable. A little cabin near the galley was intended for this purpose, but it is so unsuitable that no one will go into it, and it is used as a dark room by the photographers, who cannot stay in it long even for business.

If the male passengers be not drawn together in one way as much as they might wish they are in another, for in our ladies we are exceptionally happy. Although only three, they represent most charmingly the three interesting states of "colonial" maid, married, and widow. The married lady is elderly, speaks French and German, plays cribbage, is musical, has seen a good deal of the world, and wins the hearts of more than one Frenchman at Tahiti. "C'est une

femme du monde! DU MONDE!! DU MONDE!!!" said one excitable Frenchman later on, laying his hand upon his heart. The widow is young, Australian, mourning a lately-lost French husband. To many of the accomplishments in which young widows are facile princeps she adds a knowledge of the Tahitian language, and can tell us a great deal that is interesting about the manners and customs of the natives. She is on business bent, having property in Tahiti which needs looking after. The third is a pretty vivacious New Zealander of twenty summers, one of the few "English" girls (we do not talk of ourselves as New Zealanders) ever seen in these seas, and consequently much stared at and criticised by the Kanaka young ladies, who, not satisfied with daylight views, by-and-bye come on board where she is sitting on deck, after dark, and strike matches all around her to have another look at hair, dress, ornaments, and face. I think they long to take her to pieces and see what she "has on"—a matter of little difficulty in their own case! But I anticipate.

To our three ladies heaven sends, as reward for their virtues, a young colonial Irishman, whose sprightliness and attentions never flag; who does not know a note of music, but who joins heartily, as if he loved it, in the choruses, as he does in everything else that goes on-one of those New Zealanders to whom girls give pleasant nicknames, which the whole ship's crew and passengers take up. This jolly youth rejoices in two: one complimentary to his nation, made up by taking an O from the end of his name, where it was only a delusion and a snare, and placing it at the beginning (before he turned up on board that ultimate O caused speculation among the ladies, who after, with much interest, scanning the passenger list, hoped to see at least a Spanish hidalgo, and were a trifle disappointed to find he was only a New Zealander); but the other nickname, "Mr. Patsy," is the successful one, and runs through the ship till the very firemen think it is his real name.

Another young New Zealander has brought his banjo, and contributes much to the amusement of the company by a good repertoire of music-hall songs of the better class, with choruses in which, in the evenings, ladies and all of us join. His "Ting-a-Ling," "Little Tin Soldier," and "The Pussy Cat and the Owl," sung by-and-bye to the banjo under the spreading foliage of pandanus and banana, surmounted by the feathery coco fronds, will not soon be forgotten by some of the Tahitian half-caste ladies. It is quite a musical revelation to them. We, the officers and passengers of this steamer, rather flatter ourselves that music is our strong point. And when,

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