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A BOTANICAL TOUE AMONG THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS. 131
the existence of this tree at least tliree miles away from the valley in which it
was growing. The fii'st hint was by a native pointing first to a piece of yellow
cahco (which I carried with other things for the pnrpose of payment), and then
to a tree, by which I immediately understood what was meant. Dm-ing our
jaunt back in another direction, I found many other treasures, one in particular
belonging to the Order ATtisacecBja, genus between Seliconia and Strelitzia, bear-
ing immense leaves beautifully striped with almost every colour.
The Tanese are, of the New Hebrideans, although not the tallest, the most
muscular, and mentally the superior race. Two natives who could speak En-
ghsh well enough to be understood, while going with me in search of plants,
expressed themselves thus :— " Spose missi-on-a-ry come live Tana plenty Tana
man come down kill it missi-on-ar-y like it pig." And I believe they would be
savage enough to do so.
In many places in Tana, but not in any other island of the New Hebrides,
a fine species of Mynstica was plentiful. On either side of the track to the
volcano, some specimens of it were gi-owing to fifteen or sixteen feet, and be-
neath them the ground was covered with their fruit.
In Eromanga we remained only a couple of hours, but in Vate or Sandwich
Island several days.
Having first visited Havannah hai'bour, and afterwards Tela harbour, I had
a good opportunity of penetrating for a considerable distance into the mainland.
It was late wLen we anchored in the first-mentioned harbour, and so no canoes
came alongside tiU morning. A Loyalty Islander, however, who called himself
" Jimmy Charcoal," came to us that night in a boat. He could speak English
and several of the native dialects fluently, and, as soon as the natives came in
the morning, I was enabled to speak, through him, to a chief— an old whiteheaded
fellow, who promised faithfully to take me into the interior under his
protection. Accordingly, I accompanied him in his canoe to the shore, where
we were soon joined by about thirty other natives, three only of whom seemed
willing to follow the chief and myself. But, much to my astonishment and
discomfiture, the old chief feigned tired after we had walked about five miles
inland. The other three, when they saw that I wislied him to go further, signified
by touching theu- lips and beating the ground that he was both hungry and
tired, whereupon I ofiered him some bread, which he accepted, and ate with an
appetite. He walked for a few hundred yards further, and then lurked oS" into
a tiiicket. The other natives, however, seemed to be good-liumoured-looking
fellows, and so \^'e proceeded on some three or four miles further, greatly en-
couraged by the appearance of the distant vegetation, which consisted prin-
cipally of dense, more or less broken, belts of Castiarlna, Melaleuca, Barriny-
tonia, Erythrina, forests of Plantain, the fruit lying in heaps upon the ground ;
park -like spaces of hundreds of acres in extent ; groups of Palms and Tree-
ferns of great beauty, wliich gave to the landscape a peculiarly charming effect,
such as I had not previously witnessed in other islands, but in pai'ts of Yate
I found the vegetation poor and scanty, as it formed a garden of beauty and
fertility in others. On the wliole, however, I should think that Yate, from its
being admirably adapted for the gi'owth of cotton, woidd not be a bad locality