Chapter 4
When I was first learning the ropes as a “recruiter” in the Kanaka labour trade, recruiting natives to work on the plantations of Samoa and Fiji, we called at a group of islands called Nisân by the natives, and marked on the chart as the Sir Charles Hardy Islands. I thought it likely that I might obtain a few “recruits,” and the captain wanted fresh provisions.
The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in _bêche-de-mer_ and pearl-shell fishing. Less than forty years back they were notorious cannibals, and very warlike, and never hesitated to attempt to cut off any whaleship or trading vessel that was not well manned and well armed.
As I had visited the group on three previous occasions in a trading vessel and was well known to the people, I was pretty sure of getting some “recruits” for Samoa, for our vessel had a good reputation. So, lowering our boats, the second mate and I went on shore, and were pleasantly received. But, alas for my hopes! I could not get a single native to recruit. They were, they said, now doing so well at curing _bêche-de-mer_ for a Sydney trading vessel that none of the young men cared to leave the island to work on a plantation for three years; in addition to this, never before had food been so plentiful--pigs and poultry abounded, and turtle were netted by hundreds at a time. In proof of their assertion as to the abundance of provisions, I bought from them, for trade goods worth about ten dollars, a boat-load of turtle, pigs, ducks, fowls, eggs and fish. These I sent off to the ship by the second mate, and told him to return for another load of bread-fruit, taro, and other vegetables and fruit. I also sent a note to the captain by my own boat, telling him to come on shore and bring our guns and plenty of cartridges, as the islands were alive with countless thousands of fine, heavy pigeons, which were paying the group their annual visit from the mountainous forests of Bougainville Island and New Ireland. They literally swarmed on a small uninhabited island, covered with bread-fruit and other trees, and used by the natives as a sort of pleasure resort.
The two boats returned together, and leaving the second mate to buy more pigs and turtle--for we had eighty-five “recruits” on board to feed, as well as the ship's company of twenty-eight persons--the skipper and I started off in my boat for the little island, accompanied by several young Nisân “bucks” carrying old smooth-bore muskets, for they, too, wanted to join in the sport I had given them some tins of powder, shot, and a few hundred military caps. We landed on a beautiful white beach, and telling our boat's crew to return to the village and help the second mate, the skipper and I, with the Nisân natives, walked up the bank, and in a few minutes the guns were at work. Never before had I seen such thousands of pigeons in so small an area. It could hardly be called sport, for the birds were so thick on the trees that when a native fired at haphazard into the branches the heavy charge of shot would bring them down by the dozen--the remainder would simply fly off to the next tree. Owing to the dense foliage the skipper and I seldom got a shot at them on the wing, and had to slaughter like the natives, consoling ourselves with the fact that every bird would be eaten. Most of them were so fat that it was impossible to pluck them without the skin coming away, and from the boat-load we took on board the skip's cook obtained a ten-gallon keg full of fat.
About noon we ceased, to have something to eat and drink, and chose for our camp a fairly open spot, higher than the rest of the island, and growing on which were some magnificent trees, bearing a fruit called