Part 6

One day I made an excursion with him in his canoe, and we coasted inside of the coral barrier for a long distance. Everywhere the shore was thickly fringed with cocoanut trees and palms. So clear was the water that the branching coral could be seen many yards below. We landed in a little bay, and proceeded to a friendly village hidden in the jungle. Here I was as much an object of curiosity as I had been in the other places; but it also seemed to me that I was regarded with a certain shyness and reserve, and there was an evident desire that I should not go about and look into the houses. Before one of the largest of the houses I noticed several human heads stuck on bamboos, and as these heads were fresh, it suddenly occurred to me that the villagers had just returned from a head-hunting expedition, and had been dining off human flesh. I therefore determined to keep my eyes open, and very soon I came across unmistakable evidence that I was right, for behind one of the huts in the centre of the village I discovered a very old man and a middle-aged woman busily engaged enveloping portions of human flesh in leaves preparatory to cooking it, which is done in a sort of oven built of loose stones. In another part of the village I saw a heap of human bones, including thigh and leg bones, and an arm to which the flesh still adhered. It was not a very pleasant sight, and I was glad to get away.

I subsequently heard in China that the natives of these islands scrape the inside of the kernels of the young cocoa nuts into a gourd, and, adding pounded sago to it, they mix human brains with the mess, and diluting it with goat's milk, drink the compound. I attached little credence to this statement at the time, but within the last few years it has been amply confirmed, especially by Mr. H. H. Romilly, who paid several visits to the islands. He says that the disgusting decoction is known as dak-dak.

I parted from my friendly chief, or king, with regret, and I promised myself that I would return at no distant date, and endeavour to explore the island. Circumstances, however, arose which made the fulfilment of that promise impracticable at the time.

On leaving New Britain we nearly came to grief on a coral reef near the Duke of York Island, which lies off the western end of the larger island. But, having got clear, we coasted along New Ireland in order to get the land breeze. When at the extreme or eastern end of the island, I went with some of the crew into a small bay, where we effected a landing, our object being to replenish some empty water-casks, and obtain fruit and vegetables. With this object in view we made our way towards a village, but were speedily surrounded with natives, who showed such a hostile spirit, and would have attacked us but for our firearms, that we deemed it prudent to return to the shore. The New Irelanders bear the reputation of being much more fierce and savage than their neighbours. In this island there are still several active volcanoes, and hot sulphur springs are numerous. While sailing along the shores of New Ireland, a violent shock of earthquake occurred, and the sea was greatly agitated, causing the ship to roll heavily. Slight shocks are almost of daily occurrence.

The people of all this group of islands are exceedingly interesting as ethnological studies. They are amongst the most intelligent of the South Sea islanders, and display great ingenuity in ornamenting their spears, clubs, and other weapons, as well as their canoes. These latter are fitted with outriggers, whereas in the Solomon Group, a little further to the south, the outrigger is unknown. The men are finely built, and seem capable of sustaining great fatigue. Many of them whiten their woolly hair by sprinkling powdered seashells on it, having first soaked the hair in grease. The effect of this whitened hair is very remarkable. The women of all the groups are handsome and well formed when young; but, like all natives of tropical countries, they age quickly. They marry very early, often before they are twelve years of age. Some of the tribes, both men and women, go entirely naked.

A very curious custom prevails in the New Britain Group, in compelling a man who has neglected his wife and children to run the gauntlet. Two rows of women extend for a distance of several hundred feet, each woman being armed with a lithe stick. Down the avenue thus formed, the culprit, in a state of absolute nudity, has to make his way; and, as he darts past, the women belabour him savagely, and by the time he reaches the end of the row he is exhausted and covered with blood.

This punishment is greatly dreaded, not so much on account of the physical suffering it entails, as the disgrace that follows, for the man is an outcast afterwards for several weeks. No one of his tribe dare speak to him; he must betake himself to the jungle, where he lives naked, and as best he may, until the expiration of his sentence.

The currency of the islands is small shells, exceedingly delicate and pretty; and as they are only found in small quantities at one particular spot, they have a high value. They are strung on strings made of fibre, and, when anything has to be paid for, a length is measured off. A piece that will stretch across a man's breast will purchase two or three cocoanuts. At present, the chief trade of the island, I am informed, is in copra, that is, the dried kernels of the cocoanut, which is collected by the traders and despatched to Europe, where it is made into cocoanut oil, while the refuse is used for cakes for fattening cattle. On all these islands sago grows wild, as does also the sugar cane; but so fertile is the soil that tropical productions of every description would flourish amazingly. On New Britain the yam and sweet potato are cultivated extensively, and grow to an immense size.

In building canoes the natives of this part of the Pacific have no equal. The body of the canoe is generally made out of the trunk of a tree, the sides being built up from this body. The planks forming the sides are sewn together with the tough grass I have spoken of, and they are afterwards caulked and made watertight by means of a peculiar cement, which I understand is the kernel of a nut which grows extensively in the forests. The nuts are pounded in a large mortar. The powder is then mixed with boiling water, and in that state is worked into the seams. On drying, it becomes perfectly hard and watertight. The war canoes will carry from forty to sixty men. These are invariably decorated with human heads and carved crocodiles. The crocodile, which abounds in the centre of the islands, is an object of veneration, as is also the shark, which grows to an enormous size in these warm seas, and is most ferocious. The natives navigate their canoes very expertly amongst the coral reefs. From a very early age children of both sexes are accustomed to the water, and they will swim about for hours without showing any signs of fatigue. They seem to have no fear of the sharks that infest the waters. Whether it is that the sharks do not attack them, I really cannot say. What is certain is that a white man would very soon be gobbled up. Perhaps these South Sea sharks do not like black men.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] On mentioning this circumstance of the dish of stewed snakes some months later to friends of mine in China, they insisted that I must have been mistaken, as none of the South Sea Islanders were snake-eaters. But that some of the tribes do eat snakes has been amply proved since by Mr. C. M. Woodford, who visited the Solomon Group of Islands several times, and lived for months on some of the smaller islands. It appears that it is only certain tribes who eat the snakes; and they are held in contempt by the other tribes who do not use snakes. After my friends so persistently averred that I was mistaken, I came to that conclusion myself; but now I have no longer a doubt that I partook of boiled snake on that memorable day, and, as far as I remember, I found it a toothsome dish, but I bar the oil it was cooked in. That oil, I believe, was made from the blubber of shark.--THE AUTHOR.

_Old Stone Signs of London._

THOUGH the predictions of John Dryden were not always fortunate, one stanza in the "Annus Mirabilis," 1666, which refers to the future of London City, may here be appropriately quoted:--

"More great than human now and more August, New deified she from her fires does rise: Her widening streets on new foundations trust, And, opening, into larger parts she flies."

It may be observed that Augusta was the Roman name for London.

Now of the old stone signs of London yet extant, one or two only bear date anterior to the Great Fire. Many of those which still remain, fixed either on the outside walls or within the houses they originally marked, are undated, but their age may be guessed with a tolerable degree of accuracy. It is also known that the custom of denoting houses by carved stone signs built into the outer walls did not come into general use until the rebuilding of the city subsequent to the year 1666.

The inconvenience of the old swinging signs, which blocked the daylight, and which, by their creaking noises, made day and night alike hideous, had long been felt--nay, more, their danger to passers-by, when wind and decay had caused a downfall, had been not a few times painfully apparent. Hence the Act of Charles II., which forbade swinging signboards, was both wise and salutary. The signboards, however, died hard, and prints as late as the middle of the eighteenth century show the streets full of them. But signs had their use in those days of unnumbered streets, and it was not until the numbering of the houses was enforced that the quaint, historic, and, in some cases, even highly artistic, landmarks vanished.

As years have rolled by, the stone signs themselves, built though they were into the walls of the houses, have in a great measure disappeared. Some are luckily preserved in the Guildhall Library Museum, others are in private hands, many have been carted away as rubbish during rebuilding, and only a few now remain _in situ_. It is with these few that this paper is now concerned, and of which illustrations are given.

The use of the curious sign known as the "Boy and Pannier," in Panyer-alley, is threefold. It was a street sign, a trade sign, and also, it would seem, a landmark. Stow, writing in 1598, mentions a street sign there, probably the upper portion only of the present sign. He writes, "... Is another passage out of Pater Noster row, and is called, of such a sign, Panyer-Alley, which cometh out into the north over against St. Martins Lane." Along this alley the bakers' boys were wont to sit, with their baskets or panniers of bread exposed for sale, the sale of loaves at the bakers' shops for some reasons being prohibited by law. On the lower slab there yet remains a barely legible inscription, which in modern English runs thus:--

When you have sought the city round, Yet still this is the highest ground.

August 26, 1688.

Cheapside and its tributaries are, as times go, rather rich in stone signs. On the external wall of No. 37 may be seen a well carved swan with collar and chain. This is a sign of heraldic origin without doubt; it was, in fact, one of the badges of Henry IV., and was also heraldically one of the charges of Buckingham, Gloster, and others. Hitherto, however, efforts to trace the exact history of this sign have been without avail. Far different is it with the White Bear, now to be seen within the house of business of Messrs. Gow, No. 47, Cheapside. This most interesting sign was discovered while making alterations as lately as 1882. The house itself stands at the corner of Soper's-lane (modern designation, Queen-street), and was once the shop of the far-famed merchant, Sir Baptist Hicks, Kt., subsequently Viscount Campden. Baptist Hicks was the successful son of a wealthy father, and succeeded to what was in those days a most thriving silk mercer's business. His career is remarkable in more ways than one, for though a favourite at Court, immensely wealthy and knighted, he was the first London merchant who after knighthood took the resolution to still continue in business.

It is also worthy of notice that the stone figure of the bear faces in the opposite direction to all other heraldic signs now standing in London. At No. 28, Budge-row, will be found one of the best preserved of all the London signs, "The Leopard" (otherwise Lizard or Lazarde). This is the crest of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, and as Budge-row took its name from the skin of newly-born lamb, which was termed Budge, the origin of this sign can be in no way a matter of doubt. The Skinners' Hall, too, was close by, and quite early in the fourteenth century it may be noted that enactments were in force against the wearing of "cloth furred with Budge or Wool" by persons (women) of inferior rank.

Lower Thames-street, known in the time of Stow as Stock Fishmonger-street, still possesses two very good examples of signs: one, the "Bear," with its collar and chain, carved in very high relief, and surmounted by initials and date (1670).

On the borders of Islington and Clerkenwell there are a group of signs which belong to houses celebrated in past days. The first is the "Old Red Lion." Here there are two carved shields, one of which only is antique--_i.e._, that on the north gable. This house has memories and traditions both literary and artistic. Within its walls Tom Paine wrote the "Rights of Man." This is, however, a questionable honour. Here Hogarth was wont to stay, and has even introduced its gables into one of his prints--"Evening." The house, too, was the haunt at times of Thomson, Goldsmith, and Johnson.

Another sign is the "Pelican," of which there is an example in Aldermanbury. The fabulous story of the pelican "vulning" (_i.e._, wounding) its breast to feed its young endured for ages, and even as late as the reign of George I., at Peckham Fair, there was advertised to be on view "A pelican that suckles her young with her heart's blood, from Egypt." In the same district as the "Pelican," at the corner of Addle-street, E.C., may be seen yet another "Bear"--how popular as signs and how enduring these bears seem! This carving is dated 1670 (not 1610), and bears initials N.T.E. The N., which is the surname, is reversed; the T. and the E. standing in all probability, as was customary, for the Christian names of the builder and his wife. The "Elephant and Castle," irreverently called the "Pig and Pepper-box," in Belle Sauvage-yard, is the crest of the Cutlers' Company, to whom the house was left in 1568 by John Craythorne. The "Belle Sauvage Inn," over the origin of whose name and sign so much antiquarian ink has been spilt, vanished years ago. This hostelry was memorable among other things for being opposite the spot at which the rebel Wyat rested on the occasion of his unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Ludgate. It was also a celebrated stopping-place for the northern carriers. In Belle Sauvage-yard for a time dwelt Grinling Gibbons, and there he carved, according to Walpole, "a plot of flowers which shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that passed by."

Two or three outlying stone signs remain now to be mentioned. One is the "Cock and Serpents," at No. 16, Churchlane, Chelsea. This sign, evidently religious in its origin, is very remarkable, both in its design and also from its date, 1652. It does not appear to have any history, though the road in which it is to be found teems with memories of not a few of England's worthies. Another, the sign of the "Dog and Duck," now built into the garden wall of Bethlem Hospital in Southwark, is important from the fact that it records the precise sport (duck hunting) which was the attraction of the house, and also because on the same stone, and dated 1716, we find the arms of the Borough and Southwark--a conjunction of which the history of signboards offers no other example.

One illustration is given of a sign which is not stone, _i.e._, the "Leather Bottle," at the corner of Leather-lane, Hatton Garden. There appear to be doubts whether the present sign is the original, but as one branch of sign lore deals with signs appropriate to places, it may be well to mention this one, which is certainly of respectable antiquity, as an example. Space is wanting for more than mere mention of the "Marygold" of Messrs. Child's, the "Golden Bottle" of Messrs. Hoare's, and the three quaint iron squirrels of Messrs. Gosling's. Nor can the traditions of the ancient "Cock" Tavern in Fleet-street, with its carved wooden sign (possibly the work of Gibbons), be here related. The writer, however, may perhaps be permitted in conclusion to acknowledge with gratitude his indebtedness to the only standard book on the subject, and also to kind assistance rendered to him by many with whom he has come in contact while tramping the now modern streets of our historic metropolis in search of its ancient signs.

_Captain Jones of the "Rose."_

By W. CLARK RUSSELL.

SEVEN men sat in a gloomy wooden cave. Under a massive beam that ran athwart the ceiling swung a sort of coffee-pot, from the spout of which sputtered a smoking and stinking flame, whose disgusting fumes were to be everywhere tasted in the atmosphere of the darksome wooden cave. The seven men were seated, not on morocco chairs or velvet sofas, but on rude boxes, whose lids were scored by the cutting up of cake tobacco. There were one or two pillars or stanchions in this gloomy wooden cave, from which dangled several oilskin coats and oilskin leggings, and under the ceiling hung a number of bags called hammocks, with here and there a ragged blanket peeping over the edge, or an old shoe showing through the nettles. In the midst of the ceiling was a square hole called a hatch, down which this day there floated very little daylight, owing partly to the hatch being small and partly to the sky being overcast with clouds.

Had those seven men seated in this interior been cleanly shaved, and had they been apparelled in well-washed coloured shirts, sleeved waistcoats, comfortable trousers, and caps with naval peaks, they would have passed as a harmless, respectable body of seafaring men--persons who would say "mum" to a lady when addressed by her, and answer intelligently and respectfully when asked about the weather. But as they now sat they looked as sulky and wild a set of fellows as one could imagine, strangely and fearfully attired, grimy of face and hairy, booted with half-Wellingtons and belted in Wapping fashion, and timid people would have thought that they carried a murderous air because each man wore a sheath upon his hip, in which lay a very sharp blade.

The wooden cave in which these men sat, rose and fell as though it were the extreme end of a long board violently see-saw'd; and this motion, combined with the smell of the fumes of the slush-fed lamp and a vapour rising out of a small tub of boiled pork, not to mention other odours such as might be produced by well-worn, newly-greased sea-boots, bedding which had made several voyages round the world, sooty clay pipes, old ropes, stale salt water, and many mysteries of malodorous commodities stowed below in the hold and forepeak, must instantly have upset the stomach of any landsman who out of curiosity should have put his head into the little hatch to see what was inside of it.

This cave was indeed a ship's forecastle, but the seven men who sat in it were mariners who had for many years been tossed by the various oceans of the world, and could not possibly have been sea-sick, even though they should have been offered a handsome reward to try.

One of them was a large, strong man, with a shaggy head of hair and a beard like rope-yarns. He looked as though he had taken a header and come up again to blow crowned with black seaweed. This strong man suddenly, and with a sulky fury of gesture, whipped the knife out of the sheath that was strapped to his hip, and, plunging it into a lump of pork, lifted the horrid block into the air, and cried out--

"Here it is agin!"

As he pronounced these words, the little square of hatch was obscured by the interposition of a man's body.

"The smell of that there pork," said the voice belonging to the body in the hatch, "is something to sit upon, something strong enough to lean agin. Why, a man might turn to and chop them fumes into first-class bunk-boards. Talk o' strength!"

"Come below, cook!" bawled one of the seven men.

"No; I've got to see to the capt'n's dinner. But I'm _of_ ye if there's to be trouble. When I signed it was for wittles and a dry bottom and a ship's company. Pump, pump, and nothen to eat! Nothen to eat and pump, pump! Here's logic as don't tally with this covey's reckoning for _one_." And the man, violently smiting himself upon the breast, disappeared.

The powerful sailor who had held the pork aloft whilst the cook discoursed, shook it off the blade into the tub again and spat.

"It's about time," said he, "that all hands was agreed."

"All hands is agreed," said one of the sailors, "'cepting that blooming Dutchman Peter. But if he don't come into it it'll be a bad job for one of us if, on some dark night, him and me happens to be aloft together."

"That there Peter," said a sailor, "was a-boasting to me that he'd ha' shipped for a pound a month; d'ye know he'd eat a shipmate's shirt if by so doing he thought he would airn a shilling by saving his allowance."

"This is sweet meat to Peter," said one of the seven, pointing to the pork, "and a pound a month is good money to Peter; and if Peter and the likes of him could get their way, then if ye wanted to see what sort of man an English sailor looked like ye'd have to ask the master of the fust workhus as hove in sight to show ye him."

"What a blazing fool a fellow makes of hisself when he goes to sea!" exclaimed a man with red hair and a broken nose. "I might ha' been a market-gard'ner had I stayed ashore. Think o' that! What did I run away from home for? For the likes of this for a parlour," said he, waving his hand round the forecastle, "and for the likes of yon," pointing to his hammock, "for a bed, and the likes of that muck," he added, pointing to the pork, "for a meal. But no growling's allowed. Ho no! Tell 'em that pickled dog ain't pork, and that wermin ain't ship's bread, and you're taken afore the magistrate and committed, and locked up, and left to rot whilst the blooming Dutchmen are getting all the jobs, because pickled dog to them _is_ pork, and wermin a relish." He struck his fist heavily upon the chest on which he sat, and fastened his eyes upon his huge knuckles whilst he turned them about, as though he were inspecting a sample of coal.

"No use keeping all on growling," exclaimed a quiet-looking seaman, addressing the others over his folded arms. "What's to be the order of the day?"