NAVIGATORS ISLANDS

NAVIGATORS ISLANDS, an archipelago in the South Sea, discovered by Bougainville, who gave to them that name, because the natives do not pass between the different villages, which are all built in creeks and bays, but in their canoes. The Navigators Islands are ten in number; namely, Opoun, Leone, Fanfoué, MAOUANA, Oyolava, Calinassé, Pola, Shika, Offamo, and Quera.

We have already given an account of the soil and productions of MAOUANA; and as the other islands of this cluster are equally fertile, we need not go over the same ground again. It may be proper, however, to observe, that in some of them the sugar-cane was found growing spontaneously, though its juice contained less of the saccharine substance than the sugar-cane of the West Indies, which our voyagers attributed to its growing in a richer soil and in the shade. According to Perouse, the Navigators Islands are situated about the 14th degree of south latitude, and between the 171st and 175th degrees of longitude west from Paris. In Oyolava the smoke was seen hovering over a village as over a large European town; and the number of canoes which from that island surrounded the frigates was immense. These are very ticklish vessels, and would be absolutely useless to any body but such excellent swimmers as the islanders, who are no more surprised or uneasy at their oversetting than we are at the fall of a hat. Taking up the canoe on their shoulders, they empty it of water, and then get in again, with the certainty of having the same operation to perform a second time in half an hour. Sometimes they join two canoes together by means of a cross piece of wood, in which they make a step to receive the mast; and in this way they are less liable to be overset, sometimes performing a long voyage without any such accident. It is needless to add, that these canoes are very small, generally containing only five or six persons, though some few of them may contain as many as fourteen.

The natives of the Navigators Islands are tall and well made. Their usual height is five feet nine, ten, and eleven inches; but their stature is less astonishing than the colossal proportions of the different parts of their bodies. "Our curiosity (says Perouse), which often led us to measure them, gave them an opportunity of making frequent comparisons of their bodily strength with ours. These comparisons were not to our advantage; and we perhaps owe our misfortunes (see MAOUANA in this Suppl.) to the idea of individual superiority resulting from repeated trials. Their countenances often appeared to express a sentiment of disdain, which I hoped to destroy, by ordering our arms to be used in their presence; but my end could only have been gained by directing them against human victims; for otherwise they took the noise for sport, and the trial for a diversion."

"Among these Indians a very small number is below the height indicated above. I have, however, met

several who were only five feet four inches, but Navigators, these are the dwarfs of the country; and although their stature resembles ours, their strong and nervous arms, their broad chests, and their legs and thighs, are of a very different proportion.

"The men have the body painted or tattooed, so that any one would suppose them clad, although they go almost naked. They have only a girdle of seaweeds encircling their loins, which comes down to their knees, and gives them the appearance of the river gods of fabulous history, whom it is customary to depict with rushes round their waist. Their hair is very long. They often twist it round their heads, and thus add to their native ferocity of countenance, which always expresses either surprise or anger. The least dispute between them is followed by blows of sticks, clubs, or paddles; and often, without doubt, costs the combatants their lives. They are almost all covered with scars, which can only be the consequence of their individual quarrels. The stature of the women is proportioned to that of the men. They are tall, slender, and not without grace; but they lose, while yet in their prime, those elegant forms, of which nature has not broken the mould among this barbarous race, but of which she appears to leave them in possession only for a moment, and with reluctance. Among a great number of women that I had an opportunity of seeing, I only observed three really pretty. The gross effrontery of the rest, the indecency of their motions, and the disgusting offers which they made of their favours, rendered them fit mothers and wives for the ferocious beings that surrounded us." Our author gives the following instance of indecent manners, which is, perhaps, without a parallel.

The young and prettiest females soon attracted the attention of several Frenchmen, who, in spite of the Commodore's prohibition, endeavoured to form a connection with them, and were successful. The looks of the Europeans expressing desires which were soon divined, some old women undertook the negotiation. The altar was prepared in the handsomest hut in the village, all the blinds were let down, and the inquisitive were excluded. The victim was then laid in the arms of an old man, who exhorted her, during the ceremony, to moderate the expression of her pain; while the matrons sang and howled: the ceremony being performed in their presence, and under the auspices of the old man, who served at once as priest and altar. All the women and children in the village were round the house, gently lifting up the blinds, and seeking to enjoy the sight through the smallest crevices in the mats. Whatever former navigators may have said, Perouse was convinced that, in the Navigators Islands at least, the young girls, before they are married, are mistresses of their persons, and that they are not dishonoured by their complaisance. It is even more than probable, that in marrying they are called to no account concerning their past conduct; but he had no doubt that they are obliged to be more reserved when provided with a husband.

These people cultivate certain arts with success. Under the article MAOUANA mention has been made of the elegant form which they give to their huts. It is not with such folly as is commonly supposed that they disdain our instruments of iron; for they finish their work

Navigators, very neatly with tools made of a very fine and compact species of basalt in the form of an adze. For a few glass beads they fold to Perouse large three-legged dishes of a single piece of wood, and so well polished that they seemed to have been laid over with a coat of the finest varnish. It would take an European workman several days to produce one of these dishes, which, for want of proper instruments, must cost an Indian several months labour. They set, however, scarcely any value upon them, because they set little upon the time they employ. The fruit trees and nutritious roots that grow spontaneously around them, insure to them their subsistence, as well as that of their hogs, dogs, and fowls; and if they sometimes stoop to work, it is to procure enjoyments rather agreeable than useful. They manufacture very fine mats, and some paper stuffs. Our author remarked two or three of them, whom he took for chiefs, with a piece of cloth tied round their waist like a petticoat, instead of a girdle of weeds. It is composed of real thread, prepared no doubt from some filamentous plant like the nettle or flax; and is manufactured without a shuttle, the threads being absolutely laid over one another like those of their mats. This cloth, which has all the suppleness and solidity of ours, is very fit for the sails of their canoes; and appeared far superior to the paper stuff of the Society and Friendly Islands, which they manufacture also. Their canoes are well constructed, and furnish a good proof of the skill with which they work in wood. For a few glass beads they gave to the Frenchmen, among other things, a wooden vessel filled with cocoa nut oil, exactly of the shape of our earthen pots, and such as no European would undertake to fashion by any other means than a turning lathe. Their ropes are round, and twisted like watch chains of ribbon: their mats are very fine; but their stuffs are inferior to those of the Easter and Sandwich Islands.

Perouse derives the natives of those islands, whose colour, he says, nearly resembles that of the Algerines and other nations on the coast of Barbary, from the Malays; and as we do not vouch for the truth of his theory, though we admit it to be ingenious, we shall give the reasoning by which he supports it in his own words.

"We did not at first discover (says he) any identity between their language and that of the natives of the Society and Friendly Islands, of which we had vocabularies; but a more mature examination convinced us, that they speak a dialect of the same language. A fact which tends to prove it, and which confirms the opinion of the English concerning the origin of these people, is, that a young domestic, a native of the province of Tagayan in the north of Manilla, underflood and explained to us the greater part of their words. It

is well known that the Tagayan, the Talgal, and the Navigators, are a generality of languages spoken in the Philippines, are derived from the Malay: a language more diffused than were those of the Greeks and Romans, and common to the numerous tribes that inhabit the islands of the great Pacific Ocean. It appears to me evident, that all these different nations are the progeny of Malay colonies, which, in some age extremely remote, conquered the islands they inhabit. I should not even wonder, if the Chinese and Egyptians, whose antiquity is so much vaunted, were mere moderns in comparison of the Malays. But however this may be, I am satisfied that the aborigines of the Philippine Islands, Formosa, New Guinea, New Britain, the New Hebrides, the Friendly Islands, &c. in the southern hemisphere, and those of the Marianna and Sandwich islands in the northern, were that race of woolly headed men still found in the interior of the islands of Luconia and Formosa. They were not to be subjugated in New Guinea, New Britain, and the New Hebrides; but being overcome in the more eastern islands, which were too small to afford them a retreat in the centre, they mixed with the conquering nation. Thence has resulted a race of very black men, whose colour is still several shades deeper than that of certain families of the country, probably because the latter have made it a point of honour to keep their blood unmixed. I was struck with these two very distinct races in the Islands of Navigators, and cannot attribute to them any other origin.

"The descendants of the Malays have acquired in those islands a degree of vigour and strength, a lofty stature, and a Herculean form, which they do not inherit from their forefathers, but which they owe, without doubt, to an abundance of food, to a mild climate, and to the influence of different physical causes which have been constantly acting during a long series of generations. The arts which they perhaps brought with them may have been lost for want of materials and instruments to practise them; but the identity of language, like Ariadne's clue, enables the observer to follow all the windings of this new labyrinth. The feudal government is also preserved here: that government which little tyrants may regret; which was the disgrace of Europe for several centuries; and of which the Gothic remains are still to be found in our laws, and are the medals that attest our ancient barbarism: that government, which is the most proper to keep up a ferocity of manners, because the smallest disputes occasion wars of village against village, and because wars of this nature are conducted without magnanimity, and without courage. Surprises and treachery are employed by turns; and in these unfortunate countries, instead of generous warriors, nothing is to be found but base assassins (A). The Malays are still the most peridious nation

tion of Asia; and their children have not degenerated, because the same causes have led to and produced the same effects. It may be objected, perhaps, that it must have been very difficult for the Malays to make their way from west to east, to arrive at these different islands; but the westerly winds blow as frequently as the easterly in the vicinity of the equator, along a zone of seven or eight degrees from north to south, where the wind is so variable, that it is hardly more difficult to navigate east than west. Besides, these different conquests may not have been effected at the same time: the people in question may, on the contrary, have spread themselves by little and little, and gradually have introduced that form of government which still exists in the peninsula of Malacca, at Java, Sumatra, and at Borneo, as well as in all the other countries subject to that barbarous nation.