of the largest of the New Hebrides, in the Pacific ocean. It extends twenty leagues from north to south. Its inland mountains are very high, and clad with forests. Its vegetable productions are luxuriant, and in great variety; cocoa-nut, breadfruit, bananas, sugar-canes, yams, eddoes, turmeric, and oranges. Hogs and common poultry are the domestic animals. The inhabitants appear to be of a race totally distinct from those of the Friendly and Society islands. Their form, language, and manners, are widely different. They seem to correspond in many particulars with the natives of New Guinea, particularly in their black colour and woolly hair. They go almost naked, are of a slender make, have lively but very irregular ugly features, and tie a rope fast round their belly. They use bows and arrows as their principal weapons, and the arrows are said to be sometimes poisoned. They keep their bodies entirely free from punctures, which is one particular that remarkably distinguishes them from the other tribes of the Pacific ocean.

The population, according to Mr Forster, may amount to 50,000, who occupy 600 square miles of ground. The same author informs us that very few women were seen, but that those few were no less ugly than the men, were of small stature, and their heads, faces, and shoulders were painted red. They had bundles on their backs containing their children, and the men seemed to have no kind of regard for them. They appeared in fact to be oppressed, despised, and in a state of servility.

The men use bows and arrows, and a club about 30 inches long, which they hang on their right shoulder, from a thick rope made of a kind of grats. They live chiefly on vegetables, and apply themselves to husbandry. Their music had nothing remarkable in it, either for harmony or variety, but seemed to Mr Forster to be of a more lively turn than that at the Friendly islands. In some of their countenances he thought he could trace a mischievous, ill-natured disposition, but he confesses that he might mistake jealousy for hatred. It is in 16° 28' S. Lat. and 167° 56' E. Long.