[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

LOLOWAY~MALO~THE BANKS ISLANDS 259

a normal aspect except the forest, which looked
brown and ragged, like autumn woods at home.

I made use of the first calm day to visit the
lonely little islet of Meralava. As it has no anchor-
age, no one can land there except in quiet weather,
and so it had come about that the company’s em-
ployé had had no communication with the outside
world for four months. The island is an extinct
volcano, a regular cone, with the crater as a deep
cavity in the top. There is hardly a level square
metre on the whole island, and the shores rise steeply
out of the sea; only a few huge lava blocks form
a base, on which the swell breaks and foams. When
we reached the island, this swell was so heavy as to
render landing almost impossible. All we could do
was to take the employé aboard and return home.
I was very sorry to have to give up my visit to
Meralava, as the natives, though all christianized,
have preserved more of their old ways than those of
other islands, owing to their infrequent intercourse
with civilization. For the same reason, the popula-
tion is quite large; but every time a ship has landed
an epidemic goes through the island, the germs of
which appear to be brought by the vessels, and
the natives evidently have very small powers of
resistance. We may. here observe on a small
scale what has taken place all over the archi-
pelago in the degeneration and decimation of the
aborigines.

The people of Meralava live on taro, which they
grow in terraced fields, the water being obtained