[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
18 MALEKULA ' their work and to the great task of acquiring wealth by means of which they may purchase their way up the social ladder. The responsibilities of a husband and father are theirs, and the light- hearted irresponsibility of youth gives place to a certain roughness which characterizes the middle-aged. This in its turn passes, and among the older men there emerges an ease, a dignity, even a certain courfliness, but unless an old man be a person of high social standing, age is all too often accompanied by loss of activity and premature senility oi mind and body." In these terms docs Deacon write of the men. Of the general character of the women he says nothing, and so little has he recorded of the women's life that it is not possible to make any deductions on this subject. About the children, however, we can glean something. Deacon remarked that there is among them a great deal of spontaneous affection and quick intelligence. When he was in Lambumbu he wrote :— " I remember especially one small boy, Sam, who was always coming to see me. I was evidently to him something of a hero, with perhaps not a little of the glamour of the unknown about me. He would sit chattering or listening intently to what I Was saying for hours. He was very fond of making me talk the native language (though he himself spoke English surprisingly well) and would painstakingly make me repeat words and sentences, ending up often by sitting thinking for a few moments and then adding with an air of reflective ï¬Ånality: ‘White man speak; me, me speak.’ Ile was very interested in my parentage; whether my grandfather was alive. In return for this information he would give me his HISTORY ; what happened when his father had died, etc. He was insatiably curious about all the appliances of civilization ; a little nervous but very eager to know how to use them. He would often stroke my hair affectionately and adrniringly with the remark that it was ‘good too much ' ; his own because it was curly he considered to be ' no good '. Once after sitting silent for some time, contemplating me, he observed: ‘Master you good more.’ This was probably because not long before I had given him a. candle which threw him into an ecstasy of delight. On another occasion he counted my ï¬Ångers and was considerably astonished to find that there were ï¬Åve of them, exactly like his own." Narrvr. Coum-nous To-mv‘ The ï¬Årst Europeans to land on Malekula were Captain Cook and his men in I774, but they remained there only for a very short 1 The letters and notes from which the following pages have been compiled were written, and represent conditions, in H726.-—C. H. W.
