The Solomon islanders have a name for being the most treacherous and bloodthirsty race in existence, but when one remembers the way they were treated by the first invaders of these islands, {85} the Spaniards and French, and afterwards by the whalers and the roughest traders that ever stepped aboard a schooner, it is really a wonder that they permit a white-faced man to pass within coo-ee of their islands.

From the earliest days they have learned to fear the white men, and, acknowledging their superior powers and weapons, they naturally resorted to treachery and cunning to outwit them. If they had known the white man only as a benefactor, their attitude towards him and their state of civilisation would have been very different from what it is now. The possibility is that they would have developed into as fine and intelligent a race as the Maoris.

Had the Maori war been at the beginning of the white man’s career in New Zealand, that country would not be the paradise it is to-day, nor would the coloured natives be the men of knowledge and wisdom some of them are. They would have been given such a bad start that they would not have got over it.

From the very beginning the Maoris were treated with respect, and their naturally fine disposition answered to the call, and thousands of them so trusted the Englishman that had the war {86} gone on for another thirty years their faith in him would not have been shaken.

The Solomon islanders have had no chance, they have been feared from the beginning and shot down on the slightest provocation. It is only now that they are beginning to discriminate between the bad and the good white man, and I am perfectly safe in saying that a straight man can go amongst them unarmed, and if he treats them well he will be as safe with them in the densest bush as he would be in crowded Piccadilly.

The native villages are very different from those in New Guinea. Very few of them are built on piles, but in some of the small interior villages pile dwellings can still be seen. They are, however, only some two to four feet off the ground, like many others found in the countries of all savage races. Streets, too, are not discovered as often in the Solomons as elsewhere, the houses being built with no particular design. A clump of bush will be dotted with houses, with only small paths leading from one to the other. The houses are of the typical hut shape, built of wood and thatched. A ridge pole resting on two uprights supports the roof which is triangular in shape, and the sides are formed in a similar fashion. Before thatching, both the roof {87} and sides are formed by poles lashed together on which the thatch is worked. The door, if it can be so called, is merely an aperture which opens from a raised platform, and to get into the hut it is necessary to step—one generally falls—down into the room.