A PIG FOR A WIFE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 283, 11 April 1929, Page 8

A PIG FOR A WIFE.

LIFE ON CANNIBAL ISLAND

Tiny Human Dwellings,

In a land where a wife can be bought for a pig, and where cannibals still exist, Mr. John A. Baker and his wife encountered thrilling adventures amid primitive and savage races. Their story was related to the Royal Geographical Society in London recently. Assisted by the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund, Mr. Baker headed an expedition to the unexplored part of the northern New Hebrides. The islands are under the joint control of Great Britain and France. The explorer spent most of his time in the islands of Espirito Santo and Gaua. In Sakau there are only seven white persons, and none in the interior. There are five ranks in Sakau society, and a man rises from one to the other by dancing all night and killing a stipulated number of pigs. “ Cannibalism still occurs, though rarely,” related Mr. Baker. “To my mind this is not so terrible a vice as it is usually considered, for they do not kill people to eat them, but only eat them when killed for other reasons. Between my two visits a white man was killed in the southwest of Esperito Santa.” The people are polygamous, but only a few men have more than one wife. At a village called Tungwi, which had not previously been visited by a white man, Mr. Baker found what must he some of the smallest human habitations in the world. The tops of all the houses, except the men’s clubhouse, were only as high 'as his shoulders.

Accompanied by Mr. J. De H. Morel, and his wife, Mr. Baker crossed to Gaua Island, after waiting some months for a boat. There was no white person there, and the native women insisted on patting Mrs. Baker to he quite certain she was a white woman. Mr. Baker called a native conference, and addressed them in pidgin English, which was interpreted sentence by sentence, with the result that he got E 0 recruits for porterage. When they reached the lake, the basin of which is part of an immense extinct volcano, Mr. Baker and his wife explored it in a collapsible boat. In searching for the source of the geysers the natives found the only native living in this vast deserted district. He showed them the pools, some 60 feet in diameter, full of boiling water. These hot springs warm the only inhabitant’s taro gar- | den. He udes the hot stream to cook his taros. On 'caving, the explorers gave him some safety pins, which he unfastened and thrust through his

One European lives on the 100 miles of this coast, and none inland. The visitors crossed the crest of a ranve of four mountains, "which the explorers have named the LinisupeArusasari range, discovered another range thev named the North Pus range, and then started their climh of 6000 feet to the summit. It would have been impossible but for the vegetation.

The party clambered from root to branch and branch to root along a knife edge with a sheer drop on each side. Bribes of tinned r. eat failed to get the guides to ascend the adjoining peak, and the party returned.