SOLOMON ISLANDERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 253, 4 March 1911, Page 10

SOLOMON ISLANDERS.

A SAD PIUTUKE. A writer in the Melbourne Argus draws a. sad picture of the Solomon Islands. He says that there is, perhaps, no other spot on the globe where so glorious a setting for romance is provided as in .these' islands, but there is no place for the romantic in the heart or mind of the Solomon Islander. He is careless, but not happy; he is picturesque in a way, but his picturesqueness is more than counterbalanced by his overwhelming tilthiness. Though the back door of his home may open into the sea ke enters the water very rarely, and only under compulsion. The majority of the natives suli'er from skin diseases. The writer state* that on (Juadalcauar, one of the largest islands in the British Protectorate, lie has seen hundreds of natives on whom it would be impossible to lind a square inch of healthy skin. (Juri-guri, a kind of ringworm, and bukwa, a disease that makes the skin dry and scaly, ailed* 50 per cent, of the inhabitants of the western islands, and a running sore, which in some eases spreads oveh the whole of the legs or arms, is 'becoming rery common. The islanders have a vague conception of a heaven and a linn belief in spirits, buL these ideas do not amount to a religion. The/ observe, however, a fairly strict code of morality. The strictest of the islanders arc the Malaita tribe, who, curiously enough, are the moat barbarous and savage, and at the same time the most intelligent of the natives. Cannibalism is practised still in JUalaita, but thieving is very rare, and immorality on the part of young people is punished by death, the bodies or parts el the bodies of those who pay the penalty being exhibited as a warning t 0 others. There is not a spark of ail'eetion in the composition of the islanders, and marriage is purely a business transaction. In nearly every respect the natives have made no advance in civilisation «mce their discovery 350 years ago. Infanticide is becoming common among them, and the birth-rate is declining They supply many of the problems that have to be solved by the earnest workers who are laboring among the peoples of the Paciiic.