ed but curly-haired, and of
whom we find representatives in the New Hebrides. The island-nature
of the archipelago is very favourable to race-mixture; and as we know
that on some islands there were several settlements of Polynesians,
it is not surprising to find a very complex mingling of races, which
it is not an easy task to disentangle. It would seem, however, that
we have before us remnants of four races: a short, dark, curly-haired
and perhaps original race, a few varieties of the tall Melanesian
race, arrived in the islands in several migrations, an old Polynesian
element as a relic of its former migrations eastward, and a present
Polynesian element from the east.

Every traveller will notice that the lightest population is in the
south and north-east of the New Hebrides, while the darkest is in
the north-west, and the ethnological difference corresponds to this
division.

In the Banks Islands we find, probably owing to recent immigration,
more Polynesian blood than in the northern New Hebrides; in the Santa
Cruz group the process of mixing seems to be just going on.

The number of natives in the New Hebrides and Banks Islands
amounted, according to the approximate census of the British Resident
Commissioner in 1910, to 65,000. At a conservative estimate we may say
that before the coming of the whites, that is, a generation ago, it was
ten times that, i.e. 650,000. For to judge from present conditions,
the accounts of old men and the many ruined villages, it is evident
that the race must have decreased enormously.

Language

The languages belong to the Melanesian and Polynesian classes. They are
split up into numerous dialects, so widely different that natives of
different districts can hardly, if at all, understand each other. It
is evident that owing to the seclusion of the villages caused by the
general insecurity of former days, and the lack of any literature,
the language developed differently in every village.

On some islands things are so bad that one may easily walk in one day
through several districts, in each of which is spoken a language quite
unintelligible to the neighbours; there are even adjoining villages
whose natives have to learn each other's language; this makes them
fairly clever linguists. Where, by migrations, conditions have become
too complicated, the most important of the dialects has been adopted
as a kind of "lingua franca."

Under these circumstances I at once gave up the