suspicious and lazy,
but quite harmless as long as they are not provoked. Mr. Ch. had had
about thirty men working on his plantation for quite some time, and
everything had gone well, until one day one of them had fallen into
the Sarrakatta and been drowned. According to native law, Mr. Ch. was
responsible for his death, and should have paid for him, which he
omitted to do. At first there was general dismay, no one dared approach
the river any more; then the natives all returned to their villages,
and a few days later they swarmed round the plantation with rifles
to avenge their dead relative by murdering Mr. Ch. He was warned by
his boys, who were from Malekula for the most part, and this saved
his life. He armed his men, and after a siege of several weeks the
bushmen gave up the watch and retired. But no one would return to
work for him any more.

Altogether, the bushmen of Santo are none too reliable, and only the
memory of a successful landing expedition of the English man-of-war
a year ago keeps them quiet. On that occasion they had murdered an
old Englishman and two of his daughters, just out of greed, so as to
pillage his store. They had not found much, but they had to pay for
the murder with the loss of their village, pigs and lives.

I tried to find boys at the south-west corner of Santo, where the
natives frequently descend to the shore. A neighbour of Mr. Ch., a
young Frenchman, was going there in a small cutter to buy wood for
dyeing mats to sell to the natives of Malekula, and he kindly took
me with him. We sailed through the channel one rainy morning, but
the wind died down and we had to anchor, as the current threatened
to take us back. We profited by the stop to pay a visit to a Mr. R.,
who cultivated anarchistic principles, also a plantation which seemed
in perfect condition and in direct opposition to his anti-capitalistic
ideas. Mr. R. was one of those French colonists who, sprung from the
poorest peasant stock, have no ambitions beyond finding a new and
kindlier home. Economical, thrifty, used to hard work in the fields,
Mr. R. had begun very modestly, but had prospered, and was now,
while still a young man, the owner of a plantation that would make
him rich in a few years. This good, solid peasant stock, of which
France possesses so much, makes the best colonists, and as a rule
they succeed far better than those who come to the tropics with the
idea of making a fortune in a few years without work