... We are a little crowded, but not too much. Zaca is beautiful; 118 feet long, 23 feet beam, 125 tons, 22 tons lead on keel, draws just under 15 feet of water. I have had my share of fortune in vessels on survey trips and plenty of hard times ... now I blink, looking around me, and wonder if I’m awake. I should like to keep the daily menus, they are so varied and excellent. First night we had grilled steak, perfect; next night Long Island duckling, and I gorged—Christmas dinner every night. Always fresh vegetables, just like home (U. S., not Fiji). All Frosted Foods....
Roomy cabin, electric fan over bunk, reading light over bed. Two bunks, one of which I use for scientific gear, a chiffonier and two drawers, under the bunk, which Malakai and I share, as well as a roomy clothes closet with hangers etc. I share Mr. Crocker’s elaborate bathroom with Maury. We eat on deck at two bridge tables under an awning, as the mainsail is not raised.
... Was somewhat worried, coming on this trip, for fear we might have to conform to millionaire standards of dress. This would have been cruelty to me and would have hindered, as it always does, the success of the work. On some small boats I have been on trips with Resident Commissioners who felt that they must uphold good old British prestige by putting on black coats and choker collars every night; I remember one who ran out of boiled shirts and had to eat in his stateroom to conceal his shame. But Crocker out-Herods Herod. Lavalavas are the order of the day, and in the evening a singlet if it is too cool. Day and evening, Crocker wears a lavalava or a very short pair of shorts—nothing else but a bandanna handkerchief around his neck....
We did not lack scientific equipment or scientific brains. Mr. Crocker and his secretary Maurice (Maury) Willowes collected specimens of anthropological and marine-life interest. Norton Stuart was a botanist, and Toschio Aseida a Japanese photographer of submarine and surface phenomena. Gordon Macgregor was an anthropologist from the Bishop Museum, and our ship’s surgeon, Dr. John B. Hynes, did blood groupings on the various islands we visited. This may sound like a hero list out of the “Iliad,” and I may add Homerically, “with me always were Gordon White and my long-tried henchman, Malakai Veisamasama.” Malakai found the stateroom so comfortable that it rather surprised him. Between island visits he sprawled on his bunk, always reading. It was usually The Martyrdom of Man, which I gave him once for a birthday present. He carried it with him as you’d carry a Bible.
The Zaca’s white crew had been mostly enlisted in California. The stewards were soft-footed and dextrous. When we sat under the awning of long, starlit evenings I had the impression of being on a crack ocean liner. We had everything but an orchestra, but there was a phonograph wired throughout the Zaca, and a very powerful Morse station of R.C.A.... No, this wasn’t real. I wasn’t the Lambert who had slapped mosquitoes in a Papuan whaleboat and been stranded on a New Hebrides island, waiting for anything with steam-power or gas-power or paddle-power to take him off.
******
I wanted to see the Solomon Islands again, for my inspection in 1921 had been a hurry-up affair, at the whim of Lever Brothers’ busy island inspector. My visit to Tulagi in 1930 had been mostly directed toward Rennell Island. In 1921 ill luck had kept me from seeing Malaita, the most savage spot in the savage Solomons. On the Crocker trip Gordon White and I were equipped to make tuberculin tests, for little was known of its prevalence in the group. Above all things, I was anxious to compare my new notes with my old ones. What had happened to the health of the islands I had seen twelve years ago? And what had happened to Rennell Island in three years?
In the Zaca’s comfortable lounge my only worry was that I might get too fat to waddle ashore, what with Mexican beer and a snack at 11 A.M., cocktails and a snack before dinner, highballs and a snack in the evening. Being by nature a sensualist, I had to pray to my Puritan forefathers to save me from myself until our ship touched the White Sands.
Visiting Tucopia, a dot on the southeast tip of the Solomons, I met a problem almost unique in the Pacific—overpopulation. This island, too small to warrant a stop-over, was another Rennell in miniature, with the same lake in the center. And the people who came paddling out in canoes were strikingly like Rennellese, perhaps more like the tribes of Bellona—more Melanesian than either. They had the same style of tapa breechclout, the same palm-fan sticking in the back, the same way of knotting their hair. The Fijians have another island, Thikombia (Tucopia in Fijian), which lies just north of Vanua Levu. It is undoubtedly one of the old steppingstones to this second Tucopia and Rennell. The Tucopians whom we found here spoke a language with so much Fijian in it that Malakai could speak a few words with them; he said that they looked like the light-skinned tribe on Thikombia, who were supposed to have come from Futuna.
A native missionary informed us that “people were growing like weeds.” District Officer Garvey had been there shortly before and wondered what to do with a race that was increasing faster than their food grew. For this fertility the missions were responsible, indirectly; when they came they said that every man should have a wife. Formerly only one son in the family was allowed to marry, the restriction being aimed at keeping the population within the bounds of subsistence. After their Christian teachers changed the rules Tukopia’s birth crop became embarrassing.... Well, that was something I couldn’t settle for them, except to suggest more recruiting for work on faraway plantations. That wouldn’t have been so practical, either, for the Tucopian had the same savage home-love as his Rennellese cousin. I went away chuckling. Here was a native race whom missionizing had increased. The men who came to our ship had a well-fed look. They seemed to be on the upgrade, though overcrowding might endanger their future.