I reminded Captain Ashley of how I had first looked those boys over, back in 1921. Norman Wheatley, retired blackbirder, had settled sedately on Roviana Lagoon, where he had married a native woman. His early adventures should have made him rich, but a ruling vice had reduced his surplus to near the vanishing point. His vice was collecting prize-winning small craft in Sydney. All around the lagoon were his ancient yachts, racing schooners and launches, rotting away for lack of use and attention. Wheatley’s sons were pretty small then, but he had listened to me when I said that he ought to make doctors out of them.
Trader Kuper was then living on Santa Ana with his native wife, a fine woman who had posed for my camera in her tribal costume. Her two boys, the older not more than four, were running wild on the beach, absolutely naked. The mother was bare from the top of her head to the waistband of her lavalava; around her neck were shark’s teeth, and a long pencil of polished shell ran through the septum of her nose. Tenderly she picked the children up and told me that they were nice boys, but not strong. I had found that they had hookworm, and I delayed my departure to dose them with chenopodium. When I left I had given Mrs. Kuper instructions as to further treatment. I saw Mr. Kuper a few years later and he told me that they had grown to be fine husky kids, and he was grateful because we had saved their lives. I had reminded him, as I had Norman Wheatley, that his sons ought to go to Suva and study medicine.
Well, so young Geoffrey Kuper was studying in New Zealand. Certainly he would be an ideal candidate for the Medical School, Ashley said.
Again I heard the old story of benevolent Dr. Fox of the Melanesian Mission. Earnestly wishing to help the natives and to understand them, Fox specialized in ethnology. In order to put himself in closer touch with native family ways, he offered to change lives with Joni, one of his dark parishioners. Joni agreed to change his name to Dr. Fox; Dr. Fox to become Joni. The real Dr. Fox handed the real Joni his bankbook and so on, while the metamorphosed clergyman moved into the native house and took over all the family with all the duties, except the intimate matrimonial ones. He didn’t learn much, because the natives remained secretive. The French farce situation became intolerable when the simon-pure Fox discovered that his counterfeit had been strutting all over the island using Dr. Fox’s name and prestige so successfully that there were many newborn infants being called “Dr. Fox.” So lavalava was immediately exchanged for clerical garb, and all bets were off. That was a classic yarn around Tulagi, but still good for a wicked smile.
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We coasted down the shore of Malaita, a great hulk of mountainous woods 110 miles long, beautiful and forbidding. When I had covered the Solomons in 1921 a convenient hurricane had beaten us away from the shore. This island held a horrid fascination. Twelve years ago no white man had dared the interior jungles, and there was still little knowledge of its wild hill tribes. The splendid black Malaitamen were good workers, when you could get them. Recruiters, there to pick up field hands for the plantations, always worked in pairs; wise laws of the Protectorate compelled them to do so, for bloody experience had proved the necessity of armed caution.
The luxurious Zaca skirted the savagery of Malaita, which the Spaniards called “Mala” for short; and it was “Bad” to them, as ghastly stories reveal. Over there lay Sinarango where Tax Collector Bell with Cadet Lilies and fourteen native police had been butchered in 1927. There were some missionaries, planters and traders scattered along the coastline. The spread of disease was diminishing the Malaitamen, and my object in visiting them would be to learn, if possible, the role played by tuberculosis. Also I was keen to look over the Melanesian Mission’s leper establishment, for I had been told that about one per cent of Malaita’s population was afflicted.
Around Malaita are many artificial islands, time-old and mysterious as the people who inhabit them. A long native canoe, with no outrigger, landed us on one of them, about three acres built of huge coral-chunks that had been planted on the reef and filled in with soil and rubble. Dr. Macgregor pointed out children with bright yellow hair; no, it hadn’t been sunburned to that color, or bleached with lime to destroy lice. This was natural hair. When we examined a grown girl’s hair down at the roots, where the sun could never reach it, the color was almost as yellow as straw. There were gray eyes, too, flashing out of dark brown faces. Gray eyes are often found among Polynesians who have had no intimate contact with Europeans. But these were no Polynesians. They were almost as dark as the other Solomon Islanders.
White and Malakai and I had all day ashore at Tai Harbor, lining up hundreds for tuberculin tests. I was aboard ship again when I learned that my much-admired friend J. C. Barley was at Tai on inspection. When I told Crocker about Barley my host suggested that I go ashore and ask him to dinner on the Zaca. That was a pleasant assignment, for I must have a talk with the man who knew his natives inside and out.
He came around the side of a leaf-house, cool, clean and physically fit. Shaking hands, I knew that he was glad to see me again, as I was to see him. Yes, the Solomons were in a bit of a jam and all that, he said, and a jolly good thing, Lambert, that you’re looking over our tuberculosis. He spoke with gratitude, as though I had been treating him personally. That was Barley all over, responsible for every man, woman and child under his care. He had been District Commissioner for Malaita—splendid job. There were over 50,000 natives on Malaita, and we must have treated nearly 40,000 of them for prevalent diseases. Not that they wouldn’t stand a lot more of it. Naturally those wild fellows up in the hills weren’t so tubercular as the coast dwellers, he said, but they’d bear looking over. The news had spread to them that the white doctors jabbed them with a needle. They were all crazy for the treatment.