Unconventional Scientist

in New Hebrides The Unpleasant Habits of The Big Nambus

and reverend seigneurs, travelling in the New Hebrides about 1935, were gravely upset by the spectacle of a young Englishman who moved about in the apparel and habits of a native.

They said he was destroying “white prestige”; but they admitted they cou-d not expect much better, because he was “an irresponsible scientific Johnny, liable to do anything.”

The gentleman was Mr Tom Harrisson, who went with the Oxford Expedition to the New Hebrides, in 1932-4, as a biologist, and then stayed on in Malekula, where he lived on terms of great friend ship with the Big Nambus, a race of virile, warring, evil-smelling cannibals.

He gained their confidence by living as they lived, eating the things they ate, sleeping under the same rather horrible conditions. However, he was only 21 in 1932, so we must not judge him too harshly, Mr. Harrisson has written a racy account of his adventures, Savage Civilisation, published recently in London. There appear to be no copies in Australia. The following are taken from a recent news paper review: Cannibalism in Malekula follows a rule of ritual, not of hunger. After a battle, in which three or four foemen may be slain, it is the correct thing to eat soma of the victims; and every member of the tribe must take a portion under com pulsion, Mr Harrisson was not granted an exemption by his friends the Big Nambus.

“The taste is like that of tender pork, rather sweet. Some men are noted flesh lovers, and eat as much as a whole limb.

I have known only one man who definitely hungered after human flesh; he had eaten more than 100 legs. In general a small helping is enough, for this is a very filling food. The inner part of the thigh ana the head, are the greater delicacies.”

The proper cuisine for this dainty faro is to bake it wrapped in leaves in a native oven for some hours.

Young Harrisson roved a’one and un armed round northern Malekula, into which the authority of wh te Government scarcely penetrates. Sometimes he walked into a tribal war, but he escaped being baked in leaves, and on at least one occasion he was able to fix up what he calls “a damned-fool peace.” He accom plished this prcctocol between tribes with out the aid of kava , but he gives kava a high standard as a pacifist instrument.

“You don’t get drunk on kava. But it speeds up your increasing slowness.

Thoughts come cleanly. You feel friend ly; not beer sentimental; never cross. The world gains no new colour or rose tint; it fits in its pieces, and is one easily understandable who e . . . You cannot hate, with kava in you. And so it is used in the making-up of quarrels and in peace-making. It would change the face of Geneva.”

Tom grew a year’s beard on his chin, but became more remarkable for the shock of unshorn hair which fell round his shoulders. He was in this condition when he travelled on the inter-island steamer, and caused something of a sen sation. This hirsute glory fascinated the Big Nambus women. Their head-dress, which they never remove, is made of purple-stained matting, with unplaited ends falling in a purple cascade of arti ficial hair down shoulders and back, as far as the waist.

“A sure wow for me was to jerk my head to and fro, sending hair to cover all my face and then clear it again. The women would go half crazy with interest until their jealous husbands got too jealous. There are bits of my hair, yanked suddenly out of my scalp, all over the plateau, maybe still being worn by some romantic maidens, next to their woolly, lousy heads.”

This part of the book is crammed, of course, with close observations. The morals of Malekula are not those of Mos man. A page is written concerning the gross rites which initiate youths into manhood. At the culmination “this night is the one for the women. Let go!

They have the right to rape, or anything else, every man in that place. They do just that.” Savage vices combine the pleasures of Solomon with those of A'ci biades. Nesai, chieftain of Amok, has 40 wives and six ephebes.