At Santa Catalina there is a very fine specimen of a tambu house, over sixty feet in length. All the principal posts are carefully carved with weird representations of fishing expeditions, fights, war canoes, head-hunting expeditions, and other pictures of the daily life and occupations of the Solomon islander. The ridge pole, which is bigger than the usual run of these poles, is carved all over with {92} pictures which no modern journal would care to reproduce. The roofs of most tambu houses are more or less alike in general construction. They are supported on four or five rows of posts, the central one being about fourteen or fifteen feet high, whilst the outside ones do not run to more than three or four feet high, owing to the slant of the roofs. Throughout the group there is not one village standing out above all others, and there is no capital town, but on every island there are villages, and the chief in each considers his the capital. The two largest islands of the Solomon group are Bougainville and Guadalcana; Bougainville, the larger of these two, belongs to Germany. Guadalcana, from the sea, is an uncanny looking place—a great dark mountain gradually rising to a height of 8000 feet, covered with dense, dark foliage and culminating in a volcano. The Lion’s Head near by is a ragged cluster of grey rocks. Here and there patches of sage green relieve the monotony of colour and show where clumps of palms are growing. A thin line of bright yellow sand, and the white foam of the sea as it breaks over the reefs, add colour to the island and make of it a strange picture. [Illustration 29: ON THE FRINGE OF A PRIMÆVAL FOREST, SIMBO, SOLOMON ISLANDS One of the most impressive sights to be seen on some of these islands was the real tropical forest. This picture shows just the commencement of one, through which a native track wound its way. Though it was a brilliantly fine day, yet I remember when we were fairly into the forest depths it was just like twilight; while here and there long streaks of sunlight were streaming through the tree-tops, reminding us of the lights coming through the windows of a cathedral. We all went Indian file, and in many places the bush was so thick that we lost sight of each other; now and then we came upon a small native village.] On the east side of Guadalcana is a little trading {93} station, where not long ago “French Jack” resided, until at an untimely moment the blacks swooped down on him, carried away his wife and cut him to pieces; the crew of the little trading-boat, when it called for his copra, found his remains and buried them. But this is an old story, one of the many that come from these islands. A call from the Governor and the arrest of a few of the culprits is the way in which these stories end, and the captives eke out the rest of their existence in durance vile at Fiji, or if proved guilty pay the proper penalty.