KING SOLOMON’S GOLD
New Guinea was my jumping off place for the Solomon Islands, and
“jumping off” well describes my first trip around that great island
chain. I had only a few weeks to work in, and to draw conclusions
which were to lead up to years of campaigning along 700 miles of
that wild archipelago. If you will recall George Fulton, the man in
evening dress whom I met in a smelly trader’s store, you will remember
his half-promise to send me down to lost Rennell Island on the Lever
Brothers’ yacht. Well, he had kept his promise--with reservations--and
I was at last on the Levers’ _Koonakarra_, heading southeast. I had
planned to go on the Government’s _Bellama_, but she was wrecked in
a hurricane. To be transferred to George Fulton’s boat seemed like a
stroke of luck. Now I could see Rennell Island....
It was nine years before I saw Rennell, for the very good reason that
George Fulton didn’t want me to see it. He had changed his mind since I
talked with him. Rennell might turn out to be a phosphate island, one
of those volcanic freaks which quantities of bird guano and submersion
in sea water have loaded with valuable crystalline fertilizer. Fulton
didn’t want Rockefeller people snooping around his potential bonanza. A
few years later he found that Rennell’s wealth was just another myth of
King Solomon’s gold.
Alvaro Mendaña, who found these islands in 1568, returned to Spain
and told King Philip that he had discovered the place where King
Solomon got his gold. Philip rewarded the naughty liar by sending him
on a second expedition; but when he returned to the isles of specious
wealth he found that they had disappeared. Just another case of bad
Renaissance navigation, but Mendaña died hunting for the vanished
Solomons. They were lost for 200 years. Monsieur de Bougainville found
them again in 1768.
As far as Rennell Island was concerned, for a long while I felt that I
had been cheated of my gold. It was not idle curiosity which drew me
toward that mysterious spot. If the people had been, as George Fulton
said, “practically untouched for ages,” I might find there a clue to
the origin of the Polynesian race. Many of the ancient invasions have
been traced through the evidence of the hookworm. The public health
physician, you see, must be a bit of an anthropologist, a bit of a
politician and a bit of a historian....
But I had to wait until 1930 to see Rennell Island.
The _Koonakarra_ of 1921 was so busy trading, recruiting and
supervising plantations that I had to pick up what information I could
get between stops. I had an opportunity to draw one large conclusion:
that natives from the big islands to the north, near the infesting
trade routes, were much the more heavily diseased. Disease diminished
steadily as we moved down toward the less frequented parts. My
superficial look at a population which, for lack of an accurate census,
was estimated at 100,000, verified my theory: _Epidemics are the fruits
of island hospitality._
In those days little could be done to improve conditions. That group
of a half-dozen enormous islands, and the many little outlying ones,
was served by one lone Medical Officer, and some missionary doctors who
strove with a bravery against conditions that should have broken their
valiant spirits.
Among the unsung heroes--but no missionary--was my friend J. C. Barley,
Oxford M.A., who had voluntarily given his life to a God-forsaken post
at Kirakira. In his jungle house he was like something out of Kipling,
dressing for the evening, having his spot of gin and bitters before
dinner, his sound cigar afterward. He might have gone anywhere in the
colonial service, for as a young Oxonian he had outranked hundreds in
competitive examinations. But he was too clean a sportsman to play
politics. His passion for ethnology and his affectionate responsibility
for the natives kept him where he was. He had become the people’s
advocate, and knew more about the Solomons than any official report
could ever tell. His trips for inspection and research were his only
relief from solitude.
I only speak of Barley because he was so useful to my future work and
because of pleasant memories of his charming mind; in fact I should
not write at all of this brief survey, except that I wish to point out
a few spots where in later years I returned and marked the changes
wrought by contact with the outer world.
Bill Tully and I worked mostly at night, lecturing by lantern light.
The ship would be off in the early morning. At Star Harbour on San
Cristoval, the largest island on the unfrequented southeast, the naked
people carried candlenut torches as they wound down the mountain
trail. It was like something out of “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” that
twisting stream of light. Few traders and no missionaries had come to
them, and they showed a low rate of infection. A friendly, backward
Negroid people, they were endangered by their own hospitality. Charley
One Arm, the policeman, our fierce black guide, couldn’t understand us
when we refused the temporary gift of two island daughters. I went away
dreading what might happen when more trading ships came in.
Santa Ana lay so near that one of their canoes, bastard ebony with
mother-of-pearl insets, could take you there in an hour or two. Yet the
Santa Ana folk were light-skinned and their features almost Caucasian.
They wore bones in their noses and shark’s teeth around their necks.
There was more trading, hence more hookworm. I gave treatments to
Trader Kuper’s two little half-caste sons. It was a good investment,
and later I shall tell you why.
Graciosa Bay was so wild that Mr. Mathews, Lever Brothers’
representative who had lived there fifteen years with an armed guard,
warned us not to come ashore. With knives and fishhooks we lured a few
of the untamed to come aboard the launch and be examined. In fifteen
years the population had dropped from 3,000 to 500. Somehow, in spite
of their savagery, they had allowed vicious malaria and tuberculosis to
get in.
Near-by Reef Island showed a different, lighter breed. Somewhat
missionized, largely pagan, it had a murderous reputation. It was in
its harbor, Mohawk Bay, that an incident occurred which I remembered
for twelve years. After a lantern-light lecture I was resting in the
whaleboat. In the dim moonlight a naked man came floundering toward me.
I reached for a hatchet, and a mild voice told me that it was only Sam,
the Christian teacher. I had made a mistake, Sam told me, and gone to a
heathen village. His was the Christian village I should have given my
magic tins to. And wouldn’t I come? It was too late for that, so I let
him stand waist-high in the water while I taught him the outline of my
pidgin English lecture. I gave him tins and told him to bring them back
to me in the morning. He brought them to me at dawn, and I admired his
Christian fortitude. Poor devil--like the others, he thought our tins
were magic boxes that would cure the people. I waited twelve years to
hear the sequel to that story....
At Mohawk Bay I found that a young native was selling the services
of his fiancée to our sailors. Brides were expensive there, and he
had formed a syndicate to buy her, then rent her out until she had
earned the price. It was “the fashion.” Not as a moralist, but as a
doctor I asked the question: Who would educate people like these, upon
fast-opening trade routes? Who would teach them self-protection? The
missionaries? Perhaps. But the doctor must follow, or there would be
nobody left to educate.
“Recruiting,” that legalized form of contract labor, might act as an
educator. The High Commission Government was already requiring that
plantation hands should be well-cared-for medically and sufficiently
fed.
In a lonely bay I saw recruiters at work. One man with a rifle lay
flat in the bow of a cutter, covering every movement of another man
who approached the shore in a whaleboat. The whaleboat backed water
all the way, and the man sent to parley stood up, carefully facing the
naked savages who waited on the beach. All during the long powwow the
hidden rifle was carefully aimed. These labor conferences were no job
for a coward. So many lone recruiters had been killed on duty that the
Government had made it a law that they must hunt in pairs.
Considering the vast work which we must soon undertake in the Solomon
Islands, I was encouraged when I found that the intelligent native
looked upon indentured labor service as a blessing, just as it had
been in Papua. An island boy said to me, “I wish the _Hawk_ would come
soon.” The _Hawk_ was a recruiting ship. I asked him why he wanted
it to come soon, and he said, “There are so many sore-legs in the
village.” This boy knew what was good for his people, and I hoped that
there would be many more like him.
* * * * *
I never think of Sikiana without a little sadness. Three small atolls
all but link. The Sikiana Group was the last land to be discovered in
1791 and since then very few vessels had touched there. The inhabitants
were pure Polynesian people; and because our crew was composed of
Sikiana men our landing was a joyous homecoming. Every man-jack in
the village was lightly lit on homemade toddy; the Ellice Islanders,
their blood-cousins, had taught them how to cut the central spathe of
the coconut, catch the drip, and trust in fermentation. Unfermented, it
makes a fine baby food. In toddy form, it is intoxicating.
There was some heathen religious festival going on, hence the bibulous
hilarity. The women, who never drank, couldn’t speak pidgin. Much
gesturing, and the aid of our Sikiana sailors, who were sharing the
toddy, sent swimmers and canoemen to the neighboring atolls to spread
the news. And the people danced. Not lewdly, but with the natural grace
of unspoiled bodies. They were completely pagan. No missionary had ever
settled here. Traders hadn’t debauched them; the soil was too poor to
produce anything worth trading for.
The girls were lovely with their long, fine, glossy hair; they hadn’t
learned to bob it as they were doing on the missionized islands. They
wore modest _lavalavas_ from waist to ankles, and a kerchief which they
knotted around the neck and drew under one arm. Some of the men wore
their hair long, too, in ancient Polynesian fashion. I made friends
with a splendid young fellow named Lautaua, who talked fair pidgin
and told me how “in the time of his grandfather” (that might mean a
thousand years ago; they had a habit of reckoning time by grandfathers)
the Tongafiti had come to Sikiana and killed everybody except the
women, and how succeeding migrations from Ongtong Java and the Ellices
had drifted there in lost canoes.
I only mention their drinking because it was something of a freak
in that corner of the Pacific. The Sikiana folk only made toddy on
festival occasions, and never took it beyond the point of exhilaration.
Later on, taking the advice of Mr. Barley, who was always their
generous friend, they stopped making and drinking toddy. In Sikiana
they were gay enough without false stimulation--a friendly, virtuous,
lovable people; perhaps their custom of keeping women away from liquor
helped maintain their racial self-respect. By and large, I have found
the tribes on comparatively sterile islands superior in health and
character to their neighbors who had little to do but lie in the shade
and catch bananas. It’s the same the wide world over; those of Adam’s
sons who work for a living are better fitted to cope with the cruelties
of life.
Young children held our hands and drew our arms around them. The moon
swung high over the lagoon and our returned sailors, quite sober now,
daintily walked with their girls, up and down the beach. As we sat on
the sand, waiting for the lecture audience to come on, young girls put
garlands around our necks, chains which would bind our memories to
Sikiana; these were ropes of hair, a strand from the head of every girl.
I had given lectures under odd conditions, but never before like this.
White moonlight, pretty, laughing faces, simple people who took it
all as the greatest joke in the world, but were so kind-hearted that
they followed our instructions faithfully, as one might indulge a
feeble-minded person of whom one is fond. Everybody smiled, even the
dignified patriarch whom we called Old Number One; he was an unsalaried
official representative of the Government. Between Old Number One and
Lautaua, everything was arranged for us. Next day when we departed all
was in order.
A simple people, allowed to grow up in their own way. Were they
the uncivilized ones, or were we? They were not entirely free from
tuberculosis; but they seemed to have set up an immunity. Here was a
Government without the need of officialdom; no discord, no poverty,
no distress, no taxes, no clothing to speak of; and no vices more
obnoxious than a little toddy-drinking on national holidays.
I left happy Sikiana with a certain fear for its future. I saw it again
in 1933....
* * * * *
I returned by way of Sydney to pick up my family. In a week or so
I would be pointing toward Suva, which was the cultural center of
the South Pacific--if you disregard the scientifically advanced
universities in Australia and New Zealand. Suva was to be headquarters
for the rest of my professional career.
Thus far I had worked toward proving my favorite point: Depopulation
follows the visitor. I believed what I still believe--that the item
which looms over everything else in the question of failing native
races _is the introduction of diseases to which they have no immunity_.
I had seen its effects so often, right under my eyes.
Moving toward Sydney, I took stock of my South Sea experience, which
had covered less than four years. I was beginning to see that one bad
old theory was losing ground--the belief that the native, especially
the Melanesian, is an economic unit to be exploited till he dies.
Governments once blind and cruel were beginning to see light. The
British High Commission, controlling five island groups, was struggling
toward better things. So was progressive New Zealand with her mandates
and possessions over wide stretches of Polynesia.
I considered the stumbling blocks in the way of curing sick Oceania.
The Rockefeller Foundation, a vast scientific machine tuned up to deal
out mercy in a practical, businesslike way, must have a co-operation
which the Pacific administrations of that day were not offering. There
must be teamwork, or nothing could be accomplished. Medical authority
must come from a central brain. As things stood, the health physicians
were political appointees, either lazy and incompetent time-servers
or good men baffled by overwork and the whims of local government.
When one good health officer retired a successor would come in to
undo whatever he had begun. It was medical chaos, and I felt that the
Foundation’s liberal share in cleaning up the Pacific must be backed up
by some unified control. Else the work would be as futile as sweeping
fog off a back porch. Suva, capital of Fiji, was headquarters for the
British High Commission, and the Governor of Fiji was its head. Suva
would be the ideal center for such medical authority.
I considered the problem of leprosy. All along the way I had
encountered this imported disease, but there was no census to tell
whether or not it was increasing. The cure and prevention of leprosy is
methodical treatment with the one known remedy, and segregation of the
infected. In all the South Pacific except Fiji there was nothing like a
modern leper colony. The island governments should combine to support
one.
The shortage of doctors had been very discouraging. Few competent white
men cared to endure tropical hardships for starvation pay. From sheer
boredom and despair many of them became quacks and drunkards--even
if they hadn’t started out that way. The answer to that was educated
native medical men.... I have talked about that a great deal, because
that idea never left me. And now I was going to Fiji, where there had
already been a crude attempt to teach medicine to Fijians.
As our ship neared Suva, a larger worry was in the back of my mind.
Through years of study, from North Queensland to Papua, from Papua
to New Guinea, from New Guinea to the Solomon Islands, I had found
that oil of chenopodium was not working well enough or fast enough to
relieve the million patients who reached out for a cure. In Rabaul’s
hospital I had given injections of it, hoping to make the drug more
effective through a new channel. The experiment had removed whipworms,
but almost no hookworms.
I had to look these facts in the face. Chenopodium, on which we had
relied as a cure for one of the world’s most prevalent blights, was not
coming up to our expectations. There seemed no answer to that, until
help came from an unexpected quarter.