Few natives appeared at Espiritu Santo, and the vessel passed on to
Oanuta or Cherry Island, where the Bishop had never been, and where a
race of dull, good-natured giants was found. The chief was a noble-
looking man with an aquiline nose, and seemed to have them well under
command, and some of the younger men, who had limbs which might have
been a model for a sculptor, could have lifted an ordinary-sized
Englishman as easily as a child. They were unluckily already
acquainted with whalers, whom they thought the right sort of fellows,
since they brought tobacco and spirits, did not interfere with native
habits, nor talk of learning, for which the giants saw no need. The
national complexion here was of a lighter yellow, the costume a
tattooed chest, the language akin to Maori; and it was the same at
Tikopia, where four chiefs, one principal one immensely fat, received
their visitors seated on a mat in the centre of a wide circle formed
by natives, the innermost seated, the others looking over them.
These, too, were accustomed to whalers, and when they found that pigs
and yams in exchange for spirits and tobacco were not the object,
they were indifferent. They seemed to despise fish-hooks, and it was
plain that they had even obtained muskets from the whalers, for there
were six in the chiefs house, and one was fired, not maliciously but
out of display. The Bishop told them his object, and they understood
his language, but were uninterested. The fat chief regaled the two
guests with a cocoa-nut apiece, and then seemed anxious to be rid of
them.

The Banks Islands, as usual, were much more hopeful, Santa Maria
coming first. Canoes came round the vessel, and the honesty of the
race showed itself, for one little boy, who had had a fish-hook given
him, wished to exchange it for calico, and having "forgotten to