New Hebrides

New Hebrides, a chain of islands in the Western Pacific, extending NNW. to SSE., and lying W. of Fiji and NE. of New Caledonia. There are in all some thirty islands (area, 5110 sq. m.), of which twenty are inhabited, the people, mostly of the Melanesian race, numbering about 70,000. They are of volcanic origin, some—e.g. Ambrym, Tanna, and Polevi—having active volcanoes, but rest upon a coral foundation. The larger islands are Espiritu Santo (70 miles long by 40 wide), Mallicolo (56 miles by 20), Ambrym (22 miles by 17), Vaté or Sandwich (30 miles by 15), Erromango (30 miles by 22), Tanna (18 miles by 10), and Aneityum (35 miles in circumference). All are wooded, and some lofty, reaching 3000 feet. The climate is moist, but clear and healthy, the thermometer ranging from 60° to 90° F. The usual tropical plants and products are grown—yam, taro, banana, bread-fruit, sugar-cane, arrowroot, and cocoa-nut. Sandalwood, at one time common, is now almost extinct. The seas swarm with fish, some of them poisonous, and whales are taken near by. The people are savage cannibals of a low type, and are decreasing in number. They speak a great number of dialects, many being unintelligible to the others. The southern islanders (Erromango to Aneityum) have been civilised by English and Scottish missionaries. This chain was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Quiros in 1606, and was thoroughly explored by Captain Cook in 1773. They are claimed by the British, though nothing is done to occupy them. The French have more than once cast covetous eyes upon the group, but their attempts to annex it have encountered the strenuous opposition of the Australian colonists. Since 1863 the natives of these islands have been every year carried away to serve as labourers on the plantations in Queensland, Fiji, and New Caledonia, and many barbarities have been perpetrated in connection with the traffic. See Dr J. Inglis, In the New Hebrides (1887) and the Memoir of J. G. Paton (1889).