themselves have often scraped up a little English, and in the
French zone (though far less commonly) a little French-English, or
an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'Beach-la-Mar,'
comes easy to the Polynesian; it is now taught, besides, in the
schools of Hawaii; and from the multiplicity of British ships, and
the nearness of the States on the one hand and the colonies on the
other, it may be called, and will almost certainly become, the
tongue of the Pacific. I will instance a few examples. I met in
Majuro a Marshall Island boy who spoke excellent English; this he
had learned in the German firm in Jaluit, yet did not speak one
word of German. I heard from a gendarme who had taught school in
Rapa-iti that while the children had the utmost difficulty or
reluctance to learn French, they picked up English on the wayside,
and as if by accident. On one of the most out-of-the-way atolls in
the Carolines, my friend Mr. Benjamin Hird was amazed to find the
lads playing cricket on the beach and talking English; and it was
in English that the crew of the Janet Nicoll, a set of black boys
from different Melanesian islands, communicated with other natives
throughout the cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jested
together on the fore-hatch. But what struck me perhaps most of all
was a word I heard on the verandah of the Tribunal at Noumea. A
case had just been heard--a trial for infanticide against an ape-
like native woman; and the audience were smoking cigarettes as they
awaited the verdict. An anxious, amiable French lady, not far from
tears, was eager for acquittal, and declared she would engage the
prisoner to be her children's nurse. The bystanders exclaimed at
the proposal; the woman was a savage, said they, and spoke no
language. 'Mais, vous savez,' objected the fair sentimentalist;
'ils apprennent si vite l'anglais!'