n the beginning were
too explicit, the panic of shame and fear had been too sweeping. There
is scarce a woman of our native friends in Apia who can speak upon the
subject without terror; scarce any man without humiliation. And the
shock was increased out of measure by the fact that the head--or one of
the heads--was recognised; recognised for the niece of one of the
greatest of court ladies; recognised for a Taupo-sa, or sacred maid of a
village from Savaii. It seemed incredible that she--who had been chosen
for virtue and beauty, who went everywhere attended by the fairest
maidens, and watched over by vigilant duennas, whose part it was, in
holiday costume, to receive guests, to make kava, and to be the leader
of the revels, should become the victim of a brutal rally in a cow-park,
and have her face exposed for a trophy to the victorious king.

In all this muttering of aversion and alarm, no word has been openly
said. No punishment, no disgrace, has been inflicted on the
perpetrators of the outrage. King, Consuls, and mission appear to have
held their peace alike. I can understand a certain apathy in whites.
Head-hunting, they say, is a horrid practice: and will not stop to
investigate its finer shades. But the Samoan himself does not hesitate;
for him the act is portentous; and if it go unpunished, and set a
fashion, its consequences must be damnable. This is not a breach of a
Christian virtue, of something half-learned by rote, and from
foreigners, in the last thirty years. It is a flying in the face of
their own native, instinctive, and traditional standard: tenfold more
ominous and degrading. And, taking the matter for all in all, it seems
to me that head-hunting itself should be firmly and immediately
suppressed. "How else can a man prove himself to be brave?" my friend
asked. But often enough these are but fraudulent trophies. On the morrow
of the fight at Vaitele, an Atua man discovered a body lying in the
bush: he took the head. A day or two ago a party was allowed to visit
Manono. The King's troops on shore, observing them put off from the
rebel island, leaped to the conclusion that this must be the wounded
going to Apia, launched off at once two armed boats and overhauled the
others--after heads. The glory of such exploits is not apparent; their
power for degradation strikes the eyes. Lieutenant Ulfsparre, our late
Swedish Chief of Police and Commander of the forces, told his men that
if any of them took a he