yams so offered were
piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there. If any one were
impious enough to appropriate them to his own use, it was believed that
he would be smitten with madness. Great feasts were held at the
presentation of the first-fruits; and the sacred enclosure itself was
often spoken of as the _Mbaki_ or Harvest.[693]

[Sidenote: Periodical initiation of young men in the _Nanga_.]

But the most characteristic and perhaps the most important of the rites
performed in the _Nanga_ or sacred stone enclosure was the periodical
initiation of young men, who by participation in the ceremony were
admitted to the full privileges of manhood. According to one account the
ceremony of initiation was performed as a rule only once in two years;
according to another account it was observed annually in October or
November, when the _ndrala_ tree (_Erythrina_) was in flower. The
flowering of the tree marked the beginning of the Fijian year; hence the
novices who were initiated at this season bore the title of _Vilavou_,
that is, "New Year's Men." As a preparation for the feasts which
attended the ceremony enormous quantities of yams were garnered and
placed under a strict taboo; pigs were fattened in large numbers, and
bales of native cloth stored on the tie-beams of the house-roofs. Spears
of many patterns and curiously carved clubs were also provided against
the festival. On the day appointed the initiated men went first into the
sacred enclosure and made their offerings, the chief priest having
opened the proceedings by libation and prayer. The heads of the novices
were clean shaven, and their beards, if they had any, were also removed.
Then each youth was swathed in long rolls of native cloth, and taking a
spear in one hand and a club in the other he marched with his comrades,
similarly swathed and armed, in procession into the sacred enclosure,
though not into its inner compartment, the Holy of Holies. The
procession was headed by a priest bearing his carved staff of office,
and it was received on the holy ground by the initiates, who sat
chanting a song in a deep murmuring tone, which occasionally swelled to
a considerable volume of sound and was thought to represent the muffled
roar of the surf breaking on a far-away coral reef. On entering the
enclosure the youths threw down their weapons before them, and with the
help of the initiated men divested themselves of the huge folds of
native cloth in which th