here was no _Nanga_ in the land. So they
built one of their own after the fashion of that which they left behind
them." "Here," says Mr. Basil Thomson, "we have the earliest
tradition of missionary enterprise in the Pacific. I do not doubt that
the two sooty-skinned little men were castaways driven eastward by one
of those strong westerly gales that have been known to last for three
weeks at a time. By Fijian custom the lives of all castaways were
forfeit, but the pretence to supernatural powers would have saved men
full of the religious rites of their Melanesian home, and would have
assured them a hearing. The Wainimala tribes can name six generations
since they settled in their present home, and therefore the introduction
of the _Nanga_ cannot have been less than two centuries ago. During that
time it has overspread one third of the large island."

[Sidenote: The general licence associated with the ritual of the _Nanga_
may be a temporary revival of primitive communism.]

A very remarkable feature in the _Nanga_ ritual consists in the
temporary licence accorded to the sexes and the suspension of
proprietary rites in general. What is the meaning of this curious and to
the civilised mind revolting custom? Here again the most probable,
though merely conjectural, answer is furnished by Mr. Fison. "We cannot
for a moment believe," he says, "that it is a mere licentious outbreak,
without an underlying meaning and purpose. It is part of a religious
rite, and is supposed to be acceptable to the ancestors. But why should
it be acceptable to them unless it were in accordance with their own
practice in the far-away past? There may be another solution of this
difficult problem, but I confess myself unable to find any other which
will cover all the corroborating facts."[696] In other words, Mr. Fison
supposes that in the sexual licence and suspension of the rights of
private property which characterise these festivals we have a
reminiscence of a time when women and property were held in common by
the community, and the motive for temporarily resuscitating these
obsolete customs was a wish to propitiate the ancestral spirits, who
were thought to be gratified by witnessing a revival of that primitive
communism which they themselves had practised in the flesh so long ago.
Truly a religious revival of a remarkable kind!

[Sidenote: Description of the _Nanga_ or sacred enclosure of stones.]

To conclude this part of my subject I wil