ceremony. They struggled for a moment, the dogs came and licked
the blood, and then each guest took away his portion, to have a
private feast at home. The whole performance made a desperately
business-like impression, and everything was done most prosaically;
as for me, having no better dinner than usual to look forward to,
I quite missed the slightly excited holiday feeling that ought to go
with a great feast. Formerly, the braining of the pigs was done with
skilfully carved clubs, instead of mere sticks, and this alone must
have given the action something of solemnity; but these clubs have
long since been sold to collectors and never replaced.

In spite of their frequent intercourse with whites, the people of Vao
are still confirmed cannibals, only they have not many opportunities
for gratifying their taste in this direction. Still, not many years
ago, they had killed and eaten an enemy, and each individual, even
the little children, had received a small morsel of the body to eat,
either with the idea of destroying the enemy entirely, or as the
greatest insult that could be offered to him.

These same people can be so gay, childlike, kind and obliging,
tactful and generous, that one can hardly believe the accounts
one often hears of sudden outbreaks of brutal savagery, devilish
wickedness, ingratitude and falsehood, until one has experienced them
himself. The flattering and confiding child will turn suddenly and
without apparent reason into a man full of gloom and hatred. All
those repressing influences which lead the dwellers in civilized
lands to some consistency of action are lacking here, and the morals
of the natives run along other lines than ours. Faith and truth are
no virtues, constancy and perseverance do not exist. The same man who
can torture his wife to death from wanton cruelty, holding her limbs
over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over
the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or
a finger-joint of the dead as a valuable relic round his neck; and the
same man who is capable of preparing a murder in cold blood for days,
may, in some propitious evening hour, relate the most charming and
poetic fairy-tales. A priest whom I met knew quite a number of such
stories from a man whom he had digged alive out of the grave, where
his relatives had buried him, thinking him old enough to die. This
is not a rare occurrence; sometimes the old people themselves are
t