fires do not appear to be separated. As a result, there is real family
life, owing in part to the fact that meals are eaten in common. The
gamal is replaced by a cooking-house, which is open to the women;
generally it is nothing but a great gabled roof, reaching to the
ground on one side and open on the others. Here the families live
during the day, and the young men and guests sleep at night, while
the married couples sleep in their huts, which are grouped around
the cooking-house.

The position of the women, so much better here than elsewhere, is
not without effect on their behaviour. They are independent and
self-possessed, and do not run away from a stranger nor hide in
dark corners when a white man wants to speak to them. Because of
their intelligence they are liked on plantations as house-servants,
and so many of them have gone away for this purpose that Aoba has
been considerably depopulated in consequence; few of these women ever
return, and those who do are usually sick. Some Aoba women have made
very good wives for white men.

The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers
on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the
mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally
carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes. The
women are very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a
refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut
lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression;
and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk,
give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The men, too,
are good to look at. Considering the intelligence and thriftiness of
the race, it is doubly regrettable that alcoholism, recruiting and
consumption have had such evil effects of recent years.

I roamed about in the neighbourhood of Nabutriki and attended several
festivals; they are much the same as elsewhere, except that the
pigs are not killed by braining, but by trampling on their stomachs,
which apparently causes rupture of the heart and speedy death.

As I mentioned elsewhere, a man's rise in caste is marked on every
occasion by the receipt of new fire, rubbed on a special stick
ornamented with flowers. Fire is lighted here, as in all Melanesia,
by "ploughing," a small stick being rubbed lengthwise in a larger
one. If the wood is not damp, it will burn in less than two minutes: