coming from the inner country
towards the mouth of the stream.

At first I had only a confused view of bright stuffs--white, blue, and
red--and the shining of metal objects, in the midst of a crowd partly
concealed by the dust they raised on their way. Very much to my surprise
I found that they were advancing along a wide road, paved in a peculiar
manner, for I had never seen anything of this kind among the heathen
tribes of the Pacific. Their dresses, too, though for the most part mere
wraps, as it were, of coloured stuff, thrown round them, pinned with
brooches, and often clinging in a very improper way to the figure, did
not remind me of the costume (what there is of it) of Samoans, Fijians,
or other natives among whom I have been privileged to labour.

But these observations give a more minute impression of what I saw than,
for the moment, I had time to take in. The foremost part of the
procession consisted of boys, many of them almost naked. Their hands
were full of branches, wreathed in a curious manner with strips of white
or coloured wools. They were all singing, and were led by a woman
carrying in her arms a mis-shapen wooden idol, not much unlike those
which are too frequent spectacles all over the Pacific. Behind the boys
I could now distinctly behold a man and woman of the Polynesian type,
naked to the waist, and staggering with bent backs beneath showers of
blows. The people behind them, who were almost as light in colour as
ourselves, were cruelly flogging them with cutting branches of trees.
Round the necks of the unfortunate victims--criminals I presumed--were
hung chains of white and black figs, and in their hands they held certain
herbs, figs, and cheese, for what purpose I was, and remain, unable to
conjecture. Whenever their cries were still for a moment, the woman who
carried the idol turned round, and lifted it in her arms with words which
I was unable to understand, urging on the tormentors to ply their
switches with more severity.

Naturally I was alarmed by the strangeness and ferocity of the natives,
so I concealed myself hastily in some brushwood behind a large tree. Much
to my horror I found that the screams, groans, and singing only drew
nearer and nearer. The procession then passed me so close that I could
see blood on the backs of the victims, and on their faces an awful dread
and apprehension. Finally, the crowd reached the mouth of the river, at
the very place where I had es