,
_Old Samoa_, pp. 240 _sq._

[30] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 91 _sqq._; G. Brown,
_Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 288-291. Compare Violette,
"Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel de Samoa," _Les Missions
Catholiques_, iii. (1870) pp. 119, 120.

[31] S. Ella, "Samoa," _Report of the Fourth Meeting of
the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science,
held at Hobart, Tasmania, in January 1892_, p. 633.

It is another sign of the intellectual enlightenment of the Samoans that
they rose apparently superior to that system of malignant magic, which
kept their neighbours the Melanesians in lifelong bondage. The
experienced missionary, Dr. George Brown, could not find in Samoa any
trace of the practice of that particular form of the black art with
which he was familiar in New Britain and other Melanesian islands, the
practice of procuring some object which has belonged to an enemy or been
touched by him, and taking it to a sorcerer, that he may perform over it
a ceremony for the purpose of injuring the person from whom the object
has been obtained. The proceeding is one of the commonest forms of
sympathetic magic, but the Samoans appear to have ignored or despised
it.[32] Again, the silence of our authorities on the subject of amulets
and talismans leaves us to infer that the Samoans were equally
indifferent to that branch of magic which seeks to ensure the safety and
prosperity of the individual by attaching a miscellaneous collection of
rubbish to his person, a system of ensurance against evil and misfortune
which has attained a prodigious development among some savages, notably
in Africa,[33] and is very far from being unknown in Europe at the
present day. Again, unlike most savages, the Samoans were close
observers of the stars, not only reckoning the time of night by the
rising of particular stars, but steering by them when they were out of
sight of land.[34]

[32] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 245.
Compare S. Ella, _op. cit._ p. 638.

[33] See, for example, E. W. Smith and A. M. Dale, _The
Ila-speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia_ (London, 1920), i.
252 _sqq._

[34] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 348.

Against these amiable and enlightened traits in the Samoan character
must be set their cruelty in war. If they opened hostilities with a
great deal of formal politeness, they conducted them with great
ferocity. N