festivals for the
entertainment of the public were called _Hokis_ or _Kaioas_: they are
described as a sort of wandering troubadours or minstrels, who went from
tribe to tribe, seeking their fortune. They took great care of their
persons, which they artificially whitened. At once poets, musicians, and
dancers, they nevertheless did not enjoy the public esteem; on the
contrary, their effeminate habits incurred the contempt of a people who
had small taste for the fine arts.[53] Thus these wandering minstrels
and mountebanks would seem to have corresponded to the Areois of the
Society Islands.[54] The dances were accompanied by the beating of drums
and the songs of a chorus, it might be of a hundred and fifty singers,
who sat on the upper platform along with the chiefs and warriors.
Sometimes in the intervals between the dances a choir of women, seated
on an adjoining and elevated platform, would chant in dull monotonous
tones, clapping their hands loudly in unison with their song. The
subjects of the songs were various and were often furnished by some
passing event, such as the arrival of a ship or any less novel incident.
Not unfrequently, like ballads in our own country, the songs caught the
popular fancy and became fashionable, being sung in private by all
classes of society. So passionately addicted were the Marquesans to
these entertainments that they undertook the longest and most fatiguing
journeys from all parts of the island in order to be present at them,
carrying their food and suffering great hardships by the way; they even
came in their crazy canoes, at the hazard of their lives, from other
islands, and accepted the risk of being knocked on the head at one of
the brawls with which such gatherings usually ended.[55]

[53] Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ p. 231.
Compare C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._ i. 237, who calls the
performers _Kaioi_.

[54] See above, pp. 259 _sqq._

[55] C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._ i. 234, 236, 237.

Closely connected with the festivals were the banqueting-halls, as they
may be called. These were houses, or rather sheds, thatched with leaves
and open in front, where the lower end of the sloping roof was supported
on short wooden pillars, of which the upper parts were rudely carved in
the likeness of the god Tiki, thus forming a sort of Caryatids. These
sheds varied in length from thirty to sixty and even two hundred feet in
length. They stood on quadrangula