covered over with a thin piece of cocoa-nut shell, in other instances the incised scalp was simply replaced. The "cure" was death to some, but most of the cases recovered. To such an extent was this remedy for headache carried on, that the sharp-pointed clubs, in the bundle above, were specially made for the purpose of striking that weak part on the crown of the head, and causing instant death.

22. NEW CALEDONIA.

S. S. E. side of the island.

The following notes I obtained, in 1845, from two native teachers who had lived on the island for about three years, the one a Samoan and the other a Rarotongan. Here again we were reminded of the Fijians, but only in colour and figure, the dialects are widely different. The people knew of no native name embracing the entire island, but all was divided into separate districts and villages, with distinct names for each. War there was the rule, peace the exception.

At the birth of a child the doorway was the place set apart for the occasion, and the friends assembled in a circle outside. If a girl she was betrothed forthwith to some one present, and, when seven or eight years of age, went to his house, and was taken special care of by the family until she was older. If it was a boy, there were great shouts and rejoicings.

A

priest cut the umbilicus on a particular stone from Lifu, that the youth might be stone-hearted in battle. The priest, too, at the moment of the operation, had a vessel of water before him, dyed black as ink, that the boy, when he grew up, might be courageous to go anywhere to battle on a pitch-dark night, and thus, from his very birth, the little fellow was consecrated to war.

Girls worked in plantations. Boys learned to fight. Boys fought with boys. The people generally were trained to a keen sense of hearing. They listened on the ground, and could discern the tread of a party coming to battle, when they were yet a long way off. Circumcision was practised "when the youth's whiskers reached the hair of his head." No whiskers was considered a sign of wickedness, a curse from the gods, and the mark of an outcast. Chiefs had ten, twenty, and thirty wives. The more wives the better plantations, and the more food. Common men had one or two. No laws of consanguinity were observed in their marriages, the nearest relatives united. If a wife misbehaved, the chief did not divorce her, but made her work all the harder.

Taro, yams, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, fish, pigeons, bats, rats, and human flesh were the prevailing articles of food. No pigs; few bread-fruits. They cooked in earthenware pots manufactured by the women. No intoxicating kava, but they drank enormous quantities of salt water. They worked in the morning

till eleven A.M.

Then rested; drunk cup after cup of salt water until it operated; cooked, and had their daily meal. Only one meal a day.

They had no clothing. Married women only wore a short fringe. Disease-makers burned rubbish as at Tana (see p. 320). They thought white men were the spirits of the dead, and brought sickness; and gave this as the reason why they wished to kill white men. If a man among themselves was suspected of witchcraft, and supposed to have caused the death of several persons, he was formally condemned. A great festival was held. He was dressed up with a garland of red flowers, arms and legs covered with flowers and shells, and his face and body painted black. He then came dashing forward, rushed through among them, jumped over the rocks into the sea, and was seen no more.

At death they dressed the body with a belt and shell armlets. Raised and cut off the finger and toe nails whole to preserve as relics. They spread the grave with a mat, and buried all the body but the head. After ten days the friends twisted off the head, extracted the teeth as further relics, and preserved the skull also. In cases of sickness, and other calamities they presented offerings of food to the skulls of the departed. The bodies of the common people as well as those of the chiefs were treated thus. The teeth of old women were taken to the yam plantation as a charm for a good crop, and their

skulls were also erected there on poles for the same purpose. They set up spears at the head of a chief when they buried him, fastened a spear-thrower on to his forefinger, and laid a club on the top of his grave. Their villages were not permanent. They migrated within certain bounds, as they planted. There were fifty or sixty round houses in some villages. They had only stone edge-tools formerly. They felled their trees by a slow fire close to the ground; took four days to it. Burned off the branches also,

and, if for a canoe or house-post, the length of log required. If for a canoe, they cut a hole in the surface of the log, kindled a small fire, and burned down and along, carefully drop, drop, dropping water all around, to confine the fire to a given spot; and in this way they hollowed out their logs for the largest

canoes.

The chiefs had absolute power of life and death. Priests did not interfere in political affairs. At death the chief nominated his successor, if possible, in a son or a brother. The law of private revenge allowed the murder of the thief and the adulterer. In a neighbouring district the guilty parties of adultery were tried, dressed up, fed before the multitude, and then publicly strangled. A man of the friends of the woman took one end of the cord, and a man of the friends of the man took the other.

The population was principally along the coast. The people thought they were more numerous now

than formerly. They accounted for it by there being less war now than formerly. Still, it was war, war, war, incessant war! They said that formerly they did not stop a fight until one party was killed right out to the verge of extinction, but that now they are more merciful. They fought with clubs, spears, and slings. They picked out the good bodies of the slain for the oven, and threw the bad away; they tied up a captive to a tree, dug a hole, and kindled a hot stone oven for his body before his very eyes. The women went to battle. They kept in the rear, and attended to the commissariat! Whenever they saw one of the enemy fall it was their business to rush forward, pull the body behind, and dress it for the oven. The hands were the choice bits, sacred to the priests. The priests went to battle, but sat in the distance, fasting and praying for victory. They fasted for days if they got no hands. If the body of a chief was cooked, every one must partake, down to the little child, and before a gourmandiser proceeded to polish the bones, he called out, "Have all tasted?" If it was the body of a woman they ate only the arms and legs. On Maré they devoured all. Sometimes they cooked in joints, and sometimes the whole body was doubled up in a sitting posture, with the knees to the chin, put into the oven, and served up so, as they squatted around for their meal. Their appetite for human flesh was never satisfied. "Do you mean to say that you will forbid us the fish of the sea?