V.] THE OCEANIC NEGROES: PAPUASIANS. 139 



stomach and from time to time dip its fevered face into the 

 water. In a day or two it had quite recovered 1 ." 



In Guadalcanar Mr Woodford discovered a wide-spread system 

 of what for lack of a better term he calls "castes," 

 but which seems to be a kind of freemasonry with m^nry. 

 several "lodges" in that and some of the adjacent 

 islands. The Kema, Ravu, or Kua, as they are variously called 

 by the natives in a general way, have each its proper name, such 

 as Gambata, the largest and most powerful, in Guadalcanar ; 

 Kiki in Gela ; Lakoli, Kakau and elsewhere. Tribes of different 

 speech may be members of the same lodge, and it is owing to 

 the protection afforded by them that the associates are able to 

 pass freely from village to village even when war is raging between 

 them. Mr S. H. Ray refers somewhere to the Supwe, a similar 

 institution widely diffused throughout the New Hebrides and the 

 Banks group, a kind of social club, which gives a certain prestige 

 or influence to its members, and has a gamal ("lodge") in every 

 village, accessible only to the associates. It is interesting to note 

 that the Motu people of British New Guinea, originally from 

 Melanesia 2 , call the large communal house in the village dubu, 

 probably the same word as supwe, d and s being interchangeable, 

 as in Motu dala--- Fiji and Rotuma sala, and Sesake mata ki sala. 

 I do not know whether the club exists as an institution in Motu- 

 land, but the name might have been transferred to the separate 

 communal building. 



Such protection is much needed in a region where the main 

 object of their existence " is to take each other's heads. They 

 are like wild beasts always prowling about for prey, but rarely 

 attacking unless they feel that they have their victim in their power 

 without risk to themselves. Theirs is the same motive that animated 

 the native clergyman whom 1 once saw in Fiji take a live rat, de- 

 liberately chop off its four feet with his knife, and then allow it to 

 struggle, maimed, away. The same motive that animates school- 

 boys to torture frogs, that inspires the Englishman's inquiry, ' What 

 shall we kill to-day ? '- -the destructive instinct that, after centuries 

 of civilisation, still lurks in our nature 3 ." 



1 Op. cit. p. 31. 2 Eth. p. 287. 



3 Ib. p. 434- 



