242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he is bade wait while the rest enter. At last comes one to the 

 gate who bids him enter, having first made him undertake, under 

 penalty of death, not to divulge to women, to children, or to the 

 uninitiated, anything of that which he may see or hear within. 

 Entering on this stipulation, he finds the yard crowded with the 

 warriors of his town, who welcome him to their ranks, call him by 

 his new name, and congratulate him on passing all the tests so 

 well. When this social function is over, he is led onward to the 

 door of the house, there to receive his martial equipment. As he 

 enters the door he notices the Duk-duk extinguisher standing in 

 a farther corner, and squatting before it some half-dozen of the 

 most considerable men of his tribe, including the chief. The bow 

 and arrows, the spear, the heavy club, and the short-helved stone 

 axe are then given him by the chief, with a few words of counsel, 

 bidding him use them as a warrior should, and advising him that, 

 if he use them well, he may in time be chosen to sit within the 

 house, while the others are privileged only to use the yard. Then 

 another of the seated figures he who has that day worn the 

 great Duk-duk mask arises and chants the mysteries, to which, 

 at proper intervals, the initiated standing near the door respond 

 by an answering chant, which has no meaning that they know ; 

 the words are in an unknown tongue, and have been handed down 

 by tradition from they know not whom. From the sound of 

 some of the words even in their mutilated condition, and from the 

 frequent use of the remarkably significant word Saba, it is pos- 

 sible that this refrain preserves a trace of an ancient Polynesian 

 migration over these islands, just as the Derry-down chorus in 

 English is a Druidical remnant. 



For the rest, the mysteries, which have very little interest for 

 the white man, are merely a rationalistic rehearsal of a creed of 

 unbelief. Everything which by the uninitiated is held as of 

 particular obligation, is here chanted as something that the ini- 

 tiated must rigidly impress upon the profane, yet which for them- 

 selves they may disregard. The tabu is to have no force for them 

 except the great tabu, with a flock of hair on it, and that they 

 must not break through. All others they may transgress, if only 

 they do it slyly, and so as not to raise public scandal among the 

 women and the others who are bound by their provisions. They 

 must teach the uninitiated that there are malign spirits abroad 

 by night, but they themselves need not believe anything so 

 stupid. In a word, they form an association for the purpose of 

 playing upon the innocence and credulity of their fellows, and 

 right bravely do they keep up the imposture. One only belief do 

 they profess, and that is in the spirit of the volcano-fires, and even 

 that is discarded by the inner degree of the Duk-duk, those half- 

 dozen men who sit within the mystic house and dupe the initiates 



