328 A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



The village was full of visitors, and everyone was dressed in 

 his best. The Dancing Green in front of the chief's house was 

 cleared, and a white tappa flag was stuck up in the centre. We 

 called on the chief, and found him sitting on his mat in a fine 

 large house, about 40 feet long by 20 broad, 10 feet in height to 

 the slope of the roof, and 25 feet to the ridge pole. The house 

 was built of a wooden frame, the rafters and beams being secured 

 with plaited cocoanut fibre or sennet. The walls are of reed, 

 the roof a thatch of grass. The sleeping place at one end was 

 on slightly raised ground, six inches above the rest of the floor, 

 and was divided off by a curtain of tappa suspended from a cord 

 stretched across. The floor was merely the earth covered with 

 mats. This description will suit any Fijian house except as to 

 dimensions. 



The chief sat on his mat near the middle of the house, whilst 

 four or five servants and a visitor sat at the far end. The chiefs 

 small boy was being polished up by his nurse for the festivities, 

 and another woman was making girdles of jasmine twigs for 

 the chiefs little daughter, holding one end of the garlands 

 between her toes, as she twined the twigs into the sennet with 

 her fingers at the other. 



When the small boy was handed from one nurse to another, 

 each nurse, after handing him, went through the usual ceremony 

 of respect to a chief, sat still a moment and clapped her hands 

 four times reverently, and did the same after handing the boy to 

 his father. The clapping was not done so as to make a noise, 

 the palms of the hands were merely brought together quietly 

 four times. The women looked reverently on the floor whilst 

 doing it, as if saying a prayer. It was not at all done as an act 

 of ostentation — indeed the women's backs might be turned to the 

 company at the time — but appeared much more like a ceremony 

 of private devotion. The posture of the hands whilst clapped 

 together is the same as that of Europeans and Japanese and so 

 many races, during prayer. 



The chief dressed his son's head himself. The head dress- 

 ing consisted in shaving off all the boy's wool, except a vertical 

 ridge which was left intact at the back, and looked some- 

 what like the crest of a Greek helmet, and in smearing the 



