FIJI ISLANDS. 337 



Our interpreter, an Englishman, who had married a Fijian 

 woman, and who knew the people well, told me that old women 

 sometimes clap the hands twice in expressing astonishment. 

 This habit of expression is evidently derived from the clapping 

 of hands in expressing respect to a chief, and is interesting as 

 showing how peculiar means of expression may thus be of 

 entirely artificial origin. The clapping of hands is used as a 

 ceremony of respect to superiors in Japan, as at the funeral of 

 Okubo, the minister lately assassinated in Yedo, at which " all 

 present saluted the deceased with three claps of the hands."* 



The interpreter further said that the mountaineers in express- 

 ing astonishment, shake backward and forwards transversely 

 once or twice, the right hand held hanging back foremost from 

 the half-extended arm ; a similar gesture is stated by Darwin to 

 be used by Northern Australian natives, to express negation. 



A short click made with the tongue and repeated several 

 times, is also used by the mountaineers to express astonishment, 

 and also to express pain, as on striking the foot against a stone, 

 or even by a man when hit by a bullet, louder exclamation 

 being repressed through bravery. The same sound is used by us 

 in pain, but more often to express disappointment, as on saying 

 " what a pity ! " 



The audience at Nakello, when they shouted with laughter, 

 produced a general sound exactly like that proceeding from a 

 European audience. No doubt the sound of laughter is one of 

 the very earliest and oldest of human cries. It is certainly an 

 astonishing sound, and one that it is very difficult to listen to and 

 analyze without prejudice and a remote feeling of sympathy. 

 The best way to study it that I know, is to seize on opportunities 

 when one is being constantly interrupted, say at one's club, in 

 reading a serious book, by shouts of laughter from a party of 

 strangers ; one can then note the curious variety of spasmodic 

 sounds produced, and marvel that men in the midst of rational 

 conversation should be compelled by necessity to break off 

 suddenly their use of language, and find relief and enjoyment in 

 the utterance of perfectly inarticulate and animal howls, like 

 those of the " Long-armed Gibbon." 



* The Japan Mail, June 6, 1878, p. 306. 



