629 : PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
The mountaineers were unceasingly at war with each other, 
but since 1868 seemed to unite more to fight the people of the 
coast. For some years they terrorized Navitilevu. <A stratagem 
in which they were peculiarly effective, particularly when dealing 
with expeditions from the seaboard and other islands, was the 
““Undu.” Decoying their foes into a ravine, they allowed them 
to get well in, where they had ambuscades planted on either side ; 
a considerable part of the force then closed in the rear, and an 
attack was made in the front, followed up by simultaneous 
charges on each flank. The invading party, disconcerted, turned 
and ran, when they were thrown into utter panic by finding their 
retreat blocked. A massacre easily ensued. Several of these 
mountain man-traps have been shown me where great slaughter 
was done, and the coast tribes, I found, greatly feared the high- 
Jand “ Undu,” as a mode of tactics peculiar to the interior tribes. 
Even on more level country these people could resort to peculiar 
decoy methods to lure opponents into an ambush. Apart from 
the use of arms, the mountaineers prepared themselves for battle 
by rites of zrvaudnerability, thus striking terror into their enemies, 
while sustaining their own courage with the thought. For days 
before a fight the warriors would steadily prepare themselves by 
songs and chants in honour of ‘Na kalouvatu” (Stone God), 
which was their war-god, the Deity being held to enter into a 
selected stone taken from the larger water-worn pebbles of a 
running stream. For hours night after night would their chants 
be heard, accompanied by the monotonous booming of large 
bamboos struck upon the ground, and such sounds would strike 
mysterious fears into the coast people who had come to attack 
them. Certain pleasures and foods were rigorously abstained 
from, and the rubbing of the body with prescribed leaves was a 
later part of the performance. At length one man would exclaim 
that the demon had entered into him, and that he was now in- 
vulnerable ; no weapon formed against him should prosper, the 
battle-axe would bound back from his toughened skin, the musket 
bullet would flatten against his body, and the spear-point glance 
harmlessly aside. 
In the last war of the mountaineers they put the Vodevode 
(“leaping aside” of lethal weapons) to a practical test. At 
Vatuvoko, a hill town near the mouth of the Segatoka River, the 
men were in the Bure (men’s house) chanting the Vodevode song 
to the weird bamboo accompaniment when a warrior deemed 
himself possessed by the Aadouvatu. He bent low and sprang 
through the doorway, then moved about making sharp, nervous 
exclamations. The Vuniduvu (priest of the ceremonies) followed 
from the Bure, and fired a gun at him to prove how impervious 
he was to ball. This much-desired fact was demonstrated by the 
bullet striking him fair in the chest, and— passing right through 
him. He fell prone in the arena but the ball sped through the 
. 
ee ee ee 
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