PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 625 
elaborately-plaited ropes of cocoanut-fibre, and were the gods of 
the place. According to the chief, one was a god and the other 
a goddess ; he had known them to engage in a sharp altercation, 
and, on the eve of an event of great tribal importance, the shells 
had grown strangely restless, climbed the upright post at one end 
of the interior of the temple, and made their way along the 
ridge-pole. The god and goddess were deities of war, and when 
the Nuya Malu warriors were about to attack, these divine shells 
were blown, and the noise reverberated through the hills and 
struck terror into the souls of those who were awaiting the 
onset. The tribe having then reeently professed Christianity, I 
was able to purchase these curiosities, and took them with me 
down the Waidina. My lads amused themselves with sounding 
the gods when we came near to a village, and the people turned 
out in excitement to look at these dread powers, for the report of 
our bearing the shells preceded us. It was like the Egyptians 
running along the banks of the Nile to view their old Pharaohs 
floated down in charge of the archeologists who had exhumed the 
mumimy-cases. 
The hill men have their amusements, principal among which 
are war-dances, in which they decidedly excel. The dance with 
war fans is a wild proceeding, carried on with great vigour, and 
in curious evolutions. The spear dance is exceedingly graceful, 
though at times verging on the alarming; but the club dance 
surpasses anything of the kind done by natives from anywhere 
else in Fiji. For agility and rapidity of spring, for wild, terrific 
bounds (to say nothing of ear-piercing shouts and yells), for 
vigour of execution, for grace and power of movement, a club 
dance by the Kai Namosi could scarcely be equalled. 
In their manners the tribes differ much. Those living in the 
wooded half of Na Vitilevu possess an aristocracy, show very great 
respect to chiefs, and the latter are severely exacting in matters 
of etiquette. The people, on the other hand, living on the 
Sigatoka River and the grass country of Navosa are more of a 
democracy, pay less attention to such chiefs as they have, and 
are uncouth in their manner altogether. They have fewer words 
and acts denoting respect, nor have the chiefs anything like the 
same influence. All alike were polygamists, and gave their 
wives a hard time of it by making them beasts of burden, on 
Petruchio’s maxim, that “women are made to bear.” I have 
seen a procession of women going in single file through the woods, 
bent double under heavy loads, while the lord and husband of 
the lot marched with stately masculine dignity behind, carrying 
a spear. A chief explained to me that every additional wife 
meant an increased food supply, as there was one more tiller of 
the soil added to the establishment. As a result of this condition 
of things the women rapidly look old, and are then very ugly, 
the old hags being perfectly hideous. Even the younger women 
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