FIJL-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 149 
kin Seeing them for the first time one feels that he is looking at 
an orange through a magnifying glass. 
In this village we were treated with great courtesy, given the 
exclusive use of some of the houses, but underneath all the formal- 
ity we were very plainly objects of curiosity to the natives of the 
village. On the evening of our arrival there was in our honor a 
prolonged singing festival by the men of the village, their heavy 
bass voices uniting in a monotonous chant with a peculiar rhythm 
and most unexpected pauses, with here and there an exclamation 
or a groan-like ending which sounded most weird as it was borne 
to us across the tropic night. One felt that he was in the presence 
of the long past ages and could well imagine the feelings of cap- 
tives in other days, awaiting the dawn which would bring the 
human sacrifice and the cannibal feast. While we were spared the 
boiling pot our sufferings were none the less acute for the singing 
continued that night without interruption until daylight, and was 
resumed the following evening at night-fall. At midnight of the 
second night, the chorus still proceeding with undiminished vigor, 
Mr. Fell sent an envoy to thank the singers, assuring them of our 
appreciation, and begging them not to put themselves to further 
inconveniences in our behalf. So we got some sleep that night. 
This boat trip up the Navua with excursions out the following 
day along some of the smaller tributaries gave us a most favorable 
opportunity for close contact with a tropical rain forest. The 
trees were not as large as I had expected to find and were fre- 
quently spaced rather widely apart, but the whole formation was 
one vast tangle of vines and creepers, trees, shrubs, and epiphytes, 
—the whole constituting an almost impenetrable jungle through 
which we made no effort to pass, since travel by river permitted 
ready contact with its margins. Only when accompanied by na- 
tives armed with cutting knives for opening the way could a white 
man hope to make much progress through such a.jungle. 
A strenuous overland trip of ten or fifteen miles took us into 
the beautiful valley of the Waidina river. In its upper stretches 
the stream flows through a double fault valley bordered right and 
left by nearly vertical mountain walls, 1000 to 1500 feet in height, 
dissected in part into separate elevations. While rounded in many 
places the walls are here and there so nearly vertical as to be al- 
most bare of larger vegetation, but the slightest irregularity gives 
