THE VELI AND THEIR DOINGS. 205 



which they term emphatically their cocoa-nut and their 

 plantain ; and men imprudent enough to cut down these 

 plants, have received a sound beating from the enraged 

 Veli. They drink kava made, not of the cultivated 

 Macropiper methysticum, but of a pepper growing wild 

 in the woods, and vernacularly termed Yaqoyaqona 

 (Macropiper pubendum, Benth.). The Fijians have no 

 long stories about them, as they have about their gods. 

 All the accounts of the Veli relate to isolated facts, 

 to their abode, their having been seen, heard to sing, 

 caught in a theft, and found to beat the destroyers of 

 their peculiar trees ; but they are so numerous that it is 

 no wonder the Fijians should consider the evidence suffi- 

 cient to establish their real existence. 



The women about this place, as well as about Nagadi, 

 were tatooed around the whole mouth, not merely 

 around the corners, as is customary on the coast. The 

 reader may smile at this observation, but after living 

 awhile amongst natives in an almost absolute state 

 of nudity, the eye readily detects these minute differ- 

 ences, and the mind begins to comprehend why, on pay- 

 ing compliments, these people dwell with such em- 

 phasis on this or that part of the body, when a Euro- 

 pean, under similar circumstances, would record his ad- 

 miration for a becoming toilet, whole or in part. In 

 narrating travels in barbarous countries, the disadvan- 

 tage of the people not wearing clothes is acutely felt. 

 In order to convey, at least, some notion of what the 

 personages encountered were like, one is compelled to 

 notice their arms, legs, and other parts of their body, 

 a fact for which one is not always inclined. 



