NEW CALEDONIA. 343 



to some one present, and leaves home for the house of her 

 future husband when seven or eight years of age ; if a boy 

 there are great shouts and rejoicings, and the priest cuts 

 the navel-string on a particular stone, tliat the new-born 

 may be .sto?ie;-hearted in battle. Circumcision is practised 

 when the boy has become c]uite adolescent. Common 

 people have one or two wives ; chiefs have from ten to 

 thirty. They intermarry without troubling themselves 

 about consanguinity, even between the nearest relatives. 

 They cut off the finger and toe-nails of the dead to preserve 

 as relics, and bury all the body but the head, the skidl of 

 which they keep for different purposes. They migrate from 

 place to place, never long occupying the same piece of 

 ground for cultivation ; hence there are no permanent 

 villages. As they had only stone axes until recently, they 

 felled their trees by means of a slow fire close to the 

 gi-ound. The chiefs have absolute power of hfe and death. 

 The law of private revenge allows the slaying of the thief 

 and the adulterer. They live principally along the coast. 

 They fight with clubs, spears, and slings. Women go to 

 battle, keeping in the rear, and Avhen they see an enemy 

 fall it is their business to rush forward, to pull the body 

 behind, and to prepare it for the oven. The priests go to 

 battle too, but sit in the distance, fasting and praying for 

 victory. Their appetite for human flesh is never satisfied. 

 They have no pigs, and but few bread-fruit trees. Taro, 

 yams, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, fish, pigeons, bats, rats, and 

 human flesh are the prevailing articles of food. They cook 



