714 NATIVE FANCIES. 



a patch of the long grass called kune or kunai, which is used for thatching houses, she 

 heard something rustle in the grass, but in searching for a " nialira " was unable to find 

 one. Whereupon with true native logic she made a long detour and finally found her 

 victim hiding away with a couple of cocoa-nuts, as he knew his "nimuna" was passing 

 through the neighbourhood and he could not let her see him with food in his hands. 

 In consequence of the woman's assertions her husband demanded ten fathoms of diwara 

 from the alleged offender although there was no proof whatever against him. If the 

 woman heard anything at all in the grass it was most likely a lizard and she concocted 

 her story on the strength of it. The last I heard of the affair was that the parties 

 had submitted the matter to Mrs Parkinson's arbitration. 



In the course of my relations with my assistants I became acquainted with several 

 of the minor traits of the native character. 



Sometimes they fall ill and ascribe their malady to the influence of "puta." They 

 are very careful to conceal or destroy all waste-products of their food, an admirable 

 custom, but if they fail to do so by inadvertence, an enemy can collect the refuse and 

 work mischief with it by sorcery. This branch of sorcery is called " puta " and one of 

 my men, To-warabur, fell a victim to it, according to his own account. 



When they see a log of wood or a bamboo-stem, floating vertically in the water 

 and bobbing up and down, as often happens, they are frightened and filled with 

 veneration for it, calling it " a tuk." On one occasion we passed such a drifting 

 bamboo rod upon the top of which there were some accidental marks so disposed as 

 to convey a grotesque resemblance to the human face. One of my boys, To-iraran, fled 

 behind the mast in terror of this ill-omened taberan or demon. I then learnt that 

 a former assistant of mine, a " koloata " or man of the bush, called To-bokat, who had 

 fallen sick and returned to his village, had traced his affliction to the retribution due 

 to him for having innocently hurled some stones at one of these vagrant logs. 



Once I thought I had purchased the fidelity of two bearded men of Davaun but 

 they disappeared during the night. I went to Davaun the next day to demand an 

 explanation and was told that To-palavur's mother was sick and had said " very good 

 they no go belong whity man." This affords an illustration of the working of the native 

 idea of the " kubak," according to which the friends and relatives of a sick person who 

 have slept within the same house or enclosure as the patient cannot spend a night 

 elsewhere without causing a turn for the worse. 



In the middle of July I left Karavia to take up my quarters in a recently vacated 

 trader's house at Baravon on the other side of the bay, where there is good anchorage 

 during the south-east season. I stayed here for some time, the chief objection to the 

 place being that it was overrun by rats, which manifested the utmost impudence and 

 indifference to the presence of a white man in their midst. 



In August I paid a visit to the Credner Islands, called locally the Pigeon Islands, 

 of which Nanuk is the smaller and Palakuvur the larger. These uninhabited islands are 

 purely coral-formations, covered with vegetation, surrounded by reefs with a passage 

 between the islands and a beach of white calcareous sand. On a subsequent occasion 

 I procured here numbers of the interesting Enteropneust, Ptychodera ruficollis, but this 

 time I accidentally incapacitated myself for serious work by biting into an uncooked 



