178 A MISSION TO VITI. 
after leaf unfolded, the tubers increased in size and sub- 
stance, how their hearts must have trembled, their cou- 
rage forsaken them! And when at last the foliage began 
to turn yellow, and the taro was ripe, what agonies they 
must have undergone! what torture could have equalled 
theirs ? 
How many dead bodies have been eaten at Namosi, it 
is impossible to guess ;- but as for every corpse brought 
into the town a stone was placed near one of the bures, 
you get some faint idea of the number. I counted no 
less than four hundred around the Great Bure alone, 
and the natives said a lot of these stones—of which 
the larger ones indicated chiefs—had been washed 
away, when, some time ago, the river overflowed its 
banks. 
On some of the Tavola(Zerminalia) trees standing about 
the Great Bure, I noticed certain incisions, and as Mac- 
donald, on ascending the Rewa river, had noticed similar 
ones at the town at Naitasiri, and was told that they 
were “a register of the number of dead bodies (bokolas) 
brought to the spot to be offered up at the bure before 
they were cooked and eaten,” I inquired repeatedly 
after their meaning, and was assured by various persons 
that, at Namosi at least, they were entirely the work of 
children. As the bark of the Tavola-trees is as smooth 
as our beech, I carved my name on the largest of them; 
a much condemned habit of our race, but which, in re- 
mote comers of the earth, I have not always been able 
to resist. 
There are ovens in the public square for baking dead 
bodies, and the pots in which human flesh is boiled or 
