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 puberulum, 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. 
