168 Letter X71, 
there is this difference, that there girls are employed in the masti- 
cation of the plant; while here they not only employ boys, but 
they do not allow a woman to come near—no, not even in sight 
of the kava-house while they are drinking—evidently consider- 
ing the presence of women a profanation of the whole cere- 
mony. 
After witnessing the process of manufacture, I did not feel at 
all inclined to try the result, even although in doing so I would 
only have been following the example of recent travellers, who 
would be highly indignant, I dare say, if I were to accuse them 
of doing anything which may be truly called disgusting. Being 
curious, however, to know how it tasted, I got some of the 
plant and chewed it for myself, and, after doing so once, was 
never tempted to repeat the experiment. It has a pungent and 
very disagreeable taste, and it took me about an hour’s hard 
work, with cocoanuts and bananas, to get the unpleasant savour 
out of my mouth. 
The religion of the Tanese seems to consist merely in a host 
of superstitious fears. Their gods are all evil, and their re- 
ligion consists mainly in endeavours to propitiate them. They 
have gods of the sea and of the land, geological and botanical 
gods ; but the most dreaded beings of all, perhaps, are their 
human gods, viz., the disease-makers. Our medical men devote 
themselves to the cure of suffering humanity, but they have prac- 
titioners who imagine that they can “breed disease as well, and 
both, curiously, are paid with equal readiness by their pa- 
tients—the one set that they may cure, and the other that they 
may not kill. 
These disease-makers go prowling about, picking up xahak, 
z.¢., the refuse of what anyone has been eating; and if the 
disease-maker takes this home and burns it, it is firmly believed 
that the person whose zahak it is will immediately fall ill, re- 
maining so as long as the burning continues, and dying if the 
whole be consumed. 
