332 FEEJEE GROUP. 
A place about two hundred feet in length is cleared for this purpose, 
and it excites great interest, often producing quarrels attended with 
bloodshed, and sometimes wars. 
The older boys are trained to the use of the spear, using in the 
exercise long reeds and sticks, whose ends are rolled up in tapa, in 
order to prevent accident. 
The Feejee mode of sending messages (lotu) is as follows: a chief, 
when he wishes to send one, gives the messenger as many reeds as 
the message is to contain separate subjects. ‘These reeds are of dif- 
ferent lengths, in order to distinguish them from each other. When 
the messenger arrives at his destination, he delivers the reeds succes- 
sively, and with each of them repeats the purport of the part of the 
message of which it is the memorial. Such messages are carried 
and delivered with great accuracy; and the messengers, when ques- 
tioned on their return, repeat them with great precision. 
A reed is also used as the pledge on closing an agreement, and the 
delivery of it makes it binding. If a chief presents a reed, or sticks 
one in the ground, it is considered as binding him to the performance 
of his promise. 
The women are kept in great subjection, and this is not accom- 
plished without severity. Their lords and masters frequently tie them 
up and flog them, and even the whites punish their native wives, which 
they say they are compelled to do, as without the discipline to which 
they are accustomed, they could not be managed. 
The women are besides never permitted to enter the mbure, nor, as 
we have seen, to eat human flesh, at least in public. They keep the 
house clean, take care of the children, weed the yam and taro beds, 
and carry the roots home after the men have dug them up. Like 
other property, wives may be sold at pleasure, and the usual price is 
a musket. Those who purchase them may do with them as they 
please, even to knocking them on the head. 
The girls of the lower classes of a town or koro, are entirely at the 
disposal of the chief, who may sell or bargain them away as he pleases. 
Next to war, agriculture is the most general occupation of this 
people. To this they pay great attention, and have a great number 
of esculent fruits and roots which they cultivate, in addition to many 
spontaneous products of the soil. 
Of the bread-fruit tree they have nine different kinds, distinguished 
by fruits of different sizes and shapes, and the figure of their leaves. 
The variety called umbudu, is the largest, sweetest, and most agree- 
able to the taste; those known by the names of botta-bot and bucudo, 
are also excellent. 
