chap. xii. CHARMS AGAINST UNPLEASANT DREAMS. 
311 
with the skin on, was brought as my share. It is astonishing 
what excitement the killing of a bullock produces. The 
men are as busy as bees, and, on each of these joyful oc¬ 
casions, I had reason to expect that nothing but cooking 
would be done for the rest of the day. While resting here, 
one of the chiefs cautioned me against walking so much, es¬ 
pecially in the woods, as the fatigue of walking, added to the 
damp of the forest, would be very likely to produce fever. 
When the bearers gathered around my door on the follow¬ 
ing morning, I noticed that a number of them had spots of 
white clay, like paint, upon the cheek or forehead, and under 
the ear, and one or two had a white circle round the eye. I 
had noticed the same once or twice before upon the face of 
one of the chiefs, as well as others of our party; and, on in¬ 
quiring the cause, I was told that the mark round the eye 
was a medicinal application, but that the others were put on 
as a sort of charm, to avert the evil apprehended after the 
unpleasant dreams of the past night. I could not help 
thinking that the quantity of beef they had eaten, after the 
slaughtering of the ox on the previous day, had probably more 
to do with their dreams than either witchcraft or evil spirits. 
On leaving the village, we ascended and kept chiefly along 
the lateral hills which extend from the sides of the high 
mountain ranges, running north and south along this part 
of the island. 
Near one of the villages, we passed the newly-made grave 
of a Hova chief. It consisted of a space thirty feet square, 
enclosed by stone walls four or five feet high. The inside 
was filled with earth to the level of the top of the walls, and 
had a smaller stone structure standing in the centre. The 
grave stood upon the summit of a circular hill overlooking 
the village, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of wooded 
mountains. There was something peculiarly affecting to me 
in the solitude and loveliness of the spot which the chief, 
