130 SISSANO. 
now making Fiji should be the seat of the interaction of the kava people 
with the dual people, more recent Polynesian influence being, of course, 
also present. On this assumption we should except to find that Fiji has 
closer affinities in culture with the matrilineal region than with other regions 
of the Solomons, and there can be little doubt that this is the case. The 
resemblance is particularly striking in their systems of relationship. No 
systems recorded in this book show a closer resemblance than those of the 
coastal people of Fiji and of the matrilineal region of the Solomons. ‘There 
is not merely a resemblance in structure dependent on the fact that both are 
based on the cross-cousin marriage, but many of the terms are the same in 
the two places, the identity extending even to the possessive pronouns. 
Further, the close resemblance which thus exists between the terms of rela- 
tionship of the two places is only one instance of general linguistic similarity, 
for F. W. Schmidt has especially noted (Mitt. Anthrop. Ges. Wien, 1899, 
XXIX, 251) the close resemblance between the languages of Florida, Ysabel, 
and Guadalcanar and those of Fiji. 
Another feature which brings Fiji into relation with the matrilineal region 
of the Solomons, and both places into relation with the Banks and New 
Hebrides, is the presence of secret societies. If these societies are institu- 
tions founded by the kava people it is a striking fact in favor of the pre- 
dominance of this people in the matrilineal region of the Solomons that it 
should be in this region only that secret societies are known to have existed. 
I now return to the substances which form the special subject of this 
chapter. I have spoken of the culture of the matrilineal region of the Solo- 
mons as having been relatively little influenced by the betel people. Though 
there is reason to believe that their influence was slight compared with that 
exerted on other regions of the group, it is evident that it was by no means 
small absolutely, and one of the facts to be explained is the disappearance 
of kava. 
So far as we know at present this disappearance is complete. It may be 
noted that kava is used in such a way in Vanikolo and Tikopia that it might 
easily be overlooked; as a matter of fact its use in Vanikolo has been com- 
pletely overlooked until now, and has been recorded in this book for the first 
time. It is therefore possible that kava may yet be found in the Solomons, 
perhaps in the ritual of the bush people, of which we are at present completely 
ignorant. In southern Melanesia kava is closely connected with the secret 
organizations and with the cult of ghosts; we should therefore expect to 
have found its use connected with the Matambala of Florida, and it is possible 
that kava disappeared with the extinction of these societies. 
In any case there is so much which suggests the presence of the kava people 
in the matrilineal region of the Solomons that it is legitimate to assume that 
kava was once used in those islands; if so, its disappearance would have 
been merely the result of a further progress of the changes which have made 
it so inconspicuous in Vanikolo that it has hitherto escaped attention. It 
remains to inquire whether there are any conditions which will explain how 
a practice introduced from without should succeed in displacing another, to 
which we must suppose the people to have been attached by long custom. 
It is not, I think, difficult to see how kava, in so far as it is used as a daily 
stimulant, may have been displaced by betel mixture. Kava is a substance 
which can only be used after prolonged preparation; even in those parts of 
Melanesia where it is used the supply is generally far from plentiful. Fur- 
ther, in the Banks Islands its use is properly limited, not merely to men, but 
to the older men and chiefs, and it is probable that this limitation would 
also have been present in the Solomons. 
