Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before

Mortality, Longevity, Diseases, Etc.

Mortality, longevity, diseases, and the treatment of the sick, will now form the subject of a few observations; and here we begin with—

Infants.—Before the introduction of Christianity probably not less than two-thirds of the Samoan race died in infancy and childhood. This mortality arose principally from carelessness and mismanagement in nursing; evils which still prevail to a great extent. Even now, perhaps, one-half of them die before they reach their second year. The poor little things are often carried about with their bare heads exposed to the scorching rays of a vertical sun. Exposure to the night-damps also, and above all stuffing them with improper food, are evils which often make us wonder that the mortality among them is not greater than it is. The Samoans were always fond of their children, and would have done anything for them when ill; but, with the exception of external applications for skin diseases, they had no proper remedies for the numerous disorders of children. Were their care in preventing disease equal to their anxiety to observe a cure when the child is really ill, there would probably be less sickness among them, and fewer deaths.

Adults.—The universal opinion of the natives is that the mortality is now greater among young and middle-aged people than it was formerly. "It was common," they say, "to see three or four old men in a house, whereas you rarely see more than one now." Among a people destitute of statistics or records of any kind, it is difficult to speak correctly of an earlier date than 1830. Since that time, however, the population has been remarkably stationary. We have not observed any marked disproportion in the deaths of adults of any particular age compared with other parts of the world. A person died in 1847 who was present at the massacre of M. de Langle and others connected with the exploring expedition of La Perouse in 1787, and who was then a youth of about fourteen years of age. Judging from his appearance, we may suppose that there are some in every village who must be sixty, seventy, and even eighty years of age.

They have stories of a giant race, and tell particularly of one called Tafai. He was very tall and strong, but not cruel to any one. He could throw a long cocoa-nut tree at the rocks as if he were but hurling a thin spear. He plucked up by the roots a great Malili tree, eighty feet high, carried it off on his shoulder, branches and all, and could throw it up and catch it again as if he were playing with a small crab. It is said, too, that so great was his weight, if he put his foot on a rock it left a footprint as if the rock had been soft sand.

Diseases.—Pulmonary affections, paralysis, diseases of the spine producing humpback, ophthalmia, skin diseases, scrofulous, and other ulcers, elephantiasis, and a species of leprosy, are among the principal diseases with which they were afflicted. Ophthalmia and various diseases of the eye were very prevalent. There were few cases of total blindness; but many had one of the organs of vision destroyed. Connected with diseases of the eye, pterygium is common; not only single, but double, triple, and even quadruple are occasionally met with. The leprosy of which we speak has greatly abated. The natives say that formerly many had it, and suffered from its ulcerous sores until all the fingers of a hand or the toes of a foot had fallen off. Elephantiasis, producing great enlargement of the legs and arms, has, they think, somewhat abated too; only, they say, it prevails among the young men more now than it did formerly. Insanity is occasionally met with. It was invariably traced in former times to the immediate presence of an evil spirit. If furious, the party was tied hand to hand and foot to foot until a change for the better appeared. Idiots are not common. Consumption they call "Moomoo;" and there were certain native doctors who were supposed to be successful in spearing the disease, or rather the spirit causing it. The doctor when sent for would come in, sit down before the patient, and chant as follows:—

which in English is—

Then he would rise up, flourish about with his spear over the head of the patient, and leave the house. No one dared speak or smile during the ceremony. Influenza is a new disease to the natives. They say that the first attack of it ever known in Samoa was during the Aana war in 1830, just as the missionaries Williams and Barff, with Tahitian teachers, first reached their shores. The natives at once traced the disease to the foreigners and the new religion; the same opinion spread through these seas, and especially among the islands of the New Hebrides. Ever since there have been returns of the disease almost annually. It is generally preceded by unsettled weather, and westerly or southerly winds. Its course is generally from east to west. It lasts for about a month, and passes off as fine weather and steady trade-winds set in. In many cases it is fatal to old people and those who have been previously weakened by pulmonary diseases. There was an attack in May 1837, and another in November 1846, both of which were unusually severe and fatal. They have a tradition of an epidemic, answering the description of cholera, which raged with fearful violence probably about eighty years ago. In 1849 hooping-cough made its appearance, and prevailed for several months, among adults as well as children. A good many of the children died. In 1851 another new disease surprised the natives—viz. the mumps. It was traced to a vessel from California collecting pigs, and soon spread all over the group. Scarcely a native escaped. It answered the usual description of the attack given in medical works, and passed off in ten days or a fortnight. Hitherto they have been exempt from small-pox. Some years ago the missionaries vaccinated all the natives, and continue to do so as often as a supply of vaccine lymph is obtained.

Medicine.—The Samoans in their heathenism seldom had recourse to any internal remedy except an emetic, which they used after having eaten a poisonous fish. Sometimes juices from the bush were tried; at other times the patient drank on at water until it was rejected; and, on some occasions, mud, and even the most unmentionable filth, was mixed up and taken as an emetic draught. Latterly, as their intercourse with Tongans, Fijians, Tahitians, and Sandwich Islanders increased, they made additions to their pharmacopœia of juices from the bush. Each disease had its particular physician. Shampooing and anointing the affected part of the body with scented oil by the native doctors was common; and to this charms were frequently added, consisting of some flowers from the bush done up in a piece of native cloth and put in a conspicuous place in the thatch over the patient.

The advocates of kinnesipathy would be interested in finding, were they to visit the South Seas, that most of their friction, percussion, and other manipulations, were in vogue there ages ago, and are still practised. Now, however, European medicines are eagerly sought after; so much so, that every missionary is obliged to have a dispensary, and to set apart a certain hour every day to give advice and medicine to the sick.

As the Samoans supposed disease to be occasioned by the wrath of some particular deity, their principal desire, in any difficult case, was not for medicine, but to ascertain the cause of the calamity. The friends of the sick went to the high priest of the village. He was sure to assign some cause; and, whatever that was, they were all anxiety to have it removed, as the means of restoration. If he said they were to give up a canoe to the god, it was given up. If a piece of land was asked, it was passed over at once. Or, if he did not wish anything particular from the party, he would probably tell them to assemble the family, "confess, and throw out." In this ceremony each member of the family confessed his crimes and any judgments which, in anger, he had invoked on the family or upon the particular member of it then ill; and, as a proof that he revoked all such imprecations, he took a little water in his mouth, and spurted it out towards the person who was sick.

In surgery, they lanced ulcers with a shell or a shark's tooth, and, in a similar way, bled from the arm. For inflammatory swellings they sometimes tried local bleeding; but shampooing and rubbing with oil were the more common remedies in such cases. Cuts they washed in the sea, and bound up with a leaf. Into wounds in the scalp they blew the smoke of burnt chestnut wood. To take a barbed spear from the arm or leg they cut into the limb from the opposite side and pushed it right through. Amputation they never attempted.

The treatment of the sick was invariably humane, and all that could be expected. They wanted for no kind of food which they might desire, night or day, if it was at all in the power of their friends to procure it. In the event of the disease assuming a dangerous form, messengers were despatched to friends at a distance that they might have an opportunity of being in time to see and say farewell to a departing relative. The greater the rank the greater the stir and muster about the sick of friends from the neighbourhood and from a distance. Every one who went to visit a sick friend supposed to be near death took with him a present of a fine mat, or some other kind of valuable property, as a farewell expression of regard, to aid in paying native doctors or conjurors, and to help also in the cost of pigs, etc., with which to entertain the friends who were assembled. The following story illustrates the ideas and doings of the people at such a time:—

Tuitopetope and Tuioleole were two brother conjurors belonging to Upolu who had been on a visit to Tutuila. On their return they landed at night at Aleipata just as messengers were running from place to place to inform the friends of the dangerous illness of the chief Puepuemai. The two looked into the house, and there they saw a number of gods from the mountain called Fiso sitting in the doorway. They were handing from one to another the soul of the dying chief. It was wrapped up in a leaf, and had been passed by the gods inside the house to those sitting in the doorway. One of them said to Tuitopetope, "You take this," and handed the soul to him. He took it. The god mistook him in the dark for another of their god party. Then all the gods went off, but Tuitopetope remained in the village and kept the soul of the chief.

Next morning some women of the family were sent off with a present of fine mats to fetch a noted priest doctor. Tuitopetope and his brother, who were sitting on the beach as they passed along, asked where they were going with that bundle of property. "To fetch a doctor to Puepuemai," was the reply. "Leave it here," said they, "and take us." "Lads! you are joking," said the women. "No, we are not; we can heal him." The women went back to the house to consult again with the friends assembled around the dying man. All agreed to let the young men come and do what they could.

Tuitopetope and his brother were accordingly sent for. The chief was very ill, his jaw hanging down, and apparently breathing his last. They undid the leaf, let the soul into him again, and immediately he brightened up and lived. It was blazed abroad that Puepuemai was brought to life again by Tuitopetope and his brother, and they gained a wonderful celebrity. It was supposed they knew everything and could do anything; and so they were sent for by chiefs all over the group to heal the sick and find out the guilty in thieving and other criminalities.

Death And Burial.

Whenever the eye was fixed in death the house became a scene of indescribable lamentation and wailing. "Oh, my father, why did you not let me die, and you live here still?" "Oh, my brother, why have you run away and left your only brother to be trampled upon?" "Oh, my child, had I known you were going to die! Of what use is it for me to survive you; would that I had died for you!" These and other doleful cries might have been heard two hundred yards from the house; and they were accompanied by the most frantic expressions of grief, such as rending garments, tearing the hair, thumping the face and eyes, burning the body with small piercing firebrands, beating the head with stones till the blood ran, and this they called an "offering of blood" for the dead.

After an hour or so the more boisterous wailing subsided, and, as in such a climate the corpse must be buried in a few hours, preparations were made without delay. The body was laid out on a mat, oiled with scented oil, and, to modify the cadaverous look, they tinged the oil for the face with a little turmeric. The body was then wound up with several folds of native cloth, the chin propped up with a little bundle of the same material, and the face and head left uncovered, while, for some hours longer, the body was surrounded by weeping relatives. If the person had died of a complaint which carried off some other members of the family, they would probably open the body to "search for the disease." Any inflamed substance they happened to find they took away and burned, thinking that this would prevent any other members of the family being affected with the same disease. This was done when the body was laid in the grave.

While a dead body was in the house no food was eaten under the same roof; the family had their meals outside, or in another house. Those who attended the deceased were most careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by the household god if they violated the rule. Fasting was common at such times, and they who did so ate nothing during the day, but had a meal in the evening. The fifth day was a day of "purification." They bathed the face and hands with hot water, and then they were "clean," and resumed the usual time and mode of eating.

The death of a chief of high rank was attended with great excitement and display; all work was suspended in the settlement; no stranger dared to pass through the place. For days they kept the body unburied, until all the different parties connected with that particular clan assembled from various parts of the islands, and until each party had, in turn, paraded the body, shoulder high, through the village, singing at the same time some mournful dirge. The body, too, was wrapped up in the most valuable fine mat clothing which the deceased possessed.

The burial generally took place the day after death. As many of the friends as could be present in time attended. Every one brought a present, and the day after the funeral these presents were all so distributed again as that every one went away with something in return for what he brought. The body was buried without a coffin, except in the case of chiefs, when a log of wood was hollowed out for the purpose. The body being put into this rude encasement, all was done up again in some other folds of native cloth, and carried on the shoulders of four or five men to the grave. The friends followed, but in no particular order; and at the grave again there was often further wailing and exclamations, such as, "Alas! I looked to you for protection, but you have gone away; why did you die? would that I had died for you!"

The grave was called "the fast resting-place," and in the case of chiefs, "the house thatched with the leaves of the sandal wood," alluding to the custom of planting some tree with pretty foliage near the grave. There was no village burying-ground all preferred laying their dead among the ashes of their ancestors on their own particular ground. They carried the skulls of their dead from a land where they had been residing during war back to the graves of their fathers as soon as possible after peace was proclaimed. The grave was often dug close by the house. They made it about four feet deep, and after spreading it with mats, like a comfortable bed, there they placed the body with the head to the rising of the sun, and the feet to the west. With the body they deposited several things which may have been used during the person's illness, such as his clothing, his drinking-cup, and his bamboo pillow. The sticks used to answer the purpose of a pick-axe in digging the grave were also carefully buried with the body. Not that they thought these things of use to the dead; but it was supposed that if they were left and handled by others further disease and death would be the consequence. Other mats were spread over the body, on these a layer of white sand from the beach, and then they filled up the grave. The spot was marked by a little heap of stones a foot or two high. The grave of a chief was neatly built up in an oblong slanting form, about three feet high at the foot and four at the head. White stones or shells were intermixed with the top layer, and if it had been a noted warrior his grave might be surrounded with spears, or his club laid loosely on the top.

Embalming was known and practised with surprising skill in one particular family of chiefs. Unlike the Egyptian method, as described by Herodotus, it was performed in Samoa exclusively by women. The viscera being removed and buried, they, day after day, anointed the body with a mixture of oil and aromatic juices. To let the fluids escape, they continued to puncture the body all over with fine needles. In about two months the process of desiccation was completed. The hair, which had been cut and laid aside at the commencement of the operation, was now glued carefully on to the scalp by a resin from the bush. The abdomen was filled up with folds of native cloth; the body was wrapped up with the same material, and laid out on a mat, leaving the hands, face, and head exposed. A house was built for the purpose, and there the body was placed with a sheet of native cloth loosely thrown over it. Now and then the face was oiled with a mixture of scented oil and turmeric, and passing strangers were freely admitted to see the remains of the departed. Until about twenty years ago there were four bodies laid out in this way in a house belonging to the family to which we refer, viz. a chief, his wife, and two sons. They were laid on a platform raised on a double canoe. They must have been embalmed upwards of thirty years, and although thus exposed, they were in a remarkable state of preservation. They assigned no particular reason for this embalming, further than that it was the expression of their affection to keep the bodies of the departed still with them as if they were alive. None were allowed to dress them but a particular family of old ladies, who all died off; and, as there was a superstitious fear on the part of some, and an unwillingness on the part of others, to handle them, it was resolved at last to lay them underground.

Burnings for the dead.—On the evening after the burial of any important chief his friends kindled a number of fires at distances of some twenty feet from each other, near the grave; and there they sat and kept them burning till morning light. This was continued sometimes for ten days after the funeral; it was also done before burial. In the house where the body lay, or out in front of it, fires were kept burning all night by the immediate relatives of the departed. The common people had a similar custom. After burial they kept a fire blazing in the house all night, and had the space between the house and the grave so cleared as that a stream of light went forth all night from the fire to the grave. The account the Samoans give of it is, that it was merely a light burning in honour of the departed, and a mark of tender regard.

The unburied occasioned great concern. No Roman was ever more grieved at the thought of his unburied friend wandering a hundred years along the banks of the Styx than were the Samoans while they thought of the spirit of one who had been drowned, or of another who had fallen in war, wandering about neglected and comfortless. They supposed the spirit haunted them everywhere, night and day, and imagined they heard it calling upon them in a most pitiful tone, and saying, "Oh, how cold! oh, how cold!" Nor were the Samoans, like the ancient Romans, satisfied with a mere "tumulus inanis" at which to observe the usual solemnities; they thought it was possible to obtain the soul of the departed in some tangible transmigrated form. On the beach, near where a person had been drowned, and whose body was supposed to have become a porpoise, or on the battlefield, where another fell, might have been seen, sitting in silence, a group of five or six, and one a few yards before them with a sheet of native cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. Addressing some god of the family he said, "Oh, be kind to us; let us obtain without difficulty the spirit of the young man!" The first thing that happened to light upon the sheet was supposed to be the spirit. If nothing came it was supposed that the spirit had some ill-will to the person praying. That person after a time retired, and another stepped forward, addressed some other god, and waited the result. By-and-by something came; grasshopper, butterfly, ant, or whatever else it might be, it was carefully wrapped up, taken to the family, the friends assembled, and the bundle buried with all due ceremony, as if it contained the real spirit of the departed. The grave, however, was not the hades of the Samoans, as we have already seen in Chapter III. Prayers at the grave of a parent or brother or chief were common. Some, for example, would pray for health in sickness and might or might not recover. A woman prayed for the death of her brother, he died, but soon after she died also. A chief promised to give a woman some fine mats, he deceived her, and off she went and prayed at the grave of his predecessor in the title. The man took ill and died. She confessed what she had done, but said she did not pray for death, but only pain to make him smart for his deceit. And so the custom was carried on, but with fluctuating belief in its efficacy.

Houses.

The Samoans have a tradition that of old their forefathers had no houses. They say that in those days the people were "housed by the heavens," and describe the ingenuity of a chief who first contrived to build houses. He had two sons, and out of love to them built for each of them a house. But leaving tradition let me describe the houses to be seen at the present day in some of the villages, and the counterpart of those which have been in use for ages. Imagine a gigantic bee-hive, thirty-five feet in diameter, a hundred in circumference, and raised from the ground by a number of short posts, at intervals of four feet from each other all round, and you have a good idea of the appearance of a Samoan house.

The spaces between these posts, which may be called open doors or windows all round the house, are shut in at night by roughly-plaited cocoa-nut leaf blinds. During the day the blinds are pulled up, and all the interior exposed to a free current of air. The floor is raised six or eight inches with rough stones, then an upper layer of smooth pebbles, then some cocoa-nut leaf mats, and then a layer of finer matting. Houses of important chiefs are erected on a raised platform of stones three feet high. In the centre of the house there are two, and sometimes three, posts or pillars, twenty feet long, sunk three feet into the ground, and extending to and supporting the ridge pole. These are the main props of the building. Any Samson or giant Tafai pulling them away would bring down the whole house. The space between the rafters is filled up with what they call ribs—viz. the wood of the bread-fruit tree, split up into small pieces, and joined together so as to form a long rod the thickness of the thumb, running from the ridge pole down to the eaves. All are kept in their places, an inch and a half apart, by cross pieces, made fast with cinnet. The whole of this upper cagelike work looks compact and tidy, and at the first glance is admired by strangers as being alike novel, ingenious, and neat. The wood of the bread-fruit tree, of which the greater part of the best houses are built, is durable, and, if preserved from wet, will last fifty years.

The thatch also is laid on with great care and taste; the long dry leaves of the sugar-cane are strung on to pieces of reed five feet long; they are made fast to the reed by overlapping the one end of the leaf, and pinning it with the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet run through from leaf to leaf horizontally. These reeds, thus fringed with the sugar-cane leaves hanging down three or four feet, are laid on, beginning at the eaves and running up to the ridge pole, each one overlapping its fellow an inch or so, and made fast one by one with cinnet to the inside rods or rafters. Upwards of a hundred of these reeds of thatch will be required for a single row running from the eaves to the ridge pole; then they do another row, and so on all round the house. Two, three, or four thousand of these fringed reeds may be required for a good-sized house. This thatching, if well done, will last for seven years. To collect the sugar-cane leaves, and "sew," as it is called, the ends on to the reeds, is the work of the women. An active woman will sew fifty reeds in a day, and three men will put up and fasten on to the roof of the house some five hundred in a day. Corrugated iron, shingles, and other contrivances, are being tried by European residents; but, for coolness and ventilation, nothing beats the thatch. The great drawback is, that in gales it stands up like a field of corn, and then the rain pours into the house. That, however, may be remedied by a network of cinnet, to keep down the thatch, or by the native plan of covering all in with a layer of heavy cocoa-nut leaves on the approach of a gale.

These great circular roofs are so constructed that they can be lifted bodily off the posts, and removed anywhere, either by land, or by a raft of canoes. But in removing a house, they generally divide the roof into four parts—viz. the two sides, and the two ends, where there are particular joints left by the carpenters, which can easily be untied, and again fastened. There is not a single nail in the whole building; all is made fast with cinnet. As Samoan houses often form presents, fines, dowries, as well as articles of barter, they are frequently removed from place to place. The arrangement of the houses in a village has no regard whatever to order. You rarely see three houses in a line. Every one puts his house on his little plot of ground, just as the shade of the trees, the direction of the wind, the height of the ground, etc., may suit his fancy.

A house, after the usual Samoan fashion just described, has but one apartment. It is the common parlour, dining-room, etc., by day, and the bedroom of the whole family by night. They do not, however, altogether herd indiscriminately. If you peep into a Samoan house at midnight, you will see five or six low oblong tents pitched (or rather strung up) here and there throughout the house. They are made of native cloth, five feet high, and close all round down to the mat. They shut out the mosquitoes, and enclose a place some eight feet by five; and these said tent-looking places may be called the bedrooms of the family. Four or five mats laid loosely, the one on the top of the other, form the bed. The pillow is a piece of thick bamboo, three inches in diameter, three to five feet long, and raised three inches from the mat by short wooden feet. The sick are indulged with something softer, but the hard bamboo is the invariable pillow of health. The bedding in old times was complete with a single mat or sheet of native cloth. In the morning the tent was unstrung, mats, pillow, and sheet rolled together, and laid up overhead on a shelf between the posts in the middle of the house.

These rolls of mats and bedding, a bundle or two done up in native cloth on the same shelf in the centre of the house, a basket, a fan or two, and a bamboo knife stuck into the thatch within reach, a fishing-net, a club, and some spears strung up along the rafters, a few paddles, and a few cocoa-nut shell water-bottles, were about all the things in the shape of furniture or property to be seen in looking into a Samoan house. The fire-place was about the middle of the house. It was merely a circular hollow, two or three feet in diameter, a few inches deep, and lined with hardened clay. It was not used for cooking, but for the purpose of lighting up the house at night. A flaming fire, as we have already remarked (p. 75), was the regular evening offering to the gods, as the family bowed the head, and the fathers prayed for prosperity from the "gods great and small." The women collected during the day a supply of dried cocoa-nut leaves, etc., which, with a little management, kept up a continued blaze in the evening, while the assembled family group had their supper and prayer, and sat together chatting for an hour or two afterwards.

But about house-building: it was a distinct trade in Samoa; and perhaps, on an average, you might find one among every three hundred men who was a master carpenter. Whenever this person went to work he had in his train some ten or twelve, who followed him, some as journeymen, who expected payment from him, and others as apprentices, who were principally anxious to learn the trade. When a young man took a fancy to the trade he had only to go and attach himself to the staff of some master carpenter, follow him from place to place for a few years, until he thought he could take the lead in building a house himself; and whenever he could point to a house which he had built, that set him up as a professed carpenter, and he would from that time be employed by others.

If a person wished a house built, he went with a fine mat, worth in modern cash value 20s. or 30s. He told the carpenter what he wanted, and presented him with the mat as a pledge that he should be well paid for his work. If he accepted the mat, that was a pledge that he undertook the job. Nothing was stipulated as to the cost; that was left entirely to the honour of the employing party. At an appointed time the carpenter came with his staff of helpers and learners. Even now their only tools are a felling-axe, a hatchet, and a small adze; and there they sit, chop, chop, chopping, for three, six, or nine months it may be, until the house is finished. Their adze reminds us of ancient Egypt. It is formed by the head of a small hatchet, or any other flat piece of iron, lashed on, at an angle of forty-five, to the end of a small piece of wood, eighteen inches long, as its handle. Of old they used stone and shell axes and adzes.

The man whose house is being built provides the carpenters with board and lodging, and is also at hand with his neighbours to help in bringing wood from the bush, scaffolding, and other heavy work. As we have just remarked, a Samoan house-builder made no definite charge, but left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as a person of no rank or respectability, and was disreputable, not merely to himself, but to the whole family or clan with which he was connected. The entire tribe or clan was his bank. Being connected with that particular tribe, either by birth or marriage, gave him a latent interest in all their property, and entitled him to go freely to any of his friends to ask for help in paying his house-builder. He would get a mat from one, worth twenty shillings; from another he might get one more valuable still; from another some native cloth, worth five shillings; from another, some foreign property; and thus he might collect, with but little trouble, two or three hundred useful articles, worth, perhaps, forty or fifty pounds; and in this way the carpenter was generally well paid. Now and then there might be a stingy exception; but the carpenter, from certain indications, generally saw ahead, and decamped, with all his party, leaving the house unfinished. It was a standing custom, that after the sides and one end of the house were finished, the principal part of the payment was made; and it was at this time that a carpenter, if he was dissatisfied, would get up and walk off. A house with two sides and but one end, and the carpenters away, was indicative. Nor could the chief to whom the house belonged employ another party to finish it. It was a fixed rule of the trade, and rigidly adhered to, that no one would take up the work which another party had thrown down. The chief, therefore, had no alternative but to go and make up matters with the original carpenter, in order to have his house decently completed. When a house was finished, and all ready for occupation, they had their "house-warming," or, as they called it, its oven consecration; and formerly it was the custom to add on to that a night dance, for the purpose, they said, of "treading down the beetles."

The system of a common interest in each other's property, to which we have referred, is still clung to by the Samoans with great tenacity. They feel its advantages when they wish to raise a little. Not only a house, but also a canoe, a boat, a fine, a dowry, and everything else requiring an extra effort, is got up in the same way. They consider themselves at liberty to go and take up their abode anywhere among their friends, and remain without charge, as long as they please. And the same custom entitles them to beg and borrow from each other to any extent. Boats, tools, garments, money, etc., are all freely lent to each other, if connected with the same tribe or clan. A man cannot bear to be called stingy or disobliging. If he has what is asked, he will either give it, or adopt the worse course of telling a lie about it, by saying that he has it not, or that it is promised to some one else. This communistic system is a sad hindrance to the industrious, and eats like a canker-worm at the roots of individual or national progress. No matter how hard a young man may be disposed to work, he cannot keep his earnings: all soon passes out of his hands into the common circulating currency of the clan to which all have a latent right. The only thing which reconciles one to bear with it until it gives place to the individual independence of more advanced civilisation, is the fact that, with such a state of things, no "poor laws" are needed. The sick, the aged, the blind, the lame, and even the vagrant, has always a house and home, and food and raiment, as far as he considers he needs it. A stranger may, at first sight, think a Samoan one of the poorest of the poor, and yet he may live ten years with that Samoan and not be able to make him understand what poverty really is, in the European sense of the word. "How is it?" he will always say. "No food! Has he no friends? No house to live in! Where did he grow? Are there no houses belonging to his friends? Have the people there no love for each other?"

Canoes.

Next to a well-built house, Samoan ingenuity was seen in their canoes. Any one could fell a tree, cut off the branches, and hollow out the log some fifteen feet long, for a common fishing canoe in which one or two men can sit. But the more carefully-built canoe, with a number of separate planks raised from a keel, was the work of a distinct and not very numerous class of professed carpenters. The keel was laid in one piece, twenty-five to fifty feet long, as the size of the canoe might be, and to that they added board after board, not by overlapping and nailing, but by sewing each close to its fellow, until they had raised it some two, or, it might be, three feet from the ground. These boards were not sawn, squared, and uniform, but were a number of pieces, or patches, as they are called, varying in size from eighteen inches to five feet long, as the wood split up from the log with felling axes happens to suit; all, however, were well fastened together, and, with the help of a little gum of the bread-fruit tree for pitch, the whole was perfectly water-tight. In dressing each board, they left a ledge, or rim, all round the edge, which was to be inside, making it double the thickness at the edge to what it was in the middle of the board. It is through this ledge or rim they bored the holes, and with a few turns of cinnet sewed tight one board to the other. The sewing only appeared on the inside. Outside all was smooth and neat; and it was only on close inspection you could see that there was a join at all. They had timbers, thwarts, and gunwale, to keep all tight; and over a few feet at the bow and the stern they had a deck, under which they could stow away anything. The decked part at the bow was the seat of honour, and there you generally saw the chief of the travelling party sitting cross-legged, at his ease, while the others were paddling.

The width of a canoe varied from eighteen to thirty inches; the length, from fifteen to fifty feet. But for an outrigger, it was impossible to keep such a long, narrow thing steady in the water. The outrigger may be described, in any boat, by laying oars across at equal distances, say one right above a thwart. Make fast the handle of each oar to the gunwale on the starboard side of the boat, and let the oars project on the larboard side. To the end of each projecting oar make fast four small sticks running down towards the water, and let their ends also be fastened to a long thick piece of wood, sharp at the one end to cut through the water, and floating on the surface parallel to the boat. This being done will give any one an exact idea of a Polynesian outrigger, by means of which long narrow canoes are kept steady in the water.

Some people who sketch and engrave from imagination, err in representing the natives of Samoa as pulling their short paddles, as the European boatman pulls his long oars. The paddle is about four feet long, something like a sharp-pointed shovel; and when the natives paddle, they sit with their faces in the direction in which the canoe is going, "dig" in their paddles, send the water flying behind them, and forward the canoe shoots at the rate of seven miles an hour. They have always a sail for their canoe, as well as paddles, to take advantage of a fair wind. The sail is triangular, and made of matting. When set, the base is up, and the apex down, quite the reverse of what we see in some other islands. The mat sails, however, are giving place to cloth ones, made in the form of European boat-sails.

Some two or three generations back the Samoans built large double canoes like the Fijians. Latterly they seldom built anything larger than a single canoe, with an outrigger, which might carry from fifteen to twenty people. Within the last few years the native carpenters have tried their hand at boat-building, and it is astonishing to see how well they have succeeded in copying the model of an English or American whaleboat, sharp at both ends, or having "two bows," as they call it. Some of them are fifty feet long, and carry well on to one hundred people. From stem to stern there is not a nail; everything is fastened in their ancient style, with cinnet plaited from the fibre of the cocoa-nut husk. Cinnet is likely long to prevail in native canoe and boat-building. Although it looks clumsy, it has the advantage of not rotting the wood like an iron nail. It is durable also. With care, and the sewing once or twice renewed, a Samoan canoe or boat will last ten or twenty years.

They did not paint their canoes, but decorated them with rows of white shells (Cypræa ovula) running along the middle of the deck at the bow and stern, and also along the upper part of the outrigger. Now and then they had a figure-head with some rude device of a human figure, a dog, a bird, or something else, which had from time immemorial been the "coat-of-arms" of the particular village or district to which the canoe belonged. A chief of importance must also have one, or perhaps two, large shells in his canoe, to answer the purpose of trumpets, to blow now and then as the canoe passed along. It attracted the attention of the villagers, and called them out to look and inquire, "Who is that?" The ambition to see and to be seen was as common in Polynesia as anywhere else. As the canoe approached any principal settlement, or when it reached its destination, there was a special too-too-too, or flourish of their shell trumpets, to herald its approach. The paddlers at the same time struck up some lively chant, and, as the canoe touched the beach, all was wound up with a united shout, having more of the yell in it, but the same in meaning as a "hip, hip, hurrah!"

The French navigator Bougainville, seeing the Samoans so often moving about in their canoes, named the group "The Navigators." A stranger in the distance, judging from the name, may suppose that the Samoans are noted among the Polynesians as enterprising navigators. This is not the case. They are quite a domestic people, and rarely venture out of sight of land. The group, however, is extensive, and gives them some scope for travel. It numbers ten inhabited islands, and stretches east and west about 200 miles. Within these bounds they have kept up an intercourse from the earliest times in their history, which is fully proved, not only by tradition, but by the uniformity of customs and language which prevails from the one end of the group to the other.