A good method of learning a language, where there is neither dictionary, textbook, nor grammar, is to begin, in the primary class, with the children. Accordingly, to the children I devoted my earliest attention; in the guise of a playmate, I let them unwittingly instruct me. One game, with its marvellous amplifications, I found to be exceedingly popular: our nursery game of cat’s-cradle. It is, indeed, a game and pastime not only of the children, but also of youths, maidens, matrons, and old men. All were familiar with figures which, at first made my head swim by their intricacy and the lightning rapidity of the wriggling brown fingers. I was already familiar with one or two figures which I had learned from a delightful paper in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute, by my friend, Dr. A. C. Haddon, and I was keen for more.

My first lesson came from the hands of Kakofel, the young daughter of Lian, Chief of Dulukan. Curly-headed, little Pooguroo was my earliest and most faithful friend; and Kakofel came next. Her father brought her with him, or rather she trudged after in his train, the first morning after Friedlander and I arrived at his village. We were busy getting our various “traps” ready for the day’s work; Friedlander with his merchandise, and I with my photographic outfit, when Lian, a handsome man with a somewhat negroid face, but light in colour, solemnly ascended the ladder and silently squatted cross-legged on the floor a short distance from the door. Directly behind him a closely cropped little head arose; at first, just on a level with the threshold; next, there cautiously peered forth a pair of wide open, wondering, snappy black eyes, framed all round in long, jet-black lashes, making the whites look larger and whiter; then uprose a little brown body girdled with a straggly skirt of dried leaves hanging down to the knees; last of all two little brown legs, and lo, there stood Kakofel! She immediately seated herself cross-legged beside her father, conveniently near the doorway, however, in readiness for an instant retreat down the ladder at a second’s notice. Not a word did the dignified, impassive Lian utter; Friedlander took no notice of him, and I, like “Br’er Rabbit,” kept on saying nothing. Greetings are not “good form” in Uap, and nowhere is it diplomatic to blurt out at once the object of a visit. A row of little brown heads, following Kakofel’s example, now appeared on the level of the threshold, but remained there, motionless, like little tropical cherubim with the wings moulted. Of course, Lian had his betel basket with him, and so did Kakofel, and the embarrassing pause was bridged by the preparation of a bolus, which they both performed mechanically, while their eyes narrowly examined us and every corner of the room. The little maid was about twelve years old, an exceedingly round and healthy little body for one brought up on coconuts; according to the Uap standard of beauty, the little girl gave promise of a highly attractive future belle.

At length Lian spoke, and just as though he were of the highest culture and fashion, began with the weather and the prospects of rain, just then much needed for the coconut trees and the tanks, or rather water holes, on the island; then, of course, the next subjects broached were coconuts, copra, and trade; I could not understand what was said, but Friedlander, always courteous and kind, included me in the conversation by translating from time to time. The peculiar appearance of the little damsel’s cheeks was, however, what I was most anxious to have explained. She looked as if she were suffering from an extraordinarily severe attack of mumps combined with jaundice. At the earliest opportunity I begged my host to permit me to ask by what mysterious malady she had been attacked; and I extended my hand to touch the strange excrescences; she shrank back timidly with a little cry and her feet darted for the first rung of the ladder; thereupon all the cherubim instantly disappeared. I at once tried to make amends by stepping back a few paces; her father then explained that what I had mistaken for mumps were merely the halves of a coconut shell worn to protect her poor, little ears, which had been recently punched in conformity with the feminine fashions of Uap. These shell protectors had been scraped smooth and powdered thickly with saffron, or reng-reng, an ornamental cosmetic in universal use and the stain had been so smeared over the little girl’s neck and cheeks that the skin and shells were all the same colour.

When she saw, however, that my interest was friendly, she loosened the strings that held the coconut shells in place and showed me, as a special favour, her terribly swollen ears, whereof the lobes had been punctured and a wad of oily green leaves, as thick as a dentist’s thumb, inserted in the wound to keep it from closing up. Her spirits were not, however, in the least depressed by her afflictions, and after I had, as a fair exchange, displayed to her some elaborate Japanese tattooing on my arms and she had contributed to it many smudges of black and yellow from her inquisitive fingers, we became excellent friends. To change the subject, I produced a string and inquiringly showed her one of my cat’s-cradle figures. She watched my awkward movements with open-mouthed wonder and then, taking the string, made a figure, which she called melāng,—coral,—representing a stalk of coral with two side branches; of course, I was eager to learn it, and in my attempts I increased my vocabulary with several words or phrases,—dakafel, meaning “not right,”—kafel, “all right,” and piri amith, “very painful,” which I was told to say when she nearly twisted my fingers out of joint in forcing them through tight loops or in hooking them over each other at impossible angles. Manigil, “excellent, very good” was the last word I learned.

By this time the cherubim had dispelled both their fears and the illusion, by crawling up stealthily and sitting down on the floor near us. Of course, little Pooguroo was there close beside me, and gave a smile meaning “we’re old friends, aren’t we?” In a few minutes they were all at cat’s-cradle, competing with each other in making the figures rapidly and grunting at me for applause. Before this first lesson was over, Lian, the chief, became so lost in watching us that he stopped talking copra, and, taking the string from his daughter, tried to show off his own skill in some wonderful pattern, but he was so shaky with a palsy of his hands, that his efforts were vain and his disrespectful daughter jeered at his failure, and in high glee shouted “dakafel! dakafel!” until he gave it up and, with a provoked smile, flung the string at her merry little face and resumed his talk about trade.

Kakofel was the tomboy of Dulukan; there was no mischief afoot that she was not in it, and where the boys were making the most noise and playing the roughest games, there was Kakofel, always in the midst, and her rippling laughter, ending in a prolonged high note, was always distinguishable above the others. But I grieve to say our friendship did not last long; it was my inadvertent rudeness that caused the breach. One resplendent moonlight night, the shouting of boys and the shrill screams of little girls playing in the coconut grove seemed to be more boisterous than usual, and Kakofel’s voice frequently rose high above the rest. Friedlander and I strolled forth to see what was going on, and were astonished to see firebrands flying in all directions, scattering trails of sparks, like comets. “Hang the little imps,” shouted Friedlander, “they’re at their fiendish fire-game again!” They had built a fire of dried coconut husks which smoulder slowly, and, armed with these glowing embers, were hiding behind coconut trees, awaiting a chance to launch the fiery missile at some unwary playmate. Friedlander was not concerned for the blisters on tough little hides, but he was justly fearful lest a misdirected brand might lodge on the thatch of his storehouses. Off he dashed into the darkness, hurling broadcast some awful Uap words; the pyrotechnic display fell at once to earth, and the shouts and laughter died away in the patter of little bare feet and the rustle of grass skirts. Like wild animals they knew how to run to cover, and in a trice the grove was still and dark and silent, as at midnight, and deserted; merely the persistent embers, that kept on glowing where they had been dropped, were left to tell of the escapade.

But Friedlander was rendered so anxious over the risk to his “go-downs,” stored full with several months’ accumulation of copra, that when he became convinced that it was impossible to run to earth the will-o’-the-wisps, he strode over to the failu, where several men and boys were still sitting around a fire, and there vented his wrath upon them, assuring them that if they didn’t restrict those little devils, and especially that little “Kakofel Kan” (that is: “that little demon of a Kakofel”), whom he suspected by her tell-tale laughter to be the ring-leader, he would hold them all responsible for any damage by fire, and would confiscate their largest and whitest fei till the loss was made good.

Their eyes and mouths opened wide in astonishment and, when his harangue was concluded, several of them jumped up and started out in the darkness to catch and chastise the culprits; as well might they have attempted to catch the frigate bird that soared over the house the day before.

By the next morning Friedlander’s rage and anxiety had subsided and the night’s adventure had apparently faded from his memory, as all other annoyances of his life always vanished whenever his lighter with a full load of coconuts pulled up to the jetty. While I was tinkering at my cinematograph or my camera, I glanced up and happened to see Kakofel sauntering toward me, swinging in one hand her inseparable betel basket, and in the other holding the white spongy heart of a sprouted coconut, known as “būl, which is about the size of an apple and of the consistency of pith, but with a very pleasant, sweet taste, and a favourite delicacy with children. The process of munching this būl, from time to time, eclipsed and disarranged the sweet and innocent smile with which she saluted me as she approached. There was, of course, her usual accompaniment of small boy and girl-satellites and when she stood at my side, I shook my finger at her and said in the merest joke, “Hullo, Kakofel Kan!” Her expression changed in a flash! She stopped short, the smile vanished, her eyes opened wide, as she stared at me, with an expression of almost horror on her face; the half eaten būl dropped from her hand, she turned quickly, and with one backward glance at me over her shoulder, ran swiftly out of the enclosure and up the path toward her home, her little brown legs swinging out sideways from the knees, as, in native, girlish fashion she turned her toes in to get a better grip upon the loose sand. That was almost the last I ever saw of Kakofel; nothing would induce her to come near me again; when the phonograph was played to large audiences, she was present, but always in the furthest row of listeners, and often sitting solemnly alone outside the light bamboo fence; when I caught her eye and smiled, she responded with a stony stare, and turned away; if I called to her, she paid not the slightest attention, except to quicken her pace to a run. Indeed, she was a mournful loss in my circle of small friends; she was always a merry little thing; a wonderful adept at cat’s-cradle, and a patient, although derisive, teacher.

However deeply I may have wounded Kakofel’s feelings, her mother by no means shared the affront; for she was always the first to arrive and the last to leave whenever a phonograph “recital” was on hand; moreover, she invariably managed to secure a seat as near as possible to the instrument, whence she could command the best singers to come forward to sing or speak into the brass horn; I usually dropped three or four imported cigarettes in her lap by way of thanks. She was not what even an ecstatic imagination could describe as beautiful, but she had a gentle, plaintive expression, and this rueful look was emphasised by a droop at the left corner of her mouth caused by the loss of all her teeth on that side. She was extremely thin, every bone of her chest stood out almost in alto-relievo, but she seemed, withal, to be very cheerful and, whenever the phonograph showed off well its power of mimicry to some surprised new-comer, she emitted “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” The dim blue tattoo marks on the back of her hands and on her legs bore witness that in her youth she had been the fêted belle of some failu, before Lian took her to himself as wife. I once paid her a visit when she happened to be busy boiling some dal (yams), and lak (taro), for the midday meal, and she showed me all over her kitchen by allowing me to thrust my head within the doorway. It was merely a little outhouse of palm leaf close beside their large house and only about six feet long, by three or four wide; the floor was really neatly swept up, although the thatching of the sides and rafters was well coated with soot. The fireplace was a large iron bowl,—purchased of course, from Friedlander,—banked up in a mound of sand; in this the fire was built, without any draught, and over it an iron tripod, whereon was hung another iron bowl in which the food was cooking. She had to sit by and watch the fire constantly because, as she explained, it was exceedingly ill-omened for a spark to fly out and lie burning on the floor, so while the fire burned brightly, she must be close at hand to push back embers that might fall, and to catch flying sparks.

The little house wherein the women cook their own food is called pinfi, meaning “woman’s fire,” and is always for their exclusive use; no man can eat food cooked in utensils that have been used in preparing food for a woman, and I doubt if a man would use even the same fire; I know that they will not light a cigarette from the same ember or match that a woman uses; this is true even of husband and wife. Once, at Friedlander’s instigation, to make a test, I picked some areca nuts out of a woman’s betel basket as if to examine them, and then in an absent-minded manner, dropped them into the basket of a man who had seen me take them from the woman; instantly he snatched them out of his basket and flung them from him as if they had been live coals. I questioned Lian about this custom; he admitted that nothing would induce him to eat food prepared in a woman’s bowl or chew a betel nut that had been in a woman’s basket. He assured me solemnly that it would inevitably bring ill luck or sickness. When I visited Lian’s wife, all utensils used in the preparation of her husband’s food were in a small vestibule or antechamber near the door of the house, and there also was the fireplace used exclusively for him. This taboo, as I suppose it may be termed, does not, however, prevent a husband from eating voraciously of the food which his poor wife, slaving over the fire (in the tropics too!), has cooked for her high and mighty lord;—here is just where the charming flexibility of the taboo is in evidence. The ill omen attached to the flying sparks is devised to frighten poor women into taking care lest they set the house on fire; and, by the way, it is, indeed, almost miraculous that they do escape daily, nay hourly conflagrations, even with this dread omen hanging over them. In the first place, their skirts are composed of four or five layers of dried leaves and strips of bast, and are so voluminous and distended that they stand out all round the body, outrivalling the old-fashioned hoopskirts; even when sitting down, the women are surrounded by a mound of veritable tinder. In the second place, they are for ever striking matches to light their cigarettes, nay, worse even, they carry about with them for the sake of economy the glowing husk of a coconut, and neither to matches nor husk do they give the slightest heed, striking the one recklessly over their own skirts or absent-mindedly resting the other against the skirts of their neighbour. Yet in spite of this utter recklessness never did I see a skirt catch fire, although I confidently awaited it every time they assembled to hear the phonograph. When the female audiences had dispersed after these exhibitions, Friedlander’s neatly swept little compound was wont to look like a threshing-floor, so covered was it with fragments of pandanus leaves, the relics of female attire. One month at longest is the life of a woman’s dress; then the old skirt is burned and a brand-new one plaited, with no tedious fittings at the dressmaker’s, nor depressing bills to pay.

When dressed in their best for visits or feast days, the women don skirts prettily decorated with wide strips of pandanus leaves bleached for the purpose and stained a bright yellow with reng, and about the waist-band are inserted brightly variegated leaves of croton. The effect is, indeed, extremely pretty on the background of their smooth, brown skin. The women do not, as a rule, adorn themselves with necklaces or other ornaments; some, who do not work very hard in the taro patches, wear bracelets of coconut shell or tortoise-shell, and sometimes finger rings of the same material. The long strips of hibiscus bast, stained black, which they all wear knotted about their necks after they have come to maturity, seems to take the place of all other finery. This cord, known as marafá, must be always worn by a woman, young or old, when she is away from her home; to be seen in the open air without it would be as immodest and disgraceful as to appear without any clothes at all. Within the dwelling house, however, it may be discarded with perfect propriety.

Standards of beauty vary so widely among different races, from the fat, round-faced beauties alleged to predominate in Turkish harems, to the thin oval-faced belles of Japan, and to the long-eared, black-toothed maidens of Borneo, that I was anxious to learn what in masculine eyes of Uap constituted feminine beauty. One day, after a phonograph recital for the men, fifteen or twenty from different parts of the island lingered behind to watch the putting of the tom-tom in its box; I then took the opportunity of asking them who, in their opinion, was the prettiest girl of all they knew on the island. They seemed to take a great interest in the discussion which followed, and several girls were named and their charms discussed and compared, but finally a unanimous voice was given to Migiul the mispil of Magachagil, in the south of Uap. Their good taste may be verified by turning to her photograph on the opposite page.

Migiul was a frequent visitor at Friedlander’s house, being an intimate friend of his wife, and whenever she came to visit her parents, who lived close by in Dulukan, she spent the greater part of the day gossiping in Mrs. Friedlander’s cosy little home and learning to speak the Marianne Island language. She was an exceptionally bright girl, about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a sad, plaintive expression and a soft, gentle voice,—a universal favourite with the women, and the admiration of all the men. Nor was this all. Her reputation as a ballad singer was widespread, hence she was pushed forward on all occasions when a new song “record” was to be made, and seemed modestly conscious of her proficiency; I cannot honestly affirm, however, that I sympathised with her admirers in their ecstasy over her high or low notes, which to my dull, untrained ears too closely resembled, in all seriousness, the cry of a cat in agony. Notwithstanding her peculiar position in that small community, there was no trace of boldness in her demeanour; her voice in speaking was always low, “an excellent thing in woman;” she never obtruded herself, but retreated quickly to the background when she had finished her song; in fact, she was the personification of unstudied, innate femininity. This may be surely accepted, whether among primitive people or amid the conventionalities of modern society, as a high standard of refinement and an essential element of a thorough lady. Poor little Migiul, according to the exactest code of propriety is in her own eyes and in those of all her Uap world, a thoroughly blameless, moral girl.

Of all my friends among the men, old Fatumak, the mach-mach or soothsayer, was the most faithful, the most intelligent, and, consequently, to me, invaluable. In his youth he had fallen from a coconut tree and so injured his spine, that he was permanently deformed and had a dwarf-like figure with a pronounced distortion. One evening, when he had been rehearsing to Friedlander and myself some of the legends of Uap, I asked him how it was that he knew so much; he said he had heard these stories from the old people when he was a boy, and then he added, pointing to a long row of notches on the handle of a little adze that he always carried:—“Those marks, each one,—one moon; twenty-eight moons after I fell, I lay in my house; no one to talk to; I think and think over everything; I talk to myself; I remember these stories. Some I think true; some I think foolish.” This had been his school,—two years of solitary self-communion, and during this time he had pondered on the problems of nature and the human mind, and solved them in his simple primitive way, to his own satisfaction. He emerged a wise man among his own people and endowed, as they believed, with prophetic foresight. He was ready with an answer to every question and made his living by interpreting omens and telling fortunes by mysterious combinations of knots in Bei leaves.

His house, wherein he lived quite alone, never having taken to himself a wife, was a veritable magpie’s nest, so full was it of odds and ends of every description, piled in corners or suspended from rafters, mostly discarded rubbish from the houses of Spanish or German traders. It was enclosed by an open fence of bamboo, fairly well built but naturally flimsy; in this fence there stood a gate which at night and invariably in the absence of the owner, was kept closed with a ponderous, rusty padlock, although a single, slight push would have been enough to throw the whole fence flat; indeed, I doubt that anyone hurrying along on a dark night and happening to stumble into Fatumak’s fence, would have been aware of it, or recognized any difference between it and other obstructive patches of thick undergrowth; but it was a great comfort to the old fellow to feel that “fast bind” ought to mean “fast find.” In the house his most valued possessions, such as bits of brass wire, nails, beads, extra blades for his adze, empty baking-powder boxes, the key-board of an ancient accordion, and innumerable other articles calculated to set a Uap’s “pugging tooth on edge,” were kept secure in a large tin biscuit-box, whereof the top had been cut on three sides, and the third side served as a hinge. He had contrived to punch holes through this lid and the side of the box, and through them he had inserted the hasp of another padlock almost as unwieldy as the one on his front gate. I think that after locking it he had lost the key,—the corners of the lid looked as if they had been bent upward to extract what he wanted without disturbing the lock; in fact, it was through these openings that I was able to examine the treasures of this safe.

The old man,—I call him old, but I doubt that he was over fifty, yet seemed older because of his deformed body and his quiet, sedate, and thoughtful bearing,—had a pleasant, pensive face, with somewhat negroid features, a broad flat nose and thick re-curving lips; his hair, just beginning to show grey, was, however, wavy and curly, with no trace of the wool of African negroes or of Papuans. He smiled easily and took good humouredly the chaff which we constantly poked at him for his thrifty devices, which closely verged on miserliness, and, occasionally, for the prices he charged poor unfortunates who invoked his skill in foretelling the future. He was not able, on account of his misshapen back, to paddle his own canoe, but he had constructed a raft of palm stems and bamboos, which he called his “barco,” after the Spanish, and many a time I saw him start off in the early morning to make his rounds of fortune-telling, poling his “barco” up the coast in the shallow lagoon, and return again in the evening with his decks almost awash with ripe coconuts,—his fees for consultation collected on the spot. His method of foretelling the future by means of bei leaves, he himself believed in implicitly, and invariably became serious and reserved if we alluded to it lightly. Many a time when he was squatting beside us as we ate our lunch or dinner at a little table in the yard under the palms, he would be called aside by an anxious client to interpret some mysterious combinations of knots which had been tied at random in strips of palm leaf. There are only a favoured few who know the hidden significance of marriages of the kan or demons, indicated by these knots, and this knowledge is kept sacredly secret and never revealed until the father, at the approach of death, discloses it to his son; thus it is handed down from generation to generation.

On several occasions I noticed these consultations with Fatumak, but had no idea of their meaning; I supposed that the tying of knots in a strip of leaf was mere frivolity to fill up the time. One day, however, a seeker for truth happened to sit close beside me and I heard him earnestly talking to himself, or to the knots, as each one was tied; when the four strips were finished, he adjusted them carefully in his hand and showed them to Fatumak, who merely glanced at them and murmured a reply. This was repeated several times; then the man arose and went away contented. Of course, I asked Fatumak what it all meant and he informed me that the man wished to find out whether or not a friend of his, in the northern end of Uap, who was very sick, was going to get well; the answers had been favourable.

Whoever wishes to consult the omens in this manner provides himself with eight or ten strips of green palm leaf, preferably the narrow leaves of the coconut, and in the presence of the soothsayer, proceeds to tie at random in each strip a series of single knots about a half inch apart, not counting the knots as he ties them, but all the time murmuring to himself the question which he wishes answered. When four strips bear many knots thus tied, he takes the first strip and, counting off the knots by fours, beginning at the broad end of the leaf, catches the strip between his thumb and the base of the index finger of the right hand in such a way that all the knots which are over an even division by four, stick up above the back of the hand. On the second, third and fourth strips he counts off the knots in the same way, and catches them in turn between the index and middle finger, the middle finger and ring finger, and the ring finger and little finger, thus leaving the uneven number of knots sticking up close to the knuckles. If there happens to be, on any strip, an even number of fours, then four knots are left projecting. The seer then reads the omen from the combinations of knots in the two pairs of strips, composed of the thumb and index strip, and the index and middle finger strip for one pair; and the middle and ring finger strip, and the ring and little finger strip for the other. Each pair signifies a different kan, or demon, and it is in accordance with the union of these kan, that the omens are good or bad. As may be seen, there are sixteen combinations of the number of knots possible in each pair; consequently, there are sixteen valuable kan which assist at this form of mach-mach. For instance, the thumb strip may have four knots left over and the index strip have two, this is the sign that the female kan, Vengek, is present for one; the middle finger strip may have one and the ring finger strip have three knots left projecting above the knuckles, this is the sign that Nebul, a male kan, is associating with Vengek, and this indicates a certain answer according to the drift of the question; which would be also affected by the appearance of Vengek or Nebul in the first or second pair of knots, the time of day, conditions of the weather and many other influences, which Fatumak declared it would be useless to tell me, as I could not possibly understand them all. I had made the grave error of showing too rapid a comprehension of one of the mysteries of the art when he was giving me the signs of the various kan, their sex, and to whom they were married. This is the list, as he gave it to me, before explaining anything about sex or marriage among the kan:

Of course, he had to give a practical demonstration of each combination, he could not carry the numbers in his head; and when he had finished the last one, Liverr, he vouchsafed the additional information, while the knots were still between his fingers, that this kan was a woman and was married to Wunumerr. This led me to ask about the next to the last, Vengek; this also proved to be a woman, married to Trunuwil; the next, Nafau (four-and-two) also a woman and married to Namen (two-and-four),—this gave me the key,—the descending numerical combinations were women and they were married to their ascending reverse combinations.

Three-and-two would be a woman and married to two-and-three; three-and-one the wife of one-and-three, etc., etc. Foolishly exultant over my guessing these combinations, I forestalled Fatumak in telling off the remaining combinations and named the husbands and wives; he first eyed me with astonishment, and then became unmistakably provoked and sullen. But my pride had its fall; I could not determine the even combinations of four-and-four, three-and-three, two-and-two, and one-and-one, so I had to appeal to his superior knowledge again; whereupon he told me rather gruffly that four-and-four was the chief Sayuk, and his lesser half was Nagaman (two-and-two), and one-and-one was their son Thilibik, and three-and-three was the bachelor youth Thugalup; and then he added that I might be very clever and guess just as shrewdly about the Bei, but that I would never know any more than what he had just told me, and that no white man could ever understand it; we had our glasses that looked beyond the sight of man into the distance, but the men of Uap had Bei wherewith they could see things that had not yet happened that were beyond the thoughts of man. With that he gathered up his betel basket and solemnly walked away. I had lost for ever a golden opportunity by my vanity,—but I incline to think it was somewhat pardonable.

I did learn, however, a little more about the mach-mach, or momok men, from the chief, Ronoboi, also a noted seer and dealer in charms. Those who practice the art must be aged widowers, or widows, from whose lives all thoughts of love for the opposite sex have vanished; they may never eat food that has been prepared the previous day; they must always be scrupulously careful that the “quids” of betel nut, which they have finished chewing, are destroyed either by fire or by throwing them into the sea, where no profane hands can find them and thereby work charms (consequently their betel basket is provided with an extra compartment wherein the exhausted “quids” are deposited to await their destruction); the parings of their nails and the hair cut from their head must likewise be burned or thrown into the sea; if they spit upon the ground, they must always wipe it out with the foot. All this is done so that no counter spells may be worked against them. The aim of the regulation in regard to warmed-over food is, we may surmise, that no stale food shall be proffered as a compensation for their fortune-telling or, possibly, it may be to avoid the risk of poisons. Whoever takes counsel of the Bei, must himself make the knots in the strips of palm leaf and hold them in his right hand. He cannot force his fortune by pre-arranging the combinations of kan; there are so many controlling circumstances, of which only the soothsayer has knowledge, that it would be futile for any one to try to deceive the Fates.

Fatumak bore me no grudge for trying to pry too curiously into his art; he came to visit us again the next day; all was forgiven and he was as genial as ever. It happened that on this particular occasion he had come to settle his accounts with Friedlander for goods to be received in return for coconuts rendered. He was always most accurate in his dealings and seemed to remember so exactly the number of coconuts representing the value of each article which he had been promised, that Friedlander fairly marvelled at his memory, until one day he discovered that the old man had invented a cipher for all the articles of trade and for the quantities of coconuts. In this cipher he drew up his accounts with a lead pencil on any old scrap of paper that he could find, and then proudly read them off to Friedlander. The signs were always the same and were perfectly intelligible to the writer, no matter how long a time had elapsed since they had been written. On the opposite page is a photograph of one of his accounts, which I preserved after it had been settled; the various entries have been numbered and translated. Some of them are merely pictographs, such as the axe, and the iron pots, but others need explanation. I asked him the meaning of the mark indicating a package of tea, and he explained that when tea was given to him it was always in a little piece of paper, and that the little round object represented the bundle, and the crooked line at the top was the twist he gave to the ends of the paper to keep it secure. The sign which he used for boxes of sardines is puzzling; Fatumak did not explain it, but it looks as if the wavy twist on the right side of the figure is meant to represent the strip of tin which is twisted off with a key when these cans are opened; whence he got the sign also for a hundred coconuts he could not explain, but it was always the same and perfectly legible to him.

The people of Uap use a decimal system having separate words for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, but sixty is six-tens, seventy, seven-tens, etc.; and again, uncompounded words for one hundred and one thousand. This may seem trivial to note, but I found a decimal system among the Miri Nagas of Upper Assam, in India; they counted, however, only to ten, and then repeated; they had no terms for eleven, twelve, thirteen, etc., nor for twenty. When they reached ten, a stick or pebble was placed beside them on the ground as a record of the tens.

Fatumak’s cipher or system of sign writing elevates him at once head and shoulders above the most advanced and intelligent of his fellow-countrymen, who, for the greater part, have barely emerged from the stone age; in fact, adzes of sharpened shell are still to be found in almost all the houses of the old families, and the old men can distinctly remember these primitive implements in daily use by their parents and grand-parents.

In sooth Fatumak was a most lovable old character, uncomplaining under the discomforts of his deformity, always ready to impart and anxious to receive information, and never obtrusive or presuming, as is so often the failing of natives of these islands when they find that a stranger is interested in them.