expression, which tells of the powerful good sense for which many of these people have been so remarkable. Certainly they are a handsome and attractive race.

We noticed in all these villages the same characteristic in house-building which struck us at PangoPango-namely, that there is a good deal of roof supported on posts, but little of anything answering to a wall; so the houses resemble huge oval mushrooms, and home-life is of a very public description. There are, however, movable screens of plaited cocoa-palm, which are put up so as to enclose the house at night, on the same principle as the paper walls or screens which compose the sides of a Japanese house, and which are generally removed in the daytime. The wooden screens invariably are so.

At night the interior of a Samoan house resembles a small camp, as large curtains of heavy native cloth are slung from the roof and hang like tents, within which the sleepers lie on a pile of soft fine mats, their necks, not their heads, resting on a bamboo or wooden pillow raised on two legs. Furniture is conspicuous by its total absence. A few baskets for fish or vegetables hang about the walls, and a few bundles containing cloth and mats lie in the corners. Cookery is done out of doors in the native ovens, for Samoans have no pottery of any sort; so the picturesque cooking-pots of a Fijian

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kitchen are lacking. The very few cooking or water pots which are sometimes seen in a chief's house have invariably been imported from Fiji, and are prized accordingly.

The roof itself is one of the most precious possessions of the isles. Ponderous as it appears, it can be divided into four parts, and removed from one place to another, should the family have occasion to flit. The great rafters are bound together by strong creeping-plants (vines or lianas) from the forest, and the ordinary thatching consists of sugar-cane leaves, strung on reeds, which are laid so as to overlap one another: sometimes a heavy cocoa - palm matting above all, secures the roof against a very high wind.

Some of the Samoan homes revealed very pleasant cool-looking groups of comely lads and lasses lounging on their mats, making and smoking the invariable tiny cigarettes, consisting of a scrap of tobacco rolled up in a morsel of the dried banana-leaf fringe they wear round the waist. A few were whiling away the hot hours of the day by a game with small cocoa-nut shells: each player has five shells, with which he tries to knock every one else's shell from a given spot, leaving his own in their place. They also play a game something like forfeits. They sit in a circle, in the centre of which they spin a cocoa-nut on its thin end; and

as it falls, the person towards whom the three black eyes point is considered to have lost. In the same way they cast lots to decide who shall do some work or go an errand. In one village a party of lads had assembled on the village green to play totoga, or reed-throwing-a game very common in Fiji. The reeds, which are 5 or 6 feet in length, have oval wooden heads about 4 inches long, and the skill lies in making these skim along the grass to the furthest possible distance.

In a green shady glade we saw a party of young men, very lightly clad, practising spear-throwing, aiming at the soft stems of banana-trees, which I suppose represented the bodies of their foes. In the game they take sides, and one party tries to knock out the spears planted by the other. Sometimes they carry very short spears, and in throwing these, aim so as first to strike the ground, whence the shaft glides upwards towards the mark. I am told that a feat is sometimes performed which must involve marvellous coolness as well as dexterity. A man, armed only with a club, stands up as a target, and allows all the others to throw their spears at him. All these he catches with his club, and turns them aside in quick succession. It can scarcely be called a pleasant game, however.

We saw several distressing cases of elephantiasis, which is here called fè-fe, and, we are told, is com

mon. It produces hideous malformations; and the sufferers are pitiable objects, the arms and legs being hideously swollen. The natives attribute this disease to the action of the sun; but some Europeans who have suffered from it declare that it is also produced by exposure to the night air, and by excessive drinking of kava. Happily it is painless. Some of the Samoans suffer severely from ulcers; and we heard of some cases of ophthalmia.

Here and there, beneath the green shade of the plantains, close to the houses, we noticed hillocks of white sea-sand, surmounted by a low oblong cairn of wave-worn pebbles, with a layer of white stones on the top. These are the graves of the household. No Highlander is more careful to have his own bones, or those of his kindred, laid beside the dust of his forefathers, than is the Samoan. To him the idea of a common cemetery is repulsive. His desire is to be laid in the tomb in the garden, on land belonging to his family. When a man of any consequence dies, the ends of a canoe are cut off, and it is used as a coffin. This, however, is an innovation. The true old custom was to wrap the body in mats only-fine soft mats-and to lay it in a shallow grave, with the head to the east and the feet toward the setting sun. The wooden pillow and cocoa-nut cup of the dead were buried with him. Then the grave was covered with white sand,

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and the cairn was raised, always about a foot higher at the head than at the feet.

If the deceased was a chief of any note, bonfires were kindled at short intervals all round the grave, and the mourners sat near and fed the fires till dawn; and this they did for ten consecutive nights. But in the case of commoners, it sufficed to keep up a blazing fire all night in the house, taking care that the intervening space was so cleared as to allow the warm light to rest on the grave. The household fireplace was, as it is still, merely a circular hollow in the middle of the house, lined with clay, only a few inches deep, and rarely exceeding a yard in diameter. As the house has no walls, there is no difficulty about smoke, but considerable danger of setting fire to the surrounding mats. Nowadays, the fire in the house burns only for warmth, and for the convenience of lighting cigarettes; but in heathen days a blazing fire was kindled every evening in honour of the gods, to whom the house-father commended the family and all their interests.

Near one of the villages we caught a glimpse of a dark olive-green snake, the first I have seen for many a day. They are not quite so rare here as in Fiji, but are equally innocent; and the girls take them up without hesitation, and play with them, and even twine them round their necks. We also