merry, and pleasure-loving; the gayest, though by far from either
the most capable or the most beautiful of Polynesians. Fine dress

is a passion, and makes a Samoan festival a thing of beauty. Song
is almost ceaseless. The boatman sings at the oar, the family at

evening worship, the girls at night in the guest-house, sometimes
the workman at his toil. No occasion is too small for the poets

and musicians; a death, a visit, the day's news, the day's
pleasantry, will be set to rhyme and harmony. Even half-grown

girls, the occasion arising, fashion words and train choruses of
children for its celebration. Song, as with all Pacific islanders,

goes hand in hand with the dance, and both shade into the drama.
Some of the performances are indecent and ugly, some only dull;

others are pretty, funny, and attractive. Games are popular.
Cricket-matches, where a hundred played upon a side, endured at

times for weeks, and ate up the country like the presence of an
army. Fishing, the daily bath, flirtation; courtship, which is

gone upon by proxy; conversation, which is largely political; and
the delights of public oratory, fill in the long hours.

But the special delight of the Samoan is the MALANGA. When people
form a party and go from village to village, junketing and

gossiping, they are said to go on a MALANGA. Their songs have
announced their approach ere they arrive; the guest-house is

prepared for their reception; the virgins of the village attend to
prepare the kava bowl and entertain them with the dance; time flies

in the enjoyment of every pleasure which an islander conceives; and
when the MALANGA sets forth, the same welcome and the same joys

expect them beyond the next cape, where the nearest village nestles
in its grove of palms. To the visitors it is all golden; for the

hosts, it has another side. In one or two words of the language
the fact peeps slyly out. The same word (AFEMOEINA) expresses "a

long call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (LESOLOSOLOU)
signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no

cessation, as in the arrival of visitors"; and SOUA, used of
epidemics, bears the sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood,

or visitors." But the gem of the dictionary is the verb ALOVAO,
which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut. It is used in

the sense of "to avoid visitors," but it means literally "hide in
the wood." So, by the sure hand of popular speech, we have the

picture of the house deserted, the MALANGA disappointed, and the
host that should have been quaking in the bush.

We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of
manners, highly curious in themselves, and essential to an

understanding of the war. In Samoa authority sits on the one hand
entranced; on the other, property stands bound in the midst of

chartered marauders. What property exists is vested in the family,
not in the individual; and of the loose communism in which a family

dwells, the dictionary may yet again help us to some idea. I find
a string of verbs with the following senses: to deal leniently

with, as in helping oneself from a family plantation; to give away
without consulting other members of the family; to go to strangers

for help instead of to relatives; to take from relatives without
permission; to steal from relatives; to have plantations robbed by

relatives. The ideal of conduct in the family, and some of its
depravations, appear here very plainly. The man who (in a native

word of praise) is MATA-AINGA, a race-regarder, has his hand always
open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of

contempt) NOA, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or
extremity of laziness. Beggary within the family - and by the less

self-respecting, without it - has thus grown into a custom and a
scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse.

Special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of
fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro,

of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of flyhooks, of
implements for netting pigeons, and of mats. It is true the beggar

was supposed in time to make a return, somewhat as by the Roman
contract of MUTUUM. But the obligation was only moral; it could

not be, or was not, enforced; as a matter of fact, it was
disregarded. The language had recently to borrow from the

Tahitians a word for debt; while by a significant excidence, it
possessed a native expression for the failure to pay - "to omit to

make a return for property begged." Conceive now the position of
the householder besieged by harpies, and all defence denied him by

the laws of honour. The sacramental gesture of refusal, his last
and single resource, was supposed to signify "my house is

destitute." Until that point was reached, in other words, the
conduct prescribed for a Samoan was to give and to continue giving.

But it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good
grace. The dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing

ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts - "troop of
shamefaced ones," "you draw in your head like a tern," "you make

your voice small like a whistle-pipe," "you beg like one
delirious"; and the verb PONGITAI, "to look cross," is equipped

with the pregnant rider, "as at the sight of beggars."
This insolence of beggars and the weakness of proprietors can only

be illustrated by examples. We have a girl in our service to whom
we had given some finery, that she might wait at table, and (at her

own request) some warm clothing against the cold mornings of the
bush. She went on a visit to her family, and returned in an old

tablecloth, her whole wardrobe having been divided out among
relatives in the course of twenty-four hours. A pastor in the

province of Atua, being a handy, busy man, bought a boat for a
hundred dollars, fifty of which he paid down. Presently after,

relatives came to him upon a visit and took a fancy to his new
possession. "We have long been wanting a boat," said they. "Give

us this one." So, when the visit was done, they departed in the
boat. The pastor, meanwhile, travelled into Savaii the best way he

could, sold a parcel of land, and begged mats among his other
relatives, to pay the remainder of the price of the boat which was

no longer his. You might think this was enough; but some months
later, the harpies, having broken a thwart, brought back the boat

to be repaired and repainted by the original owner.
Such customs, it might be argued, being double-edged, will

ultimately right themselves. But it is otherwise in practice.
Such folk as the pastor's harpy relatives will generally have a

boat, and will never have paid for it; such men as the pastor may
have sometimes paid for a boat, but they will never have one. It

is there as it is with us at home: the measure of the abuse of
either system is the blackness of the individual heart. The same

man, who would drive his poor relatives from his own door in
England, would besiege in Samoa the doors of the rich; and the

essence of the dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own
advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbour.

But the particular drawback of the Polynesian system is to depress
and stagger industry. To work more is there only to be more

pillaged; to save is impossible. The family has then made a good
day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew

of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins to be
recognised even in Samoa. One native is said to have amassed a

certain fortune; two clever lads have individually expressed to us
their discontent with a system which taxes industry to pamper

idleness; and I hear that in one village of Savaii a law has been
passed forbidding gifts under the penalty of a sharp fine.

Under this economic regimen, the unpopularity of taxes, which
strike all at the same time, which expose the industrious to a

perfect siege of mendicancy, and the lazy to be actually condemned
to a day's labour, may be imagined without words. It is more

important to note the concurrent relaxation of all sense of
property. From applying for help to kinsmen who are scarce

permitted to refuse, it is but a step to taking from them (in the
dictionary phrase) "without permission"; from that to theft at

large is but a hair's-breadth.
CHAPTER II - THE ELEMENTS OF DISCORD: FOREIGN

THE huge majority of Samoans, like other God-fearing folk in other
countries, are perfectly content with their own manners. And upon

one condition, it is plain they might enjoy themselves far beyond