[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

AOBA 24 3

behaviour. They are independent and self-possessed,
and do not run away from a stranger nor hide in
dark corners when a white man wants to speak to
them. Because of their intelligence they are liked
on plantations as house-servants, and so many of
them have gone away for this purpose that Aoba has
been considerably depopulated in consequence; few
of these women ever return, and those who do are
usually sick. Some Aoba women have made very
good wives for white men.

The people of Aoba are remarkable, for their
cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half
the day in the water, while those from the mountains
never miss their weekly bath, after which they
generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up
to their homes. The women are very pretty, slim
and strong; their faces often have quite a refined
outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but
well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft
and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their
movements, their light and supple walk, give them
a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The
'men, too, are good to look at. Considering the
intelligence and thriftiness of the race, it is doubly
regrettable that alcoholism, recruiting and consump-
tion have had such evil effects of recent years.

I roamed about in the neighbourhood of N abutriki
and attended several festivals ; they are much the same
as elsewhere, except that the pigs are not killed by
braining, but by trampling on their stomachs, which ap~
patently causes rupture of the heart and speedy death.