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

I30 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

a monotonous tune, one man starting and the others
joining in; the dance consists of slow, springy jumps
from one foot to the other.

On two sides of this dancing circle the women
stand in line, painted all over with soot. When
the men’s deep song is ended, they chant the same
melody with thin, shrill voices. Once in a while they
join in the dance, taking a turn with some one man,
then disappearing; they are all much excited; only
a few old bags stand apart, who are past worldly
pleasures, and have known such feasts for many,
many years.

The whole thing looks grotesque 'and uncanny,
yet the pleasure in mere noise and dancing is
childish and harmless. The picture is imposing and
beautiful in its simplicity, gruesome in its wildness
and sensuality, and splendid with the red lights
which play on the shining, naked bodies. In the
blackness of the night nothing is visible but that
red—lit group of two or three hundred men, careless
of to-morrow, given up entirely to the pleasure of
the moment. The spectacle lasts all night, and
the crowd becomes more and more wrought up,
the leaps of the dancers Wilder, the singing louder.
We stand aside, incapable of feeling with these
people or sharing their joy, realizing that theirs is
a perfectly strange atmosphere which will never
be ours.

Towards morning we left, none too early, for
a tremendous shower came down and kept on all
next morning. I went up to the village again, to