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

242 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

talk, as a rule, turned on stories of ghosts, in which
both of them firmly believed, and by which both were
much troubled. Marmaduke was strangled every
few nights by old women, while a goblin had sat on
Albert’s chest every night. until he had cleared the
bush round his house and emptied his Winchester
three times into the darkness. This had driven the
ghosts away,—a pretty case of auto-suggestion. I
was interested in hearing these stories, though I
should hardly have thought a sensible man like
Albert could have believed such things.

The people of Aoba are quite different from those
of the other islands,——light-coloured, often straight-
haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite
good—looking, intelligent, and their habits show many
Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important
here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society,
and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on.
Men and women live together, and the fires do not
appear to be separated. As a result, there is real
family life, owing in part to the fact that meals are
eaten in common. The gamal is replaced by a
cooking—house, which is open to the women; gener-
ally it is nothing but a great gabled roof, reaching to
the ground on one side and open on the others.
Here the families live during the day, and the young
men and guests sleep at night, while the married
couples sleep in their huts, which are grouped around
the cooking-house.

The position of the women, so much better

here than elsewhere, is not without effect on their '