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

26 MALEKULA
The nahal lamp are rights-oi-way which may never be closed.
and which are kept in repair by people passing to and fro. Every
user of such a path clears away any obstruction that he may see,
and if walking slowly a native will pull up the grass and weeds
along the sides of the track to prevent it from becoming over-
grown. Should he ï¬Ånd a tree which has fallen across the way,
he tells the people at the nearest village, and some of the men
then go out, kindle a ï¬Åre and burn the log through, thus removing
the obstruction. Besides keeping the track itself in order, the
convenience of travellers is cared for by making it easy for them
to get water on their journey. At every wayside stream where
the fall of the land will permit, one sees a split bamboo trough
resting upon a transverse stick and serving as a spout for the
water of the rivulet.
It seems that not all villages had a nahal lamp leading to
them, and it is possible that only the principal villages of each
clan were thus linked. Less important hamlets were united to
their " parent " village and to the outer world by paths called
nahal amut or " dead-end " paths. Unlike the nahal lamp these
are not always open to the public. They pass through the lands
belonging to individuals of different clans. and far from being
" rights-of-way " as are the nahal lamp, they may be blocked at
the wish of the owner of any piece of land which they traverse.
If after closing a nahal amu! running through his ground a man
ï¬Ånds that the obstruction which he set up has been broken through
by a man of his own clan, he will make no serious complaint,
but were the trespasser a member of a different clan, he would
be considered fully justiï¬Åed in shooting him, A village, too,
will often block the mlhal amut leading to it, if it hears that a
man intends to practice a certain " projective " form of death
magic against one of its members. Although a clan is not named,
but has only its distinctive gong-rhythm, all the villages have
names, of which the meanings are often very picturesque, as,
for instance, “ Under the Banyan Tree," " The Place of Red
Earth," “The House of Death," " The Sacred Place by the
Sea." 1 In addition to their common or public names, many of
them, if not all, have also a secret name. Thus Ndawu has the
1 The native words to which these translated names correspond cannot be
identiï¬Åed Wm. any certainty, save only " -rm House oi Death which in the
dialect of Seniung is Ame! '1_Bm,A4A 1-I. W,