bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of the road wound
steeply upward. As we went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of
us, Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for
me, and read aloud from his notes the abstract of their virtues.
Presently the road, mounting, showed us the vale of Hatiheu on a larger
scale; and the priest, with occasional reference to our guide, pointed
out the boundaries and told me the names of the larger tribes that lived
at perpetual war in the old days: one on the north-east, one along the
beach, one behind upon the mountain. With a survivor of this latter clan
Father Simeon had spoken; until the pacification he had never been to
the sea's edge, nor, if I remember exactly, eaten of sea-fish. Each in
its own district, the septs lived cantoned and beleaguered. One step
without the boundaries was to affront death. If famine came, the men
must out to the woods to gather chestnuts and small fruits; even as to
this day, if the parents are backward in their weekly doles, school must
be broken up and the scholars sent foraging. But in the old days, when
there was trouble in one clan, there would be activity in all its
neighbours; the woods would be laid full of ambushes; and he who went
after vegetables for himself might remain to be a joint for his
hereditary foes. Nor was the pointed occasion needful. A dozen different
natural signs and social junctures called this people to the war-path
and the cannibal hunt. Let one of chiefly rank have finished his
tattooing, the wife of one be near upon her time, two of the debouching
streams have deviated nearer on the beach of Hatiheu, a certain bird
have been heard to sing, a certain ominous formation of cloud observed
above the northern sea; and instantly the arms were oiled, and the
man-hunters swarmed into the wood to lay their fratricidal ambuscades.
It appears besides that occasionally, perhaps in famine, the priest
would shut himself in his house, where he lay for a stated period like a
person dead. When he came forth it was to run for three days through the
territory of the clan, naked and starving, and to sleep at night alone
in the high place. It was now the turn of the others to keep the house,
for to encounter the priest upon his rounds was death. On the eve of the
fourth day the time of the running was over; the priest returned to his
roof, the laymen came forth, and in the morning the number of the
victims