oon, panting under
an immense load of fruit, with a pile of firewood on top, a child on
their back and possibly dragging another by the hand. Port Olry is the
only place in the New Hebrides where the women carry loads on their
heads. Everywhere else they carry them on their backs in baskets of
cocoa-nut leaves. In consequence the women here are remarkable for
their erect and supple carriage.

The work in the fields consists merely of digging out the yam and
picking other fruit, and it is a sociable affair, with much talking and
laughter. There is always something to eat, such as an unripe cocoa-nut
or a banana. Serious work is not necessary except at the planting
season, when the bush has to be cleared. Then a whole clan usually
works together, the men helping quite energetically, until the fields
are fenced in and ready for planting; then they hold a feast, a big
"kai-kai," and leave the rest of the work to the women. The fences are
made to keep out the pigs, and are built in the simplest way: sticks
of the wild cotton-wood tree, which grows rankly everywhere, are stuck
into the ground at short intervals; they immediately begin to sprout,
and after a short time form a living and impenetrable hedge. But they
last much longer than is necessary, so that everywhere the fences
of old gardens bar the road and force the traveller to make endless
detours, all the more so as the natives have a way of making their
fields right across the paths whenever it suits them.

The number of women here amounts only to about one-fourth of that
of the men. One reason for this is the custom of killing all the
widows of a chief, a custom which was all the more pernicious as the
chiefs, as a rule, owned most of the young females, while the young
men could barely afford to buy an old widow. Happily this custom is
dying out, owing to the influence of the planters and missionaries;
they appealed, not unwisely, to the sensuality of the young men, who
were thus depriving themselves of the women. Strange to say, the women
were not altogether pleased with this change, many desiring to die,
for fear they might be haunted by the offended spirit of their husband.

When a chief died, the execution did not take place at once. The
body was exposed in a special little hut in the thicket, and left to
decay, which process was hastened by the climate and the flies. Then
a death-feast was prepared, and the widows, half frantic with mad
dancing and howling, w