ady for cooking. When the fire was
burnt down they took out half of the stones with forks of split
bamboo, and then piled up the food in the hole, first the fruit,
then the meat, so that the grease should run over the fruit; then the
hole was covered with banana leaves, the hot stones piled on top and
covered with more leaves. Food cooked in this way is done in three or
four hours, so that the "stoves" are usually opened in the afternoon,
and enormous quantities eaten on the spot, while the rest is put in
baskets to take home. The amount a native can eat at one sitting
is tremendous, and one can actually watch their stomachs swell as
the meal proceeds. Violent indigestion is generally the consequence
of such a feast. On the whole, no one seemed to be thinking much of
the dead man in whose honour it was given,--such things are said to
happen in civilized countries as well.

I stayed in this village for another day, and many chiefs from the
neighbourhood came to consult me, always complaining of the one
thing--poison. Each secretly accused the others, each wanted me to
try my glass on all the others. I did not like my reputation of being
a magician at all, as it made the people still more suspicious of me
and more afraid of my instruments and my camera.

These so-called chiefs were rather more intelligent than the
average. Most of them had worked for whites at one time, and learned to
speak pidgin-English; but they were as superstitious as anyone else,
and certainly greater rogues. They were naked and dirty, but some had
retained some traces of civilization, one, for instance, always took
off his old felt hat very politely, and made quite a civilized bow;
he must have been in Noumea in former days.

There was no leprosy or elephantiasis here, but a great deal of
tuberculosis, and very few children, and nearly all the men complained
that their women were unwilling to have any more children.

From the next village I had a glimpse of the wild mountains of western
Santo. I decided to spend the night here, left the boys behind, and
went southward with the moli and a few natives. This was evidently
the region where the volcanic and coral formations meet, for the
character of the landscape suddenly changed, and instead of flat
plateaux we found a wild, irregular country, with lofty hills and
deep, narrow gullies. Walking became dangerous, though the path was
fair. On top of a hill I found an apparently abandoned village, fro