be almost as much at home in the water as on dry land."

In his book on the Melanesians Codrington says (243) that

"a wife jealous of her husband, or in any way incensed at
him, would in former times throw herself from a cliff or
tree, swim out to sea, hang or strangle herself, stab
herself with an arrow, or thrust one down her throat; and a
man jealous or quarrelling with his wife would do the like;
but now it is easy to go off with another's wife or husband
in a labor vessel to Queensland or Fiji."

There is one class of men in Fiji who are not likely to commit
suicide. They are the bachelors, who, though they are scorned and
frowned on in this life, must look forward to a worse fate after
death. There is a special god, named Nangganangga--"the bitter hater
of bachelors"--who watches for their souls, and so untiring is his
watch, as Williams was informed (206), that no unwedded spirit has
ever reached the Elysium of Fiji. Sly bachelors sometimes try to dodge
him by stealing around the edge of a certain reef at low tide; but he
is up to their tricks, seizes them and dashes them to pieces on the
large black stone, just as one shatters rotten fire-wood.

SAMOAN TRAITS

Cruel and degraded as the Fijians are, they mark a considerable
advance over the Australian savages. A further advance is to be noted
as we come to the Samoans. Cannibalism was indulged in occasionally in
more remote times, but not, as in Fiji, owing to a relish for human
flesh, but merely as a climax of hatred and revenge. To speak of
roasting a Samoan chief is a deadly insult and a cause for war
(Turner, 108). Sympathy was a feeling known to Samoans; their
treatment of the sick was invariably humane (141). And whereas in
Australia, Borneo, and Fiji, it is just as honorable to slay a female
as a male, Samoans consider it cowardly to kill a woman (196). Nor do
they practise infanticide; but this abstinence is counterbalanced by
the fact that the custom of destroying infants before birth prevailed
to a melancholy extent (79).

Yet here as everywhere we discover that the sexual refinement on which
the capacity for supersensual love depends comes last of the virtues.
The Rev. George Turner, who had forty years of experience among the
Polynesians, writes (125) that at their dances "all kinds of obscenity
in looks, language, and gesture prevailed; and often they danced and
revelled till daylight." The universal custo