the enjoyment of every pleasure which
an islander conceives; and when the _malanga_ sets forth, the same
welcome and the same joys expect them beyond the next cape, where the
nearest village nestles in its grove of palms. To the visitors it is all
golden; for the hosts, it has another side. In one or two words of the
language the fact peeps slyly out. The same word (_afemoeina_) expresses
"a long call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (_lesolosolou_)
signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no cessation,
as in the arrival of visitors"; and _soua_, used of epidemics, bears the
sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood, or visitors." But the gem
of the dictionary is the verb _alovao_, which illustrates its pages like
a humorous woodcut. It is used in the sense of "to avoid visitors," but
it means literally "hide in the wood." So, by the sure hand of popular
speech, we have the picture of the house deserted, the _malanga_
disappointed, and the host that should have been quaking in the bush.

We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of manners,
highly curious in themselves, and essential to an understanding of the
war. In Samoa authority sits on the one hand entranced; on the other,
property stands bound in the midst of chartered marauders. What
property exists is vested in the family, not in the individual; and of
the loose communism in which a family dwells, the dictionary may yet
again help us to some idea. I find a string of verbs with the following
senses: to deal leniently with, as in helping oneself from a family
plantation; to give away without consulting other members of the family;
to go to strangers for help instead of to relatives; to take from
relatives without permission; to steal from relatives; to have
plantations robbed by relatives. The ideal of conduct in the family, and
some of its depravations, appear here very plainly. The man who (in a
native word of praise) is _mata-ainga_, a race-regarder, has his hand
always open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of
contempt) _noa_, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or
extremity of laziness. Beggary within the family--and by the less
self-respecting, without it--has thus grown into a custom and a scourge,
and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse. Special words
signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs
for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro,