is, nowadays, eight. On these heaps, some hands of ripe bananas and some betel-nut bunches are placed. On the ground, beside them, on trays of plaited coco-nut leaves, the lumps of meat are displayed. All this food has been provided by the toli’uvalaku, who previously has received as contributions towards it special presents, both from his own and from his wife’s kinsmen. In fact, if we try to draw out all the strands of gifts and contributions connected with such a distribution we would find that it is spun round into such an intricate web, that even the lengthy account of the foregoing chapter does not quite do it justice.
After the chief’s helpers have arranged the heaps, they go over them, seeing that the apportionment is correct, shifting some of the food here and there, and memorising to whom each heap will be given. Often in the final round, the toli’uvalaku inspects the heaps himself, and then returns to his former seat. Then comes the culminating act of the distribution. One of the chief’s henchmen, always a man of inferior rank, accompanied by the chief’s helpers, walks down the row of heaps, and at each of them screams out in a very loud voice:
“O, Siyagana, thy heap, there, O Siyagana, O!” At the next one he calls the name of another canoe: “O Gumawora, thy heap, there! O Gumawora O!”
He goes thus over all the heaps, allotting each one to a canoe. After that is finished, some of the younger boys of each canoe go and fetch their heap. This is brought to their fire, the meat is roasted, and the yams, the sugar cane and betel-nut distributed among the crew, who presently sit down and eat, each group by itself.
We see that, although the toli’uvalaku is responsible for the feast, and receives from the natives all the credit for it, his active part in the proceedings is a small one, and it is more nominal than real. On such occasions it would perhaps be incorrect to call him ‘master of ceremonies,’ although he assumes this rôle, as we shall see, on other occasions.
Nevertheless, for the natives, he is the centre of the proceedings. His people do all the work there is to be done, and in certain cases he would be referred to for a decision, on some question of etiquette.
After the meal is over, the natives rest, chew betel-nut and smoke, looking across the water towards the setting sun—it is now probably late in the afternoon—towards where, above the moored canoes, which rock and splash in the shallows, there float the faint silhouettes of the mountains. These are the distant Koya, the high hills in the d’Entrecasteaux and Amphletts, to which the elder natives have often already sailed, and of which the younger have heard so many times in myth, tales and magical spells. Kula conversations will predominate on such occasions, and names of distant partners, and personal names of specially valuable vaygu’a will punctuate the conversation and make it very obscure to those not initiated into the technicalities and historical traditions of the Kula. Recollections how a certain big spondylus necklace passed a couple of years ago through Sinaketa, how So-and-so handed it to So-and-so in Kiriwina, who again gave it to one of his partners in Kitava (all the personal names of course being mentioned) and how it went from there to Woodlark Island, where its traces become lost—such reminiscences lead to conjectures as to where the necklace might now be, and whether there is a chance of meeting it in Dobu. Famous