Now the leading idea of kayga’u is that it produces some sort of mist. The mulukwausi who follow the canoe, the sharks and live stones which lie in wait for it, the depth with all its horror, and the débris of the canoe ready to harm the owner, all these are blinded by the mist that arises in obedience to these spells. Thus the paralysing effect of these two main forms of magic and the specialised sphere of influence of each of them, are definite and clear dogmas of native belief.
But here again we must not try to press the interpretation of these dogmas too far. Some sort of mist covers the eyes of all the evil agencies or blinds them; it makes the natives invisible from them. But to ask whether the kayga’u produces a real mist, visible also to man, or only a supernatural one, visible only to the mulukwausi; or whether it simply blinds their eyes so that they see nothing, would be asking too much. The same native who will boast of having produced a real mist, so great that it led astray his companions, will next day perform the kayga’u in the village during a burial, and affirm that the mulukwausi are in a mist, though obviously a perfectly clear atmosphere surrounds the whole proceedings. The natives will tell how, sailing on a windy but clear day, after a kayga’u has been recited into the eye of the wind, they hear the shrieks of the mulukwausi, who, losing their companions and the scent of the trail, hail one another in the dark. Again, some expressions seem to represent the view that it is mainly an action on the eyes of the witches. ‘Idudubila matala mulukwausi,’—‘It darkens the eyes of the mulukwausi,’ or ‘iguyugwayu’—‘It blinds,’ the natives will say. And when asked:
“What do the *mulukwausi* see, then?” they will answer: “They will see mist only. They do not see the places, they do not see the men, only mist.”
Thus here, as in all cases of belief, there is a certain latitude, within which the opinions and views may vary, and only the broad outline, which surrounds them, is definitely fixed by tradition, embodied in ritual, and expressed by the phraseology of magical formulæ or by the statements of a myth.
I have thus defined the manner in which the natives face the dangers of the sea; we have found, that the fundamental conceptions underlying this attitude are, that in shipwreck, men are entirely in the hands of the witches, and that from this, only their own magical defence can save them. This defence consists in the rites and formulæ of the kayga’u, of which we have also learnt the leading principles. Now, a consecutive description must be given of how this magic is performed when a toliwaga sets out on an expedition. And following up this expedition, it must be told how the natives imagine a shipwreck, and what they believe the behaviour of the shipwrecked party would be.
III
I shall give this narrative in a consecutive manner, as it was told to me by some of the most experienced and renowned Trobriand sailors in Sinaketa, Oburaku, and Omarakana. We can imagine that exactly such a narrative would be told by a veteran toliwaga to his usagelu on the beach of Yakum, as our Kula party sit round the camp fires at night. One of the old men, well-known for the excellence of his kayga’u, and boastful of it, would tell his story, entering minutely into all the details, however often the others might have heard about them before, or even assisted at the performance of his magic. He would then proceed to describe, with extreme realism, and dwelling graphically on every point, the story of a shipwreck, very much as if he had gone through one himself. As a matter of fact, no one alive at present has