the linguistic material directly representing some of the natives’ thoughts on ethnographic subjects.
XV
I shall give here first a text on the subject of the priority in sailing, which as described in Chapter IX, is the privilege of a certain sub-clan in Sinaketa. I was discussing with a very good informant, Toybayoba of Sinaketa, the customs of launching the canoes, and I tried, as usually, to keep my interlocutor as much as possible to concrete details and to the stating of the full sequence of events. In his account he uttered this sentence:
“The Tolabwaga launch their canoe first; by this the face of the sea is cleared.”
I thereupon perceived that a new subject had been brought within my notice, and I headed my informant on to it,