means of saving the party, about the love magic of Iwa, and many other facts, which only a man of cosmopolitan experience and culture, like Ibena, would know and understand thoroughly. He was a good informant, eager to instruct and to display his wisdom and knowledge, and not devoid of imagination; of the licentious and libidinous women of Kaytalugi (see Chapter X) and of what a man has to suffer there, he would speak as if he had been there himself. At this time, he was specially loquacious about the Kula, and associated customs, inspired as he was by the hope of re-visiting his old haunts, and by the admiration and reverence shown to him by his listeners, myself included.
The other members of the audience were most interested in his accounts of how they make gardens in Kitava, Iwa and Gawa; of the special dances performed there, of the technicalities of Kula, and of the great efficiency of the Iwan love magic.
At that time, I was able to obtain more information about the Kula, and that more easily and in a shorter while, than I had, with strenuous efforts, for months before. It is by taking advantage of such epochs, when the interest of the natives is centred round a certain subject, that ethnographic evidence can be collected in the easiest and most reliable manner. Natives will willingly state customs and rules, and they will also accurately and with interest follow up concrete cases. Here, for instance, they would trace the way in which a given pair of armshells had passed through the hands of several individuals, and was now supposed to have come round again to Kitava—and in such a way one receives from the natives definite ethnographic documents, realities of thought, and details of belief, instead of forced artificial verbiage.
I saw the proceedings as far as the ceremonial launching of the chiefs’ canoes in Kasana’i and Omarakana (cf. Chapter VI), when the natives assembled in big numbers, and various festivities took place. Afterwards when everything was ready for sailing, a similar crowd gathered on the beach, though less numerous than the previous one, for only the neighbouring villages were there instead of the whole district. The chief addressed the crowd, enjoining strict taboos on strangers entering the village while the men were away. Such taboos, on the surface at least, are very carefully kept, as I had opportunities to observe during the two previous absences of To’uluwa. Early in the evening, everybody retired into his or her house, the outside fires were extinguished and when I walked through the village, it was quite deserted and except for a few old men specially keeping watch, no one was to be seen. Strangers would be careful not to pass even through the outskirts of the village after sunset, and would take another road to avoid the grove of Omarakana.
Even men from the sister-village of Kasana’i were excluded from entering the capital, and on one occasion when two or three of them wanted to visit their friends, they were stopped from doing it by some of the old men, with a considerable display of indignation and authority. As it happened, a day or two afterwards, but still while the Kula party were away, one of the favourite sons of To’uluwa, called Nabwasu’a, who had not gone on the expedition, was caught in flagrante delicto of adultery with the youngest wife of the very old chief of Kasana’i. The people of the latter village were highly incensed, not without an admixture of malicious amusement. One of these who had been expelled two nights before from Omarakana took a conch shell and with its blast announced to the wide world the shame and scandal of Omarakana. As a conch shell is blown only on very important and ceremonial occasion, this was a slap in the face of the supposedly virtuous community, and a reproach of its hypocrisy. A man of Kasana’i, speaking in a loud voice, addressed the people of Omarakana:—
“You don’t allow us to enter your village; you call us adulterous (*tokaylasi*); but we wanted only to go and visit our friends. And look here, Nabwasu’a committed adultery in our village!”