"All the cooking is done out-of-doors, and there is very little inside the houses that can be called furniture. In one house we found a group of young people playing a game which was something like our game of forfeits. They sat in a circle and spun a cocoanut around on its sharp end; when it fell the person towards whom the three black eyes pointed was adjudged the loser. When they are to decide which of them is to do anything, leaving the others free, the lottery of the cocoanut is used to determine the matter.
"Warfare being more prevalent here in later years than in the Society group, we found the games of the young men much more vigorous than at Tahiti. We saw a party of boys playing at _totoga_, or reed-throwing; they had reeds five or six feet long, with points of hard wood, and the skill of the game consisted in making the reeds skim as far as possible along the grass.
"In another spot some young men were throwing spears at the stumps of trees, and in this game the skill consisted in a youth's ability to force out the spear of some one else while fixing his own in the stump. They have several games in which spears and clubs are used, and sometimes they are accompanied by a good deal of risk. Spears are thrown so as to hit the ground and then glide upward to the mark, and sometimes a man stands up armed with only a club and allows half a dozen others to throw their spears at him in rapid succession. By a dexterous handling of his club he turns the spears aside, but it is evident that the slightest mistake may have serious consequences.
"When we came back to the landing-place we thought we would take a ride in a native boat instead of calling away the boat of the yacht. So we hired an outrigger canoe, and were quickly paddled to the side of the _Pera_. These boats are not by any means new to us, as we have seen them in Ceylon, the Malay Archipelago, and other parts of the world. The Samoans handle them with a great deal of skill, and I do not wonder that Bougainville recognized their ability by calling this group the 'Navigator's Islands.'
"I forgot to say," added Frank, "that we saw several cases of elephantiasis, which the natives call _fé-fé_, and is said to be quite common in all the islands of the group. The arms and legs of the victims are swollen to a great size, but, happily for them, the disease is not attended with pain. The cause of _fé-fé_ is as unknown as is that of goitre in Switzerland."