The work in the fields consists merely of digging out the yam and picking other fruit, and it is a sociable affair, with much talking and laughter. There is always something to eat, such as an unripe cocoa-nut or a banana. Serious work is not necessary except at the planting season, when the bush has to be cleared. Then a whole clan usually works together, the men helping quite energetically, until the fields are fenced in and ready for planting; then they hold a feast, a big "kai-kai," and leave the rest of the work to the women. The fences are made to keep out the pigs, and are built in the simplest way: sticks of the wild cotton-wood tree, which grows rankly everywhere, are stuck into the ground at short intervals; they immediately begin to sprout, and after a short time form a living and impenetrable hedge. But they last much longer than is necessary, so that everywhere the fences of old gardens bar the road and force the traveller to make endless detours, all the more so as the natives have a way of making their fields right across the paths whenever it suits them.
The number of women here amounts only to about one-fourth of that of the men. One reason for this is the custom of killing all the widows of a chief, a custom which was all the more pernicious as the chiefs, as a rule, owned most of the young females, while the young men could barely afford to buy an old widow. Happily this custom is dying out, owing to the influence of the planters and missionaries; they appealed, not unwisely, to the sensuality of the young men, who were thus depriving themselves of the women. Strange to say, the women were not altogether pleased with this change, many desiring to die, for fear they might be haunted by the offended spirit of their husband.
When a chief died, the execution did not take place at once. The body was exposed in a special little hut in the thicket, and left to decay, which process was hastened by the climate and the flies. Then a death-feast was prepared, and the widows, half frantic with mad dancing and howling, were strangled.
Ordinary people are buried in their own houses, which generally decay afterwards. Often the widow had to sleep beside the decaying body for one hundred days.