PLATE VIII
THE ISLANDS OF WAIER AND DAUAR FROM THE BEACH OF MER, WITH A FISH SHRINE IN THE FOREGROUND
U ZOGO, THE COCONUT SHRINE OF DAUAR
We paid several visits to Dauar, but, not to be tedious, I will only describe one. We sailed across in the early morning with Pasi, Smoke and his wife, and one or two others. On landing we were met by Keriba, and after knocking down and eating a little wild fruit, which, by the way, was scarcely worth the effort, we sat in the welcome shade of some umbrageous trees close to the beach and listened to a couple of legends of local heroes told by Keriba. One related to an old man named Iriam Moris, whose appetite and capacity would be the envy of the most “aldermanic” of City fathers. On one occasion he ate four large shellfuls of small fish, an immense king-fish, which was really a metamorphosed lad named Geigi, and he finished off with the fish-trap, cooking-stones, firewood and ashes—in fact, all he could lay hands on; and in the terse jargon of that part of the world: “He kaikai (i.e. eat) so much, he can’t walk about; he lay like a stone. He say ‘I feel good now’”! Later Geigi’s mother killed Iriam Moris and resuscitated her son. During this narration we were sitting on a slightly convex rock that was all but covered with sand, but was none other than the “big belly” of Iriam Moris.
Fig. 5. Pepker, the Hill-maker
We walked through beautiful and luxuriant “scrub” and native gardens and visited a zogo in a garden in the saddle between the two hills. The whole of the low land of the island has been more or less cultivated, so there is no old jungle anywhere; but it is all the owners of the land can do to prevent the rampant vegetation from overrunning their gardens of yams and sweet potatoes or smothering the bananas. It requires a more facile pen than I can wield and a better knowledge of plants than I possess to adequately describe such scenes. As is usually the case in most of the uncultivated tropical districts I have seen, there were but few flowers, and these were of no special beauty; but this is partly made up for by the varied form and hue of the green foliage and by the bold contrasts of light and shade that result from vertical sunshine. The smooth broad leaves of the bananas above and of aroids below give the eye welcome “areas of repose” amid the multiplicity of detail and the unceasing struggle for mastery that almost oppresses one in tropical vegetation.
