people to believe that a considerable sum had been abstracted. Persons were deputed to consult a noted seer, called Ndrau-ni-ivi, whose finger tingled at the mention of the Mbuli's name. The poor Mbuli, knowing for the best of reasons that he was innocent, instead of taking the obvious course of submitting his books to be audited by the magistrate, presented a larger fee to a rival seer to "press down" (mbika) that given to Ndrau-ni-ivi, and triumphantly vindicated his character by the verdict of his practitioner's great toe. Upon this evidence he prosecuted his slanderers for defamation before the Provincial Court. The cunning and knack of clever guessing necessary for the lucrative calling of the seer formerly made the business a monopoly of the priests.
The yalovaki (soul-stealing) was an even surer method of detecting crime. It was the mildest form of trial by ordeal ever devised, but no boiling water or hot ploughshare could have been more effective. If the evidence was strong, but the suspect obstinately refused to confess, complaint was made to the chief, who summoned the accused, and called for a scarf. Usually the man confessed at the bare mention of the instrument, but if he did not, the cloth was waved over his head until his spirit (yalo) was entangled in it, and it was then folded together and nailed to the prow of the chief's canoe. Then the man went mad, for the mad are they whose soul have been stolen away.
Charms
There is no unusual feature in the Fijians' belief in charms. They were carried to avert calamities of all kinds, but principally shipwreck and wounds in battle. A mountain girl, who had never before seen the sea, was once a fellow-passenger with me in a stormy passage to Suva. A heavy lurch of the little vessel threw her sprawling on the deck, and I noticed that, while the other natives were bantering her, she was crying bitterly. Her fall had disengaged a pebble from her hand which had been given her as a talisman against death by drowning. Charms have their uses in litigation
I had once before me a little old man who enjoyed some reputation for skill in witchcraft. Being sentenced for some petty offence, he solemnly removed his loin-cloth, and took from between his thighs a little bag, containing dried root, and flung it away with a gesture of contempt, much to the amusement of the enlightened native police, who explained that it was an amulet against conviction.
TRAPPING THE LITTLE GODS
The Kalou-rere
The kalou-rere differed from other religious observances in that, though it was practised in most parts of the group, either under its prevailing name or that of ndomindomi, the form was universal. The votaries were youths of the male sex only: there was no recognized priesthood; the cult was rather one of the effervescences of youth which in England find their vent in the football field and the amateur stage. The object of the rites was to allure the "Little Gods"—the Luve-ni-wai (Children of the Water)—a timid race of Immortals, to leave the sea, and take up their temporary abode among their votaries on land. Beyond the gift of immunity from wounds in battle, and such pleasure as may be drawn from the excitement of the secret rites, it is not clear that the Little People conferred any boon upon their worshippers commensurate with the labour and privations that worship entailed, but more than this has been urged against Freemasonry by its critics.
In a retired place near the sea a small house was built, and enclosed with a rustic trellis fence, tied at the crossings with a small-leafed vine, and interrupted by long poles decorated with streamers. Within the enclosure a miniature temple was erected to contain a consecrated cocoanut, or some other trifle. No effort was spared to make the place attractive to the shy little gods; the roof of the house was draped with masi; the wall studded with crab-claws, and span-long yams and painted cocoanuts were disposed about the foundations that they might eat and drink.
A party of twenty or thirty youths spent several weeks in