The other country, Kaytalugi, is a land of women only, in which no man can survive. The women who live there are beautiful, big and strong, and they walk about naked, and with their bodily hair unshaven (which is contrary to the Trobriand custom). They are extremely dangerous to any man through the unbounded violence of their passion. The natives never tire of describing graphically how such women would satisfy their sensuous lust, if they got hold of some luckless, shipwrecked man. No one could survive, even for a short time, the amorous yet brutal attacks of these women. The natives compare this treatment to that customary at the yousa, the orgiastic mishandling of any man, caught at certain stages of female communal labour in Boyowa (cf. [Chapter II, Division II]). Not even the boys born on this island of Kaytalugi can survive a tender age. It must be remembered the natives see no need for male co-operation in continuing the race. Thus the women propagate the race, although every male needs must come to an untimely end before he can become a man.
None the less, there is a legend that some men from the village of Kaulagu, in eastern Boyowa, were blown in their canoe far North from the easterly course of a Kula expedition, and were stranded on the coast of Kaytalugi. There, having survived the first reception, they were apportioned individually and married. Having repaired their canoe, ostensibly for the sake of bringing some fish to their wives, one night they put food and water into it, and secretly sailed away. On their return to their own village, they found their women married to other men. However, such things never end tragically in the Trobriands. As soon as their rightful lords reappeared their women came back to them. Among other things these men brought to Boyowa a variety of banana called usikela, not known before.
II
Returning again to our Kula party, we see that, in journeying across Pilolu, they move within the narrow confines of familiar sailing ground, surrounded on all sides both by real dangers and by lands of imaginary horrors. On their track, however, the natives never go out of sight of land, and in the event of mist or rain, they can always take sufficient bearings to enable them to make for the nearest sand-bank or island. This is never more than some six miles off, a distance which, should the wind have dropped, may even be reached by paddling.
Plate XL
A Waga Sailing on a Kula Expedition
A canoe fully loaded with a crew of twelve men, just about to furl sail arriving in the Amphletts. Note the cargo at the gebobo and each man’s personal bundle of folded mat on top of it. (See [Div. II].)
Plate XLI