The spell ends by a conclusion similar to that of many other canoe formulae, „My canoe, thou art like a whirlwind, like a vanishing shadow! Disappear in the distance, become like mist, avaunt!”
These are the three usual rites for the sake of speed at the beginning of the journey. If the canoe remains slow, however, an auxiliary rite is performed; a piece of dried banana leaf is put between the gunwale and one of the inner frame sticks of the canoe, and a spell is recited over it. After that, they beat both ends of the canoe with this banana leaf. If the canoe is still heavy, and lags behind the others, a piece of kuleya (cooked and stale yam) is put on a mat, and the toliwaga medicates it with a spell which transfers the heaviness to the yam. The spell here recited is the same one which we met when the heavy log was being pulled into the village. The log was then beaten with a bunch of grass, accompanied by the recital of the spell, and then this bunch was thrown away74. In this case the piece of yam which has taken on the heaviness of the canoe is thrown overboard. Sometimes, however, even this is of no avail. The toliwaga then seats himself on the platform next to the steersman, and utters a spell over a piece of coco-nut husk, which is thrown into the water. This rite, called Bisiboda patile, is a piece of evil-magic (bulubwalata), intended to keep all the other canoes back. If that does not help, the natives conclude that some taboos pertaining to the canoe might have been broken, and perhaps the toliwaga may feel some misgivings regarding the conduct of his wife or wives.
Chapter IX. Sailing on the sea-arm of Pilolu
I — The landscape. Mythological geography of the regions beyond. II — Sailing: the winds; navigation; technique of sailing a canoe and its dangers. III — The customs and taboos of sailing. Privileged position of certain sub-clans. IV — The beliefs in dreadful monsters lurking in the sea.
I
Now at last the Kula expedition is properly set going. The canoes are started on a long stage, before them the sea-arm of Pilolu, stretching between the Trobriands and the d’Entrecasteaux. On the North, this portion of the sea is bounded by the Archipelago of the Trobriands, that is, by the islands of Vakuta, Boyowa and Kayleula, joining in the west on to the scattered belt of the Lousançay Islands. On the east, a long submerged reef runs from the southern end of Vakuta to the Amphletts, forming an extended barrier to sailing, but affording little protection from the eastern winds and seas. In the South, this barrier links on to the Amphletts, which together with the Northern coast of Fergusson and Goodenough, form the Southern shore of Pilolu. To the West, Pilolu opens up into the seas between the mainland of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. In fact, what the natives designate by the name of Pilolu is nothing else but the enormous basin of the Lousançay Lagoon, the largest coral atoll in the world. To the natives, the name of Pilolu is full of emotional associations, drawn from magic and myth; it is connected with the experiences of past generations, told by the old men round the village fires and with adventure personally lived through.
As the Kula adventurers speed along with filled sails, the shallow Lagoon of the Trobriands soon falls away behind; the dull green waters, sprinkled with patches of brown where seaweed grows high and rank, and lit up here and there with spots of bright emerald where a shallow bottom of clean sand shines through, give place to a deeper sea of strong green hue. The low strip of land, which surrounds the Trobriand Lagoon in a wide sweep, thins away and dissolves in the haze, and before them the southern mountains rise higher and higher. On a clear day, these are visible even from the Trobriands. The neat outlines of the Amphletts stand diminutive, yet firmer and more material, against the blue silhouettes of the higher mountains behind. These, like a far away cloud, are draped in wreaths of cumuli, almost always clinging to their summits. The nearest of them, Koyatabu — the mountain of the taboo75 — on the North end of Fergusson Island, a slim, somewhat tilted pyramid, forms a most alluring beacon, guiding the mariners due South, To the right of it, as we look towards the South- West, a broad, bulky mountain, the Koyabwaga’u — mountain of the sorcerers — marks the North-western corner of Fergusson Island. The mountains on Goodenough Island are visible only in very clear weather, and then very faintly.
Within a day or two, these disembodied, misty forms are to assume what for the Trobrianders seems marvellous shape and enormous bulk. They are to surround the Kula traders with their solid walls of precipitous rock and green jungle, furrowed with deep ravines and streaked with racing water-courses. The Trobrianders will sail deep, shaded bays, resounding with the, to them unknown, voice of waterfalls; with the weird cries of strange birds which never visit the Trobriands, such as the laughing of the kookooburra (laughing jackass), and the melancholy call of the South Sea crow. The sea will change its colour once more, become pure blue, and beneath its transparent waters, a marvellous world of multi-coloured coral, fish and seaweed will unfold itself, a world which, through a strange geographical irony, the inhabitants of a coral island hardly ever can see at home, and must come to this volcanic region to discover.
In these surroundings, they will find also wonderful, heavy, compact stones of various colours and shapes, whereas at home the only stone is the insipid, white, dead coral. Here they can see, besides many types of granite and basalt and volcanic tuff, specimens of black obsidian, with its sharp edges and metallic ring, and sites full of red and yellow ochre. Besides big hills of volcanic ash, they will behold hot springs boiling up periodically. Of all these marvels the young Trobriander hears tales, and sees samples brought back to his country, and there is no doubt that it is for him a wonderful experience to find himself amongst them for the first time, and that afterwards he eagerly seizes every opportunity that offers to sail again to the Koya. Thus the landscape now before them is a sort of promised land, a country spoken of in almost legendary tone.
And indeed the scenery here, on the borderland of the two different worlds, is singularly impressive. Sailing away from the Trobriands on my last expedition, I had to spend two days, weatherbound, on a small sandbank covered with a few pandanus trees, about midway between the Trobriands and the Amphletts. A darkened sea lay to the North, big thunderclouds hanging over where I knew there was the large flat island of Boyowa — the Trobriands. To the South, against a clearer sky, were the abrupt forms of the mountains, scattered over half of the horizon. The scenery seemed saturated with myth and legendary tales, with the strange adventures, hopes and fears of generations of native sailors. On this sandbank they had often camped, when becalmed or threatened with bad weather. On such an island, the great mythical hero, Kasabwaybwayreta stopped, and was marooned by his companions, only to escape through the sky. Here again a mythical canoe once halted, in order to be re-caulked. As I sat there, looking towards the Southern mountains, so clearly visible, yet so inaccessible, I realised what must be the feelings of the Trobrianders, desirous to reach the Koya, to meet the strange people, and to kula with them, a desire made perhaps even more acute by a mixture of fear. For there, to the west of the Amphletts, they see the big bay of Gabu, where once the crews of a whole fleet of Trobriand canoes were killed and eaten by the inhabitants of unknown villages, in attempting to kula with them. And stories are also told of single canoes, drifted apart from the fleet and cast against the northern shore of Fergusson Island, of which all the crew perished at the hands of the cannibals. There are also legends of some inexperienced natives, who, visiting the neighbourhood of Deyde’i and arriving at the crystal water in the big stone basins there, plunged in, to meet a dreadful death in the almost boiling pool.