„Till Dobu men come”.
„They will come”, said Tovasana, „not in two days, not in three days, not in four days; they will come tomorrow, or at the very last, the day after tomorrow”.
„You go with them to Boyowa?”
„I sail first to Vakuta, then to Sinaketa with the Dobu men. They sail to Susuwa beach to fish, I go to your villages, to Kaduwaga, to Kaysiga, to Kuyawa. Is there plenty of mwali in your villages?”
„Yes, there are. So-and-so has...”
Here followed a long string of personal names of big armshells, the approximate number of smaller, nameless ones, and the names of the people in whose possession they were at the time.
The interest of both hearers and speakers was very obvious, and Tovasana gave the approximate dates of his movements to his visitors. Full moon was approaching, and the natives have got names for every day during the week before and after full moon, and the following and preceding days can therefore be reckoned. Also, every seven-day period within a moon is named after the quarter which falls in it. This allows the natives to fix dates with a fair exactitude. The present example shows the way in which, in olden times, the movements of the various expeditions were known over enormous areas; nowadays, when white men’s boats with native crews often move from one island to the other, the news spreads even more easily. In former times, small preliminary expeditions such as the one we have just been describing, would fix the dates and make arrangements often for as much as a year ahead.
The Kaduwaga men next inquired as to whether any strangers from the Trobriands were then staying in Gumasila. The answer was that there was in the village one man from Ba’u, and one from Sinaketa Then inquiries were made as to how many Kula necklaces there were in Gumasila, and the conversation drifted again into Kula technicalities.
It is quite customary for men from the Trobriands to remain for a long time in the Amphletts, that is, from one expedition to another. For some weeks or even months, they live in the house of their partner, friend, or relative, careful to keep to the customs of the country. They will sit about with the men of the village and talk. They will help in the work and go out on fishing expeditions. These latter will be specially attractive to a Trobriander, a keen fisherman himself, who here finds an entirely new type of this pursuit. Whether an expedition would be made on one of the sandbanks, where the fishermen remain for a few days, casting their big nets for dugong and turtle; or whether they would go out in a small canoe, trying to catch the jumping gar fish with a fishing kite; or throwing a fish trap into the deep sea — all these would be a novelty to the Trobriander, accustomed only to the methods suitable to the shallow waters of the Lagoon, swarming with fish.
In one point the Trobriander would probably find his sojourn in the Amphletts uncongenial; he would be entirely debarred from any intercourse with women. Accustomed in his country to easy intrigues, here he has completely to abstain, not only from sexual relations with women married or unmarried, but even from moving with them socially, in the free and happy manner characteristic of Boyowa. One of my main informants, Layseta, a Sinaketa man, who spent several years in the Amphletts, confessed to me, not without shame and regret, that he never succeeded in having any intrigues with the women there. To save his face, he claimed that he had had several Amphlett belles declaring their love to him, and offering their favours, but he always refused them: