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The highest castes wear the darkest, nearly black, varieties. These croton bushes are planted along the sides of the gamals, so as to furnish the men's ornaments; and they lend the sombre places some brightness and colour. Half for ornament and half for purposes of healing are the large scars which may frequently be seen on the shoulders or breasts of the natives.
As each of these clubs has its own house, we sometimes find quite a number of such huts in one village, where they take the place of gamals. Each Suque high caste has his own house, which the low castes may not enter. The caste of the proprietor may be seen by the material of which the hedge is made, the lower castes having hedges of wood and logs, the highest, walls of stone and coral slabs.
Having won the confidence of a native, we may be taken into his courtyard, where there is little to be seen, as all the social life goes on in the gamals or on the dancing-grounds. A dozen simple huts stand irregularly about the square, some half decayed and serving as pigsties. One hut belongs to the master, and each of his wives has a house of her own, in which to bring up her children.
This helped matters a little, although, until the day I left, I was always the centre of an excited mob that pulled at my sleeves and trousers and shrieked into my ears. I was always cordially invited to enter the gamals; these were square houses, kept very clean, with a fireplace in the centre, and the floor covered with mats.
There is wood-carving, or was. I found the doorposts of old gamals beautifully carved, and plates prettily decorated; but these were all antiques, and nothing of the kind is made at the present day. The race, however, is quite different from that around Port Olry.
On the other side were the large, well-kept gamals, and crowds of people in festival attire; many had come from a distance, as the feast was to be a big one, with plenty to eat for everybody. Palo, the host, was very busy looking after his guests and giving each his share of good things.
The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl.
Among the beams of the roof hang all kinds of curiosities: dancing-masks and sticks, rare fish, pigs' jaws, bones, old weapons, amulets and so on, everything covered with a thick layer of soot from the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are a kind of club-house, where the men spend the day and occasionally the night.
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