Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
Two pandanuses frame the view, their long leaves waving softly in the breeze that comes floating down the valley. Half asleep, I know the delights of the lotus-eaters' blessed isle. Next day I landed in Aoba, at "Albert's." He was an American negro, who, after having been a stoker and sailor, had settled here as a coprah trader.
I could no more do that than than you could kill that Aoba wife of yours over there." Old Hutton rose, too, and put a detaining hand on Blackett. "Look here, now, an' I suppose you think I'm lyin'. If I thought that that there Aoba wench was foolin' me in any way sech as givin' away my tobacco to a nigger buck, I'd have to wentilate her yaller hide or get laid out myself." Blackett shuddered.
Under big sheds, in the shade of the tall trees, lie large whale-boats of European manufacture, belonging to the different clans, in which the men undertake long cruises to the other islands, Santo, Aoba, Ambrym, to visit "sing-sings" and trade in pigs.
Later he works his way up in the society by attending numberless feasts and ceremonies, by having endless discussions on tusked pigs, by borrowing, buying and lending pigs, by plotting and sacrificing. The number of castes varies on different islands: in Ambrym there are fourteen, in Venua Lava twenty, in Aoba ten.
Blackett, finding it impossible to make old Hutton drunk or get him to turn in, resigned himself entirely to the old pirate, who, glancing to the far end of the room, to where Cerita and his own wife, a tall, lithe-limbed Aoba woman, were lying together on a mat smoking cigarettes, proceeded to pour out the story of his countless murders and minor villainies.
The people of Aoba are quite different from those of the other islands, light-coloured, often straight-haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite good-looking, intelligent, and their habits show many Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society, and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on.
The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes.
Up in these northern mountains I spent a most unpleasant week in wet, cold weather, in a wretched house; but I had the satisfaction of finding two boys to take the place of Lingban, who had, by this time, become semi-idiotic with home-sickness. I returned to the coast and waited for an opportunity to cross to Aoba, but the weather was so bad that even Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking