United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He rose and brushed the cigarette ashes down the front of his frayed cassock as an old native woman responded to his call and brought another bottle of Bordeaux. The nonos were incessantly active. I slapped at them constantly and sucked at the wounds they made. But he paid no attention to them at all except when they attacked him under his soutane; then he struck convulsively at the spot.
The missionaries have had great trouble in demolishing their tombs and idols; but the Indians, inland, still continue the custom of pasing tabi sa nano, or asking permission of their dead ancestors, when they enter any wood, mountain, or corn field, for hunting or sowing; and if they omit this ceremony imagine their nonos will punish them with bad fortune.
"God sends us such trials to brighten our crown," he said comfortingly. "I have seen white men dead from the nonos. They were not here in the old days, but since the jungle has overrun us because of depopulation, they are frightful. During the mass, when the priest cannot defend himself, they are worst, as if sent by the devil who hates the holy sacrifice.
"The nonos never stop biting," she said in French. These nonos are the dread sand-flies that Père Victorien had run from to get some sleep in Atuona. They are a kind of gadfly, red-hot needles on wings.
The girl wore it as the Maid herself, and sat the horse without faltering, despite the nonos and the heat. It was a wonderful day for Joan and for the Marquesas." He sat for a moment lost in the vision. "So it was all as you had planned?" "Mon ami, it was not I, but Joan herself, to whom all honor belongs.
It was such a garden as the prince who woke the Sleeping Beauty penetrated to reach the palace where she lay entranced, and something of the same sense of dread magic lay upon it. Humanity was not so much absent as gone, and a feeling of doom and death was in the motionless air, which lay like a weight upon leaf and flower. The thin, sharp buzzing of the nonos was incessant.
He fell into a reverie, scratching his legs after the nonos and letting his cigarette go out. I arose to depart. He must go to Huapu with the chief, who was again at the door, "And did the fête help the parish?" I asked with that bromidic zeal to please that so often discloses the fly just when the ointment's smell is sweetest. "Alas!" he replied, with a sorrowful shake of his beard.
He had lost much cuticle, and the saddle was in shreds, but the puaka piki enata was evidently in fairly good health. The old man had slowly followed me down the trail, and he stood within the doorway of a rude hut, blinking in the sun as he watched my movements. In the houses were altogether fewer than a dozen people. They sat by cocoanut-husk fires, the acrid smoke of which daunted the nonos.
He said that they had had two children, and he had been sure that at least he would find them alive. His misery made me feel bad, and the damned nonos, too, and I cried I don't know how damn sentimental it was, but that was the way it affected me. The old chap seemed so alone in the world.
They have clung to their lonely paepaes despite their poverty of numbers and the ferocity of the nonos. They had clearings with cocoanuts and breadfruit, but they cared no longer to cultivate them, preferring rather to sit sadly in the curling fumes and dream of the past. One old man read aloud the "Gospel of St.
Word Of The Day