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The feast I was to attend had been in preparation for some time. On all the dancing-grounds long bamboos were in readiness, loaded with yams and flowers, as presents to the host. Everything was brought to his gamal, and the whole morning passed in distributing the gifts, each family receiving a few yams, a little pig, some sprouted cocoa-nuts and a few rolls of money.
Whereas on Melanesian islands the dancing-grounds only are kept cleared, and surrounded by thick shrubbery for fear of invasion, here all the underbrush had been rooted out, and the shore was like a park, with a splendid view through dark tree-trunks across the blue sea, while the golden, godlike forms of the natives walked about with proud, regal gait, or stood in animated groups.
And some time in the starlight they felt their path dip, and knew that they were going downward now to the land of Rodriguez' dreams. When the peaks glowed again, first meeting day in her earliest dancing-grounds of filmy air, they stood now behind the wanderers. Below them still in darkness lay the land of their dream, but hitherto it had always faded at dawn.
Considering how few available feathers one little bird yields, and how many are needed for one roll, it is not surprising that this feather money is very valuable, and that a single roll will buy a woman. At great dances the circular dancing-grounds along the shore are decorated with these ribbons.
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.
"What if I should tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnight to-night, you will see the real author of this mischief eh?" "And why to-night?" "Because the moon rises at midnight." There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds under the ruins of Fort St.
Lianas wind in distorted curves through the branches, like giant snakes stiffened while fighting. This square is one of the dancing-grounds of Vao. The rows of stones surround the square on three sides two, three or more deep.
When alarmed, he hides in the foliage, and once swallowed up in the green depths which are his home and his protection, neither eye nor ear can find any trace of him. But our ideas change when we enter his village home, with its dancing-grounds with the big drums, the sacred stone tables, idols and carved tree-trunks, all in a frame of violently coloured bushes red, purple, brown and orange.
Gordon's death, the Tannese met on their village dancing-grounds and held high festival in praise of the Erromangans.
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