strain. Conversation and social intercourse between the 193 two sexes is repressed to monosyllables. A group of male natives, such as the group in our cook-house, will bring an animated conversation to a complete silence when a mari appears to sell her basket of taro, and ob- serv[e] it until she departs. The mari, on such an occa- sion, inevitably performs some silly and embarrassed contretemps and shifts and filigrees around like a child of two. They carry their children on their backs straddle- legged fashion, they wear lava lavas, or loin cloths, and their figures are enlarged around the waist from the weight of the loads they are forced to carry up and down the steep trails. It would not be correct to say that the women are left all the work to do. The men stir about considerably themselves. But they are free and independently spirited and their exits and their entrances, their tasks and their excursions are timed to suit themselves. And when a mari sells anything her husband takes the calico or tobacco and gives it, or part of it, to her if he chooses. For all the wretchedness and squalor of the people of the village, they are not wretched-spirited people. The struggle for existence stands, like the jocund sun in Romeo and Juliet, tiptoe on the mountain top, and the sulking lean ribbed dogs that sniff hungrily around under the poles of the huts bear witness that there is