In front of me, near the entrance, is the chiefs place. He spends a long time in preparing his kava, and drinks it noisily. Kava is a root which is ground with a piece of sharp coral; the fibres are then mixed with water, which is contained in a long bamboo, and mashed to a soft pulp; the liquid is then squeezed out, strained through a piece of cocoa-nut bark into a cocoa-nut bowl and drunk. The liquid has a muddy, thick appearance, tastes like soapy water, stings like peppermint and acts as a sleeping-draught. In Santo only chiefs are allowed to drink kava.
At first, innumerable dogs disturbed my sleep, and towards morning it grew very cold. When I came out of the hut, the morning sun was just getting the better of the mist, and spreading a cheery light over the square, which had looked dismal enough under a grey, rainy sky. I made all the women gather on the outskirts of the square to be measured and photographed. They were very bashful, and I almost pitied them, for the whole male population sat around making cruel remarks about them; indeed, if it had not been for the chiefs explicit orders, they would all have run away. They were not a very pleasant spectacle, on the whole. I was struck by the tired, suffering expression of even the young girls, a hopeless and uninterested look, in contradiction with their lively behaviour when unobserved. For they are natural and happy only when among themselves, and in the presence of the men they feel that they are under the eye of their master, often a brutal master, whose property they are. Probably they are hardly conscious of this, and take their position and destiny as a matter of course; but they are constrained in the presence of their owners, knowing that at any moment they may be displeased or angry, for any reason or for none, and may ill-treat or even kill them. Aside from these considerations their frightened awkwardness was extremely funny, especially when posing before the camera. Some could not stand straight, others twisted their arms and legs into impossible positions. The idea of a profile view seemed particularly strange to them, and they always presented either their back or their front view. The poor things got more and more nervous, the men roared, I was desperate,--altogether it was rather unsatisfactory.