At our morning and evening
prayers numbers are always about who seem to enjoy the singing. We see
quite a number of strangers every day--some from Brumer Island, Tissot,
Teste, China Straits, Catamaran Bay, Farm Bay, and other places. Those
from Vakavaka--a place over by China Straits--are lighter and
better-looking than those here. The women there do not seem to tattoo
themselves. Here they tattoo themselves all over their faces and bodies,
and make themselves look very ugly. I have not seen one large man or
woman amongst them all.
We had much difficulty in getting a sufficient supply of plaited cocoanut
leaves for the walls and roof of our house. By the 14th, we had the
walls and roof finished, when all our party moved into it. We had a
curtain of unbleached calico put up between the teachers' end and ours,
and curtains for doors and windows, but were glad to get into it in that
unfinished state: the weather was breaking, and we felt anxious about the
teachers sleeping in the tent when it rained, and we had no privacy at
all where we were, and were tired of squatting on the ground, for we
could not get a chair in our part of the house; indeed, the flooring was
of such a construction that the legs of a chair or table would have soon
gone through it.
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