Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/23

Rh Until quite recently there were three such stones on the island of Toga, in the delta of the Wailevu, near Rewa; and with the genial help of Nemani (native magistrate at Rewa) and Ratu Joni Mataitini (native practitioner A. N. C.), I obtained the following account of them from the chief and elders of the neighbouring village of Bulu, which I afterwards verified at Navuniivideke and Lukia.

One of these stone idols or shrines, Katalewe by name, was vested in a certain mataqali called Navokai, belonging to Navasa, where the village of that name is at the present day. They owned some land at Naivila, a former town across the backwater, at the rear of the present site of Bulu. Their yavu (foundation) there was called Na Qavoka, and on this yavu Katalewe had his being. Latterly Naivila has been used as planting land by the Navasa people; but in order to reach it I had to pass through several old fighting trenches; and large trees, vu ni dawa principally, were growing upon the ancient yavus (foundations), whose form was still to be made out.

Another leprosy shrine, only a mile or two distant from the same place, was called Toralagi, and is said to be still there. And the third was called Ratu. Latterly Ratu has been missing, nobody exactly knows how or why. His former site was pointed out to me in the cleft between the buttresses of a dawa tree, and there I dug. I came upon three angular pieces of soft trachytic rock with fractures and decaying surfaces, from three to five pounds in weight each, and a fragment of reef-coral. Neither was Ratu. I had difficulty in persuading any one to assist or approach me in this performance. The people stood hesitatingly a few yards off, and were disinclined to handle the knife or the digging stick; but one man finally took the plunge and loosened the soil while I unearthed the stones. Beyond this I learnt nothing about Ratu except the following two short stories.

When the Noco people attacked the Toga district they