Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/27

Rh crystalline yet smooth surface of a piece of dolomite, if waterworn, such as the outcrop along the valley of the Sigatoka and at Yasawailau would become, in the Toga district, an object for remark and perhaps veneration.

A stone shrine of the leprosy demon even more remarkable perhaps than Katalewe is one I discovered near the centre of the island, in Noikoro. I could not find that its genius loci was known by any proper name; and the stone itself was called simply Na Vatu ni Sakuka—the leprosy stone. This stone is situated near the roadside on a yavu at Vunavuga, an ancient village site on the hillside forming the western slope of the valley of the Sigatoka river near a point corresponding to lat. 17° 48′ S., and not far from Buli Noikoro's town, Korolevu. It is a largish basaltic rock with peculiar markings upon it, in which the natives see a resemblance to the appearance of leprous maculae on the human skin. The Vunavuga people now live near the river-bank at the new village of Naviti, and there are several bad cases of leprosy among them. It is here indeed that what leprosy exists among the Noikoro tribes is focussed; and, though numerically inconsiderable, its type is the worst in Colo.

Some time back the proprietorship of this Vatu ni Sakuka, and of the yavu and plot of ground where it lies, vested in one Bativusi (lit. cat-flesh glutton), who was a leper. Rasabasaba was vasu to Bativusi's yavu at Vunavuga; and when the latter died the former became custodian of the shrine and administrator for the Dii indigites, or at least the medium through whom they were invoked and their powers manifested. In Rasabasaba these powers passed entirely to the family of the vasus. Their mataqali is called Na Kavidi; and their turaga ni mataqali, or elder for the time being, being ex-officio proprietor of this stone, is considered to possess the attribute of conferring leprosy upon any offending person, whether of his own or of another mataqali, and either of his own motion or in compliance