Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/31

Rh Carnarvon, on the opposite bank of the Sigatoka river, and a few hours' walk from the Vatu ni Sakuka at Vunavuga. This stone is not a single one, but is described as either rift in several fragments or consisting of a little pile or miniature cairn of separate stones. They are red in colour like jade, it is said; and they lie at a spot called Navau, in the burial ground of that section of the village of Wala which belongs to the district of Nasikawa, near the path to the bathing place. At least such is the story; but when I visited Wala (27 January, 1891) I had not obtained these details, and was only aware of the bare fact that there was a stone at the village. Although it was the Buli who had told me of it, and he was present at the time, the old man denied all knowledge of the stone, or its whereabouts, or its Taukei, politely offered me an abundance of cocoanuts to drink, and showed evident anxiety to get me off the scent and out of the village as expeditiously as might be.

On my return to Fort Carnarvon a few weeks later I again failed to obtain any account of it, though not through want of angling for it. It was not until the 18th of July following that I heard anything more of the Wala stone, although I made many inquiries and had never given up the search. On that day I examined a number of native prisoners recently admitted to the gaol at Suva. Four of them were leprous, and one of these, a youth about 20 years of age, named Namaqa, gave me Wala as the town he belonged to. With the permission of the superintendent of prisons I took Namaqa to the hospital; and, after examining him physically, I persuaded him under the moral pressure of prison discipline to divulge the following story of how he and his brother and parents became afflicted with leprosy. I give it for convenience in the form in which I noted it down at the time, although my informant was by no means so connected or straightforward, and every link in the story had to be wormed out of him and tested from time to time by guarded cross-examination.