Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/95

] a secret lodge as far south as Ambrym. The figure in the photograph from New Caledonia is so nearly identical with that of a tamate of the Banks' Islands, that the identity of the institution may be conjectured, or at any rate a connexion

must be taken to exist. Between the Banks' Islands and Florida the interval is considerable; but scholars from Florida, on their way to Norfolk Island many years ago, recognized their own matabala in the salagoro of Mota, to which as strangers they were freely admitted. The result of their admission was fatal to the mystery in either institution. A Florida boy who had seen what the Mota salagoro was and contained, knew very well what sort of mysteries those were at home into which he had not yet been initiated, and he ceased