Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/96

74 to believe in their supernatural character. The uninitiated boys from the Banks' Islands heard in Norfolk Island from their Florida schoolfellows what they had seen, and the sacredness of the salagoro was lost for them. The secret was out many years ago, though in Florida the power of the mysteries was maintained till Christianity prevailed in the only part of the island in which the institution had a seat.

In the Banks' Islands the tamate has survived the introduction of Christianity. All belief in the supernatural character of the associations has long disappeared, all women and children know that the tamate are men dressed in disguises made by themselves, and that the sounds and cries are naturally produced. But these societies had so important a place in the social arrangements of the people that they have held their ground as clubs. It is not only in the Banks' Islands that secrecy and a costume have their attractions. The secrecy of the lodges is still maintained, the salagoro is unapproachable by women and the uninitiated, the neophyte has still to go through his time of probation and seclusion, and the authority of the society is maintained by too much of the high-handed tyranny of old times. In truth, the social power of these societies was too great to be readily dissolved, and in the