To the visitors it is all golden;
for the hosts, it has another side. In one or two words of the language
the fact peeps slyly out. The same word (_afemoeina_) expresses "a long
call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (_lesolosolou_)
signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no cessation, as
in the arrival of visitors"; and _soua_, used of epidemics, bears the
sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood, or visitors." But the gem
of the dictionary is the verb _alovao_, which illustrates its pages like
a humorous woodcut. It is used in the sense of "to avoid visitors," but
it means literally "hide in the wood." So, by the sure hand of popular
speech, we have the picture of the house deserted, the _malanga_
disappointed, and the host that should have been quaking in the bush.
We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of manners,
highly curious in themselves, and essential to an understanding of the
war. In Samoa authority sits on the one hand entranced; on the other,
property stands bound in the midst of chartered marauders. What property
exists is vested in the family, not in the individual; and of the loose
communism in which a family dwells, the dictionary may yet again help us
to some idea.
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