Next day we left for Gaua. Unhappily the captain met friends, and celebrated with them to such an extent that he was no longer to be relied on, which was all the more unpleasant as the weather was of the dirtiest, and the barometer presaged another cyclone. After two days it cleared up a little; I went ashore at the west point of Gaua, where the launch was to pick me up again two days later, as I meant to visit the interior while the others went to buy coprah. Even now the wind and the swell from the north-west were increasing suspiciously, and after I had spent a rainy night in a village off the shore, I saw the launch race eastward along the coast, evidently trying to make a safe anchorage, with the storm blowing violent squalls and the sea very high. On my way inland I still found the paths obstructed by fallen trees from the last cyclone, while nearly all the cocoa-nut palms had lost their nuts. And again the storm raged in the forest, and the rain fell in torrents. I was anxious to buy statues of tree-fern wood; they are frequently to be seen here, standing along a terrace or wall near the gamal, and seem not so much images of ancestors, as signs of rank and wealth. The caste may be recognized by the number of pigs' jaws carved on the statues. Often the artist first makes a drawing of the statue in red, white and black paint on a board; and these same designs are used as patterns for tattooing, as well as on ear-sticks and other objects. Female statues are common, which is an unusual thing. I obtained a good number of skulls, which were thrown into the roots of a fig tree, where I was allowed to pick them up as I pleased. The Suque is supposed to have originated here; and here certainly it has produced its greatest monuments, large altar-like walls, dams and ramparts. The gamals, too, are always on a foundation of masonry, and on either side there are high pedestals on which the pigs are sacrificed. Among the stones used for building we often find great boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an earlier population that has entirely disappeared.