Having inspected the gamal, we received from the highest caste present a gift of some yam, or taro, which we requited with some sticks of tobacco. The length of the gamal depends on the caste of the chief who builds it. I saw a gamal 60 metres long, and while this length seems senseless to-day, because of the scanty population, it was necessary in former days, when the number of a man's followers rose with his rank. Not many years ago these houses were filled at night with sleeping warriors, each with his weapons at hand, ready for a fight. To-day these long, dark, deserted houses are too dismal for the few remaining men, so that they generally build a small gamal beside the big one. To have killed a man, no matter in what way, is a great honour, and gives the right to wear a special plume of white and black feathers. Such plumes are not rare in Port Olry. Each man has his own fire, and cooks his own food; for, as I have said, it would mean the loss of caste to eat food cooked on the fire of a lower caste. Women are considered unworthy to cook a man's meal; in fact, their standing here is probably the lowest in all the archipelago. Still, they do not lack amusement; they gather like the men for social carousals, and are giggling and chattering all day long. Their principal occupation is the cultivation of the fields, but where Nature is so open-handed this is not such a task as we might think when we see them coming home in the afternoon, panting under an immense load of fruit, with a pile of firewood on top, a child on their back and possibly dragging another by the hand. Port Olry is the only place in the New Hebrides where the women carry loads on their heads. Everywhere else they carry them on their backs in baskets of cocoa-nut leaves. In consequence the women here are remarkable for their erect and supple carriage. The work in the fields consists merely of digging out the yam and picking other fruit, and it is a sociable affair, with much talking and laughter. There is always something to eat, such as an unripe cocoa-nut or a banana. Serious work is not necessary except at the planting season, when the bush has to be cleared. Then a whole clan usually works together, the men helping quite energetically, until the fields are fenced in and ready for planting; then they hold a feast, a big "kai-kai," and leave the rest of the work to the women. The fences are made to keep out the pigs, and are built in the simplest way: sticks of the wild cotton-wood tree, which grows rankly everywhere, are stuck into the ground at short intervals; they immediately begin to sprout, and after a short time form a living and impenetrable hedge. But they last much longer than is necessary, so that everywhere the fences of old gardens bar the road and force the traveller to make endless detours, all the more so as the natives have a way of making their fields right across the paths whenever it suits them.