Sometimes famous dancers from different towns, in fantastic and absurd decorations and dress, will contend for the championship in a contest of several days. They dance in the middle of the street before an audience of almost the entire population of the different towns seated on the ground on either side of the street. The music is not adapted to the dance, but the dance to the changing music. The musicians have hard work, and they make it harder. Streaming with perspiration they beat the drums with changing time and increasing rapidity until they are almost as nearly exhausted as the dancers, and one might think that the music had gone mad. Without doubt the native dance is a fine bodily exercise; and they dance so much that the exercise is perhaps the chief factor in the development of the strength and athletic form of the native. The women dance on the moonlight nights, and often through the entire night. They all sing as they dance, most of them standing in a circle while individuals one after another step into the middle of the circle and lead the performance. The men are standing around looking on and when a leader finishes her part one or several of her gentlemen friends will step into the circle and embrace her. These dances have always appeared innocent enough to me. But the native Christians, who know better than I, and who also know the side-scenes that invariably attend the dance though not a part of it, uniformly condemn the dance, and say that no Christian ought to take part in it. They dance on all festive occasions—a betrothal, a marriage, a victory in war, the end of a war, or the end of a term of mourning for the dead. The men decorate themselves with paint and feathers, and often they wear around their ankles strings of native bells, consisting of the dried hull of a certain nut, into which while still green they insert small stones, which make a peculiarly metallic and pleasant noise. They usually form in two long lines in the street, with the drums across one end. Some great dancer will perform in the middle, down the lines and back, sometimes in graceful movements, and sometimes in contortions almost fiendish until his body seems to have no shape at all “distinguishable in member, joint or limb.” Sometimes they all move with him down the street and back. They sing and shout as they dance, shaking the bells on their ankles, and occasionally all together suddenly stamping upon the ground. They mark the time to perfection, and the effect of so many men keeping the time perfectly while their movements differ, together with the volume of wild song and shouting is quite fascinating.