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. I find a string of verbs with the following senses: to
deal leniently with, as in helping oneself from a family plantation; to
give away without consulting other members of the family; to go to
strangers for help instead of to relatives; to take from relatives
without permission; to steal from relatives; to have plantations robbed
by relatives. The ideal of conduct in the family, and some of its
depravations, appear here very plainly. The man who (in a native word of
praise) is _mata-ainga_, a race-regarder, has his hand always open to his
kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of contempt) _noa_, knows
always where to turn in any pinch of want or extremity of laziness.
Beggary within the family--and by the less self-respecting, without
it--has thus grown into a custom and a scourge, and the dictionary teems
with evidence of its abuse. Special words signify the begging of food,
of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for
stock, of taro, of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of
flyhooks, of implements for netting pigeons, and of mats. It is true the
beggar was supposed in time to make a return, somewhat as by the Roman
contract of _mutuum_. But the obligation was only moral; it could not
be, or was not, enforced; as a matter of fact, it was disregarded. The
language had recently to borrow from the Tahitians a word for debt; while