and idea. As we know, scrupulous cleanliness is an essential in the ideal of personal attraction. Sodomy is repugnant to natives, and their attitude to it is summed up in the phrase: matauna ikaye popu (“this man copulates excrement”). Fæces have no place in magic, custom, or ritual; nor do they even play any part in sorcery.
In my own experience I have always found the natives very clean and never received any unpleasant olfactory impression in my various social contacts with them. Nor, by the consensus of opinion among white residents, is their bodily odour unpleasant to the European.
Intestinal gases are never released in the presence of other people. Such an act is considered very shameful, and would dishonour and mortify anyone guilty of it. Even in a crowd where it can be committed anonymously, such a breach of etiquette never happens in Melanesia, so that a native crowd is considerably more pleasant in this respect than a gathering of European peasants.[1] If such a mishap befalls a man by accident, he feels the disgrace deeply and his reputation suffers. Also it will be remembered how quickly an explosive escape of intestinal gas was visited upon the unfortunate louse in one of the fireside stories told in the last chapter.
Scents are as much appreciated and sought after as bad smells are abhorred and avoided. We have seen what an important part is played in native toilet by the variously and exquisitely scented flowers of the Islands: the long white petals of the pandanus, the butia and a
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