They do not, however, hang all the yam, sugar-cane, banana and taro, some of each being kept back in the houses for a purpose which will appear hereafter.

The ine and malage fruits are not hung up at all, but are kept in the avale of the village emone until the day of the actual feast, when the various vegetables and fruits are, as will be seen, put in heaps for distribution among the guests.

They then further decorate the posts with human skulls and bones, which are hung round in circles below the yams and taro, but not reaching to the ground.  These are the skulls and bones of chiefs and members of their families and sub-chiefs and important personages only of the community, and the bones used are only the larger bones of the arms and legs; skulls will, so far as possible, be used for the purpose in preference to the other bones.  These skulls and bones are taken from wherever they may then happen to be; some of them will be in burial boxes on trees, [70] some may be in graves underground, and some may be hung up in the village emone; though it may here be mentioned that those underground and in the emone are not, as I shall show later, in their original places of sepulture.

Finally croton leaves, tied in sheaves, are arranged round the posts below the skulls and bones, so as to decorate the posts down to the ground.

One other specially important matter must here be mentioned.  There will probably be in or by the edge of the village enclosure a high box-shaped wooden burial platform, [71] supported on poles, and containing the skull and all the bones of a chief, these platforms and a special sort of tree being, as will be explained later on, the only places where they and their families and important personages are originally buried.  If so, the people add to the bones on this platform such of the other skulls and special arm and leg bones, collected as above mentioned, as are not required for decorating the posts.  If, as is most improbable, there is no such burial platform, then they erect one, and upon it place all the available skulls and special bones not required for the posts.

These various preparations bring us to the evening before the day of the feast, upon which evening the women, married and unmarried, of the community, whose families have supplied pigs for the feast, dance together in full dancing decorations in the village enclosure, beginning at about sundown, and, if weather permits, dancing all through the night.  There is no ceremony connected with this dancing.