In one or two words of the language the fact peeps slyly out.

The same word (_afemoeina_) expresses "a long call" and "to come as a calamity"; the same word (_lesolosolou_) signifies "to have no intermission of pain" and "to have no cessation, as in the arrival of visitors"; and _soua_, used of epidemics, bears the sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood, or visitors." But the gem of the dictionary is the verb _alovao_, which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut.

It is used in the sense of "to avoid visitors," but 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.