Native clothing and ornaments—Their arts and industries, their canoes and weapons, and their way of fishing.

In Malekula, Efaté, and Tanna the natives wear as many adornments and cram as many ornaments on their bodies as they can, and since this weakness of theirs has been found out, both visitors and missionaries trade on it, when endeavouring to get on the right side of them. Everybody going to these places nowadays takes with him a good supply of trumpery adornments, and exchanges them for native things of ten times their value. Ivory rings and shell rings were the most precious ornaments the New Hebrideans originally wore, but the less wealthy covered themselves with armlets, fibre belts, flowers, and if they could get a comb to stick in their hair they fancied themselves immensely superior to those who had not such a mark of distinction. Trade beads are now added to their possessions, and they work them into most artistic {173} patterns and wear them round their necks. A small mirror will often be seen hanging from a native’s ear-ring, and many other strange combinations of savagedom mixed with civilisation are met with in these islands to-day. A native wearing a calico loin-cloth and a top-hat poised on his woolly head and kept in position by a string round his chin is not an uncommon sight. Another may be seen wearing a pair of knee-breeches, a tennis shirt, with the collar turned up, and a trader’s hat. Another, perhaps dispensing with the breeches, will wear only the hat and shirt. Altogether they seem to do their very best to imitate an English clown, though of course they are not aware of the fact.

To meet a burly native with elaborate ear-rings, an ivory spike through his nose, and his face well marked, with a collar and dickey hanging round his neck, seems absolutely ridiculous, but the proud possessor of such a costume will strut about as if he were the best-dressed man in the islands. As may be supposed they look particularly coy, some of them, and only require a banjo and a pair of trousers to make ideal Christy Minstrels. The humour of their costumes, needless to say, does not strike them, and their less-clothed neighbours look on them with envy, whilst the girls bill and coo at the {174} sight of them—such is fashion. A tappa loin-cloth, similar to the Fijian cloth, was originally the fashion amongst the women in parts of this group of islands, prior to the coming of the white man, and it was held round the waist by a belt of fibre and ornamented with coloured or stained grass. But, back in the bush, the married women were the only ones who wore anything that could be really called a costume, the younger women’s attire being only flimsy grass mats made of streamers, and tied round their waists—which from a point of decency would be equal to a piece of mosquito netting. The men were always clothed to a certain extent, owing to a peculiar belief they hold that they must not be seen naked.

Feathers play a prominent part in head dress on special occasions, such as at the dance I have already mentioned. The hair is never shaved off the men’s heads but left to grow wild, and some of them possess very fine beards and moustaches, but all cannot boast such growth. I have seen a good few with moustaches like boarding-house tooth-brushes.

Tattooing is not common, but cicatrices are, and most men bear curious marks on their bodies. These are made when they are quite young by cutting a pattern on the skin and then continually {175} removing the scab until a deep kind of scar is formed. It takes a long time to become perfect, but when it is they are exceedingly proud of it.
TYPE OF MAN FROM THE ISLAND OF TANNA, NEW HEBRIDES

Paint is sometimes used for decorating their faces and bodies in place of tattooing, but it is very ugly and disfigures both the men and women. Red, black, and white are the chief colours used, and no particular design characterises the work; the painter generally puts what his fancy suggests, and no meaning is attached to it, as is generally the case with the native markings.

The women are the workers here as elsewhere, and at basket-making and mat-plaiting they are splendid hands. Clothes used to be made by them and bartered for food to villagers on the coast. The mats are made from fibre, which in its turn is made from the pandanus leaf by cutting it into long shreds with a piece of shell and then allowing it to dry. Most of the mats have some sort of a pattern on them, and are now greatly prized by collectors. In the New Hebrides they are put on the floor of the huts, and are also used as screens to cut off the sleeping apartments from the day room. Some more artistic than others are fringed with feathers or tassels of discoloured grass. These, however, are generally made to sell to the tourist. {176}

Baskets are also manufactured in some of the islands. Pottery, however, is a forgotten art here, and a legend accounting for the number of old and broken pieces which may still be found in the bush is worth relating.

The natives believe that their islands at one time in the world’s history were brought up out of the sea by a beautiful goddess, Li Maui Tukituki; they say that when the world was quite new she was carrying home some water in jars, but, owing to the rocky state of the land she spilled the water, which made her so angry that she threw the jars at the ground and in that way punished it and made it still. From that day to this it has not moved. So tradition says, and these broken pieces of pottery are known as the water jars of Li Maui Tukituki and are held in great reverence by the natives.
FINISHING OFF A CANOE, BRITISH NEW GUINEA

The tools used for hut-building and canoe-building are made of stone, shell, and iron, but there are very few of the real stone adzes to be found now, except in the museums, as the trade articles have taken their place and are in use all over the islands. Exactly the same kind of canoe is made here as in New Guinea, and the same methods of making it are adopted. The largest canoes are made in Malekula, from whence the natives go {177} long voyages to trade with other islands, and, I suppose, in the old days went hunting heads; some of the canoes are made out of the trunks of the bread-fruit trees. The poles supporting the outrigger are run through............