In the matter of personal decoration I should observe that the men usually wear the plumes, not that the women dislike decorations, but because they do not often have the opportunity of wearing them. If a trade necklace or some similar ornament is given to a woman, it will very soon be observed adorning the person of her husband. An incident of this sort particularly annoyed me on one occasion in the island of St. Christoval; but I might as well have tried to persuade a pig that it was a glutton as have attempted to convince a native that such a transaction was ungallant. In some islands it is the custom for the husband on the occasion of a festival to load his favourite wife with all his worldly wealth in the form of the native bead money; and, as at Santa Anna, the wives of the headmen parade about the village thus heavily attired and presenting such a picture of “portable property” as would have gladdened the heart of Mr. Wemmick himself. This shell-money, to which I have frequently referred in this work, and which is so often employed in personal decoration, consists of small pieces of shells of different colours shaped and strung together like beads. In the eastern islands, this money is largely derived from the natives of Malaita. Six fathoms of it are said to be sufficient for the purchase of a pig. The same kind of money is used by the inhabitants of the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the New Hebrides. In the last two localities it is worked into armlets.[115]
[115] The natives of the Solomon Islands also occasionally employ as money the teeth of fish, porpoises, fruit-eating bats (Pteropidæ), and of other animals.
The men of the Solomon Islands are very fond of placing in their hair a brightly-coloured flower such as that of Hibiscus tiliaceus, or a pretty sprig, or the frond of a fern. My native companions in my excursions rarely passed a pretty flower without plucking it and placing it in their bushy hair; and they were fond of decorating my helmet in a similar fashion. Sometimes one individual would adorn himself to such an extent with flowers, ferns, and scented leaves, that a botanist might have made an instructive capture in seizing his person. In addition to the flowers placed in his bushy mass of blackish-brown hair, he would tuck under his necklace and armlets sprigs and leaves of numerous scented plants, such as Evodia hortensis and Ocymum sanctum. He would take much pleasure in pointing out to me the plants whose scented leaves are employed in the native perfumery, most of which are of the labiate order, and are to be commonly found in the waste ground of the plantations. The women seldom decorate themselves in this manner. Those of Bougainville Straits make their scanty aprons of the leaves of a scitamineous plant named “bassa” which, when crushed in the fingers, have a pleasant scent.
The fondness for decorating the person with flowers and scented herbs has been frequently referred to by travellers in their accounts of the natives of other parts of the Western Pacific. Mr. George Forster tells us that the people of Tanna and Mallicolo in the New Hebrides place inside their shell armlets bunches of the odoriferous plant, Evodia hortensis, together with the leaves of crotons and other plants.[116] We learn from Mr. Macgillivray,[117] and from Mr. Stone,[118] that the natives of the south-east part of New Guinea are similarly fond of decorating themselves with flowers and scented leaves which they place in the hair and inside their armlets and necklaces.
[116] “A Voyage round the World,” by George Forster, London, 1777; (page 276.)
[117] “Voyage of H.M.S. ‘Rattlesnake,’” by John Macgillivray; London, 1852.
[118] “A few months in New Guinea,” by O. C. Stone; London, 1880.
Tattooing is practised amongst both sexes in many islands; but the process differs from that ordinarily employed in the circumstance that the pigment is frequently omitted, and for this reason the marks are often faint and only visible on a close inspection. In this manner the natives of St. Christoval and the adjacent islands have their cheeks marked by a number of shallow grooves arranged in a series of chevron-lines, and differing but little if at all from the general colour of the skin. On the trunk the lines are of a faint blue hue, and here a pigment is more frequently used. The process, as employed in the island of Santa Anna, consists in deeply abrading the skin with such instruments as a piece of a shell, the flinty edge of the bamboo, the tooth of a large fruit-eating bat (Pteropidæ), or even by the long finger-nails. The older lads have to submit themselves to this operation before they obtain the rights of manhood; and I was informed that during its progress they are kept isolated in a house and fed on the blood of a certain fish (?). After it is completed, they are at liberty to marry, and they are allowed to take part in the fighting and in the fishing expeditions.
Tattooing is not generally practised amongst the people of the islands of Bougainville Straits. I only observed it in a few instances, more particularly amongst the women, when it resembles that which has been above described. A party of men from the village of Takura on the coast of Bougainville, whom I met on one occasion, had their faces marked with shallow linear grooves of much the same colour as the skin, which commenced at the “alæ nostri,” and, curving over the cheek-bones, terminated above the eyebrows. These lines were more distinct than those which mark the faces of the natives in the eastward islands, although they were probably produced in a similar manner. Another pattern of tattooing, which may be described as a branching coil, is to be found in the representation of the head of a native of Isabel Island, which was obtained from a mould taken in D’Urville’s expedition in 1838.[119] Some men of the districts of the Uta Pass and Urasi on the north coast of Malaita, whom I met on one occasion, had their faces marked with a double or a single row of blueish dots commencing on the cheek-bones and meeting on the forehead.
[119] Plate vi.: Atlas Anthropologie; “Voyage au Pole Sud et dans l’Océanie.”