[ Three Boys of our Native Guard. ]
One day a woman came to see me to announce that her baby had died a few days after I had taken its photograph. I was hardly surprised, for the child was very ill at the time.
"Great Master," she said, "my baby is in your box. Please give me another at once, but this time it must be one already brought up."
She was astounded when, to grant her request, I sent her off to her husband!
Doctor O. Munsterberg, in an interesting study, has advanced the view that in its origin art is nothing but realism. It is undoubtedly true that the savage mind seems entirely preoccupied with the concrete, and entirely incapable of comprehending abstract ideas. It is equally true that we have changed our methods of teaching the natives in the light of this discovery and that the results obtained illustrate the inevitable failure of our old system. No one doubts that a child learns to reproduce a drawing of some familiar object far more easily than a symbol, such as a letter of the alphabet, which is not identified with anything having a concrete existence.
The art of the Moï is nothing if not realistic. It is also solely and totally utilitarian, since it is confined to industrial use. The figures employed for ornamentation are invariably taken from the animal or vegetable world with which they are familiar. For instance, popular subjects for reproduction (not without remarkable transformations) are the tracks of a hen in the dust, the marks on the skin left by the bristles of a boar, the teeth of a saw, the scales of a turtle, or the crested ridge of a fish's back. It will be recalled in this connection that many of these signs are adopted as tribal or proprietary symbols.
The favourite objects for decoration are pipes, quivers and drinking horns. When the artist has finished his design he smears blood over the subject, both to throw up the outlines of the figure and also to add a touch of violent colour.
Sculpture is still in its infancy. In many of the cemeteries the traveller will find figures of seated women, their hair lank and dirty, supporting their elbows on their knees and covering their faces with their hands. These are the widows, who, in a truly life-like attitude of desolation, weep for the departed. The impression of reality is heightened by covering their heads with human hair and their bodies with ragged clothing.
There is a close kinship between the art of the Moï and that of the uncivilized peoples of the Malay Peninsula, another proof that all these races are branches of the same stock. Their art exhibits the same sense of proportion, the same boldness of design, the same horror of empty spaces which is revealed by the overloading of ornament and exaggeration of form.