PIGTAILS AND TATTOOING.
None of the natives had any hair upon the face; various ways of dressing that of the head were practised, the most singular of which has already been described in Volume 1. The hair was usually of its natural dark colour at the base, with the remainder dyed reddish brown and frizzled out into a mop with long-toothed combs of wood or tortoise-shell. One child had the head so shaved as to leave a long tuft on the forehead, and another on the back of the head--precisely in the same manner as is sometimes practised in Java. Nor must I omit noticing a singular appendage formerly alluded to--analogous to the pigtail once in vogue--worn by many of these people; it is formed of human hair wrapped round with twine, and ends in one or more bunches of shells, dogs' teeth, and tails of pigs--the longest one which I saw measured twenty-one inches in length. Among numerous ornaments the most common is a large round concave portion of melon shell, sometimes beautifully inlaid with filagree work of tortoise-shell, worn on the breast. Fillets of cassowary feathers, fur of the spotted bare-tailed opossum, or woven stuff studded with shells, were often seen.
Painting the face or body does not seem to be practised here, but the men are usually tattooed on the breast, cheeks, forehead, and arms, also occasionally on other places. Their tattooing, however, is much fainter and less profuse than among the women, every visible part of whose skin is generally marked with a great variety of patterns, the most usual style among them consisting in series of double parallel or converging lines an inch or more apart, the intervals being occupied by small figures, or irregular lines, with detached rectilinear figures fancifully filled up.
DRESS AND ARMS.
The women wear a petticoat of shreds of pandanus leaf, plaited above into a waistband and below reaching nearly to the knee.
They brought off little with them for barter besides bows and arrows, and as before appeared perfectly ignorant of the use of iron. A few coconuts, plantains, and mangos were obtained from them, but they had no yams. Nearly every canoe which came alongside contained several large baked earthen pots of good construction, some with wide, others with narrow mouths, and a third sort shaped like a saucer. Besides bows and arrows, we saw many spears, mostly of small size and usually finely jagged or barbed towards the end, but of very inferior workmanship, also some shields, one of which may be described.* It measures 33 inches in length by 14 in width, and in shape resembles a fiddle, being rounded at the ends and slightly contracted in the middle; it is made of wood, three-fourths of an inch thick, neatly covered with fine cane matting, fitting very tightly.
(*Footnote. Figured in volume 1.)
SINGLE OR DOUBLE CANOES.
The canoes seen here are either single or double, in the latter case consisting merely of two lashed together, usually without an outrigger. The single canoes vary in length from 20 to 30 feet, and carry from five to a dozen people. Each end tapers to a sharp projecting point longer at the bow. The outrigger frame consists of five poles laid across the gunwale in grooves, and the float, which is rather less than half the length of the body of the canoe, is secured to the ends of each by three pegs, a foot in length. The opposite ends of the outrigger poles project beyond the side only a few inches, and are secured by lashing of cane to a piece crossing them; the gunwale is further strengthened by slender poles running along it from end to end. A small portion only of the outrigger frame is converted into a platform by a few loose poles or a plank or two: some of the latter were as much as two feet in width, and only an inch in thickness, and must have been cut with stone axes out of a log of wood. The largest canoe seen was judged to be thirty-five feet in length, with a width at the bow of four and a half feet, but this far exceeded in bulk any of the other single ones. Like the rest it essentially consisted of the hollowed-out trunk of a tree. All the heavy canoes are pulled with oars, working in cane grommets, the others are propelled with paddles. Both oars and paddles have lanceolate blades and thick handles, without any attempt at ornament or even neatness of design.
The sail (of pandanus matting) is a long parallelogram, twelve feet by three, its sides secured by two tough slender poles, between which it is stretched, and which serve both as masts and yards. In making sail one of the poles is shipped, two stays from the centre leading fore and aft are then set up, after which the second pole is fixed and secured by stays, so as to give the sail the requisite inclination. We frequently saw a second smaller sail set before the first, at the distance of eight or ten feet, and managed precisely in the same way, but, even with both sails set, owing to the disproportion between the spread of canvas and the bulk of the canoe, the latter moves slowly at all times, and on a wind makes much leeway.