Their musical instruments are very primitive, but their singing is good, as they keep capital time, and have very fair voices. They are very fond of singing, their songs generally being an account of a canoe's journey, of how they got on, or about some fight that took place years ago, and occasionally about the only girl they ever loved.
They make incantations to the wind, as it is believed the winds are influenced thereby.
The natives living on the south coast manufacture different kinds of pottery, such as cooking-pots, dishes, bowls, water-jugs, and the like. They are also very clever at making fishing-nets, mats, baskets, lime-bottles, and last, but not least, canoes. As we have our shipwrights, so they have special men who understand canoe-building. It is astonishing how well they make them, considering the rude tools they have to work with. They manufacture large quantities of sago. They do not, however, make it in a granulated form, but bake it into cakes, covering them with a frame of woven leaves, this being the handiest form for carrying it about with them in their canoes. When it is required for the "table" it is made up into small dumplings, placed in the pot and boiled. The process of manufacture is as follows:
They cut down the sago palm, and remove the crown with its huge fronds. A tall tree with a smooth white bark is selected, the bark split in a straight line from top to bottom, and stripped off in one piece. They then spread out the piece of bark flat on the ground along-side the sago trunk, covering it with the large green leaves of the wild plantain. The bark of the sago-palm is split into three or four long strips, reaching from end to end of the trunk, and the white pith is exposed the whole length of the tree. A number of women sit in front of the tree, each with an adze-shaped weapon made of bamboo, with which they chip out the pith, which falls in white flakes on the clean plantain leaves.
The pith is carried away in baskets made of plaited coco-nut leaves to the river or sea, as the case may be, where it is to be washed. It is then shot into a bin about six feet square, built of logs and lined with plantain leaves. A staging of poles is erected in the water and troughs made of the leaf stalks of the sago palm are fixed upon it. They are placed in a sloping position upon the staging, the larger ends uppermost. The sago pith is now put into the trough, into which is fixed a strainer made of that delicate textile that envelopes the unexpanded fronds of the coco-nut palm. It is washed with water and kneaded with the hands, while the water runs away in a milky stream, and the woody fibre and other solid particles are arrested by the strainer. The water runs out of the bottom of the trough, and is caught in a deep receptacle where the heavy sago sinks to the bottom in a form resembling white clay. Sago, manufactured in this way, will keep good for a considerable time.
When yams are scarce, the natives have to depend almost entirely on sago and coco-nuts.
CHAPTER IV.
A STORMY TRIP.
A Christmas under a burning tropical sun, such as I spent in 1887, seems unnatural. What a contrast to a Christmas in England!