Panda 



lilts 



L 



eaves. 



29 



distinguished from the native product. Much of the uncertainty at present with the 

 genus pandanus will soon be removed, by the labors of European botanists who are 

 revising the species, but in the meantime fortitnately our study of the use of the leaves 

 in basketry does not depend in the least upon the name assigned to the particular trees 

 that furnish us with the leaves used in these islands. 



Forty years ago there were many groves of pandanus or Itala as the native name 

 goes, besides scattered specimens, so there was uo need of cultivating the tree like the 

 breadfruit and coconut about the houses, but the increased cultivation of sugarcane 

 has caused the destru6lion 

 of the native trees, and 

 groves like the one shown 

 in Fig. 37 are now uncom- 

 mon. The scarcity of leaves 

 and the disinclination of 

 the natives to use those 

 still attainable has made 

 lauhala mats and baskets 

 scarcer than the mats and 

 baskets imported from 

 China, and the native 

 manufacture is journeving 

 towards extindlioti like so 

 many other industries of 

 the olden time. Puna was fig. 38. roi,i.s of hala leaves. 



a famous region for hala mats, and in 1S64 the author, when journeying through the 

 district with that noble missionary the Reverend Titus Coan, saw many a party in the 

 curious open caves (caused by a breakdown of the lava crust in sonie of the many 

 streams of lava, ancient and recent, that form much of the surface of Puna) busily 

 engaged in weaving mats, a work for which the comparative coolness and dampness of 

 the caves was most suited. A quarter of a century later in traveling the same road 

 with a younger companion the scene was greatly changed : the caves were there, the 

 hala trees were there, but the inhabitants had gone, and for sixty miles there was 

 nothing but a few deserted churches and some aged breadfruit trees to tell that once 

 people had lived there. Fifteen years later the scene had again changed owing to the 

 opening of roads and the cultivation of sugarcane, but the present inhabitants were 

 not the old natives, and the mat making is only here and there continued when there 

 is a chance to sell to the foreigner. 



