

I04 ^^I^it and Basket IVcai'ii/o-. 



All through this region the baskets, with the exception of the rude coco leaf 

 frails, differ sufficiently from those of other countries besides differing among themselves. 

 Generally speaking there are few forms which could advantageously be adopted by 

 other countries, or be made articles of commerce. Like the peoples who made them, 

 and whose wants they doubtless supplied well enough, they seem to be passing off the 

 stage, and most of them have become even now material for museums. 



With mats the case is somewhat different. Wherever on the Pacific islands the 

 pandanus grows its leaves were used for mats, and were prepared much in the same 

 way, to be woven in the same manner, into mats hardly differing among the groups. 

 We can go beyond the Pacific region and find the same mats wherever we find the 

 pandanus, but when we rise above the plain coarse mat we find more or less differentia- 

 tion in the finer work. Then the material accessible, as in tlie case of the basket, in- 

 fluences the form, and we have seen by illustration that it is by no means difficult to 

 distinguish, in most cases, the place of manufa(?ture. 



While Hawaii leads in the manufacture of baskets (in the olden time), and has 

 produced most durable mats in the makaloa class, Hawaiian mat work cannot rank with 

 the Micronesian fibre mats, nor perhaps with the fine mats of the Samoans. Maori mats 

 were much more artificially made than those of the southeastern Pacific islanders: 

 Tonga alone held a good place in the mat making industry after Samoa. In the north- 

 west, the Solomon Islanders and the New Hebrideans were more noted for their basket 

 work than for mats; and in New Guinea, so far as I am aware, neither mats nor baskets 

 were notable. It is probable that the bags of netting, for which New Guinea is to be 

 credited, took the place of baskets. 



We have seen that the partial use of mats for dress was general throughout the 

 Pacific, although only in New Zealand did the mat become the most important part of 

 one's dress, for there the cool wet climate compelled more covering from the weather 

 than on the tropical islands of the rest of Polynesia, where the more pliant kapa became 

 the most important material for clothing. 



Note may be made that while the universal form of pandanus mat showed little 

 variation throughout eastern and central Polynesia, on the western islands of the 

 region there are curious adaptations of the material unknown to their eastern neigh- 

 bors. These have mostly been figured, and it will be seen that they are of rather 

 primitive charadler. 



Mats were articles of exchange or commerce far more than ever baskets were, 

 and hence we find them wherever the adventurous canoes of the earl}' voj'agers touched 

 shore; and while this fact has made it more difficult to distinguish the origin of some 

 mats, the material being everywhere the same, it has tended on the other hand to pre- 

 serve mats rather than baskets of former times in our museums, for as common articles 



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