New Gimiea Pillows. 



59 



mats. The houseliold work is generally done out of doors, or in wet weatlier beneath the 

 house, which, like the Hawaiian, serves mainly for sleeping purposes. We have given 

 illustrations of the Samoan, Tongan and Fijian pillows, and it is well to give the fan- 

 tastic forms affedled by the Papuan of New Guinea, for these articles, as on the other 



groups mentioned, form 

 with the sleeping mats 

 one of the most universal 

 and important portions 

 of the house furniture, 

 where the house is chiefly 

 a sleeping apartment, and 

 in New Guinea they curi- 

 ously correspond with the 

 fantastic designs of the 

 houses. The animal form 

 is everywhere noteworthy 

 (Fig. 49), from the ante- 

 diluvian reptile on the 

 top of the row to the non- 

 descript figure second 

 from the left extreme. 

 Like those already fig- 

 ured these pillows are for 

 the neck and not the head, 

 whose curious capillary 

 dressing would be great- 

 ly disturbed by an ordi- 

 nary pillow. Most of 

 these pillows are from 

 eastern New Guinea and 

 the adjacent islands. 



Chalmers gives us so much information, often in unexpe(51ed places, that I am compelled 

 to quote from him, picking up bits here and there. At Maiwa, on the Gulf of Papua : 



They have good large houses, kept \v0uderfull3' clean, with sleeping benches in all of them. 

 In front of many of the houses are nicely kept flower gardens. The largest houses are built to rep- 

 resent an alligator with open mouth : the platform in front of the house is the lower jaw, and the long 

 shade over the platform the upper, so that standing on the platform you stand in the alligator's mouth, 

 the house sloping to appear as a body. One house, to be used as a temple in one of the inland vil- 



[243] 



FIG. 52. TREE HOUSES IN NEW GUINEA. 



