144 ^^'^ Ancient Haivaiian House. 



Strainers. — Awa drinking was neither so universal on the Hawaiian Islands 

 as on the southern groups, nor attended with so many ceremonies, but as the same 

 process of chewing the peppery root and washing the masticated mass with water was 

 followed, it was of course necessar}' to strain out the woody fibre from the green liquor, 

 and there were three implements used as convenience served. First the funnel shown 

 at the left in Fig. 122 could be partly filled with vegetable fibre and the liquor poured 

 through this; second, a special strainer was made from a gourd bottle as shown in 

 Fig. 123, the neck being loosely filled with fibre. The third was perhaps the most 

 ancient form and was a coconut cup with the "eyes" enlarged slightly, as may be seen 

 in the illustration of coconut cups. Fig. 128, upper cup. 



FIG. 122. GOURD FUNNELS. 



Ipu Pawehe. — The instinct of surface decoration, rather Papuan than Poly- 

 nesian, displayed itself on these gourd vessels as well as on the kapa or bark paper, 

 and we have both iiiiickc paivclir and hiicivai pcnvehc, bowls decorated and water bottles 

 decorated : a fact that testifies to the esteem in which these fragile articles, — a sort of 

 vegetable faience, — were held. Plate XXXVI will show the nature of this bichromatic 

 design as applied to the nmeke, in black and one of the various shades of orange-brown. 

 In old specimens the orange is so deep that it is difficult, if not impossible to obtain 

 by photography the distinction between pattern and ground, even with all the refine- 

 ments of ra}^ filters and plates especially sensitive to the orange rays. 



The process by which this coloration was obtained was simple, but is variously 



described by the authors who have noticed the decoration. Male's account we have 



[328] 



