39^ THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS. 



being evidently loosened by beating, from the cut limb 

 of the tree from which it is made, and then drawn off entire. 

 This cloth is sometimes reddened by being rubbed with a red 

 earth used by the natives for smearing their bodies. No better 

 native cloth was seen ; and the natives apparently do not 

 know the method of fusing the fibrous matter from several 

 pieces of bark together, so as to form tappa, like that of Fiji 

 or Tonga. 



The hair in the women, young and old, is cut short all over 

 the head, and worn thus simply, without decoration of any 

 kind. In the boys, the hair is short, I believe cut short, 

 as in the women. Only the young men of apparently from i8 

 to 30, or so, wear the hair long and combed out into a mop or 

 bush. In the older men the hair is always short. There are 

 probably religious ceremonies connected with the cutting of the 

 hair, for the very large quantities of bunches of fresh-looking 

 hair suspended in the temples are probably not all at least, if 

 any, taken from the dead. 



The mop of hair in the young men, possibly the warriors 

 (though numbers of adults, still in full vigour, had their hair 

 short), is carefully combed out, often reddened, and greased. 

 A triangular comb is worn in it, also cocks' feathers which are 

 bound together in plumes and fastened on to the ends of 

 short sticks of wood worn as hair pins. Plumes of the 

 Nicobar pigeon, or the Night Heron, are also thus worn. 



It must be remembered that Pacific Island native ornaments 

 are all made to show on a dark skin. White shell or tusk 

 ornaments look exceedingly well against the dark skins of 

 natives, although when removed and handled by Whites, 

 they show to little advantage. The young girls amongst the 

 Admiralty Islanders sometimes have a necklace or two on, 

 but they never are decorated to the extent to which the men 

 are. The old women have no ornaments. I saw one girl only 

 with a necklace of the beads procured from the ship. Another 

 girl had one of small unshaped lumps of wood, worn apparently 

 rather as a charm than an ornament. 



Amongst the lower races of savages, decoration follows the 

 law which is almost universal amongst other animals. It is 

 the male which is profusely ornamented, whilst the female is 

 deprived of decoration. This condition is almost entirely 

 reversed by civilisation, and the grade of advancement of a 

 race may, to some extent, be measured by the amount of 

 expense which the men are willing to incur in decorating their 

 wives. The males in highly civilised communities revert to 

 the savage condition of profuse decoration only as warriors or 

 officials, and on State occasions. 



