POLYNESIA. 41 



a chief; and some, by way of evincing their extreme sorrow, applied 

 it to the tip of the tongue, in which case the operation must have pro- 

 duced great pain. 



The women, at most of the islands, use this ornament very spar- 

 ingly. The back of the hand is frequently marked so as to resemble 

 an open-worked glove. Sometimes the feet are similarly imprinted, 

 and at New Zealand the lips are so completely covered as to have 

 the appearance of being painted blue. 



MANUFACTURE OF CLOTH. 



Many tribes, in various parts of the world, have the art of making 

 a kind of cloth from the bark of a tree. That which is peculiar in 

 the Polynesian custom, is merely the mode adopted, which is common 

 to all the islands except New Zealand. It consists in peeling off 

 strips of the bark of the paper-mulberry or of the breadfruit-tree, 

 which are divested of the outer cuticle, and after being soaked for a 

 time in water, are laid upon a smooth plank, and beaten out, by 

 repeated blows of a mallet, to a substance not unlike thick but flexi- 

 ble paper; sometimes, however, it is so fine as to resemble gauze. 

 The strips are united by overlaying their edges and beating them 

 together. The mallet used, called every where ike or fe, is a stick 

 rather more than a foot in length, and five or six inches in circum- 

 ference, either square, or, in some islands, nearly round, and creased 

 or channelled with parallel grooves from one end to the other. At 

 New Zealand, where these trees are not found, and where, moreover, 

 a better defence from the rigour of the climate is required, the people 

 braid their mats from the leaves of a flax-plant indigenous to the 

 country (phormium tenax), and also manufacture from it a kind of 

 yarn or thread, of which they weave, by hand, mantles or blankets, 

 which bear some resemblance to the products of a loom. 



CANOES. 



The usual form of the Polynesian canoe is well known. Its pecu- 

 liarities are the outrigger a slender log of wood lying in the water 

 parallel to the canoe, to which it is fastened, to prevent it from upset- 

 ting, and the triangular sail of matting, broad at top, when it is 

 drawn up to the mast, and narrowing to a point at the bottom where 

 it is fastened to the prow. New Zealand again constitutes an excep- 



11 



