MICRONESIA. 75 



coating the outside of their canoes with a shining varnish. They 

 make, besides, by burning the coral rock, a fine lime, which is mixed 

 with cocoa-nut oil, and used to whitewash the inside of their canoes 

 and render them water-tight. Neither of these arts is known to the 

 Polynesians. 



2. Some of their manufactures evince a skill which seems to be the 

 offspring of civilization. This is particularly the case with their 

 cinctures, or sashes, which are made of the fibrous filaments of the 

 banana plant. They are not braided by hand, like the fine mats of 

 Polynesia, but woven in a simple loom. The shuttle resembles very 

 closely in appearance, as in use, that of our weavers. These sashes 

 have attracted much notice and admiration from foreigners, for the 

 elegance of their texture, and the beauty and regularity of the colours 

 which are inwoven. Another of their ornaments deserves notice, not 

 so much for any skill displayed in its manufacture, as because it 

 seems to be universal among the islanders of Micronesia and peculiar 

 to them. It consists of a string of alternate wooden and shell beads, 

 if this term may be applied to them. The " beads" are in the shape 

 of a sixpence with a hole through its centre, or more nearly like the 

 " button-moulds" of our dress-makers. They are made of fragments 

 of cocoanut-shell and sea-shells, which are broken or cut nearly to the 

 required shape, and then filed down together till they are smooth, 

 even, and exactly of equal size. Those of sea-shell are white, and 

 those of cocoa-nut black. They are strung alternately upon a small 

 cord, and appear like a round flexible stick, half an inch in diameter, 

 marked with alternate white and black rings. They are worn, not 

 round the neck, but round the waist, and only by the men.* 



* Since this was written, my attention has been drawn to a passage in Chamisso's 

 volume, appended to Kotzebue's voyage round the world, from which the origin, and 

 probably the real nature, of this supposed ornament may be inferred. In speaking of 

 the natives of the Ladrone Islands, he remarks : " We have discovered among their 

 antiquities something which seems to show a great advance made in civilization beyond 

 any of the other islanders of the great ocean. We speak of the invention of money. . . . 

 Disks of tortoise-shell, of the shape of button-moulds, but thin as paper, and made ex- 

 tremely smooth by rubbing, are strung close together on a thick cord of cocoa-nut sinnet. 

 The whole forms a flexible cylinder of the thickness of a finger, and several feet in 

 length. These disks were in circulation as a medium of exchange, and only a few of 

 the chiefs had the right to make and issue them." Chamisso's Werke, Leipzig, 1836, 

 vol. ii. p. 142. This " money" is evidently the same with the " beads" of the Kings- 

 mill Islanders, except that the latter use other shells instead of that of the tortoise. From 

 various slight circumstances which are now called to mind, it seems likely that these 



