70 TAMBU-HOUSES. 



sacred buildinar of some kind Mr. William Macdonald, 



through whose kindness I had the opportunity of visiting this 

 island, pointed out to me that two or three of the posts of the build- 

 inef had been carved into the fioures of women, an innovation in the 

 interior of a tambu-house which I observed in no other building of 

 this kind. 



The tambu-house of the village of Sapuna in Santa Anna, which 

 is shown in the accompanying plate, is higher, broader, and more 

 massive in structure than the other buildings which I have visited 

 in the adjacent islands. As in other tambu-houses, the forms of the 

 shark and of the human figure are given to parts of the posts ; and 

 in the hollow cavities of wooden representations of the shark on the 

 sides of the interior of the building are enclosed the entire bodies of 

 departed chiefs and the skulls of ordinary men. The carved central 

 post, which is seen in the accompanying engraving, affords a superior 

 specimen of native workmanship. It was originally brought,- as I 

 was informed by one of the natives of Santa Anna, from Guadal- 

 canar. The walls of this building are made more rain-proof by long 

 slabs, measuring 36 by 6 by 2 inches, which are cut out from the 

 dense matted growth of fibres and rootlets that invests the base of 

 the bole of the cocoa-nut pahn. 



The principal tambu-house in the village of Ete-ete, on the west 

 side of Ugi, is between GO and 70 feet in length, from 25 to 30 feet 

 broad, and 11 or 12 feet in height. Here also the sculptured posts 

 represent the body of a shark with its head uppermost and sup- 

 porting in the gape of its mouth the figure of a man, on whose 

 head rests the ridge-pole of the roof. The front of the building is 

 decorated with red and black bands, some straight, some wavy, and 

 others of the chevron pattern. Mr. Brenchley in his account of the 

 " Cruise of the ' Curacoa ' " gives a sketch of this tambu-house, which 

 he visited in 1865 (p. 258). Forming the frontispiece of his work is 

 a chromo-lithograph showing the two sides of an ornamental tie- 

 beam from the roof of a " public hall" at Ugi, which he j^resented to 

 the Maidstone Museum. It represents on one side sharks, bonitos, 

 and sea-birds supposed to be frigate-birds, and on the other side four 

 canoes with sharks attacking the crew of one of them, which is 

 bottom upwards. 



The deification of the shark appears to arise from the superstitious 

 dread which this fish inspires. Its good-will may be obtained by 

 leaving offerings of food on the rocks before undertaking a long 



