THE MAORI’S PLACE IN HISTORY. 267 
stone, wood, bone, and shell were invariably the materials 
out of which they were fashioned. In Melanesia and the 
portions of New Guinea with which we are acquainted 
agriculture of the Eastern Polynesian type was general, the 
same foreign plants being everywhere in cultivation, with 
the same absence of cereals; roots and fruits being the only 
esculents. 
Like the natives of Australia and Tasmania many of the 
Papuans and Melanesians went naked, but wherever clothing 
was used bark cloth was the principal material. In the 
Santa Cruz archipelago a rude loom is said to have been in 
use when Europeans discovered the islands. As mariners 
the inhabitants of Eastern Polynesia were far beyond the 
natives of Melanesia and New Guinea; the latter had, how- 
ever, a greater variety of vessels. The unwieldy ene 
lanata employed in trading along the northern coast of 
Torres Straits resembled the balsa of Peru. 
In some of the groups the natives constructed large highly 
ornamented canoes, in others they were contented with a 
small miserable “ dug-out”* incapable of accommodating more 
than one or two persons. In Fiji the canoes were of the 
Hastern Polynesian type, the best being constructed by 
artisans who resorted there from Samoa. 
In most of the primitive arts common to this region the 
Fijians surpassed their eastern neighbours; their inferiority 
as boat-builders is therefore the more remarkable. 
The rude loom found in the Santa Cruz group has already 
been mentioned. Besides this, in parts both of New Guinea 
and Melanesia the natives possessed certain arts and institu- 
tions that must have been survivals from some former period, 
or recent introductions from the more civilized Malay region. 
Thus in certain islands the men were armed with the bow 
and poisoned arrow, while in other islands within the same 
grcup the weapon was unknown, or had been discarded. 
In New Britain and the adjacent islands cowrie shells 
were used as a medium of exchange. On the south-east 
coast of New Guinea betel-chewing was in vogue, and the 
houses were built on tall piles after the Malay and Burmese 
fashion. 
Considering the geographical position of Madagascar, and 
* A canoe made out of the hollowed trunk of a tree. 
