726 INDUSTRIES OF TUBETUBE. 



saying, " Your teeth are not blackened and your ears are not pierced, no man will 

 marry you." 



After having been kindly entertained by Mr Fletcher, who insisted upon my 

 acceptance of a supply of coffee and tea, I started to leave Panaieti shortly after 

 sunrise on January 30th, with a light wind. Towards noon a northerly breeze carried 

 us through the passage between the Torlesse Islands and the Panaieti reef. There was 

 a lively tidal rip in the passage, and just as we emerged from it the wind ceased 

 and the tide turned simultaneously, as so often happens, and we drifted back into the 

 lagoon, where in the pale moonlight we soon found ourselves scraping the surface of 

 a submerged reef. I did not know where the next tack would bring us, but it happened 

 that a welcome land-breeze came to our assistance, enabling us to make the passage 

 once more during the night, and a couple of days later we reached the island of 

 Tubetube in the Engineer Group. 



The population of the Engineer Group was distributed as follows, Tubetube 350, 

 Kuriva 260, Naruaruari 120. The natives are famous sailors and tillers, but poor 

 fishermen. When mourning for relatives the women blacken their bodies, wear long 

 leaf petticoats reaching nearly to the ground, a mass of cords round the neck and 

 a necklace called " kokoana " of the large shells of Ovulum ovum (" dunari "). Only the 

 women are tattooed all over the chest and abdomen and often upon the face as well. 



The large canoes of Tubetube are made at the Woodlark Islands (Murua) and 

 are decorated with bird scrolls at the ends and fish-representations on the hull. Wooden 

 bowls in use here are also made at Murua, but the wooden scoops for baling out the 

 large canoes are manufactured at Tubetube as well as at Murua. The clay bowls of 

 Tubetube constitute a staple article of trade with other islands, more especially with 

 Dobu ; they are extensively moulded by women on the three islands of the Engineer 

 Group, being shaped by hand without the aid of pottery whorls, by superposing circular 

 bands of clay ; of course they remain unglazed. 



After another flying visit to Dobu and Karuana, where I had built a pile-dwelling 

 on a former occasion, I returned to Samarai, from whence I made a voyage (accompanied 

 by Mr C. H. Walker, with whom I stayed for a few days at Matadona on the western 

 side of the China Straits) to the island of Suau, which forms the south cape of New 

 Guinea. In several villages along the south-east coast I noted isolated instances of 

 the round discs fitted on to the pillars of the houses as at Panaieti. I was told 

 that there is a story current of the Savaiians (inhabitants of Savaia, a large village 

 on the mainland not far from Suau, situated at the head of a bay, across the mouth 

 of which stretches a formidable barrier reef) having fitted out an expedition to fight 

 the Panaietians some years previously. 



By this time I had become convinced that it would be useless to spend more 

 time in searching the coasts and islands of New Guinea for Nautilus, in spite of the 

 frequency with which the shells are cast upon the reefs. I therefore decided to go 

 still farther east, either to New Caledonia, Fiji, or the New Hebrides, in any case by 

 way of Sydney. 



I spent my last somewhat fever-stricken fortnight in New Guinea under the 

 hospitable roof of the Rev. C. W. Abel, of the London Missionary Society, on the small 



