478 AUSTEALASIA. 



operation lasted so long that it had to be begun before the children were six years 

 old, and the pattern was largely left to the skill and cunning of the professional 

 tattooers. Still traditional motives recurred in the ornamental devices of the 

 several tribes, who could usually be recognised by their special tracings, curved or 

 parallel lines, diamond forms and the like. The artists were grouped in schools 

 like the Old Masters in Europe, and they worked not by incision as in most 

 Melanesian islands, but by punctures with a small comb-like instrument slightly 

 tapped with a mallet. The pigment used in the painful and even dangerous opera- 

 tion was usually the fine charcoal yielded by the nut of aleurites triloba, an 

 oleaginous plant used for illumining purposes throughout Eastern Polynesia. 



The Polynesians are wrongly supposed to have been unacquainted with the bow 

 and arrow. In Tonga and Samoa these weapons were used in the battle-field, and 

 in the eastern archipelagoes they figured at the civil or religious feasts, or as mere 

 playthings. Except where anthropophagy formed part of the mythical ceremonies, 

 the only animal food was fish, shell-fish and pork, and even this diet was generally 

 forbidden to the women, sometimes under pain of death. In most of the groups 

 fruits, grains, edible roots and leaves, sometimes fermented and pounded to a paste, 

 sufficed to nourish the natives, and were mostly yielded by bountiful nature with 

 little labour on their part. At every repast the never-failing beverage was kava, 

 which the young women prepared by masticating the slightly pungent leaves and 

 fibre of the pijm' metJnsticum, still cultivated in the gardens for this purpose. After 

 fermentation the liquor becomes clear, pleasant to the taste, very refreshing and 

 but slightly intoxicating. Indulged in too freely, however, it is said to cause 

 general debility and skin diseases. Since its interdiction by the missionaries, it has 

 been almost everywhere replaced by the more dangerous brandy distilled from 

 orange juice. 



In Samoa the women were much respected, and every village had its patroness, 

 usually the chief's daughter, who represented the community at the civil and 

 religious feasts, introduced strangers to the tribe, and diffused general happiness 

 by their cheerful demeanour and radiant beauty. But elsewhere the women, 

 though as a rule well treated, were regarded as greatly inferior to the men. At 

 the religious ceremonies the former were noa, or profane, the latter ra, or sacred, 

 and most of the interdictions of things tabooed fell on the weaker sex. The women 

 never shared the family meal, and they were regarded as common property in the 

 household of the chiefs, where polygamy was the rule. Before the arrival of the 

 Europeans infanticide was systematically practised ; in Tahiti and some other 

 groups there existed a special caste, amongst whom this custom was even regarded 

 as a duty. Hence doubtless arose the habit of adopting strange children, almost 

 universal in Tahiti, where it gave rise to all manner of complications connected 

 with the tenure and inheritance of property. 



In Polynesia the government was almost everywhere centred in the hands of 

 powerful chiefs, against whose mandates there was no appeal. A vigorous hier- 

 archy separated the social classes one from another, proprietors being subject to 

 the chiefs, the poor to the rich, the women to the men ; but over all custom reigned 



