238 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



inch and a half wide. This constituted a great difference from 

 the Polynesians, for with them we have never before met with any 

 females who were tatooed, excepting a few marks on the fingers 

 and feet." 



All I could learn of the manner of tatooting on Funafuti was 

 that it was performed with a sharpened bird-bone tapped into the 

 skin with a mallet ; the pigment used was Hernandia nut reduced 

 to charcoal, ground, and mixed with water. Except the pigment, 

 it is probable that the mode of tatooing differed little from that 

 in general use throughout the Pacific. The instruments and their 

 use are thus described by a surgeon who endured a tatooing in 

 the Marquesas : " Eight or ten candlenuts are strung on a piece 

 of reed, which is stuck in the ground, the upper one being lighted. 

 An inverted section of a coconut is suspended over it. This con- 

 denses the smoke, which is very black, and when mixed with a 

 little water, forms the marking-ink. The marginal lines of any 

 figure are first marked out with a very small stick, the remainder 

 is executed without a guide. The instruments for inserting the 

 colouring matter into the skin are made of pieces of bone made 

 flat, and serrated at one end, like either a comb or saw. the 

 breadth of this end differs from the eighth of an inch to one inch, 

 according to variety or minuteness of work, some having only 

 two teeth, some a dozen. The other end is brought to a blunt 

 point, and inserted at right angles into a small cane about six or 

 eight inches long. The piece of cane is held between the finger and 

 thumb of the left hand. The stick for beating this into the flesh 

 is long or short, according to the fancy of the operator. The 

 hitting of the stick is so very rapid that it resembles nothing that 

 I know of more accurately than a trunk maker driving his 

 nails."* 



The original pigment of the Polynesian seems to have been the 

 soot of the candlenut fruit, Aleurites triloba ; where the race 

 wandered beyond the habitat of that tree, substitutes had to be 

 found. In Funafuti Hernandia was used, and in New Zealand, 

 Robley tells us that Dammara gum, Podocarpus, Veronica, 

 and the vegetable caterpillar Cordiceps larvarum were em- 

 ployed. 



In Funafuti both men and women were tatooed with the same 

 pattern, which was peculiar to the atoll, and distinguished them 

 from other islanders. 



* Coulter Adventures in the Pacific, 1845, p. 210. The operation is 

 also described by Pritchard Polynesian Eeminiscences, p. 143; by 

 Turner Samoa, p. 88 ; by Polack Manners and Customs of the New 

 Zealanders, ii., 1840, pp. 42-51; by Eobley Moko, 1896, p. 56; by 

 Quppy Solomon Islands, 1887, p. 135 ; by Buckland Journ. Anthrop. 

 Inst., xvii., 1888, p. 318. 



