288 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



Like most other Funafuti implements, the bailers are dis- 

 tinguished by their rough, unfinished state. In this they contrast 

 unfavourably with bailers from other archipelagoes which are often 

 highly finished and the subject of decorative carving on their 

 sides, ends, and handle ; wherever, indeed, the friction of their 

 office permitted. Occasionally they attain a large size, a giant 

 from the Admiralty Islands, which dominates its fellows in the 

 Australian Museum, measures no less than twenty-three by twelve 

 by eight inches. Though the general plan is common to all Pacific 

 bailers, yet the tongue varies by being sometimes and sometimes 

 not, carried in an arch to the floor. On the south coast of British 

 New Guinea, a large shell, Melo diadema, is used as a bailer, the 

 ventral side of the last whorl being knocked out to admit an 

 inserted hand to grasp the columella ; and in the Solomons, 

 Somerville saw bailers " of banana leaf stitched into the shape of 

 a small coal-scoop without a handle."* Bailers made from a palm 

 spathe from the Fly River, New Guinea, are in the Australian 

 Museum. 



The Funafuti bailer (Plate xv., fig. 8) is a plain, narrow, deep 

 scoop of probably Calophyllum wood ; in weight one pound five 

 ounces, in length a foot, in depth two and a half inches, and in 

 breadth narrowing from five and a half posteriorly to two and a 

 half inches anteriorly. The sides are at right angles to the back 

 and floor, and the handle is a median tongue attached to the 

 back and floor, seven inches long, an inch and a half deep, and 

 three-quarters of an inch broad ; beneath the bailer is rounded to 

 fit the canoe floor. In use it is not tilled, lifted, and emptied, as 

 with us, but the water is gathered and shot out at one vigorous 

 sweep. 



The paddles (Plate xv., fig. 9) agree with the foregoing in being 

 made strictly for service, not at all for show. A specimen before 

 me weighs two pounds two ounces, and measures four feet six 

 inches in total length, of which half is handle, half blade ; the 

 former being an inch and a half square, the latter five and a half 

 inches wide sloping to a thin edge. The blade has sloping shoulders, 

 parallel sides, and lanceolate point. Lister remarks of the Fakaaf u 

 paddles that they have, " longer blades than those of Samoa, 

 in botanical language they are oblong acute, not ovate. This 

 difference may be due to the small size of the timber on the 

 islets." 



DOMESTIC ARTICLES. 



CORDAGE. 



Yarn, " loukafa," for coir ropes is obtained in lengths of about 

 a foot from the husk of green coconuts, macerated for three or 

 four weeks in fresh or salt water. The mode of manufacture is 



* Somerville Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxvi., 1897, p. 371. 



