625 



Samarai jail, and a few Borowd'i men, whom I met at a So'i 

 feast in SilosUo (between Fife Bay and Mullins Harbour). 

 The several items of information obtained from these sources 

 harmonized perfectly. 



Starting from the north, there is a place on Goodenough 

 Island called Siriivdwti, which is — or prehaps it is better to say 

 was — a great centre for axe-blades, for the industry and trade 

 in stone implements are rapidly vanishing. I was emphatically 

 assured by a great number of inmates of the Samarai jail 

 (belonging to all the different tribes of the eastern end) that 

 Siriwdum was the place where the stone blades were made. 

 Whether it was really another quarrying centre, like Suloga 

 or Woodlark, or whether it was one of the places where the 

 blades used to be finally worked up and polished, or whether 

 it was only a great trading emporium for stone axes, I am, 

 for the present, unable to decide. Anyhow, it was mentioned 

 to me as the most northerly point of the great Mullins Harbour 

 trading route, where the stone blades were procured. Besides 

 the stone blades, other articles, such as formed the usual trade 

 circulating throughout the Massim area, were traded by this 

 route. (61) It is to be remembered that this route connected, 

 in the first place, two Massim districts — that of Bartle 

 Bay and those of Bonahona and of the southern shore of 

 Mullins Harbour. 



The articles which passed southwards this way were the 

 fine ceremonial handles manufactured in their best form in 

 the Trobriands and in Muiua (Woodlark), and called Diriwd'u 

 hy the Massim of Bonahona (the usual pattern of these is re- 

 produced by Seligman, oj)- cit., pi. Ixi.), and Konawe'u, the 

 heavier form, which is more popular in Woodlark and the 

 d'Entrecasteaux group (see pi. Ixii. of the same work); 

 the round carved wooden dishes ; the ebony lime 

 spatulas, and the carved wooden sword clubs (Kerepa); 

 obsidian (Nahua), which was found only in one place on 

 the d'Entrecasteaux group (Goodenough Island) ; baskets of 

 fine workmanship (Po'po) made by the Northern Mas- 

 sim. How these articles came to the villages in and 

 near Bartle Bay I cannot say, but it appears from a 

 remark of the Rev. H. Newton that the natives of that district 

 did not do much trading themselves. (^2) Thus it is very likely 

 that the islanders brought them down. 



(61)0/. C. G. Seligman, op. cit., p. 536, where the main trade, 

 as circulated by the Tuhefuhe. is enumerated. 



(62) ". . . Up the north-east coast there are no sailing 

 canoes. At Tanpota and Wedau there are just dug-outs, shaped 

 stem and stern, with an outrigger . . ." (op. cit., p. 41). 



