38 



Ka Hana Kapa. 



It is most unfortunate the science of ethnology, at the time of the American 

 Exploring Expedition, was so little developed that siapo-making, like so many 

 things, was most superficial!}- noted. How much, now lost, might have been saved 

 if the Expedition had onl}- one of the more modern trained observers! In the Narra- 

 tive of the Expedition, to which we must turn for most of the quasi-ethnological 

 information, the narrator is often grossl}- mistaken in his statements, and without 

 corrections the authoritv is unreliable. 



FIG. 15. AX OLD TABI.KT IN WHICH THIi LEAF BASK IS WKLL STAIXKD. 



A carved wooden printing slab, far more durable than the rather flims}- leaf 

 ones, was used here (Fig. 16), and also at Fiji. This method of printing, while 

 cheapening the cost, certainl}- makes the work more slovenl}- and common, whole 

 bales being printed in one pattern. Like the Tongan cloth, the Samoan, wlien printed 

 this wa}', generalU" shows through on the reverse side. 



It must not be supposed that the Samoans did not make au}- fine siapo. While 

 the texture of the fabric was neither so fine or so well beaten as that made in Tahiti, 

 Tonga, the southern islands and Hawaii, they made sheets of a striking color, well 

 glazed, and another sort ruled in imitation of mat-work (PI. 34), and the soft brown 

 patterns shown in Pis. 24, 25 are not unpleasing. 



Rev. John B. Stair, long a missionary- in Samoa, gives us a little more informa- 

 tion on the siapo of that group: — "Before the contact with Europeans, and indeed for 



