The Tanaman’s Amusements. 165 
tendrils round the reeds very firmly. A yam plantation at this 
season, when neatly kept, is a very pretty sight indeed. Men, 
women, and children join in the work, and generally they go 
on the principle of working in a body—all going to one man’s 
plantation and doing it, then he joins them and they go to the 
next, and so on. 
Fishing with nets along the reef, or with hook and line from 
canoes, hut-building and canoe-building, are some of their 
other peaceful occupations. 
Their peaceful amusements are not very numerous. They 
are fond of shooting birds with their muskets ; they seldom 
think of killing a domestic fowl otherwise, but rarely succeed 
without reducing it to a condition which we would hardly think 
suitable for the table. Sometimes they resort to their old 
weapons for amusement—particularly the boys, who have not 
got the length of guns. Putting up a mark on the beach, they 
‘practise very vigorously at it with their spears, and bows and 
arrows. They must, however, have lost much of their former 
cunning in the use of these weapons, or they never had any ; 
for I found that, with a little practice, I was about as good a 
marksman as any of them. 
Hairdressing is another favourite occupation of the Tana- 
men, and one to which they devote a good deal of time. In 
common with the natives of some of the neighbouring islands, 
they dress their hair in a very peculiar style—in a very trouble- 
some style, I would say; but they are as proud of it as the 
wearer of the most fashionable chignon is of her upper 
story. Dividing the hair into several hundred locks, they 
wrap each of them round with a native twine, as tightly as you 
wrap the handle of a cricket bat, leaving the ends free and 
curling. They generally devote Sunday to this hair-culture, 
tying up what has become loosened, and following up the hair 
as it grows with the wrapping-twine. As “ uneasy lies the head 
