482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



man of the town with three or four sticks of tobacco. I had not 

 intended to make my present before morning ; but, as I thought 

 the opportunity a good one, I gave Beta an axe, a knife, and some 

 pipes, matches, and a quantity of tobacco, and told him to present 

 them with a suitable speech. Shortly afterward one of the men 

 of the town stood up, and, leaning his two hands upon his toma- 

 hawk, returned thanks. Each man before commencing his speech 

 gave a shrill scream, I suppose to attract attention, but the sing- 

 ing went on all the time. [A few days after this, eleven natives, 

 consisting of six men, three women, two little girls, and a baby, 

 arrived at Aola, being the sole survivors out of the thirty inhabit- 

 ants. The town had been attacked at daylight two days after the 

 author's visit, and the old chief, Tambougi, who had given the 

 traveler the affectionate embrace, was among the killed.] 



Natives of different parts of the group differ considerably from 

 one another, but they belong to the Melanesian or Papuan type. 

 The natives of Buka and Bougainville and of the islands of Bou- 

 gainville Straits and of Choiseul are intensely black in color, but 

 as one journeys eastward the color changes to a dark brown. 

 They have woolly hair, but occasionally natives are met with wavy 

 and in some cases straight hair. The men wear no clothes beyond 

 the T-bandage usually met with among savage races, but fre- 

 quently men are seen without even this. The natives of Alu, how- 

 ever, wear a small piece of calico round the waist. On San Cris- 

 toval and the more eastern islands the women wear a small plaited 

 square of grass fiber, about six inches by four, which is suspended 

 round the waist by a string and hangs down the front. Upon 

 Malayta they wear the same, but one frequently sees women with- 

 out even this. On Guadalcanar the women wear a series of 

 fringes, one over the other, made out of some vegetable fiber re- 

 sembling hemp. For working in they wear a similar fringe made 

 out of a shredded banana-leaf. The dress of the women of Rubi- 

 ana and the neighboring district was declared by Captain Cheyne, 

 who visited the islands in 1846, to be indescribable. At Alu the 

 women wore pieces of calico bought from the traders. These 

 Solomon natives are not so addicted to the practice of tattooing 

 as the lighter-colored Polynesians, probably because the pattern 

 would not show so conspicuously upon their dusky skins. In San 

 Cristoval, however, both men and women have frequently the 

 face cut all over with a pattern of chevron-shaped cicatrices; 

 and on Guadalcanar the same practice is in vogue, but the pat- 

 tern takes the form of small circles, which are traced by a sharp- 

 ened bone from the wing of the flying fox, and a small bamboo 

 with the edge sharpened. The operation, which is completed at 

 one sitting, is a particularly painful one, and the operator is highly 

 paid for his trouble, tattooing being a profession. 



