616 
STRAY NOTES ON PAPUAN ETHNOLOGY, 
of disgust. A pretty scene every evening in an Eastern Papuan 
village is a file of women wending their way by the forest path 
home, each bending under a porha full of fift}' or sixty pounds 
weight of fire-wood or garden produce. The basket is laid across 
her shoulders somewhat as a North British fisher lass carries her 
creel of fish, but instead of being slung the porha is caught by the 
rim in the crook of the porter's fingers. 
Postscrijrt. — Since writing the above I have been favoured by 
two veteran missionaries and accomplished ethnologists with the 
following additional information. 
The Rev. Dr. W. Wyatt Gill tells me :— 
" This is the common food-basket throughout the South Pacific 
Islands, and no doubt it is the same in the North Pacific, too. 
At Mangaia, it is called 'raurau' = ' leaflet-leaflet ' {i.e., of the 
coconut palm). At Rarotonga it is the ' k i k a u.' Now, 
' k i k a u ' is the name for the coconut leaf or frond. So although 
a food basket is made from only a part of a frond, it bears the 
same name as the whole. There are plenty of parallels to this in 
our own language, i.e., a ' sail ' for a ' ship,' &c, kc. At Aitutaki, 
it is called indifferently ' t a p o r a ' or ' k e t e.' 'Kete' means 
basket in general. Mangaia, Rarotonga and Aitutaki are the 
three chief islands of the Cook's Group. I have seen exactly the 
same food baskets at Tahiti and each of the Leeward Islands (now 
French) as far back as 1852. Their name is 'ete' (i.e., the 
'kete' of the Cook's Group) I believe." 
The Rev. S. Ella writes to me : — " Your drawing of it is a good 
sketch, only needing the knotting together of the leaflets (pinnse) 
to form the bottom. It is the commonest kind of basket used, 
and is easily and quickly made, the material, the upper end of a 
coconut leaf, being always at hand. It is not so remarkable that 
it should be so generally used throughout Polynesia, and in almost 
exactly similar form and construction, when one considers its 
simplicity almost self-suggestive, and the general abundance of 
the materials; women and children make them with ease. Your 
description of its construction is correct. It is employed for 
