130 
Rennellese carving is accomplished and a real industry. We have as a group 
purchased a great deal at very low prices, 1 have purchased two fine black and 
natural color, woven, Rennellese, pandanus fiber bags, and Wilmot has given me a 
gift of the best black fiber decorated mat we have seen here and which I turned 
down for $12.00, since 1 did not have the money to spare. Black fiber designs 
on the natural buff pandanus fiber are most typically Rennellese, We have seen 
crabs, hermit crabs, crocodiles, men and women in traditional garb, owls, 
turtles, snakes, and lizards carved on the canes, usually inlaid with 
mother-of-pearl. The carved, brown wood artifact is buried in black swampy soil 
after being carved, and on its recovery from the mud a couple of weeks later it 
is all very black. 
The staffs or canes are often precisely bilateral, symmetrical, and covered 
with traditional animal motifs. One cane which I saw at Hutuna had a bit of 
humor and Informality with the owls catching the snakes in their claws, and the 
man in traditional dress bent over backward to wrap himself around the cane. 
The natural, with an Eskimo art-like shift to the grotesque, develops in some of 
the masks and even carved canes, and the humorous is at times espoused; most 
however, are conventional and ceremonially serious. One unfinished carving at 
Hutuna was of a woman bearing a child. It was good and I yielded to John's 
desire to purchase it although I badly wanted it myself. He then only failed to 
remember to retrieve it after sending it back to the carver to finish it, I am 
very disappointed to have lost this strange piece. 
Pauto village, Bellona Island November 9, 1972 
We reached Bellona at about 7 a.m, and went ashore at 8 a.m. with the sea 
covered with white caps and the waves 6-8 feet high. It was a rough approach to 
the reef and we did not dare to take the shore boat in over the reef with the 
mild surf beating upon it. Thus we disembarked in hip high water and Bellona 
people on shore came out and helped us carry cargo in over our heads, keeping it 
all dry. It was not a dry landing, Wilmot left us promptly to walk halfway 
down the length of the long Island to his home village of Tamgaki tonga between 
Pauto and Ngongona. There his Bellona wife lives with their two small children. 
He mobilized the Bellona Council tractor for us, and by the time the three shore 
boat landings were over, we had the tractor there waiting for us at the 
Matahenua road head above the coral- paved hill down to the beach: Ahanga. Most 
of those who met our landings and carried supplies ashore were girls and women, 
among whom were only a few boys ., .perhaps six females per male. This is what 
one often expects here in Bellona, Among the few boys, Tuhaika Poingi, a boy of 
11 in Standard 5 of the Adventist Primary School at Mataiho (between Ngongona 
and Ngongau) was the most helpful, and it is he who has stayed with me all day. 
Now he is with me in the home of Solomon, an ex-police man of the Solomon Island 
force, who is uncle of Milly, the nurse here at Bellona who runs the 
dispensary. 
We loaded all our supplies, bedding, medical equipment and food onto the 
trailer of the tractor, and together with no fewer than two dozen Bellona women 
and children and a few men, we drove the length of the island — almost. We 
passed the dispensary, visited the Mataiho school and met the headmaster and 
