TENIMBER WOMEN. 
165 
The women, if not treated with a great show 
of affection, and though left to perform all the 
harder duties of life, are not subjected to re- 
straint, and hare a free and happy air about 
them. It is they who go to the distant forest 
to cultivate on the poor soil covering the coral 
rocks the sweet -potatoes, manioc, sugar-cane, 
Indian corn, cotton, and tobacco which are need- 
ful in their daily life. It is they who stamp the 
Indian com into meal ; all day long, somewhere 
in the village, the dull thud of the stamping- 
pole in the large tridacna shell is heard. They 
must have good muscles ; they lift the heavy 
pole as if it were a bamboo. And how deftly 
they keep gathering in the grain with the left 
hand, scarcely any being spilled from the shell 
in the stamping. What does fall is at once 
picked up by the fowls, which are domestic pets ; 
and possibly from this food the Tenimber fowls 
are in excellent condition, and particularly well- 
Havoured. 
Here and there a woman is to be seen sitting 
© 
close under the eaves of her house weaving cloth. 
Her loom is indeed an heirloom, and the simple 
contrivance is often elaborately carved, it being 
the pastime of lovers of successive generations to 
make fresh carving on the fair ones loom. The 
