THE TWO RACES WHICH PEOPLED POLYNESIA. 
55 
from its roots nearly to its termination, leaving a small tuft 
at the top ; as it grows longer the bandage is continued still 
higher up, at last it becomes nearly a foot long ; by these 
means the hair stands up erect, and forms a huge mass, 
which is impervious to the rays of even a tropical sun, 
so that no other covering for the head is required. To 
preserve this elaborately manipulated head-dress unin- 
jured at night, the neck rests on a narrow wooden pillow, 
formed to suit its shape, which is sometimes made of a joint 
of bamboo, to which legs are attached, thus converting it 
into a kind of low stool, some five or six inches high. The 
hair being of a light reddish colour, and thus standing up, 
gives the natives a singular appearance. 
Hood, the writer of the “ Cruise of the Fawn ” alludes to 
the way the hair is worn at IJea or Wallis Island : — 
u The women with their frizzled heads of hair, all squared 
at the bottom, put me in mind of the figures depicted upon 
the Nineveh marbles. In some of the islands to the west- 
ward, they have a way of dressing it in a multitude of little 
ringlets, twisted with fine cocoa-nut twine, and the men 
have their beards arranged in the same manner, also cut 
square, giving them almost identically the same appearance 
with the Assyrian figures/’* 
The Malay figure is not to be recognized in New Zealand. 
The finest men have an unmistakeable Jewish caste of 
features, high foreheads and aquiline noses ; the next have a 
Chinese or Tartar countenance, and the last, that of the 
Negretto, more slightly formed than the negro, still having 
his facial line with a chocolate-coloured skin, and frizzled 
rather than woolly hair. 
The colour of the Maori varies ; in the north and extreme 
south they are the darkest, and not so well formed as those 
inhabiting the centre of the island. Some of the tribes are 
as fair as the Spanish and Portuguese, and many shades 
lighter than in other parts of Polynesia. 
The American natives are remarkably destitute of hair ■ 
they have little or no beard, and only hair on the head ; the 
* Cruise of the Fawn, p. ioi. 
