Show BRITISH GUINEA 4 description ftp THE HOUSES IN WHICH THE NATIVES LIVE the following is mr description of new guinea dwellings I 1 IT the he houses bouses on this part of the coast as also in the villages inland are built upon pon piles varying from four to eight feet I 1 ia height A few steps up a rude ladder lead to a platform on OB which some of the family generally recline A baby and often a young pig in nets suspended from the eaves are gently swinging to and fro fishing nets lie in a earner corner with shells attached tor for weights nautilus shells with grass streamers or hideous carved pieces of wood hang bang before the bamboo door which is low lew and narrow and aad leads into the common room where all the family sleep the common room is about fla welve by eighteen feet with a bare r of rough planks generally the s sides 1 8 of old canoes tae chinks the garbage is thrown upon the plentiful remnants of cocoa desks dusks below for the pigs to eat or the sea to carry away in me middle of the room is a ri replace place and a pile of ashes on some boards with a spark pio protector 0 of bamboo sticks huner about three feet above on the central pole is bung a toi while here and there on the grass walls are suspended gourds geurds for lime bamboo pipes 9 1 spare are grass petticoats and net bags there I here 19 I 1 nu au window but a moveable moveably move able shutter can generally be opened on the seaside sea side and plenty of air enters through the walls and the holes in the floor 11 then as to clothing the natives certainly affect sincere simplicity in the matter of dress the only article common to all men is a thia abia string a third of an inch in breadth oread th passed tightly around the waist and between the legs A band of grass which serves as a pocket for tobacco knives and decorations of cotton cottma leaves is for the most moat part worn on the upper pact of the arm some have head bands of red braid ur or small rounded pieces of shells while a few wear necklaces of shells aeils or teet hand carved bones through the nose their hair thick matted and long is drawn up by a comb of bamboo cane the women wear petticoats bats of woven grass sometimes stained with a red hue the married and betrothed have short ha hair r the majority are tattooed with a Y V shaped aped mark and other designs upon their breast their figures are s squat knat and not so erect as those of hindmo women as they generally carry weights on the back and not on the head I 1 pottery of a kind is made on the island and entirely by women the they y use no machinery and no potters wheel but they have acquired great dexterity in judging toe the sizes and fashioning the shapes they break up red and gray clay into powder mix it with fine silver sand and water and knead it into a large alaree lump lum which with the hand aided by b a shell and a flat stone they first make the top and lip of the pot taking an old pot as mol mold d for the body scrape and smooth the exteriors with stone a and d shell dry the pots in the sun and thu than bake them ins in a fire W hen red boothe hot tae pots are taken out and sprinkled with ith tannin of a blackish color t extracted from mangrove bark after which they receive a second and final beati beating og they are then ready for exportation and that exportation is considerable A trading party filling twenty large canoes will sometimes start stare for tue west these canoes will carry about thirty men each and each man will have about fifty pots made by his family these six hundred men will thus have a total cargo of some thirty thou sand pots at one voyage which may extend fy fw three or tour hundred miles and from which they ft kill ill return with perhaps a hundred and fifty tons of sago obtained in exchange for their pottery all the year sound bound |