Clothes and the men—Love of adornment—Natives who are not keen on eating—Methods of cooking their food—Betel-nut chewing.

The native dress of the Solomon islanders is even more scanty than that of their neighbours the New Guinea natives. Usually the sole clothing of the men consists of a “T”-shaped garment encircling their waists and passing between their legs. Unmarried women and children fail to see any necessity for clothing at all, except those in places where the missionaries have brought their influence to bear; then a loin cloth is worn similar to that used by the natives of Fiji, Samoa, and Honolulu, to cover their nakedness.

Though the Solomon islanders do not clothe their bodies with cloth, they endeavour to cover as much flesh as they can with ornaments and flowers, and a keen competition is kept up in the discovery {105} of new ornamental shells, and in trade articles with which to adorn themselves.
NATIVE OF NEW GEORGIA WEARING SUNSHADE, A SORT OF CROWNLESS HAT MADE OF GRASSES: IT CAN BE WORN AT ANY ANGLE.

The men are always attempting to rival each other in this respect, and go through endless torture as a result. They wear tight armlets, heavy ear-rings, anklets, and nose-rings, the weight and discomfort of which would be more than most white men could stand.

Shell necklaces are among the most handsome of native ornaments, and they are made from various kinds of shells, cut and ground down, and in some cases beautifully polished. The Tredacua shells are most popular, and portions of them are converted into most artistic ornaments. Armlets are made of these shells, but it is a most tedious job and takes the maker ages to accomplish, as the circle is generally cut out with a rough piece of iron and then finished off by a course of rubbing with sand. Both men and women wear armlets, and, as most of them are placed on their arms when they are quite young, they become extremely tight as the wearer grows up, and look as if they would destroy the use of the limb. For some unexplained reason, these bracelets seem to have little or no effect on the circulation of the blood, which compels one to notice that custom is responsible for many quaint problems. {106}

The most extraordinary ornaments, however, are the grotesque ear-rings worn by the men. When quite young, a small hole is pierced in the lobe of the ear, generally with a stone, and the opening thus made is filled with a piece of banana leaf wound up and twisted so that it acts as a spring, continually enlarging the hole until it is big enough to be filled by a piece of wood, or circular looking-glass, or any other quaint thing the possessor of the hole can get to put in it.

Some of these holes are considerably bigger than the man’s ear. Lieutenant Boyle T. Somerville, who made a point of studying these particular natives, says that he measured one native’s lobe hole and found it was four inches in diameter, and Dr. Guppy states that he has seen natives carrying their pipes and matches in these gaps, and on one occasion he saw Taki, the Wano chief, with a heavy bunch of native shell money hanging from each ear. Taki said it was a sign of mourning for a recently deceased wife—it certainly needed some explanation.

Nose-rings and other nose ornaments form another disfigurement for which these natives have a weakness. Lately the women have taken to making very pretty ornaments of trade beads, which they {107} work into curious designs and arrange with peculiar mixtures of colour; some are also ornamented with wild flowers, and present an almost artistic appearance.
A RUBIANA NATIVE, SOLOMON ISLANDS

This portrait shows a native wearing large ear-rings; the lobe of the ear passes round the wooden ring. In travelling through dense forest they take the wooden rings out and tie the long ear-lobes under the chin. The gorget of pearl shell with a fretted-out MBELEMA (frigate-birds) suspended round the neck is supposed to invite the protection of the spirit called “PONDA.” The man’s hair is turned yellow by the use of lime. The armlets are of shell and hair or grass; the design on the ear-rings may be a frigate-bird motive; it is made of pearl shell let into the wood.

In Rubiana strange native methods of hair doing can be seen. Some men’s is cut in the most fantastic way and ornamented with bright plumes and flowers, and occasionally one possessing an extra fine crop of bushy hair will have it propped up with a piece of old hoop iron, and then if he can get hold of a comb, as he often can, he sticks it through the hair and the effect is weird.

Some also bleach their hair and make it the colour of straw, though this is not met with as often as in Samoa, where I have seldom seen a native without bleached hair, or without hair that shows signs of having been bleached at one time.

The same custom of shaving the head when in mourning is in vogue here as in New Guinea. Tattooing, however, is not nearly so popular, and very few natives in New Georgia show any signs of it. In place of it they paint their faces with lime, and look rather like clowns.

Raised cicatrices are very popular, and some quaint designs are worked on their bodies. Lots of natives have a porpoise and a frigate bird carved in {108} this fashion on their bodies. Most of the designs are extremely crude, owing, no doubt, to the custom of the boys who cut them on each other............