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In Yule Island, and in the vicinity of Hall Sound, and right away down the coast of New Guinea as far as Cloudy Bay, we come across a fairly uniform and rather uninteresting type of decorative art.

The designs are burnt into bamboo tobacco-pipes or gourds, “with a glowing slice of the sheathing leaf of the coco-nut kept almost at a white heat by the native artist blowing upon it. The end of the glowing ember forms a fine point, which on being slowly moved along the desired lines leaves indelible tracks.” (Lindt, Picturesque New Guinea, 1888, p. 34.) In Cloudy Bay the natives scratch the design on the rind of the bamboo before charring it; this tends to limit the burning, and to give a hard edge to the lines. Here also the designs run along the length of the pipes in distinct bands; in other parts of the Central District longitudinal bands are broken by encircling bands, and are often replaced by panels.

The employment of isolated, rectangular panels is very characteristic of this district. On such objects as tobacco-pipes the panels must from necessity follow one another more or less serially, but they need not be co-ordinated into a definite pattern. When larger surfaces are ornamented, as, for example, the bodies of women (Fig. 20, A, B), the panels may also be somewhat irregularly disposed; but there is a tendency, at all events in some places (as in the figure), for the designs to have an orderly and symmetrical arrangement, but in no case is there absolute symmetry.

Fig. 20, A.—Drawing of Tabuta, a Motu girl, by Rev. W. Y. Turner, M.D. (from Journ. Anth. Inst., vii., 1878, Fig. 4, p. 480).

B.—Back view of the same. (The hair of this girl is incorrectly drawn, it should be frizzly and not wavy.)

A common form of panel is the Maltese cross (Fig. 21, H, I); perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a light St. Andrew’s cross on a dark rectangular panel. A combination of light St. George’s and St. Andrew’s crosses on dark fields is very frequent; the arms of the latter cross often become leaf-like, and may monopolise the field. (Fig. 21, E, F.) Some travellers have suggested that these designs are derived from the Union Jack, but this is not the case. Another kind of panel is that shown in Fig. 21, G. Fig. 21, D, illustrates one form of a common type of band pattern.

Fig. 21.—A. Design on a lime-gourd from Kerepunu; B. Part of the decoration of a pipe from Maiva; C. Detail on a pipe from Kupele, in the Berlin Museum; D-I. Designs on pipes—G from Kupele (Berlin), H, I, from Koiari (Berlin). All the Figs. are to different scales.

One of the most widespread of the isolated designs is that shown in Fig. 21, A, B, and Fig. 22, but it is subject to many variations. Similar designs are tattooed on people below the armpit or on the shoulder. Now that attention has been called to this and other designs, we shall probably learn what significance is attached to them. Occasionally we find what appear to be undoubted plant motives on pipes and other objects from this district, as, for example, on a pipe from Kupele in the Berlin Museum (Fig. 21, C), and it is probable that the designs just alluded to are also plant derivatives.

Fig. 22.

Part of the decoration of a pipe in the Cambridge Museum; one-sixth natural size.

Throughout this district, especially along the coast, the women are tattooed, and in some localities they are entirely covered with tattoo marks. The men are much less tattooed than the women.[8] The designs employed are for the most part the same as those used to decorate pipes and gourds. The angled design tattooed on the chests of women (Fig. 20, A, B) is found on a pipe in the Cambridge Museum. (Fig. 22.)

Noticeable features in the decorative art of this district are the preponderance of straight lines over curved lines; as well as the occurrence of dotted lines and of very short lines, which form a kind of fringe to many of the lines. (Figs. 21, 22, 51.)

Very remarkable also is the absence of the delineation of the human or of animal forms. Bounded on the north-west by a luxuriant art based on human faces and forms, and limited to the south-east by bird-scrolls and bird and crocodile derivatives, not to mention human effigies and representations of various animals, these central folk are unaffected by these two very distinct forms of artistic activity. The only exceptions, so far as my evidence goes, is in the transitional country north of Hall Sound, and a few carvings of crocodiles in certain tabu houses or dubus.

The rigid conservatism of the native mind is the sheet-anchor of the ethnographer; no better example of this mental rigidity is needed than is supplied by the Motu people who live in the vicinity of Port Moresby. The women make large quantities of pottery, which the men trade for sago up the Papuan Gulf even to a distance of two hundred miles. Three or more canoes lashed together and fitted with crates constitute a trading canoe or lakatoi. A fleet of twenty lakatoi carrying about six hundred men, each of whom would take about fifty pots, has been known to sail from Port Moresby. The 20,000 or 30,000 exported pots will bring in exchange a cargo of 150 tons, or more, of sago. Notwithstanding this great annual trading, the decorative art of the Motu is absolutely untouched by that of the Gulf natives, or vice versâ; the artistic motives, scheme of decoration, and technique are entirely different.

It seems probable that many of the decorated objects that are labelled in European museums as coming from this district are the work of the hill tribes, or of that coast population which does not belong solely to the Motu and allied tribes.