Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/222

208 are arranged to form canal streets, and the walls of edifices erected on them are built of basaltic columns in like manner. The ruins are much overgrown with the rich vegetation of the tropics, but enough is visible to disclose the remains of a city, of a second Venice, of whose builders we are ignorant.

Yap, in the Western Carolines, is singularly interesting. The natives are good-looking and profusely tattooed. The hands and fore-arms of the women are tattooed with mitts as in the Marshall Islands. The houses are large and built of mats. They stand on an extensive platform of earth revetted with stones, against which is placed the curious stone money of the islanders. This is in the form of huge disks of arragonite, quarried in the Pelew Islands, more than two hundred miles away. The disks are like great grindstones, and frequently weigh three tons. People have said on hearing of this money that there was not much risk of its being stolen. Nevertheless, an American trader at Yap complained to me that some which had been placed in his charge had been carried off in the night.

I visited two other islands which may be included in the Caroline group. These were Nuguor and Greenwich Island, both low atolls. At Nuguor human sacrifices are still offered; one had occurred about two years before I was there. The inhabitants are of almost gigantic size. They are ruled by two queens, and have retained the tradition of their migration from Samoa and the name of the chief, Vavé, who led it. Greenwich Island is very little known. The Pelew-Islanders are a particularly interesting people. In each village there are large "club-houses," to which the younger men resort. A few women from neighboring villages also frequent them. It is not considered comme il faut for a woman to enter one in her own village. If she did she would become an outcast; going into one a mile or two off, however, in no way affects her position. The buildings are of wood, and the gable-ends are adorned with carvings and frescoes. There is also in the Pelew Islands a curious kind of money. It is really bits of antique glass vessels and jasper beads, which the people believe came down from the gods, but which in fact came out of the ships of early navigators.

In the Polynesian archipelagoes of Samoa and Tonga we find a superior race and, especially in the latter, a comparatively advanced civilization. The people of the two are akin. The Samoans are of a softer type than the Tongans, who live in a cooler climate. The beauty of the Samoan women has often been remarked, and it would be difficult to exaggerate it. The Tongans are of greater stature, and the women are rather handsome than pretty. The scenery of the Samoan Islands is only surpassed by that of New Britain and Eastern New Guinea. Except in the Vavau group, the Tongau scenery is at best rather poor, as the islands are, in general, low. Samoa is always hot, while the winter climate of Tonga-tàbu is delicious. Both