Page:String Figures and How to Make Them.djvu/175

 CHAPTER V

CAROLINE ISLANDS CATCH

HIS catch was shown to Dr. W. H. Furness in 1902 by a Natik woman, "Emily," who was returning to the Caroline Islands, on. the steamer Oceana, from Australia, where she had gone from Ponapè as a nurse in an English family. Natik (or Ngatik) is a small island south of Ponapk, with a population of about one hundred and fifty. It has twice been swept by tidal waves and almost all of the inhabitants killed. The natives speak a strange dialect

of Ponapè intermingled with English words. They are chiefly the descendants of an African negro from a whaling vessel and a native woman from Ponapè.

First: Opening A. (Taking up the right palmar string first.)

Second: Take the left hand out of all the loops, and let them hang straight down from the right hand held palm down with the fingers pointing to the left.

Third: Put the tips of the left thumb and little finger together and insert them from the left side into the right index loop (Fig. 314); then separate the left thumb and little finger, and, taking the loop off the right index, draw the hands apart (Fig. 315). This movement arranges the string on the left hand in the "First Position," and on the right hand puts a twisted loop on the thumb, a twisted loop on the little finger and a string across the palm.

Fourth: With the left index take up from below (as in Opening A) the string on the right palm (Fig. 316) and separate the hands (Fig. 317).