Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/8

112 when their island first became known early in the last century. When Beechey visited Mangareva the people sailed their rafts and could do so much with them that it would not be correct to say that they had lost the art of navigation, as may be said about the Torres Islanders. Nevertheless the art must have been very inferior to that which was given to them by the possession of the canoe.

POTTERY.

Pottery is less essential to the life of an islander than a canoe but yet its convenience must be so great that its manufacture would seem to be an art most unlikely to disappear.

The distribution of pottery is one of the most remarkable features of the material culture of Oceania. In southern Melanesia it is now found only in two places, New Caledonia and Espiritu Santo (usually called Santo), and then, passing northwards, we do not meet with it again till we come to the Shortland Islands, Bougainville and Buka, and then it goes again to reappear in New Guinea. East-wards it is found in Fiji but is totally absent from Polynesia.

Its distribution, however, was once more extensive. Fragments of pottery are found scattered about in Malikolo and Pentecost, in neither of which islands is pottery now used and in Malikolo the people have a myth to explain the presence of the fragments. Further, pottery has been found buried at considerable depths in two places, and promises through its indestructibility to become in these distant islands