In September, 1917, an uvalaku expedition was led by Kouta’uya from Sinaketa to Dobu. The Vakutans joining them on the way, and the canoes of the Amphletts following them also, some forty canoes finally arrived at the western shore of Dawson Straits. It was arranged then and there that a return expedition from that district should visit Sinaketa in about six months’ time. Kauyaporu, the esa’esa (headman) of Kesora’i hamlet in the village of Bwayowa, had a pig with circular tusks. He decided therefore to arrange an uvalaku expedition, at the beginning of which the pig was to be killed and feasted upon and its tusks turned into ornaments.
When, in November, 1917, I passed through the district, the preparing of the canoes was already afoot. All of those, which still could be repaired, had been taken to pieces and were being relashed, recaulked and repainted. In some hamlets, new dug-outs were being scooped. After a few months stay in the Trobriands, I went South again in March, 1918, intending to spend some time in the Amphletts. Landing there is always difficult, as there are no anchorages near the shore, and it is quite impossible to disembark in rough weather at night. I arrived late in a small cutter, and had to cruise between Gumasila and Domdom, intending to wait till daybreak and then effect a landing. In the middle of the night, however, a violent north-westerly squall came down, and making a split in the main-sail, forced us to run before the wind, southwards towards Dobu. It was on this night that the native boys employed in the boat, saw the mulukwausi flaming up at the head of the mast. The wind dropped before daybreak, and we entered the Lagoon of Sanaroa, in order to repair the sail. During the three days we stopped there, I roamed over the country, climbing its volcanic cones, paddling up the creeks and visiting the villages scattered on the coral plain. Everywhere I saw signs of the approaching departure for Boyowa; the natives preparing their canoes on the beach to be loaded, collecting food in the gardens and making sago in the jungle. At the head of one of the creeks, in the midst of a sago swamp, there was a long, low shelter which serves as a dwelling to Dobuan natives from the main Island when they come to gather sago. This swamp was said to be reserved to a certain community of Tu’utauna.
Another day I came upon a party of local natives from Sanaroa, who were pounding sago pulp out of a palm, and sluicing it with water. A big tree had been felled, its bark stripped in the middle of the trunk in a large square, and the soft, fleshy interior laid open. There were three men standing in a row before it and pounding away at it. A few more men waited to relieve the tired ones. The pounding instruments, half club, half adzes, had thick but not very broad blades of green stone, of the same type as I have seen among the Mailu natives of the South Coast.1
The pulp was then carried in baskets to a neighbouring stream. At this spot there was a natural trough, one of the big, convex scales, which form the basis of the sago leaf. In the middle of it, a sieve was made of a piece of coco-nut spathing, a fibre which covers the root of a coco-nut leaf, and looks at first sight exactly like a piece of roughly woven material. Water was directed so that it flowed into the trough at its broad end, coming out at the narrow one. The sago pulp was put at the top, the water carried away with it the powdered sago starch, while the wooden, husky fibres were retained by the sieve. The starch was then carried with the water into a big wooden canoe-shaped trough; there the heavier starch settled down, while the water welled over the brim. When there is plenty of starch, the water is drained off carefully and the starch is placed into another of the trough-shaped, sago leaf bases, where it is allowed to dry. In such receptacles it is then carried on a trading expedition, and is thus counted as one unit of sago.
I watched the proceedings for a long time with great interest. There is something fascinating about the big, antideluvian-looking sago palm, so malignant and unapproachable in its unhealthy, prickly swamp, being