monopoly, held by these two places in the manufacture of mwali, is the inertia of custom and usage which traditionally assigns to them this sort of fishing and manufacture. For the shells are scattered all over the Lagoon, nor is the fishing and diving for them more difficult than any of the pursuits practised by all the Lagoon villages. Only the communities mentioned, however, carry it on, and they only are in possession of a system of elaborate magic, at least as complex as that of the kaloma.
The actual manufacturing of the armshells presents also no difficulties. The ornament is made out of a belt of the shell cut out nearest to its base. With a stone, the natives knock out the circular base along the rim, and they also knock a circle at some distance from the base and parallel to it, by which the broad band of shell is severed, from which the ornament is to be made. It has then to be polished, and this is done on the outside by rubbing off the soft calcareous surface on a flat sandstone. The interior is polished off with a long, cylindrical stone.8
It was the custom in Kavataria that when a man found a fine Conus shell, he would give it to his wife’s brother as a youlo present, who in turn would send the finder a return present of food, such as specially fine yams, bananas, betel-nut, and also a pig if it were an especially fine shell. He then would work out the shell for himself. This arrangement is a pendant to the one described with reference to Sinaketa, where a man would fish as well as work out a necklace for one of his wife’s kinsmen.
An even more interesting custom obtains in Kayleula. A pair of shells would be fished and broken in one of the villages of that island, or in one of its small sister islands, Kuyawa and Manuwata. In this unfinished state, as a band of coarse shell, called as such makavayna, it is then brought to the Amphletts, and there given as a Kula gift. The Gumasila man, who receives the shells, will then polish them up, and in that state again kula them to Dobu. The Dobuan who receives them then bores holes in the side, where one rim overlaps the other (clearly to be seen on Plate XVI) and attaches there the ornaments of black, wild banana seeds, and spondylus discs. Thus, only after it has travelled some one hundred miles and passed through two stages of the Kula, has the mwali received its proper shape and final outfit.
In this manner does a new-born Kula article enter into the ring, taking shape as it goes through its first few stages, and at the same time, if it is a specially fine specimen, it is christened by its maker. Some of the names express simply local associations. Thus, a celebrated pair of mwali, of which the shell was found not long ago by a Kavataria man near the island of Nanoula, is named after that place. It may be added that, in each pair there is always a ‘right’ and a ‘left’ one, the first the bigger and more important of the two, and it is after that the name is given. Of course, they never are found at the same time, but if a man has succeeded in obtaining a specially fine specimen, he will be busy trying to find its slightly inferior companion, or some of his relatives-in-law, friends or kinsmen will give him one. ‘Nanoula’ is one of the most celebrated pairs, and it was known all over the Trobriands, at that moment, that it was soon to come to Kitava, and the general interest hung round the question who was going to get it in Boyowa. A