this many villages assist as spectators, and distributions of food take place. During an usigola, dancing is done in full dress, that is, with facial painting, floral decorations, valuable ornaments, and a head-dress of white cockatoo feathers (see Plates XIII, XIV). A performance consists always of a dance executed in a ring to the accompaniment of singing and drum-beating, both of which are done by a group of people standing in the middle. Some dances are done with the carved dancing shield.
Sociologically, the village is an important unit in the Trobriands. Even the mightiest chief in the Trobriands wields his authority primarily over his own village and only secondarily over the district. The village community exploit jointly their garden lands, perform ceremonies, wage warfare, undertake trading expeditions, and sail in the same canoe or fleet of canoes as one group.
After the first inspection of the village, we would be naturally interested to know more of the surrounding country, and would take a walk through the bush. Here, however, if we hoped for a picturesque and varied landscape, we should receive a great disappointment.
The extensive, flat island consists only of one fertile plain, with a low coral ridge running along portions of the coast. It is almost entirely under intermittent cultivation, and the bush, regularly cleared away every few years, has no time to grow high.
A low, dense jungle grows in a matted tangle, and practically wherever we move on the island we walk along between two green walls, presenting no variety, allowing of no broader view.
The monotony is broken only by an occasional clump of old trees left standing—usually a tabooed place—or by one of the numerous villages which we meet with every mile or two in this densely populated country.
The main element, both of picturesqueness and ethnographic interest, is afforded by the native gardens. Each year about one quarter or one fifth of the total area is under actual cultivation as gardens, and these are well tended, and present a pleasant change from the monotony of the scrub.
In its early stages, the garden site is simply a bare, cleared space, allowing of a Wider outlook upon the distant coral ridge in the East, and upon the tall groves, scattered over the horizon, which indicate villages or tabooed tree clumps.
Later on, when the yam-vines, taro, and sugar cane begin to grow and bud, the bare brown soil is covered with the fresh green of the tender plants.
After some more time still, tall, stout poles are planted over each yam-plant; the vine climbs round them, grows into a full, shady garland of foliage, and the whole makes the impression of a large, exuberant hop-yard.