From Murua (Woodlark Island) the Kula track curves over to the South in two different branches, one direct to Tubetube, and the other to Misima, and thence to Tubetube and Wari. The district of Misima is almost entirely unknown to me—I have only spoken once or twice with natives of this island, and there is not, to my knowledge, any reliable published information about that district, so we shall have to pass it over with a very few words. This is, however, not so alarming, because it is certain, even from the little I know about them, that the natives do not essentially differ from the other Massim. They are totemic and matrilineal; there is no chieftainship, and the form of authority is the same as in the Southern Massim. Their sorcerers and witches resemble those of the Southern Massim and Dobuans. In industries, they specialise in canoe-building, and in the small island of Panayati produce the same type of craft as the natives of Gawa and Woodlark Island, slightly different only from the Trobriand canoe. In the island of Misima, a very big supply of areca (betel) nut is produced, as there is a custom of planting a number of these nuts after a man’s death.
The small islands of Tubetube and Wari, which form the final link of the Kula, lie already within the district of the Southern Massim. In fact, the island of Tubetube is one of the places studied in detail by Professor Seligman, and its ethnographical description is one of three parallel monographs which form the division of the Southern Massim in the treatise so often quoted.
Finally, I want to point out again that the descriptions of the various Kula districts given in this and in the previous chapter, though accurate in every detail, are not meant to be an exhaustive ethnographic sketch of the tribes. They have been given with a few light touches in order to produce a vivid and so-to-speak personal impression of the various type of natives, and countries and of cultures. If I have succeeded in giving a physiognomy to each of the various tribes, to the Trobrianders, to the Amphlettans, the Dobuans, and the Southern Massim, and in arousing some interest in them, the main purpose has been achieved, and the necessary ethnographic background for the Kula has been supplied.