It is simply a form of stencilling, and only requires taste in arranging the patterns and colours, and a neat hand in executing them. But the result is handsome and artistic. And a great curtain of _tappa_ hung across a native house is such a striking and uncommon-looking kind of drapery, that it is certainly a matter of regret to know how surely this art is fated to die out before the influx of common English or American goods. In New Zealand, for instance, where it used to be made, it is now as wholly a thing of the past as the woad of our own ancestors. In Tonga, too, its use is greatly discouraged; and it is to be feared that future generations who visit Fiji may look for it as vainly as we now do for the wonderful hair-dressing which so amazed travellers in the last generation, but which was so intimately associated with ideas of war and cannibalism, that the Christians as a matter of course desisted from it. Yet it was really carried to such perfection as to rank as a high art. Each great chief had his own hair-dresser, who sometimes devoted several hours a-day to his master’s adornment, and displayed quite as much ingenuity in his designs as the potters or cloth-painters do in their work. The general aim was to produce a spherical mass about three feet in circumference; but a very successful hair-dresser has been known to bring this up to five feet! This mass was composed of twists or curls or tufts—oftenest of thousands of spiral curls, seven or eight inches long, shaped like a cone, with the base turned to the outside, and each individual hair turned inward. Others encouraged a tuft to grow so stiffly as to resemble a plume of feathers. Many had a bunch of “love-locks,” small long curls hanging on one side; others a few long very fine plaits hanging from behind the ear, or from one temple; or half the head was curled and half frizzled: it was also dyed according to taste. And some dandies liked to have their heads party-coloured, black, sienna, and red; in short, there was no limit to the strange varieties thus produced—far more diverse than the most fanciful devices of any fashionable lady in Europe. Now all this is a forgotten art, and though the gentlemen of our party who have returned from the war, saw a certain number of “big-heads,” as the _tevoro_—_i.e._, “devils,” or rather devil-worshippers—are called, I have seen no trace of it except in a few monstrous wigs, which still occasionally appear in the dances. One of Lady Gordon’s attendants, whose golden-brown hair is as soft and glossy as silk, retains one long tuft, which occasionally floats at liberty, at other times is plaited in a multitude of the finest braids, woven by the deft fingers of his love.