For weeks before the annual trading expedition Hanuabada is full of life. At every turn one comes upon women crouching on the ground, fashioning lumps of clay into the wonderfully perfect pottery for which the village is famous. The men-folk, although they do not condescend to take part in the actual fashioning of the pots, are good enough to dig the clay, which they take out of the ground with a stone adze—a flat stone blade lashed to the shorter extremity of a forked stick, the longer extremity forming the handle. [Illustration: HANUABADA GIRLS DANCING AND SINGING. Before the young braves sail on their annual pottery trading voyage, which they make on board Lakatois (sailing rafts of canoes), they have great rejoicing, and the young women dance on the decks of their strange-looking vessels. ] There is a distinct organisation of labour among the potters, the women being divided into “makers” and “bakers.” Several “makers” work together in a group. They use no wheel, but seize a lump of clay with both hands, and make a hole large enough to get the right hand in, whereupon they gradually give the vessel its contour. After being roughly shaped, it is smoothed off with flat sticks or the palm of the hand. The finished article of Hanuabada ware is in the form of a flattened sphere with a very wide mouth, and a neatly finished rim six or eight inches across. Farther to the east, along the coast, the pottery is highly decorated, but it is much more crude in form, and has no fine rim. The pots are dried in the sun for several days, and then they are turned over to the “bakers,” whose fires are blazing in every street. There are two methods of baking. One is to lay the pot on a heap of hot ashes; the other to build the fire right round it. The vessel is watched through the whole process, and is continually turned on the fire with a little stick thrust into the mouth. When many hundreds of pots have been completed, the Hanuabada people begin to think about the disposal of their wares. Their great market is at Paruru, a long way up the coast. They barter their pottery for sago with the nations of that district, and it is very curious to note that this extensive trading organisation on the part of an utterly savage people has been in existence from time immemorial, and is no imitation of European methods. To reach Paruru the potters must undertake a perilous voyage, for which they are dependent on the tail of the south-east monsoon.