Fijians Losing Their

Native Crafts

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Suva, May 8.

■TIOR at least 18 years there has been JP no woman at Bua—formerly a famous centre of Fijian pottery making—who is able to make pots. And much the same state of affairs exists in relation to other Fijian crafts, such as the making of masi (bark-cloth).

This was stated recently by Mr. G. K.

Roth, an assistant to the Secretary for Fijian Affairs, in the course of a talk on Fijian customs and ceremonies, to the St. Andrew’s Young People’s Guild, Suva.

Mr. Roth said that a stimulus might be supplied by a growth of the practice

of exchanging goods like pots, masl, salt, yaqona (kava) bowls, and sandalwood among the various people who formerly traded in these things.

Another point that he made was to the effect that yaqona is not an intoxi cant or a narcotic. He suggested that the reason why yaqona is regarded as a “loosener of tongues” is simply that, when it is drunk in company, a social occasion develops which tends to break down barriers of reserve.

Mr. D. Brown has been appointed chairman of the Levuka Township Board, Fiji, and Mr. R. X. Patterson a member of the Board. They replace Messrs H.

O. E. Palmer and E. Ashley whose resig nations have been accepted. Mr. Palmer has gone to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony to take charge of the Govern ment trading scheme there.

M. Jean Baptiste Lelievrc, foreman of the Noumea Lightering Co., was drowned recently while fishing at the entrance to the Dumbea River, near Noumea. He was 43 years old.