Two Things I Heard about the Solomon Islands

Mon, Jan 31, 2005

“The Solomon Islander ornaments everything he can, spares no pains about it, and has an excellent eye for proportion.” (J. Barnard Davis, “A Few Notes Upon the Hair, and Some Other Peculiarities of Oceanic Races.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 [1873]: 98)

“I heard the prime minister of the Solomon Islands express surprise that his was one of the nations enlisted in the ‘coalition of the willing’: ‘I was completely unaware of it.’” (Elliot Weinberger, “What I Heard about Iraq.”)