CHAPTER X

PERCEPTION OF COLOUR

It must be indeed a strange world to live in where black, blue, and green are identical in colour; yet apparently it is in such a world that the men of Uap live. As far as the colour of their heads and hands is concerned, they might as well be Jumblees, whose heads, according to Edward Lear “were green and whose hands were blue;” to them such freaks would not be amiss; for all I could make out, the verdant coconut frond, the azure sky, and their own dark bodies are all of one colour. To them blue and green are only lighter shades of black; the word _rungidu_ is applied to all three.

One day, to test their perception of colours, I painted squares in my note-book of every colour in my paint box; on asking many men the names of the colours, I learned from the answers of all, that only black, red, yellow, orange, and white had distinctive names; all the shades of blue and green were ignored; or, occasionally, they would say a deep blue was the colour of the deep sea, and light green was the colour of young coconut leaves, but in the abstract these colours were both _rungidu_. The carmine was at once picked out as _rau_; emerald green, ultramarine blue, and black were all _rungidu_, chrome yellow was _reng-reng_, orange was _mogotrul_, and white (the blank paper) was _vetch-vetch_; the white foam of the breakers was known as _uth_.

They were never at loss in naming or distinguishing the colour, and gave such qualifying adjectives as “mouldy” colour; “dirty” colour; “close to the colour of blood;” the strangest and most poetic was an adjective applied to rose madder, which one man said was a “lazy” colour. When asked to explain, he replied: “When a man feels sleepy and lazy and rubs his eyes, he sees this colour.”

Among women, however, I found that some did recognize blue and green as separate colours, and gave distinctive names to them.