Here I Lived Pretty Comfortably For Six
Weeks, Taking All My Meals And Doing All My Work At My Little
Table, to and from which I had to creep in a semi-horizontal
position a dozen times a day; and,
After a few severe knocks on
the head by suddenly rising from my chair, learnt to accommodate
myself to circumstances. We put up a little sloping cooking-but
outside, and a bench on which my lads could skin their birds. At
night I went up to my little loft, they spread their mats on the,
floor below, and we none of us grumbled at our lodgings.
My first business was to send for the men who were accustomed to
catch the Birds of Paradise. Several came, and I showed them my
hatchets, beads, knives, and handkerchiefs; and explained to
them, as well as I could by signs, the price I would give for
fresh-killed specimens. It is the universal custom to pay for
everything in advance; but only one man ventured on this occasion
to take goods to the value of two birds. The rest were
suspicious, and wanted to see the result of the first bargain
with the strange white man, the only one who had ever come to
their island. After three days, my man brought me the first bird-
-a very fine specimen, and alive, but tied up in a small bag, and
consequently its tail and wing feathers very much crushed and
injured. I tried to explain to him, and to the others that came
with him, that I wanted them as perfect as possible, and that
they should either kill them, or keep them on a perch with a
string to their leg.
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