He gazed in stupefied
wonderment at his own features so plainly depicted before him. He was
taken back to the other side, and soon returned with two more of his
tribe, who brought us a live pig, which they hauled out from a raised
flooring beneath one of their houses.
The country all round us seemed to be one large swamp, and we stood
upon a springy foundation of reeds and mud; except for these, we
should undoubtedly have soon sunk out of sight in the mud. As it was,
we stood in a foot of water most of the time, and in places we had
to wade through mud over our knees.
The lake swarmed with many kinds of curious water-birds, the most
common being a red-headed kind of plover; there was also a great
variety of duck and teal. The swamps were full of large spiders, which
crawled all over us; we had to keep continually brushing them off.
Farther down the lake we saw another small village, and we were
told that these two villages comprised the whole of this curious
tribe. Whether they axe the remnants of a once powerful tribe it
is impossible to say, but their position is well-nigh impregnable
in case they are ever attacked, as their houses are surrounded by
swamps and water on all sides, and no outsider could very well get
through the swamps to their villages. The only possible way to get
there would be to cross the water in their shell-like canoes, a feat
which no man of any other tribe would ever be able to manage.
Monckton thought that these swamps and lake were formed by an overflow
of the Musa River. This had been a phenomenally dry season for New
Guinea, so these swamps in an ordinary wet season must be under water
to the depth of many feet.
We camped close by on the borders of the forest amid a jungle of
rank luxuriant vegetation, over which hovered large and brilliant
butterflies, among them a very large metallic green and black species
(ORNITHOPTERA PRIAMUS) and a large one of a bright blue (PAPILIO
ULYSES). The same afternoon we three went out shooting on the lake. Two
of the Agai Ambu canoes were lashed together and a raft of split
bamboo put across them, and two Agai Ambu men punted and paddled us
about. Before starting we had first educated them up to the report
of our guns, and after a few shots they soon got over their fright.
The lake positively swarmed with water-fowl, including several
varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe,
red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe,
swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover
were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake,
which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy
weed. All the birds seemed remarkably tame, and we got a good assorted
bag, chiefly duck - enough to supply most of our large force with.
I stopped most of the time on the raised platform of one of the
houses and shot the duck, which Acland and Monckton put up, as
they flew over my head. I had a companion in old Giwi, the chief
of the Kaili-kailis, many of whom were among our carriers. He
seemed to be on very friendly terms with one of the Agai Ambu on
whose hut I was. Presently a woman came over in a canoe from one
of the houses in the far village, and climbed up on to the platform
where we were. Directly she saw old Giwi, she caught hold of him and
hugged and kissed him all over and rubbed her face against his body,
covering him with the black pigment with which she had smeared her
face. She was sobbing all the time and chanting a very mournful but
not unmusical kind of song. This exhibition lasted over half an hour,
and poor old Giwi looked quite bewildered, and gazed up at me in a
most piteous way, as much as to say: "Awful nuisance, this woman -
but what am I to do?" He understood the meaning of this performance
as little as I did. Possibly the woman was frightened of us, and
seeing a stranger of her own colour in old Giwi, appealed to him
for protection. The Baruga, however, had previously told us that the
Agai Ambu had recently captured one of their women, and I have since
thought that this might possibly have been the woman, and am sorry I
did not make inquiries at the time. At all events, old Giwi was too
courteous to shake her off, though to me it was a most amusing sight,
and it was all I could do to refrain from laughing aloud.
We saw the dead body of a man half-wrapped in mats tied to poles
in the middle of the lake. They always dispose of their dead thus,
and I suppose leave them there till they rot or dry up.
The chief food of these people seemed to be the bulbs of the
water-lilies, fish and shellfish. They catch plenty of water-fowl by
diving under them and pulling them under the water by the legs before
they have time to make any noise. By this method they do not frighten
the rest away, and this accounts for the birds' extreme tameness.
It seemed odd that we should be paddled about the lake, to shoot wild
fowl, by these people, who until to-day had never seen a white man
before and had fled from us in the morning. However, most of them
had fled and would not return until we had left their country.
