He assured us
of the friendliness of his people, and himself offered to accompany
us. His arm had been broken in the encounter with Monckton and his
police, and Monckton had immediately afterwards set it himself. It
now seemed quite sound.
We soon resumed our journey, on foot, passing through very varied
country, plains covered with tall grass and bounded by forest,
through which at times we passed. At other times we had to force our
way through thick swamps in which the sago-palm abounded, from the
trunks of which the natives extract sago in great quantities.
About mid-day we arrived at a fair-sized village belonging to the
Baruga tribe. It was surrounded by a tall stockade of poles, and as
we entered it, the women sitting in their huts greeted us with their
incessant cries of "orakaiba, orakaiba" (peace). On this account the
natives of this part of New Guinea are generally termed "Orakaibas"
by other tribes.
The houses here seemed larger and better built than most Papuan houses
that I had hitherto seen, and there were many curious tree-houses
high up among the branches of some very large, trees in the village,
some being fully eighty feet from the ground. They had broad ladders
reaching up to them, and looked very curious and picturesque. These
ladders are made of long rattans from various climbing palms. These
rattans, of which there were three double strings, are twisted in
such a way as to support the pieces of wood which form the steps. In
one case a ladder led from the ground in the usual way to a house
built in a small tree about thirty feet from the ground, but a second
ladder connected this house with another one in a much larger tree
about eighty feet off the ground. I climbed the first ladder, but
the second one swayed too much.
These tree-houses axe built partly as look-out houses, from which the
approach of the enemy is discovered, and partly as vantage points
from which the natives hurl down spears at their opponents below
when attacked.
Resuming our journey, after a brief halt in this village, we soon
came to the Barigi River again, which we crossed, camping in a small
deserted village close by. Here I noticed several more tree-houses in
the larger trees. This had been a very hot day, even for New Guinea,
and I could not resist taking a most refreshing bathe in the river,
though I must confess I was glad to get out again, having rather a
dread of the crocodiles, which infest parts of this river, though
they were not nearly so numerous up here as in the lower reaches of
the river which we had traversed in the morning.
