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.
There is little doubt that this part of the country is most
unhealthy. Many of our police and carriers were two days later down
with fever, and a few weeks later I had a bad attack of fever, with
which I was laid up in Samarai for some time, and which I feel sure I
got into my system in this swamp.
