The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-14

perhaps of one or two men, and return in the evening with the sago and fire
 wood they have collected during the day. Meanwhile the men lounge ,about In the village, waiting for the women to return
 to feed them.
 I We did not find the people down by the coast nearly so tractable or compan- ionable as those at the head of the water of the river. They were also much more
 quarrelsome among themselves. They tap species of sugar palm up the river, and make fermented drink out of il. On this they get fearfully intoxicated, and wild orgies take place all day. Parties of them would go off in canoes and sit under the palms from which the drink 1 was obtained. In the morning they would | be extremely drunk, and fights used to be lthe result. Sometimes these fights lasted for two days at a time. In our vicinity they more often than not tools-place at night. The natives then made such an indescribable din with their bowling and their noises that we could not sleep at our base camp.
 Spears and showers of arrows were discharged in all directions. and one could hear the sound of their axes dealing blows on the bodies of the combatants. After time the women would join in the fray, and their shrill voices added to the babel, making the noise greater than ever. When they became involved in the fights they seemed to be worse than the men. The cries were not like sounds emitted by human beings, but rather like the cries of animals. The voices of the men are naturally very loud and harsh. Yet these people are very musical and when they sing their voices are most ipleasing They sing part songs beauti- f11l1V q fond of choruses. Some of these choruses are quite rollicking. They have only one in strument-the tomtom., The singing is confined to the men. I have never heard woman join in 1t at all. Moreover, the drum is played only by the men. t'I have said that the natives wear no clothing. but this needs to be qualified in the case of widows in mourning, At such times woman is very much covered up. She wears elaborate grass clothes, like a long mantle. and has thing resembling huge poke bonnet over her head. She also paints her face with yellow ochre. The natives mourn for men. but not much for women; and the moment of death great waiing and screaming is set up, and everybody covers himself with mud. The dead are always buried in the morn ing, about an hour before daylight. Dur ing the night the whole village evidently sits up wailng.
 A Wailing Song
 "One would start off in a quavering voice, shigh above all the other voices, and they. would keep this up for hours and hours. The dirge or wailing song which they chanted was most impressive during the silence of the night. and the tap, tap tap of the tomtom accompany ing it added to the effect About an hour hafn dax 1icrlhf thax tol ha adx- off to bury it, and one heard this vail ing with the regular tap, tap, tap of the tomtom gradually dying away in the dis tance.
 we got to know the natives dwelling close in the mountains very well indeed. We got on much better with them than with those on the coast but then we had much more to do with them. When we first went among the upper river natives they appeared to be very honest, and they would religiously return to us small arti- cles left outside the tents. This how ever, was only deception on their part, l think, because a little later they devel oped into arrant thieves
 Tn their huts they preserved the skulls of their relatives. Dr. Wollaston, one of our party, and I went down another river and visited a very large village where we desired to collect some skulls. It was ai- ways rather difficult to establish trade at first, but after the first shyness had worn off we found the natives only too ready to sell the skulls they had One woman brought out the skull of child, which she said was her own child, and wished to sell it to us.
 Presently the whole village street looked like a Golgotha, all the people having put the skulls they owned outside their huts. They did not ask us to buy them, but they evidently hoped we should do so. Every house had three or four skulls set out in front of 1t. Another time man brought the skull of his young wife to sell. It struck me as being 8 particularly gruesome sight, because he stood there for long time with the skull under his arm. The natives seem to attach no importance to the lives of the women We once saw a man drowning a wom- an and we rescued her. We got her onto the bank, where she lay for some time before she was sufficiently recovered to get up and crawl away to the village. could cite other examples to show that this is not an isolated instance of cruelty Cannibalism is not practiced by the NIin- il<a people as a general custom, but ene- mics killed in warfare are eaten and I have reason to believe that before our arrival in their country raids on other i tribes were frequently made for that pur- pose. Our presence among them of course, put stop to this to a certain ex- | tent''
 l Tn the Goodfellow party were 222 per sons-an outfit quite strong enough to | hold its own against all corners. Besides I the leader, there were five Englishmen Dr. Wollaston, Captain Rawing, Dr. Mar shall and Messrs Shortridge and Stalker 1 The latter was accidentally killed There were also six Dutchmen from the island ten Gurkha mountaineers from India, 60 native soldiers and 80 convicts. The expe- dition cost S20000.
 TS Mankind Advancino7