a psalm or paraphrase, or count one hundred to myself, and I should soon drop off.  This fellow repeated aloud and he must have been going over the mythologic lore of his family for very many generations, and yet he did not sleep.  At last, a smoke, beginning with a scream of kuku.  Now, surely sleep; but no, he changed to a low monotonous chant, so grating on the sleepy man’s nervous system that it would have driven many desperate.  At last, in the morning hours, the notes became indistinct, long pauses were observed, and, finally, I fell asleep.

The women carry exceedingly heavy loads up these steep hills.  Yesterday one woman had two large kits of taro, and a child of about two years on the top of all.  Ruatoka shot eight blue pigeons and one bird of paradise to-day:  the latter must be eaten with the best of all sauces—­hunger.  The natives pick up heads, legs, and entrails, turn them on the fire and eat them.

20_th_.—­Yesterday evening, about six, the carriers came in with great shouting, and glad was I to see my lad and companion Maka then.  Great was the joy at the division of salt and tobacco.  Before we came here the women and children slept in the bush at night, the men in the village.  They are at enmity with the natives on the flat across the ravine, and it seems that sometimes they get a night visit, and may lose a man.  For the last two nights the women have been in the village, but every sound heard causes a shout.  Last night, when just getting off, they came rushing up to our house, and calling on us to get up with our guns, as their enemies were coming.  “Only fire off one, and it will frighten them away.”  We told them to go and sleep, and not be afraid.

The state of fear of one another in which the savage lives is truly pitiful; to him every stranger seeks his life, and so does every other savage.  The falling of a dry leaf at night, the tread of a pig, or the passage of a bird all rouse him, and he trembles with fear.

How they relish salt!  The smallest grain is picked carefully up.  Fortunately we have a good deal of that commodity.  Never have I seen salt-eating like this; only children eating sugar corresponds to it.

Here as in all other parts of New Guinea—­it is not the most powerful man who fights and kills most, but little abominable sneaks, treacherous in the extreme.  Since our arrival here we find the thermometer from 82 to 84 degrees during the day, and as low as 68 degrees, more frequently 70 degrees, during the night.  By bearings we are only about twenty miles in straight course from Port Moresby.

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