Along The Paths
Where They Daily Pass To And From Their Provision Grounds, Not An
Overhanging Bough Or Straggling Briar
Ever seems to he cut, so
that you have to brush through a rank vegetation, creep under
fallen trees and
Spiny creepers, and wade through pools of mud
and mire, which cannot dry up because the sun is not allowed to
penetrate. Their food is almost wholly roots and vegetables, with
fish or game only as an occasional luxury, and they are
consequently very subject to various skin diseases, the children
especially being often miserable-looking objects, blotched all
over with eruptions and sores. If these people are not savages,
where shall we find any? Yet they have all a decided love for the
fine arts, and spend their leisure time in executing works whose
good taste and elegance would often be admired in our schools of
design!
During the latter part of my stay in New Guinea the weather was
very wet, my only shooter was ill, and birds became scarce, so
that my only resource was insect-hunting. I worked very hard
every hour of fine weather, and daily obtained a number of new
species. Every dead tree and fallen log was searched and searched
again; and among the dry and rotting leaves, which still hung on
certain trees which had been cut down, I found an abundant
harvest of minute Coleoptera. Although I never afterwards found
so many large and handsome beetles as in Borneo, yet I obtained
here a great variety of species.
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