. The new New Guinea. ioned and watered, and after the lapse of halfa day returned with the cheering report that the coastmission station lay only a few points away on theport bow, and had furnished a pilot. With the guide(a native who knew something, not much—no oneknows much about the delta) we started back for theriver-maze again to look for another village, andsucceeded in finding one—we were not at all particu-lar by this time as to what we found or where wefound it. Its name, we learned, was lai. The peoplewere an ugly-looking lot, and seemed terrified of thesteamer at first, trembling a
. The new New Guinea. ioned and watered, and after the lapse of halfa day returned with the cheering report that the coastmission station lay only a few points away on theport bow, and had furnished a pilot. With the guide(a native who knew something, not much—no oneknows much about the delta) we started back for theriver-maze again to look for another village, andsucceeded in finding one—we were not at all particu-lar by this time as to what we found or where wefound it. Its name, we learned, was lai. The peoplewere an ugly-looking lot, and seemed terrified of thesteamer at first, trembling and crying out when shelet off her whistle. By and by, seeing our peoplecome ashore, they gained confidence, and, keepingtight hold of their bows and arrows, came in aperfect flotilla of canoes round the ship, staring,muttering, spitting gory betel-nut, and all the timekeeping an eye on the captain, who was busy recruit-ing ashore, followed by about half the men of thevillage. The women did not hide themselves, but. SAGO BEATING 157 none of them ventured near the ship ; they keptaway by themselves, and did not even stop theirmonotonous sago-beating work to look at us. Veryfew white people had ever been seen in lai, but youcannot be curious if you are miserable, and no onewho looked at the degraded, brutalised, smilelessfaces of these poor women could have doubted thefact that they were utterly wretched. They were ashade lower than anything we had yet seen in thedelta or elsewhere. They had not even the grasspetticoats worn in other districts ; save for a smallstrip of bark, they were naked. Some of them worethe white tusk thrust through the nose, which we hadnoticed in the men of the river tribes, but not in thewomen. It looked, if possible, even more repulsiveon a womans face than a mans. The sago-beating in which they were employedtakes up most of a womans time in the delta men fell and bring in the palms, and there theirtask stops. With crude stone adzes the w
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherphila, bookyear1911
