196 



300 yards wide, and running strongly parallel with the 

 Hanrn and about 1 mile inland. The country passed 

 through was of the slushy, muddy type met with around 



Ionomba. Goura pigeon, cassowary, and wild pig were 



plentiful. The going was very soft. We followed the 

 Maree down, and then leaving, it wtnt west 

 and finally north-west, through occasional flooded 



grass and Albizzia patches. The Marea must he a 

 terrible river in full flood, for there is flooded 

 country for a mile even now. 

 forest again, we came to a doubtful village called 

 Korike; the places are separated by about three- 

 quarters of a mile of bush and grass lands. There we 



takes place. The Marea apparently rises in Mount 

 Helweg, while the Kirei, its main confluent, rises i:i 

 Mount Otto. 



A curious incident occurred this morning. We had 

 encountered much delay and great difficulty in fording 

 and refording the Marea. Our supposed guides — 

 Korike boys — w r ere apparently at fault in finding a good 

 crossing below the junction, and giving them a lead I 

 got over safely and without much trouble a little higher. 



Entering rain j was gating ou a rock on the other side w r ashing out 



my gym shoes — an operation that had constantly to be 

 repeated, as small gravel broughi do<wn by the rivef 



, , , , 7 , collects between foot and shoe — and rebandagiug a, sore 



found many of the people who had watched us yester- on anW whm happeiling to i ook U|) stream I savv 



day. Our guide to here was Kusige, a good chap who an oldish naHve drawillg his bow . For a fraction of a 

 gave orders yesterday, and was obeyed by Waimeriba Mcond j did nof reaHze that it was bent afc whe!1 



peo])le. We had three boys, too, helping to carry, and 

 all armed to the teeth. 



At Korike, I met an old man who was light-headed, 

 but who spoke smatterings of pidgin, picked up years 



ago at Bogadjim. So boys have ventured from here 

 across the river and range to while men, but I gathered 

 that while a Chinaman had been here before, and him 



I did I made myself as small on that stone as 1 possibly 

 could. I do not think I ever felt so large or wanted to 

 feel so small in my life before. He let go and missed 



me by quite 10 yards. Jack and the Tul-tul — the latter 

 carried my rifle — were 50 yards behind, and only came 

 up in time to help search for the arrow. I had a wish 

 to recover Ihe only missile that has been fired at me 



they killed for some reason not divulged, no white man j u New Guinea. The enemy, having loosed his shaft, 



had visited these folk. To go further than Korike was llia d e such good pace up stream that he literally fade.! 

 not possible; the people made this quite plain by deter- 

 mined signs, and when I pointed out the smoke of 



villages high up on the shoulder of Mount Otto, they armed with bows and arrows barred the highway, which 



said that was a place called Sahi, and, judging by the was now the X irei torrent. At the urgent shouts of 



our Korike guides, they put down their weapons and 

 came and made friends. Half an hour later we were 



away. Just at this point we came on fish (raps and two 

 huts, and little taro' patch, and later three natives 



gestures, the people who lived in Sahi were no better 

 than they should be. However, by dint of waving my 

 arms, I got them to guide me to the Marea, where a 

 better view was obtained, and beyond which I found we 

 certainly could not go owing to the deep, broad flood 

 that was coming clown. I gathered, however, that there 

 was a place called Koromo at the foot of the mountains 

 and higher up the stream, and if I would only be patient 

 and sleep at Korike I could go there to-morrow. As 

 there was lots of food readily obtainable, with salt, I 

 " sat down " at Korike. The bush around yielded 



nothing new. Around Waimeriba there were some line 

 Octomeles, and the rain forest in the early part of the 



journey consisted of the Pometia type. Rattans were 

 very plentiful, and soon the bush deteriorated, and 

 muddy swamp forests took its place. 



would not go with them unless thej 



joined by some dozen more boys who, when I signed I 



left their arms, 

 tied up their arrows with bits of bark fibre. I couldn't 

 get them to unstring their bows, however. Thus well 

 escorted, we reached Koromo — curiously enough the 

 same name as the village already referred to near the 

 Mimea high up the Eamu. There I lunched and made 

 friends with the people, who made no difficulty about 

 letting me write down their names (such data were col- 

 lected for the information of the District Officer). I 

 bought food, and gave a present of a red " lap lap " 

 to the head of the village. I saw only men and boys, 

 the women had evidently been hidden in the bush. It 

 was after lunch, and we were packing up to go on, and 



The presence of obviously planted flowering shrubs I was trying to induce some Koromo boys to go up with 

 around Waimeriba was noticeable, Crotons, Poinceana me to Sahi, that I saw a struggle going on on the out- 

 pulcherrima, Hibiscus sp., and, over all, lot of coco- 

 nuts. Korike, on the other hand, boasts no adorn- 



ments, and has only one coco-nut. 



The wing covers of the large green beetle are here 



^ewii on 



11 tapi cloth " tapes and worn as bandeaux, 

 and very effective they are. The boys also wear a piece 



skirts of the little village. I pretended to take no 

 notice, and after much shouting and noise, an oldish 

 native was brought before me, or, perhaps, I should say 

 dragged, for it took three of his people to push and pull 

 him along. I recognized him at once as the person 

 who had let drive at me that morning. His friends let 



of tapi cloth, gaudily coloured, shaped like a sailor's him go when he was fairly close to me, and seeing that 

 collar, but much longer, reaching at times to their there was no escape, I suppose, he made a dive at me, 

 buttocks. The hair is worn long, and is twisted into 



a thousand tails, and intertwined with fibre, which 



a 



dangles beyond the tails, making the hair look longer 

 and straighter than it really is. 



nd clasping my knees with one arm and grovelling on 

 the ground, he stroked my limbs with his other hand. 

 When he at last desisted and sat back, he made a 

 voluble explanation, aided by the most lucid gesticula- 



6th April. — Leaving Korike at 7.30, reached Koromo tions, as to his conduct. From the signs he made, it 

 at 11 a.m.; lunched there, and pursued the river Kirei seemed he had gone clown to hunt and fish at the river, 

 for one and a half hours ; then camped. 



The height of this camp was 1,230 feet. For the 

 first part of this journey we retraced our steps of yes- 

 terday to where we first struck the Marea ; we then fol- 

 lowed this river up to its bifurcation, and leaving it 

 o:i our left we followed up the Kirei. The day was 

 arduous, for the Marea is a hard one to follow up, and 

 the rivers here are the only roads. Between the Kirei 



junction and where one turns to Waimeriba the river 



divides into a number of arms, and spreads itself in The Kirei tears its way through what seems to be 



rushing torrents over a mile of country. It is rocky the same geological formation as in the Owen Stanlev 

 grass and Albizzia procera country, and has a good Range, and the bed of the river is littered with the 

 -lone, so the streams which now make up the Marea 

 are pretty swift. The course once more becomes defined 

 as one reaches the foothills, and here the bifurcation 



and had seen a new and strange creature and shot at it. 

 While we parted the best of friends, and he was de- 

 lighted with a piece of red calico, he would not accom- 

 pany me up to the Sahi, and I could not induce any one 

 else to come. So we went on without guides. T noticed, 

 however, that the Koromo folk followed us at a dis- 



i 



tance, and when we made camp they turned up from all 

 sides and stayed watching our camp business till dark 

 drove them home. 





same boulders and stones as T remember seeing: in the 



O 



upper Kemp-Welcn. The slopes of the hills are despeisj 



ately steep, and the forest in consequence is of the 



