NEW GUINEA AND ITS PEOPLE. 327 



beards, and at times shave off their eyebrows and the hair from their 

 temples ; and most wear ornaments in their noses and tightly plaited 

 armlets, which they make to serve them as pockets. The women wear 

 a decent girdle or petticoat, reaching from the hips to the knees, are 

 tattooed very closely, pierce their ears with many holes, load them 

 down with ornaments, and shave their heads when they are married. 

 All their muscles and limbs have free action, they are stately and 

 graceful in all their movements, and their use of colored leaves and 

 flowers no rules of art could improve. The position of the women is 

 not so low and degraded as it often is among barbarous races. 



The houses are built on piles, and we are everywhere reminded of 

 the prehistoric lake villages of Europe. Port Moresby consists of 

 two villages standing on the beach just below high-water mark. The 

 houses are not built on a platform, as they are often represented, but 

 the piles also form the posts of the houses. The natives live, as we 

 should say, in the roof. The huts are made of thatch and wood, and 

 floored with the sides of old canoes, which are adzed down to some 

 approach to flatness. In the interior the floor is made of the mid-rib 

 of the sago-palm fronds. It is light and springy, but not good to 

 sleep on, as I can testify from experience. There is always a square 

 fire-place, made with earth, in the center of the house. You are a 

 fortunate visitor if you go when the fire is out, and thus escape being 

 blinded by the smoke. All along the coast the houses are built in the 

 same way, with slight variations in the shape of the roofs. Some look 

 like a whale-boat, depressed in the center, while others resemble the 

 keel of a boat turned upside down. In many cases the village stands 

 a good way out to sea, and is surrounded by water even at low tide. 

 We could steam down the street of many of them in our little mission- 

 steamer, and in several cases we used to anchor alongside the houses. 

 The boys and girls can sit in the door-way and fish. The houses are 

 detached, but are generally connected by a pole laid from one veranda 

 to another. The shoeless feet of the people enable them to run along 

 these, and they laugh at our objection to so round and slippery a 

 bridge. 



The canoes of the Papuans furnish an interesting illustration of the 

 earliest styles of naval architecture. As the people are largely de- 

 pendent on the sea for means of subsistence and transport, every vil- 

 lage has its fleet of canoes, of all sizes. Those at Port Moresby consist 

 simply of a hollowed log, pointed at each end, and attached to an out- 

 rigger. All are propelled by paddles, or by mat-sails whenever then- 

 is any wind. When longer voyages are undertaken, four or five, and 

 even ten, canoes are lashed together. These are decked over with 

 poles, houses are built at each end, covered with thatch, and a sort of 

 bulwarks made of the same material all round the side<. A mast is 

 raised, consisting of the stem of a small tree with its principal roots, 

 which latter are lashed to the deck, and then a huge mat-sail, crab-claw 



