59 



"remarkably light bronze colour," of some of the natives of the up- 

 per Flj' river. 



I obtained a small vobabulary— principally substantive nouns — 

 from the Sambregi tribes, immediately to the northwest of Mount 

 Murray, in the hope that it would contain sufficient information to 

 enable philologists to determine if the language was Papuan or Mela- 

 nesian; unfortunately, this was lost with all other papers in the 

 Kikor river. 



By exercising great forbearar.ee and patience, we were fortu- 

 nately successful in making friends with these bushmen everywhere. 

 As they had never seen white men before, our arrival caused great 

 excitement. At the first small communal dwellings we reached they 

 all turned out with their bows and arrows, and stood shouting their 

 war cries. They naturally thought we were a marauding party, and 

 naturall}', and rightly they were prepared to defend their wives and 

 children and homes. While they were in this condition of extreme 

 excitement our party sat down, and, although our arms were ready 

 for any emergency, appeared to take no notice of them, except to 

 hold up some red cloth. They then retired, and, when some presents 

 were sent up to the house, we found that they had all fled, the hostile 

 demonstration being probably to allow the women and children time 

 to get away into the jungle. Great care was taken that nothing was 

 touched, and a tomahawk, a knife, and some red cloth were left in 

 the house. Not seeing them return, we started on our march next 

 morning, and in the afternoon were overtaken by the natives, who, 

 when they found that we had no desire to hurt them, evinced the 

 greatest joy, and made us presents of food. After that for some 

 days we experienced little trouble in establishing friendly relations 

 with the natives we met. Possibly, by some bush telegraphy they 

 had notified the other tribes that we had no desire of injuring them. 

 In many instances the friendship of the natives was of great service 

 to us. Not only were we able to buy food, but they showed us native 

 tracks, and, in one instance, took the whole party over a wide river 

 in their canoes. 



The inhabitants of the Sambregi villages were particularly 

 interesting as they live at an elevation of 6,000 feet above the sea- 

 level, the highest elevation, I believe, of any Papuans so far visited. 

 The physique of some of the young men was magnificent, the Kagi 

 men of the main range approaching most closely to them in this 

 respect. While the tracks between the villages of Sambregi were in 

 wretched repair, and the houses below the standard of native dwellings 

 in Papua, these people excelled in drainage schemes. The gardens 

 in the rich low-lying portions of the valley are drained into the Sam- 

 bregi creek by water channels varying in depth with the contour of 

 land. In some cases the drains are as much as 8 feet in depth ; na 

 water lodges in them, and they are kept in excellent repair. With 

 the exception of the native irrigation channels near Dogura in the 

 Eastern Division, in no other part of the territory do the natives 

 show such knowledge of channel construction. Although it is most 



