took up residence in the house of the Luluai Wamdi.‘ 
It was an oval hut, its internal dimensions being about 
14 feet by 10. The dirt floor was covered with dry grass, 
the thatched roof was supported by two poles and a cross 
beam, with many struts running from the central beam 
to the outer walls. The door was so low that we had to 
bend double to enter, and there were no windows. The 
Luluai asked us gently to remove our shoes on entering : 
he never wore any. Soil was piled up around the house, 
built of course of wood, sealing it from wind and rain. 
At night a wood fire was built in a hollow on the floor. 
As there was no way out for the smoke—the door was 
always closed—the atmosphere became for us Europeans 
intolerable, except when we lay close to the ground in 
our sleeping bags. At intervals during the night we 
would awaken and see Wamadi stirring the fire. His big, 
spare, dark frame as he knelt in the smoke over the flam- 
ing embers, his prognathous jaw, his contemplative ex- 
pression, seemed to speak for countless generations of 
stone-age men, as they tended their fires in rising wisps 
of smoke, in smoke-filled huts. One or another of his 
children always slept in our house—his wives had each 
her own house—, and it was moving to watch silently 
the gestures of tenderness between father and child. 
This, including the smell of smoke, was home for the 
stone-age man. 
Heim spent his days receiving deliveries of mushrooms 
from the villagers, identifying them, describing them in 
his note-book, painting them, and going out on forays 
to see where they grew. Wasson, on the other hand, 
**Tuluai’ is a government appointed village headman. The term 
was introduced by the Germans during their occupation of the New 
Guinea coast before World War I. It is not a word native to Yuwi, 
the language of the Kuma. All ‘Luluais’ have lately been superseded 
by elected Councillors, but the former Luluai usually continues to 
enjoy his old prestige. 
[38] 
