62 



The Ancient Ilazvaiiaii House. 



tants, said to number many thousand, with their brethren to the eastward. It is too 

 true that this entire archipelago has been strangely neglected \>y scientific explorers. 

 As the two pi(5lures which I present were taken in recent years, although I cannot fix 

 the exact date, it is evident that modern and foreign changes have not made much 

 headway, and doubtless much remains of the olden time. 



FIG. 55. A KIRIWINA VII,LAGE. 



New Hebrides. — Passing to another group of Papuan cannibals (for however 

 much the missionaries have done to eradicate this great stumbling block to timid 

 explorers, there are man}' left who eujoy a feast on their fellow men, not merely at 

 their fellow men's expense) we have some very interesting records from the camera 

 of the Reverend J. H. Lawrie, for some time a missionary in this region, through 

 whose kind introduction to residents of the group I owe much of my information about 

 the New Hebrideans and a collection of many of the least known objects of their 

 manufacture. Three of the photographs of Mr. Lawrie, Figs. 56-58, show a low type 

 of hut of the rudest construction (Fig. 56) hardly as neatly built as a skilled wood- 

 man would build his temporary camp. When, however, the fact that these people are 

 very dirty is considered, the flimsy nature of their habitations, by no means so well 

 built as most birds' nests, may be advantageous for a more ready purification by fire. 

 As the people become more civilized and consequently cleaner, the house shares in the 

 change (Fig. 57), and although the thatching is still rude, there is a greatly improved 



plaited reed front and definite doorway. 



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