382 NEW GUINEA. 



scared and puzzled as these when they came to open the bottles 

 in the bosoms of their families in their pile-dwellings. 



The same man who stopped us had also stopped a boat en- 

 gaged in surveying, just before in the same manner, and it had 

 also returned to the ship. 



All kinds of suggestions were made on our return as to what 

 ought to have been done; we ought to have hit the natives 

 over the knuckles with the stretchers, or run the canoe down, 

 or fired over the natives' heads ; but there cannot be the least 

 doubt that in that case some one would have been wounded 

 at least, and one native at least shot. 



I cannot understand how it occurred that this native knew 

 nothing of fire-arms, since the Humboldt has often been 

 visited by the Dutch, and many of the natives understood their 

 nature ; one man, as has been said, having plainly asked for 

 a gun on our first arrival. Possibly the man had come from 

 a distant part of the Bay either lately or some years before, or 

 had only heard of fire-arms and was a sceptic, or knowing that 

 a gun would kill birds, had thought that special magic, and 

 had not comprehended that it would also kill men. 



A small party landed with Captain Thomson from the steam 

 pinnace for a short time, and Mr. Murray, led by some natives, 

 shot a few birds. These natives were friendly enough, but when 

 Captain Thomson approached one of the platform villages, the 

 women turned out with bows and arrows, and warned the boat 

 away, using the same signs of death as the man who discomfited 

 us. 



A stay of some little time is evidently necessary in order 

 that the natives should become on good terms with visitors in 

 a strange ship, and possibly they had been maltreated by the 

 crew of some vessel since the " Etna's " long visit in 1858 ; no 

 doubt also they forget a great deal in the lapse of sixteen years. 



As time could not be spared to wait and conciliate the 

 natives, and violent measures were of course out of the ques- 

 tion, landing was reluctantly given up, and the ship sailed for 

 the Admiralty Islands in the evening of February 24th. 



The bows of the Humboldt Bay natives are cut out of solid 

 palm-wood and have a very hard pull. They taper to a fine 

 point at either end, and in stringing and unstringing them a 

 loop at the end of the string is slipped on and off this point, 

 and rests in the extended bow on a boss raised with wicker- 

 work, at some distance from the bow-tip. 



The bows are strung quickly by their lower ends being placed 

 between the supports of the canoe outriggers as a fulcrum. If 

 an attempt be made to string a bow, by resting one end on the 

 ground, the tapering end snaps off directly pressure is applied. 



