INLAND NEW GUINEA 115 



village by my large camp soon made it necessary to 

 forage for food elsewhere, and I kept a team of boys 

 constantly at work penetrating to higher villages 

 and bringing food from the mountains above. The 

 most favoured currency there was coarse salt. On 

 the coast one conducts most transactions with the 

 natives on a currency of tobacco, but on the mountains 

 the natives grow their own tobacco and seem to have 

 always done so. 1 I found in the hill country of 

 New Guinea, where they had never heard of the white 

 man, and the white man had never before penetrated, 

 that native tobacco was grown. They rarely subject 

 it to any process of curing, except when they are 

 making preparations for a great feast. Then they 



1 Mr. Meek's conclusion that the tobacco plant is indigenous to 

 New Guinea is not held universally. The Hon. M. S. C. Smith, 

 Commissioner for Lands, Papua, records in his diary of the Kikori 

 expedition, 1910-11 : 



" Cultivated in the native gardens we found sweet potatoes, 

 taro, yams, sugar-cane, bananas, betel-nut, and ginger, the last- 

 named cultivated as a medicine. Maize is unknown. No coco- 

 nut trees were seen on the whole trip until we reached the lower 

 waters of the Kikori River, nor are there any mango trees or 

 tapioca. The natives grow a green vegetable, the leaves of which 

 they boil in bamboos. It makes a very good substitute for 

 cabbage and appears to contain a lot of vegetable oil. Tobacco 

 is cultivated in every native garden, which might lead one to 

 suppose that it was indigenous; the name, however, tends to 

 show that it is an introduced plant. It is universally called 

 ** suku " by the bushmen, which is evidently derived from " kuku," 

 the coastal name. In one of the gardens on the head-waters of 

 the Kikori I found a kava plant (Macropiper meihysticum), 

 although I saw no evidence of the manufacture of the beverage." 

 EDITOR. 



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