EXPERIENCES WITH THE NATIVES 153 



I ordinarily had very little trouble in regard to the 

 recruiting of boys, because I made it a custom to pay 

 an advance to a boy on engaging him. This I would 

 pay to him in native shell-money and he would leave 

 it behind with his people. 



When I was on a labour recruiting trip I would sail 

 my boat from village to village and send boys to 

 the shore to the villages offering the resident men so 

 much a head for service for six months, or a year, 

 as the case might be. The natives have different 

 standards of payment for different types of work. 

 The most arduous work, and the work therefore for 

 which the highest wage is demanded, is carrying for 

 the gold-fields. The next work in order of favour is 

 plantation work. What the natives like most of all 

 is the work for which I would engage them, that is to 

 say sailing about the coast and making collections. 

 The vagabonding nature of this work appeals to the 

 Papuan character. 



The cost of recruits varies in proportion as you can 

 get native food or have to feed them on tinned goods. 

 In the mountain districts where most of my collections 

 were made I found that a hundredweight of coarse salt 

 would feed a dozen boys for three or four months. I 

 do not mean that the boys would eat the salt, but that 

 was the best form of currency away from the coast (on 

 the coast tobacco was the best small money). With 

 that amount of salt it would be possible to buy suffi- 

 cient native food for a dozen boys for the course of a 



