COLLECTING ON THE GIRIWA RIVER 177 



river one day when he had gone there for drinking 

 water. The old man had seen the image at the 

 bottom of the river and had brought it to the village. 

 It was a rough image of a man a little suggestive 

 of the Buddha images of Asia, with the hands crossed 

 on the belly. 



The image had been installed in a place of honour 

 in the village, and was associated by the natives in 

 some way with ideas of fruit fulness. They would 

 place it in a garden for a while in order to get a good 

 taro or yam crop. Several images of this kind have 

 been discovered in the hill villages of New Guinea. 

 They are sharply different from the obscene images 

 that may be found sometimes on the coast. From 

 the waist-line downwards these prehistoric images 

 are not shaped in any way. On the coast, carvings 

 in wood in the shape of men, mostly of a very indecent 

 character, are common, but not carvings in stone. 

 Among the hill tribes of the present day the art of 

 carving is unknown, either in wood or in stone. 

 Clearly this stone image which I had secured, and 

 others of the same type, are relics of an older people. 



There are also found in the hill villages of New 

 Guinea carvings of birds with snakes' heads. As I 

 have said, the natives of to-day have no idea of w r orking 

 in stone, except for the rough fashioning of clubs. 



Leaving the Giriwa River I marched to the coast 

 at Buna Bay, and then embarked on the Shamrock 

 and set sail for Samarai, which I reached safely on a 



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