TRADING WITH THE NATIVES 63 



became tame enough to fly about at liberty, and the 

 cassowaries became quite a pest in the camp. 



So keen did the people become on trading that they 

 would barter all their worldly possessions for European 

 goods. Stone clubs and axes, bows and arrows, spears 

 and drums, the skulls of their forebears, indeed all 

 their moveable goods were brought to us for exchange. 

 It may sound rather a mean transaction to buy from 

 a Papuan a stone axe, which has probably been in 

 his family for generations, for a small knife or coloured 

 handkerchief, but he was always delighted with the 

 exchange and when both parties to it are satisfied a 

 bargain may be considered a just one. 



Our trade goods consisted mostly of coloured beads, 

 red cloth, knives of various sizes, and axes. Of these 

 the red cloth was by far the most useful and the most 

 sought after. The Dutch had cloth of various shades 

 and patterns, but the natives, with a true eye for colour, 

 knew that our red stuff suited their dark skins better 

 than any shade of green or blue. The axes were given 

 in exchange for canoes, and knives were mostly used 

 to pay the men who carried for us in the interior. 

 Fish hooks were greatly appreciated by the natives of 

 the coast villages, but the Jews' harps of which we had 

 a large quantity, though they are greatly in demand 

 among the Papuans of British New Guinea and in some 

 of the Pacific Islands, were of no use to us for trade, 

 and the few we gave away were used either as orna- 

 ments round the neck or as ear-rings. There was 

 always a great demand for cast-off clothing, but a Papuan 

 wearing a pair of tattered trousers or a fragment of 



