72 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



The rate of travel varied with the efficiency of the 

 cooHes and according to the strength of the current 

 in the river, which was sometimes very sluggish, and 

 at other times came swirling down at three or four 

 miles an hour. We cleared camping places at various 

 points along the river, and, if the pace was good, the 

 average stage was about six hours, though it often 

 took ten or even twelve hours when the river was in 

 flood. The pleasantest camping places were on mud- 

 banks, where the coolies could bathe and pitch their 

 tents without trouble, but they were very liable to be 

 flooded by a sudden rise of the river during the night, 

 and we generally had our own tents pitched on a space 

 cleared in the jungle at the top of a steep bank. 



It will be convenient to describe a da^^'s voj^age 

 up the Mimika by taking an extract from my diary : — 

 " May 13. The monotony of the river is beyond 

 " words, and one day is almost exactly like another. 

 " I get up at six o'clock and breakfast off cocoa 

 " and biscuits and butter, whilst the camp is coming 

 " down, i.e. tents, etc., being packed. Spend the 

 " next hour or rather more in hurrying on the 

 " coolies with their food, which they ought always 

 " to begin to cook half an hour earlier than they 

 " do. See everj'thing put into the canoes and 

 " then start with the last. After that anything 

 " from five to twelve hours' sitting on a damp tent 

 *' with one's feet in more or less (according to the 

 " weather) water swishing from side to side of 

 ** the canoe. Sometimes I paddle, but not so much 

 *' now as I did the first time I came up the river, 



