100 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



one day seeing a man and his wife both hopelessly 

 drunk come over to our camp. It was pouring with 

 rain and their canoe was several inches deep in water, 

 but they danced up and down in it and sang a drunken 

 ditty ; it was a ludicrous and at the same time heart- 

 rending exhibition. The man, when we first knew 

 him, was a fine fehow who one day cHmbed up a palm 

 tree to get us coconuts, a feat which no man out of 

 condition can perform ; a few months later he was 

 hardly ever seen sober, and in January he died. A 

 smiling round-faced youth called Ukuma, who was one 

 of our particular friends at first and was privileged 

 to wander where he liked about the camp, attached 

 himself to the drinking party, and before we left the 

 country he looked an old man, and I had difficulty in 

 recognising him. 



Though the drunken vagaries of the natives were 

 usually food for tears, they sometimes provided us 

 with amusement. One afternoon one of the principal 

 men of Wakatimi came down to the river bank quite 

 intoxicated and took a canoe, which he paddled out 

 into mid-stream and there moored it. From there 

 he proceeded to shoot arrows vaguely and promiscuously 

 at the village, raving and shouting what sounded to be 

 horrible curses. Some of the arrows fell into the village 

 and some sailed over the palm trees, and now and 

 again he turned round and shot harmlessly into our 

 camp, but nobody took the slightest notice of him 

 except his wife, who went down to the river bank and 

 told him in plain language her opinion of him. This 

 caused him to turn his attention to her, but his aim 



