ii6 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



Partly on account of the migratory habits of the 

 natives, and partly owing to the fact that at no hour 

 of the day until nightfall are all the people in or about 

 the houses, it was never found possible to take a census 

 of a village, but from our observations we arrived at 

 the conclusion that the number of men was decidedly 

 greater than that of women. 



The number of a man's wives was a favourite subject 

 for boasting and they often assured us that they had 

 two or even three wives, but we only knew two men 

 who certainly had two wives ; on the other hand we 

 knew a considerable number of men who had no wives 

 at all. It appears that a man may take a w4fe from his 

 own village or from a village in the same district ; 

 thus a Wakatimi man may take a wife from Obota 

 or Periepia, and a Parimau man from Kamura. There 

 were two women at Parimau who were said to come 

 from Wakatimi, but whether they had been voluntarily 

 exchanged or were the spoils of war we were not told. 



It was unfortunate that we learnt nothing about 

 the customs and ceremonies connected with marriage. 

 A wedding took place at Wakatimi when we all 

 happened to be absent, and the only definite descrip- 

 tion that we were able to get of it was that the bride, 

 who arrived from another village by canoe, crawled 

 on her hands and knees from the water's edge to the 

 village, a distance of about a hundred yards, and most 

 of it through mud. 



Beyond question, the happiest time in the Hves of 

 the Papuans is their childhood, when they are free to 

 play from morning to night and need not take part 



