GAMES OF THE CHILDREN 117 



in the ceaseless search for food, which occupies so much 

 of the time of their elders. As infants they are carried 

 on the backs of their mothers and very often of their 

 fathers, secured by a wide strap of bark cloth, the ends 

 of which are tied across the carrier's chest. It is 

 very seldom that you hear them cry and they appear 

 to give very little trouble ; their mothers are very 

 careful of the cleanliness of the infants. Very early 

 in life they begin to walk and almost as soon they learn 

 to swim. In fine weather they often spend the greater 

 part of the day in the river and it is a very pretty sight 

 to see a crowd of little Papuans playing together in 

 the water. Sometimes they are joined by the women, 

 who seem to enjoy the fun quite as much as the 

 children. One of their favourite games is to pretend 

 to be a school of porpoises, whose rolHng headers they 

 imitate admirably. They very soon become powerful 

 swimmers, and I remember one day seeing a small boy, 

 who cannot have been more than eight years old, swim 

 across a river in tremendous flood, while the party 

 of men who were with him had to seek a place where 

 they could safely swim across half a mile lower down. 



There are a number of games too that they play 

 on dry land : they play the universal game of lying 

 in wait for your enemy and suddenly pouncing out on 

 him ; they have great battles in which they are armed 

 with miniature bows and arrows, and reed stems take 

 the place of spears, and shrill yells make up for the 

 lack of bloodshed. There is another game which I saw 

 played three or four times in exactly the same manner, 

 and which, by reason of it somewhat resembling a 



