CHAPTER X 



Food of the Papuans— Cassowaries— The Native Dog— Question of 

 Cannibalism— Village Headman— The Social System of the 

 Papuans— The Family— Treatment of W omen— Religion— W eather 

 Superstitions— Ceremony to avert a Flood— The Pig— A Village 

 Festival— Wailing at Deaths — Methods of Disposal of the Dead— No 

 Reverence for the Remains — Purchasing Skulls. 



The search for food furnishes occasionally some very 

 curious scenes. One of the most remarkable occurs when 

 the river in flood brings down a tree-trunk in a suitable 

 stage of decay. A canoe is sent out with men to secure 

 it and tow it to the bank. When it has been left stranded 

 by the falling water, the people, men, women and children 

 come out and swarm around it like bees about a honey-pot, 

 and you wonder what they can be doing. When you go 

 close you find that some are splitting up the log with their 

 stone axes and others are cutting up the fragments with 

 sharpened shells in the same way that their ancestors — 

 and perhaps ours too— did centuries ago. The objects of 

 their search are the large white larvcB of a beetle, about 

 the size of a man's thumb ; I have seen natives eat them 

 just as they cut them out of the wood, but usually they 

 roast them in the fire and consider them a great delicacy. 

 Nothing that can by any means be considered eatable 

 comes amiss to the Papuans ; there are two kinds of 

 water tortoises which they like to eat, and rats, lizards, 

 frogs and snakes, and the eggs of crocodiles they devour 



