BIRDS OF PARADISE 159 



are made to pass over the shoulders so that the load 

 may be carried on the back, ruck-sack fashion. The 

 women carry loads as well as the men and sometimes 

 also the children, when the whole family is making a 

 journey. 



From our upper camp on the Kapare River Rawling 

 and I made two attempts to reach the forest clearing of 

 the Tapiro, which could be easily seen from the camp at 

 a distance of about three miles in a straight line ; but 

 though careful bearings of its direction were taken, it 

 turned out to be a most puzzhng place to reach. Not 

 more than a mile above the camp the Kapare emerges 

 from a deep and narrow gorge in the foot hills— or rather 

 the spurs of the mountains, they are too steep to call 

 foot hills — which descend very abruptly to the almost 

 level country below. Just after it emerges from the 

 gorge, the river is joined by a stream of the clearest 

 water I have ever seen, which we afterwards came to call 

 the White Water (see illustration opposite). 



In our first attempt to reach the clearing we wandered 

 in the jungle for ten hours and came nowhere near to it. 

 But the day was not altogether wasted, for we climbed 

 up the hillside to about fifteen hundred feet and by 

 cutting down some trees we obtained a wonderful view 

 across the plain of the jungle to the distant sea. The air 

 of the jungle was heavy with the scent of the wild Vanilla, 

 and all around us were calling (but we could not see 

 them) Greater Birds of Paradise ; sometimes we were 

 within sound of as many as six at one time. On that 

 day too I first saw the Rifle Bird (PHlorhis inter cedens), 

 one of the most beautiful though the least gaudy of the 



