230 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



to reach. The result of these two circumstances was 

 that we travelled by water with great labour to a 

 place (Parimau), which was still in low and often 

 flooded country, and from there we had to travel across 

 country for many miles before we came to the first 

 rising ground. 



It is difficult enough in New Guinea to make a way 

 up a river valley, but you always have the comforting 

 reflection that the river itself leads you back to your 

 base, when stores are exhausted and it is time to return. 

 But when you attempt to make a cross-country journey, 

 not only is the trouble of cutting a track much greater 

 than it is in a river bed, but there is the difficult and 

 often somewhat dangerous business of crossing the 

 rivers ; added to this is the risk, which increases with 

 every river you cross, of being cut off for a longer or 

 shorter period from your base camp and supplies by 

 a sudden flood in those same rivers. For this reason, 

 when coolies were sent back from an advanced camp 

 to the base, they had to be supplied with an extra 

 allowance of food in the event of their being stopped by 

 floods on the wa}^ ; such a proceeding meant diminishing 

 to some extent the store of food they had carried out 

 and a consequent waste of labour. It is essential, there- 

 fore, in trying to make a long journey in such a country, 

 to discover beforehand the river valley which will take 

 you nearest to your goal and thus avoid the risks of a 

 long cross-country journej^ 



No time was lost in sending a fleet of canoes heavily 

 laden with stores up the river from Wakatimi, and 

 early in Januar\^ the whole expedition was assembled 



