232 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



penetrate far into the mountains ; but you must in 

 New Guinea, as elsewhere, cut your coat according to 

 your cloth. 



The Iwaka at the place where we first came to it 

 is a tremendous torrent flowing in rather a narrow 

 stony bed. A little way further down it spreads out 

 into a wider channel like that of the Wataikwa, but it 

 is much larger than that river and though we searched 

 down stream for three or four miles, w^e found no place 

 where it was possible to cross. 



As we went up the river we very soon found that 

 the river banks became steeper, and it was soon evident 

 that we were at last among the hills. There was a 

 peculiar satisfaction in bending one's legs to go up 

 hill after having been for so many months on almost 

 level ground. The track was not at all easy, for it 

 appeared that in many places large slices of the hillside 

 had slipped down, bringing with them a chaos of dead 

 and living trees over which we had to pick a precarious 

 way. In some places we crept along the edge of the 

 torrent, and in others we climbed high up the hillside 

 to avoid a precipice where the river ran through a 

 narrow gorge ; but it was all a pleasant change from the 

 monotonous jungle of the plains. There was more 

 variety in the vegetation too as we went on ; creepers 

 arranged themselves prettily on the rocky river bank, 

 and Fan-palms, which we had not seen before, grew in 

 groups in the more level places. There was a tree 

 growing in many places whose lower branches were 

 covered at that season with small pink flowers, which 

 lent a grateful splash of colour to the usually gloomy 



