LACK OF WATER 237 



There was a curious green-flowered aroid with a large 

 blotched leaf, and growing everywhere over the cliffs 

 and the tree trunks were Pitcher plants {Nepenthes) of 

 two species. 



On the second day we camped on a sort of shelf 

 on the hillside, two or three hundred feet above the 

 river, and as our progress up the valley had been so 

 slow, it was certain that w^e should not be able to reach 

 the summit ridge before w^e were obliged to turn back 

 by lack of food. So it was decided to go straight up the 

 spur on which we then were in the hope that from the 

 top we might see a view of the surrounding country. 

 On the following day we climbed up about two 

 thousand feet ; the hillside was exceedingly steep, and 

 the men had to haul themselves up by the roots of the 

 trees above them. 



At our camp on the hillside — there was not a square 

 yard of level ground — we were troubled for the first time 

 in New Guinea by a lack of water. No rain had fallen 

 for two days, and the ground was so steep that all the 

 water had run off, and it was a long time before the 

 Gurkhas found a trickle of water in a gully some 

 distance away, whence a supply was laboriously fetched 

 to the camp. 



On the fourth day we climbed up about two 

 thousand feet further, but with a great deal more diffi- 

 culty. The trees became smaller as we went up, but 

 infinitely denser, and for a great part of the way we 

 scrambled up, not along the ground, but over a 

 fantastic network of roots and trunks of dead and living 

 trees, all of them covered with mosses and festooned 



