252 



PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



— but it was a piece of good fortune that it and we 

 returned at all. 



We stopped for a night on the way at Nime, a village 

 at the mouth of the Keaukwa River. This is a very 

 large village — I counted four hundred and thirty huts 



but there were hardly a dozen people in the place, 



the whole population having gone off on one of their 

 periodical migrations to a vegetable diet up the river. 

 It was evident from the immense piles of fishbones and 

 empty shells about the houses that the inhabitants must 

 live largely by fishing, when they are there. The houses 

 are better made than those at Wakatimi, and they are 

 arranged in terraces and crescents along the water's 

 edge. It w^as there that we saw the elaborate dancing- 

 houses described above (p. 143). 



Just as we paddled laboriously into the Mimika 

 estuary we saw far down on the horizon the smoke of 

 a steamer, and in an hour or two a white painted vessel, 

 which turned out to be the Dutch Government ship 

 Zwaan, drew inshore and anchored outside the bar. 

 We naturally supposed that this was a ship that had 

 come to take aw^ay the expedition, as we had informed 

 the Government some months earUer that we hoped to 

 be ready to leave the country by the end of March. 

 But that communication had taken a long time, as 

 everything does in those regions, in reaching its des- 

 tination, and the Zwaan had come, not to take away 

 the expedition, but to bring the means of prolonging 

 the expedition still further. 



It appeared that in the previous December the Com- 

 mittee of the Expedition at home, hearing of our 



