256 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



house at the same time it was wonderful that nobody 

 was damaged. 



When the people in Wakatimi saw what was going 

 on in the camp they began to yell with excitement, 

 and in a few seconds twenty or more canoes packed 

 with men came paddling madly across the river ; they 

 were so excited that some of them upset the canoes, a 

 thing they very seldom do, and they had to swim to 

 the shore. For ten minutes or so the camp was a 

 pandemonium. About two hundred raving lunatics were 

 dashing madl}^ from one house to another and carrying 

 off boxes, sacks, mosquito nets, cases of empty bottles, 

 bits of iron, tables, beds, mats and everything they 

 could possibly move. They howled and raved and 

 fought like wild beasts in a manner horrible to see. 



Several women came over and danced and sang in 

 a canoe just in front of the camp, while the crowd of 

 people who had not been able to find a place in the 

 canoes shrieked from the opposite bank. WTien they 

 could carry no more, they loaded their canoes to the 

 brim with miscellaneous cargoes and went back across 

 the river to the village. There they at once began 

 to squabble over the spoils, and the last we heard of 

 Wakatimi, as darkness came down, were the shrill 

 shrieks of quarrelsome women and the angry shouts 

 of men. 



New Guinea treated us kindly in farewell, and we 

 steamed down the river in a glorious starlight, the 

 kind of night which many people think is usual in the 

 tropics, but is in fact most lamentably rare. We left 

 Cramer on board the Mataram and went on to the 



