XII.] HOUSES OF THE PAPUANS, 279 



The Manueii are the Papuan bogies, — evil sprites who lurk in 

 the woods and hire the passer-by to destruction. Once under 

 their spell the unhappy victim is beyond human aid. The Manuen 

 changes his arms into his legs, and in tliis reversed position the 

 doomed native is compelled to dance. He is then released and 

 disenchanted, but returns home only to die. In spite of their 

 power to enter houses and, unseen, to strike the inhabitants with 

 sickness, the Manuen are only able to exert their evil influence 

 over a restricted area, and many localities are said to be free of 

 them. In one form, indeed, they are not unknown to European 

 physicians. "WTiien the mists rise in the evening the little children 

 are brought into the huts lest the ]\Ianuen — the malaria, as w^e call 

 him — should touch them. He is, no doubt, the same spirit who 

 compels the Dusuns of Borneo to build their houses on slender 

 piles — to make them temporary, not permanent residences, in 

 other words. 



Below the mission-house on Manaswari are the three villages 

 I have mentioned on a pre^dous page. They are so closely situated 

 as in reality to constitute but one, and stand fifty yards or more 

 from the shore, to which each house is connected by a bridge of so 

 sketchy and insecure a nature as to render its passage by a booted 

 European almost impossible. Even more dilapidated still are the 

 houses themselves, built as they are of rotten mats, bits of old 

 praus, gciba-gciba, or anything that comes to hand. So treacherous 

 is the floor, with its gaping holes and the loose sticks of which it is 

 composed, that, as one of our sailors remarked, one should be 

 " bird-rigged " before trusting to it ; but this feature is not without 

 its advantages, for dirt and rubbish of all kinds can easily be 

 dropj)ed through into the sea beneath. These rickety dwellings are 

 of very large size — for, like the Dyaks, several families live under 

 one roof — and their appearance is peculiar owing to their resem- 

 blance to a turtle's back, from which, indeed, it is said that the 

 idea for their construction is borrowed. To each house there are 

 two landing platforms — that nearest the shore for the women, who 



