284 NETF GUINEA. [chap. 



Konur or " the magician." ^ He is not believed, however, in spite 

 of Mangundi or " he himself " — as the old man becomes afterwards 

 named— performing many miraculous acts, and accordingly the 

 latter resolves to leave Anki for ever. Going down to the sea- 

 shore he draws the outline of a prau upon the sand, and lo ! — 

 immediately one lies before hun. In it he embarks, together with 

 his wife and child, and after a short voyage lands upon Nufoor, 

 which by a wave of the hand he changes from a barren rock into a 

 fertile and forest-covered island. He then takes sixteen stakes and 

 forms four squares, which in the morning have become four large 

 villages filled with people. Here he lives happily enough, but his 

 wife upbraids him unceasingly for his dirtiness and neglect, his 

 personal appearance having remained unchanged. Her remon- 

 strances at length succeed ; he retires to the woods and makes a 

 huge pyre on which he sacrifices liimself. But instead of dying he 

 springs Phoenix -like from the ashes, young and handsome, and 

 the full power of the gTeat Mangundi is at length acknowledged. 

 Tliis is the climax — the closing scene of the story. Mangundi 

 lectures the people on their want of faith, and disappears. But all 

 look for his return, and with it the coming of a Nufoor millennium, 

 when labour shall cease and food become abundant, when sickness 

 and death shall be no more, and earth become a Paradise. 



Mr. Bink, who had been a carpenter by trade, had built himself 

 a most comfortable and neatly-ordered house, and had planted an 

 orchard in which many Malayan fruits were doing well. Small 

 coral-paths, models of Dutch neatness, intersected the flower- 

 garden, which was gay with an abundance of ferns and tropical 

 plants. It was an ideal bungalow, but for all its brightness it must 

 have been full enough of sad memories for the poor missionary and 

 his wife — a kindly-looking woman whose pale, worn face spoke of 

 the unhealthiness of the climate and the sufferings she had under- 

 gone. Of their five children but one survived, and that one — 



^ Konur is the name by wliicli the "medicine men" or shamauns are known 

 among the Nufoor Papuans. 



