NEW GUINEA AND THE PArUANS 



40; 



explanation seems to be that it was an attempt to 

 imitate the smoke of firearms, and has been given up 

 now that its nselessness has been discovered. 



Although a few of the coast people have adopted a 

 nominal Islamism, and the English missionaries have 

 laboured hard, as liaAe a 

 handful of their Uutch 

 brethren in Geelvink Bay, 

 to win converts to Chris- 

 tianity, the vast bulk of the 

 Papuans are pagan. Their 

 religion, if such a term can 

 be used, consists mainly in 

 a sort of nature-worship — a 

 belief in spirits of the woods 

 and rocks and the sea, almost 

 all of which are of a male- 

 volent disposition. The spirits 

 of the dead wander restless 

 until some abiding-place is 

 prepared for them ; hence on 

 the death of any person the 

 relatives proceed to make a 

 wooden image as an earthly 

 habitation for his ghost. 

 This image, or horoicaar, as 

 it is termed by the Nufoor 

 Papuans, is oiten carved 



with considerable artistic skill, and on its compk-tion 

 a dance is always held. A kind of ancestor-worship 

 is found in Dorei Bay and other places, large temples 

 with caryatid piles being constructed to hold the 

 images of the Mon or " first people," and a very similar 

 custom is found in Xew Britain. Definite notions 



