I22 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



meal. The youngest children will cook on the hot ashes any little snack they may get. 

 There is another mode of cooking meat, such as joints of wallaby, by drying over a 

 small fire. This mode is resorted to when they wish to keep the meat longer than usual, 

 as in preparing for a feast, etc. The coast natives are generally nice and cleanly in 

 cooking and eating their food, a characteristic which is not so marked inland. 



The diseases of the people are not numerous, but the climate is to strangers very 

 unhealthy. The natives themselves suffer from fever, though it is not severe. The 

 disease' that follows every-where in the white man's wake is unknown in New Guinea. 

 Their most serious and troublesome diseases are ulcers of various kinds. Many children 

 die from these. A form of leprosy is met with. A very unpleasant skin disease, which 

 covers the whole body with a kind of ring-worm, is travelling along the coast from 

 the east. It is exceedingly loathsome to white men, but the natives do not seem to 

 regard it seriously. Small-pox was epidemic about 1864, and carried off thousands. It 

 came from the west and travelled eastward, but has never appeared since that time. 

 Colds, coughs and opthalmia are often epidemic. The natives have no medical treatment 

 for any disease. As it is supposed to be a bewitchment of some kind, they have resort 

 to medicine men and women, who levy enormous fees. They perform incantations over 

 the disease, suck the affected part, and pretend to draw stones, string and rubbish from 

 the place. In the case of an epidemic, the whole village turns out at night to drive it 

 away. They beat tom-toms, throw fire-sticks, shout and yell, and go from one end of 

 the village to the other, driving the evil spirit before them. 



Among the coast tribes of the south-east peninsula, a wife is looked upon as a 

 valuable possession, and is therefore paid for. Much more is paid for a wife than for 

 anything else, and a woman is proud, not of the dowry she has brought her husband, 

 but of the price he has paid for her. There are no marriage rites anywhere beyond 

 the exchange of presents of food and the payment for the wife. Polygamy is common 

 in some parts, but rare in others. At Port Moresby very few men have more than 

 one wife. Dancing is every-where popular, and the children have many games and 

 amusements. The only musical instruments are drums and tom-toms, pandean pipes, jew's- 

 harps and conch-shell trumpets. The methods of burial vary among the different tribes. 

 At Port Moresby the dead are buried, but in the case of a chief, or much loved man 

 or woman, the body is not covered in with earth ; instead a light covering of mats or boards 

 is laid on it, and an enclosure made around the grave, inside of which the principal 

 mourners sleep. In the Koiari District, and among the hill tribes generally, the honoured 

 dead are not buried, but laid out in state in the house, while the relatives live in the 

 same house. After decomposition has far advanced, the body is put on a platform of 

 sticks in the sun, a fire is lighted, and the body soon dries up. After the bones fall 

 apart, they are collected, tied up in a bundle, and hung up in the house where the 

 dead man or woman formerly lived. In the Saroa and Rigo District burial is not prac- 

 tised. I o bury the body of a deceased relative in the earth is very repugnant to them. 



Superstition reigns over New Guinea, and the people are in bondage to medicine 

 men and sorcerers who live on the credulity and ignorance of the people. Here and 

 there, as at Hood Bay, there is sometimes a ceremony which seems to recognize a 

 Supreme Being who has power to make the earth fruitful, and holds life and death in 



