20 



pole from the front only. Where the crest is narrow the houses are built at 

 the edge, so that, entering on the level in front, the elevation at the hack 

 accords with the slope of the hill. 



Strict etiquette demands that your name and business be shouted out by 

 the most sonorous voiced Papuan at the point of ingress into the plantation, 

 before intrusion on their domain, for the information of the owners. You 

 are then received by the inhabitants, both men and women, all standing or 

 sitting unarmed on the balcony, and after friendly greeting and distribution 

 of tobacco one passes on in peace. This custom is described in the account 

 of the ' Etna' expedition for the northern part of the Arfak (8, 74), and by 

 van Oosterzee (17, 1002 & 1004) on the occasion of his expedition to the 

 Angi lakes, in the Sjari region. 



From the third ridge on leaving the Soedomi River, we looked down on 

 to the Momi again, and descended to it over secondary slopes overgrown with 

 Rnbus roscefolius, the fruit dirty-red in colour, hard, and like a small rasp- 

 berry in shape, just as insipid but very different in appearance to the large 

 scarlet, strawberry-like fruit of the same species in the uplands of British 

 N. Borneo. A boggy bamboo-thicket lined the bed of the river, which we 

 crossed, to camp for the third night on the other side in an old "kebun." 

 Whole families of the hill people came down to visit us, even with babies in 

 arms, each party, after wandering round gloating over the various sights of 

 the camp, building its own shelter, to which they retired to cook their meal 

 and spend the night. I distributed tobacco to the men, women, and bigger' 

 children, and rice to the babies, of which the very tiniest demanded its quota. 

 Some of these people came on with us to the lakes, as others had done from 

 Serao a source of considerable relief to the coast carriers, many of whom 

 were getting tired from the steady climbing. These mountain people are 

 splendid carriers, but it is next to impossible to get them to go down to the 

 coast. 



The next day, proceeding through secondary forest up a lateral spur, old 

 plantations opened out at 5000'. At about 6000' a couple of bushes of the 

 copper-coloured Rhododendron Icetum, red when older, one of the glories of 

 the Arfak, heralded the approach of the mountain collecting-grounds, which 

 I alone intended to work. The korano of Wariap and his grandson Waspiri 

 pointed out, on the southern flanks of the spur near the valley below, two 

 houses of the " Orang Jatoe," or bad people, noted head-hunters according 

 to my informants, Waspiri adding that the victims were decapitated at the 

 house observed from the Serao ridge, the resulting trophies being brought up 

 here. With glasses the people could be seen standing on a rise near by, while 

 in front of the house, in a cleared space, twelve men were sitting, in two 

 rows of six each, singing some barbaric chant, accompanying their song of 

 defiance with reiterative movements of arms and legs, in Polynesian fashion. 

 Certainly, unlike all the other mountain people, they did not attempt to 



