CHAP. XXXIV.] ART AND BARBARISM. 325 



barbarism, we could hardly believe that the same people 

 are, in other matters, utterly wanting in all sense 

 of order, comfort, or decency. Yet such is the case. 

 They live in the most miserable, crazy, and filthy hovels, 

 which are utterly destitute of anything that can be called 

 furniture ; not a stool, or bench, or board is seen in them, 

 no brush seems to be known, and the clothes they wear are 

 often filthy bark, or rags, or sacking. Along the paths 

 where they daily pass to and from their provision grounds, 

 not an overhanging bough or straggling briar ever seems to 

 lie cut, so that you have to brush through 'a rank vegeta- 

 tion, creep under fallen trees and spiny creepers, and wade 

 through pools of mud and mire, which cannot dry up be- 

 cause the sun is not allowed to penetrate. Their food is 

 almost wholly roots and vegetables, with fish or game only 

 as an occasional luxury, and they are consequently very 

 subject to various skin diseases, the children especially 

 being often miserable-looking objects, blotched all over 

 with eruptions and sores. If these people are not 

 savages, where shall we find any? Yet they have all 

 a decided love for the fine arts, and spend their 

 leisure time in executing works whose good taste and 

 elegance would often be admired in our schools of 

 design ! 



During the latter part of my stay in New Guinea the 

 weather was very wet, my only shooter was ill, and birds 



