IN THE EASTERN ABQEIPELAOO. 171 



reminded me of the " claik sheaf " of the northern counties of 

 Scotland, for which a rich scytheful is selected, and of the 

 superstitions attaching to its cutting. The fields must present 

 here a picturesque sight in the reaping season, and one I 

 should have liked to see, for the harvesters in their many- 

 coloured garments and hats stand in the water amid the yellow 

 grain and push before them narrow-pointed skiffs to receive 

 the heads of corn as they are snipped off. 



At other seasons of the year the people are lazy enough — 

 that is, the male portion of them ; — for the women almost 

 entirely look after the dry-ground crops, the tobacco, coffee, 

 maize, &c., and daily go to the fields to fetch the produce, 

 returning with enormous loads in baskets suspended on the 

 back by a cord across the forehead. The sole delight of the 

 men is in tending their gamecocks. The villager carries one 

 with him wherever he goes ; and whenever his hands are free 

 he may be seen with it under his arm, patting and stroking it. 

 It is generally tethered by a cord to an elegantly made peg 

 in some shady spot near the house ; and, should another cock 

 attack his captive pet, its owner will rush to its rescue more 

 speedily than he would to the cry of his child. 



Here and throughout the district goitre was extremely 

 prevalent, nearly twenty per cent, of the people being affected. 

 It is ascribed by some to the great loads carried by the women 

 on their foreheads ; but they did not seem more subject than 

 the men. I saw even children of seven and eight years of age 

 with the beginning of the disease. The natives themselves 

 ascribe it to the soil, but why they could not say. I was told 

 by the head of the village that in the Makakau district (to 

 the north) which is notorious for its goitre, seventy per cent, 

 are affected. The soil of the Hoodjoong district is a sandy 

 pumicestone tufa. It is held by some authorities that the only 

 important point established as to the rocks in which goitre 

 does not occur is the absence of limestone and metallic im- 

 purities, and that endemic goitre coincides with metalliferous 

 deposits, iron pyrites being in the fore rank. Later on in my 

 journey I found on the Kawas river far less goitre, where we 

 have Silurian rocks and some limestone and metalliferous — 

 iron pyrites and gold; — strata than on this pumicestone plateau, 

 which is non-metalliferous. 



