220 G. A. J. VAN DER BANDE. 



4° chûrise (= chrïs, yellow; shortest bars). The value of the beads may be measured from 

 the fact, that 119 bars in ail occur on this abacus. A similar abacus from Ingrâs (N°. 1271) 

 has 96 bars. When the daughter of the chief of P o ë (also pronounced P o w a i) vvas married 

 to the son of the chief of Asé, only 80 beads, besides some stone axes and a few other 

 articles were paid. Now, the number of 80 beads as the price for a chief's daughter, compared 

 with the numbers of 96 and 119 on the above mentioned frames, concerning marriages of 

 simple villagers, propably from ten to fifteen years ago, proves that the beads are getting 

 scarcer. The Tobàdi people emphatically declared, that the increasing scarcity of the beads 

 made it difficult for the young men to collect a sufficient number for a wife, which caused 

 many of them to marry late. This scarcity, however, does not seem to be so much felt in 

 the interior, by which I mean to say, there are more beads per head of the population in the 

 interior than in the coast villages. The unfavourable condition of the coast villages in this 

 respect, cannot be caused by an increasing population, for the number of inhabitants in H. B. 

 villages was much larger before the small-pox épidémie of 1895 — 1896. Neither was I informed 

 of beads being buried with the deceased, as NlEUWENHUlS [1904, 139] mentions of Bornéo, 

 or of beads, in any other way systematically getting out of circulation. I think the explanation 

 may be found in the fact that Tobâdi, Ingrâs and Ingrau engage comparatively little in 

 agriculture and do not rear swine at ail, which causes them to buy sago from Lake Sentâni, 

 and pigs from Sëkâ and other places. Moreover, the fact, that women from the interior are 

 married to natives on the coast, but that the reverse never takes place, causes a diminution 

 of beads amongst the coast population, which is not unimportant. According to KONING [1903, 

 264], the natives from the H. B. travel very far into the interior now-a-days, that is to say. 

 farther than Lake Sentâni, in order to collect beads. 



Besides private ones, there are also beads in the community treasury. Such a 

 treasury the village of Tobâdi possesses, in which beads are found of such a high value, that 

 they are not allowed to become private property. So I did not succeed in buying such beads; 

 as the greatest favour, the chief of Tobâdi, who has the charge of the treasury and evidently 

 has the right to adorn his bag with thèse beads, allowed a photo of this bag to be made 



("g- 143)- 



Papua Tàlandjang has also its forge rs, who, by grating and grinding, are able to 

 give to the modem beads the shape and the appearance of the antique ones. The number 

 and circulation of thèse false beads is so large now-a-days, that with every bargain the beads 

 are accurately examined, one by one, and especially the stripes and bubbles. If they can be 

 bitten to pièces, this is a proof of the beads not being genuine. This could not be possible 

 with real ones. Attempts to deceive, where indeed there is an opportunity of examining every 

 bead, are not taken in ill part ; one simply has to arm oneself with cunning against the 

 deceiver. Still my interpréter, being with his Asé friends, violently scorned the Ajâpo people, 

 one of them having given some false beads in payment, when purchasing a wife from Asé. 

 However, I présume, his violence had some other political motive. Without the intention of 

 cheating any one, modem ornamental beads are sometimes grated in some way or other, 

 simply to give the glittering beads the dull surface of antique ones. A similar self-deceit the 

 owner of the belt N°. 423 had committed on its blue beads. 



This deadness of colour, the plain exterior of the beads, may hâve been the reason, 



