1887] - Geography and Travels, 365 
In New Britain betrothals take place at a very early age, but a 
high price is fixed on the girl, so that the man is often middle- 
aged before he can marry her. He may get impatient and ASi 
but in that case dare not return to his tribe. But elopement 
usually takes place when the price is nearly paid. The couple 
build a house in the bush; both families assemble, vow ven- 
geance, paint as if for war, and sally forth and burn the house, 
from which the culprits are absent; the couple come back to the 
village in the morning, and the rest of the money is eventually 
paid. The curious point is that if after all the waiting the woman 
will not live with the man he cannot recover the property he has 
given to her parents 
The writer describes in detail the ceremony of the duk-duk, 
who is supposed to be a spirit who appears at the break of the 
day of anew moon. Men covered with a tunic and a very high 
hat personate the duk-duk and irritate the young men with blows 
of cane and club. Cannibalism—at least in the form of eating 
enemies killed in battle—still exists in these islands. 
The Rev. George Brown, a Wesleyan missionary long resident 
in Duke of York Island, between New Britain and New Ireland, 
confirmed the charge of cannibalism, stating that when on one 
occasion he adventurously crossed New Ireland he saw at one 
house thirty-five human jaw-bones, some just picked, hanging 
on a rafter. The west coast of New Ireland was very well 
watered, and had large rivers. The standard of value among 
the people i is six feet of strung shells, and the natives have words 
signifying “ buy,” “sell,” “ borrow,” “ lend,” and “redeeming” a 
ledge, lend money at ten per cent., and have a word aca ea Pi 
to “ selling at a sacrifice.” 
New Guinea.—The Rev. I. Chalmers’s account of his journeys 
in New Guinea (Proc. Geog. Soc., February, 1887) contains, 
like all accounts of journeys in this region, far more ethno- 
graphical than geographical information. In 1878 Mr. Chalmers 
and his wife visited the whole coast from China Strait to Hall 
Sound; after this he went inland from Catamaran Bay to Dis- 
covery ‘Bay, and he made several inland trips from Port Moresby. 
He also voyaged ina native “lakatoi,” made of three dugouts 
lashed together, from Port Moresby westward to the Annie 
River, visiting the cannibal district of Namau, and becoming so 
extr emely friendly with the cannibals that the wonder was that 
they did not eat him for sheer love of him. Mr. Chalmers jests 
-about the “skullery,”—an open space near the dubu, or temple, 
provided with pins to hang skulls on. The skulls were all 
carved and gayly colored. The dubu was nearly two hundred 
feet long and about eighty feet high to the peak in front, where 
there was a large veranda, but diminished to nine feet. at the 
back. The aisle, hung with curtains of the frond of the young 
sago-palm, had a floor polished with blood and the tread of feet. 
