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H. J. T. BIJLMER 



though the numerous brooks offered splendid opportunities, we never saw bathing Papuans. 

 This makes a great différence with the Javanese and the Dyak. Nevertheless they made not 

 the impression of being dirty, contrary to the inhabitants of the Lake-Plain. Even in the 

 huts, but for one or two door-openings entirely closed, we could quite well put up with it. 

 Of great influence will be the fact that they had hardly any furniture or clothes. Thus, 

 among thèse people nearly complète simplicity matched with cleanliness. And that the latter 

 was not wholly the conséquence of the first, was proved by the neatness of the village. The 

 huts stood together on the nicely cleaned ground, from which ail végétation was removed. 

 The freely wandering pigs contributed doubtless to the simplification of the scavengery. First 

 of ail however the sun, that great desinfector of the Tropics, was the trusted ally of the 

 inhabitants. Day by day it was burning fiercely on the quite unshielded huts. It was a pretty 

 view from the surrounding hills: a bare patch of land with the 

 jet-black shadows of the round little dwellings and between them 

 now and then the sharply outlined silhouette of a man, hastening 

 from one hut to another, or that of a roaming pig, looking 

 for food. 



HAÏR. 



The hair of ail the Papuans I saw was crisp. The wellknown 

 mopheads were not the fashion in the régions visited by our expé- 

 dition. The Papuans of Pioneer-bivouac hâve a very peculiar way 

 of hair-dressing. Their hair is plaited in rattan spirals, forming 

 each a circular band round the head. Three or four of such bands 

 lie one upon the other, the smallest topmost, covering the crown. 

 The hair-rattan-rings are filled up with clay, thus forming massive 

 sausages, covering the head like a helmet. When the hair is undone, 

 as I saw once, it is falling down on the shoulders in clay-tresses 

 of about 4 dm. long. This clay-tressed hair is known from several 

 parts of New-Guinea and I also observed it a few times among 

 the Timorini. On the Mamberamo, now and then people without 

 any hairdress were seen ; they had bare crispheads. This was found 

 oftener, when we came higher up the river. The degree of perfection of the just described rattan- 

 helmets appeared to be the reflexion of the degree of bellicosity. For it corresponded to the 

 girth of the belly-harness, consisting of a fibre-cord, wound some hundred times around the 

 belly and covering it from thorax to pubis. Going up the river and crossing the so-called 

 Lake-Plain, rattan-helmet as well as belly-harness are only seen in very imperfect forms: 

 they are a fashion in décadence, without being replaced however by another. In Svvart-valley 

 they were totally absent. There, some men and nearly ail the women and children had un- 

 covered frizzly-heads, but the greater part of the men wore one or more nets, covering 

 head and neck. Under those nets was either a short, undressed crisphead, or a hairdress 

 of longer hair, neatly arranged. This hairdress consisted mostly of shining-black hair- 

 spirals of 2 — 3 mm. width; probably they used pig-suet as a cosmetic. The tresses did 





Fig. 5. Auct. phot 

 Timorini, woman with child. 



