CHANGES AND STRANGE SCENES 
canoes, and a very charming feature of the village 
is its crowd of children, playing with toy lakatois, 
The smallest of these toy craft are made of a section 
of bamboo ballasted with stones, with a sail of the 
same shape as that of the great rafts used by the 
srown-up people. The bigger children, scorning the 
bamboo vessels, have a larger kind, in which the 
canoes are real little dug-outs. ‘These youngsters 
are wonderful swimmers, and as they conduct their 
little regattas they jump about in the water, swimming 
and diving fearlessly, and enjoying the merriest pos- 
sible time. The people of Hanuabada are an agreeable 
and rather comely race. They are typical south-east 
coast natives, with shock heads of black wiry hair. 
The women, who carry on the characteristic industry of 
the place, the work in earthenware, are lithe picturesque 
figures in their long ramis or kilts of grass. 
It is a curious fact that, although the Hanuabada 
and Elevada people live actually on waters that teem 
with fish, they are poor fishermen, being, in fact, too 
lazy to follow that craft. They are accordingly helped 
in this industry by the Hula people, whose fishing 
fleet presents at night one of the most weirdly pic- 
turesque sights in Papua. Of this I have more to say 
in a later chapter. 
For weeks before the annual trading expedition 
Hanuabada is full of life. At every turn one comes 
upon women crouching on the ground, fashioning 
lumps of clay into the wonderfully perfect pottery for 
which the village is famous. ‘The men-folk, although 
they do not condescend to take part in the actual 
fashioning of the pots, are good enough to dig the 
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