INACTION AND AN EXCURSION 
The little expedition, however, was rather un- 
eventful, except at one point, where we discovered 
somewhat to our anxiety that we had lost the trail. 
The two natives we had brought with us went, one to 
the right and the other to the left, searching for it, 
and we kept shouting to each other all the time. 
At last, after a couple of hours’ search, we found the 
track, which would have been visible only to a Papuan, 
as there was no well-worn path. We required native 
guidance also to get us back to the creek where we 
had left our canoe. 
If there were no division between the piebald 
people and the ordinary inhabitants of Hula, at Kera- 
puna we noticed a curious class distinction, founded 
not on any physical peculiarity, but upon the mere 
question of occupation. One part of the village was 
occupied by the fisher tribe, the other part by a 
purely agricultural people. The latter were extremely 
lazy, and, as I have noted elsewhere, the lazier Papuan 
tribes are never fishermen, and always employ some 
more active people to do this work for them. ‘The 
tillers of the soil and the spoilers of the sea hold 
rigidly aloof from one another at Kerapuna, and only 
meet on the common ground of an exchange of com- 
modities—the fish being purchased for bananas and 
cocoanuts. Yet, strangely enough, the more active 
tribe was evidently there on sufferance, and was 
allowed to remain only because of the fish they sup- 
plied. Another remarkable point was, that the fishing 
populations dwelt on land and not on pile-built houses, 
as at Hula and Hanuabada. Im this district we could 
get on without any other “‘ trade” than tobacco. 
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