CHAPTER XV 
PAPUAN MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS 
My object in visiting New Guinea, as the reader 
already knows very well, was not to prosecute the 
proper study of mankind, according to Mr. Alexander 
Pope, but it was impossible to live daily with those 
unspoilt children of nature without observing a good 
deal that was curious and noteworthy. I cannot 
pretend to be a trained ethnologist, and accordingly 
the notes that I have set down in this chapter on 
manners and customs make no pretension to any 
scientific co-ordination. I shall not therefore venture 
to draw conclusions, nor advance any theories such as 
would fall within the province of the professed an- 
thropologist. My notes, too, were fragmentary, and 
often, owing to the stress of our journeyings and the 
pressure of the work which it was incumbent on me 
to prosecute, I had perforce to leave unrecorded at 
the time many things that might be useful to the 
student of primitive peoples. Such observations, how- 
ever, as I am able to make, however incomplete, may 
safely be regarded as at first-hand, and it is probable 
that in the majority of cases they were taken under 
exceptionally favourable conditions for observing the 
people just as they are. During our journeyings in 
the interior we depended on native help alone, and 
the people whom we employed were not, one might 
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