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in traversing dense vegetation. The liook on the back, used for 
stripping cane leaves, requires cutting off, as it catches in the vines 
and branches. 
Among the outfit was a liberal supply of sand shoes for all hands, 
kanakas included. 'No human bare foot will stand long in the country 
we were in, when the owner is ascending and descending with heavy 
loads. The sand shoe, or tennis shoe, with the grooved indiarubber 
sole, is by far the best for rough mountain country. Ordinary boots 
are unsuitable, uncomfortable, and dangerous. The weakness of the 
sand shoe is its inferior material. Occasionally, in very rough places, 
one pair barely lasted the whole day. Sometimes they held out for 
four or five days. They are only unsafe when the sole is wet, on wet 
slippery rocks. In that case nothing will hold like the bare foot ; but 
the bare foot requires a prolonged practical experience before frisking 
at ease through lawyer scrub and over weather-worn granite rocks. 
That experience my own " mendowies " had thoroughly acquired. 
Constant wearing of boots is one of the most unhealthy and detestable 
ordeals to which civilised man is subjected by a blind-eyed mule-headed 
custom, which has no more reason for this outrage than a stall-fed 
Calabar fashionable female for covering the abnormal calves of her 
legs with brass rings, or a Papuan monarch for wearing a sea-shell 
through the end of his nose. The civilised man still remains in some 
respects a magnificent specimen of the human ass. He wears a close- 
fitting hat that excludes the sunlight from his stupid head, and is 
surprised — in the same intellectual fashion as an owl that has lost his 
tail — to find himself prematurely bald at an early age. He jams his 
flat feet into tight boots that put a damper on the circulation, and 
then goes off to consult his doctor, under whose intelligent and dis- 
interested advice he empties a large consignment of assorted drugs 
into his indignant stomach to cure the headaches and heart disease, and 
other infirmities which are but the earnest expostulations outraged 
Nature is making against the tight-boot wearing atrocity. 
Having greatly relieved myself by these philosophic remarks, it is 
time to mention the overwhelming sense of responsibility thrown on 
me by undertaking to escort the Colonial Botanist to the summit of 
Bellenden-Ker, and bring him back right side up with every possible 
care. 
Mr. Bailey was described to me as a man never known to quail in 
danger's stormy hour if there was the remotest prospect of running 
against a new plant, falling over a log of unknown timber, or treading on 
some giant species of previously unclassified mushroom. Too well I 
knew that he was loaded to the muzzle with a full charge of botanical 
names before wdiich the bravest man would quail, and sensitive vegeta- 
tion curl up like a ]3umpkin leaf in a sharp frost. Having effected an 
insurance on his life for half -a- million, and made a will bestowing 
sixteen tons of dead and dried plants on anybody who would cart 
them home, he boldly announced to his anxious friends that he was now 
prepared to face the land wdiere the Bulhophyllum Baileyi was one 
of the champion orchids, where the Ophyoglossum pendulum and 
Dendrohium Jiispidum adorned the noblest trees, and the shy Pogona- 
tJierum mccliaroideum peeped bashfully from the crevices of the 
granite rocks. Little was known of Mr. Bailey's endurance and 
dauntless spirit by those who prophesied that he would never reach 
