538 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S, CHALLENGEB. 
of the leaf cone; there are many such in museums. Possibly the leaf is only a make- 
shift. The Dalrymple Islanders, however, sucked the bamboo full of smoke from the 
large hole at the end instead of blowing. It is remarkable that the Southern Papuans 
should have invented this peculiar method of smoking for themselves, since there can 
be little doubt that they derived the idea of smoking from the Malays, probably through 
the Northern and Western Papuans. There seems no doubt that the habit of smoking 
was first introduced into Java by the Portuguese, as well as the tobacco plant itself , 1 and 
the habit and plant no doubt spread thence to New Guinea. The Papuans at Humboldt 
Bay smoke their tobacco in the form of cigarettes. 
“ No other property than that mentioned was to be seen about the camp of the 
Gudangs, but on our asking for them, Longway produced some small spears and a 
throwing stick, which were hidden in the bush close by ; and a second lot of spears was 
produced afterwards from a similar hiding-place. The blacks keep what property they 
have thus hidden away, just as a dog hides his bone, and not in the camp ; hence it is 
impossible to find out what they really have. I saw no knife or tomahawk. No doubt 
the practice of thus hiding things away from the camp has arisen from constant fear 
of surprise from hostile tribes. 
“ The blacks feed on shell fish, snails (a very large Helix), snakes and grubs, and 
such things, which are hunted for by the women, who go out into the woods in a gang 
every day for the purpose of collecting food, and also dig wild yam roots with a pointed 
stick hardened in the fire. They have not got the perforated stone to weight their 
digging-stick, and are thus behind the Bushmen of the Cape in this matter. A staple 
article of food with these blacks is afforded by the large seeds of a climbing bean (Entada 
scandens), and their only stone implements are a round flat-topped stone and another 
long conical one, suitable for grasping in the hands. This is used as a pestle with which 
to pound these beans on the flat stone. Both stones are merely selected and not shaped 
in any way. 
“These blacks never seem to have had any stone tomahawks, and their spear-heads 
are of bone. They do not hunt the Wallabies or climb after the Opossums, like the 
more southern blacks, but live almost entirely on creeping things and roots, and on 
fish, which they spear with four-pronged spears. Staff-Surgeon Crosbie of the 
Challenger saw Longway and his boy smashing up logs of drift-wood and pulling out 
Teredos and eating them one by one as they came to them. 
“ I tested Longway and also several of the blacks together at the camp, by putting 
groups of objects such as cartridges before them, but could not get them to count in 
their language above three — piama, labaima, damma . 2 They used the word ‘ nurra ’ 3 also, 
1 A. de Candolle, Geographic Botanicpue, t. ii. p. 850. 
2 Macgillivray gives “epiamnna, elahaiu, dama” (Voyage of the “ Rattlesnake,” Appendix). 
3 unora ? Macgillivray. 
