152 
MARBIAG 
CHAP. 
from the others ; the more noise they made the louder 
she yelled, and she looked like a veritable witch. As 
she still danced on, great beads of perspiration rolled 
down her face, and finally she sank down exhausted. 
We gave her some tobacco and she went away ap- 
parently satisfied. She and a man in camp are both 
said to be mad, and the latter is supposed to have been 
bewitched (they call it purupuru). He is horrible to 
look at and has no nose or upper lip. This evening 
there are a great many more canoes here, and a fresh 
crowd of men came into the camp laden with cocoa- 
nuts, yams, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and one poor 
solitary fowl. These gifts they laid down at our door 
while we distributed tobacco in return. 
There is a fig tree here with the skeleton of a man 
encased inside, the tree having grown completely round 
it. The story is that he was fastened to it alive, and 
the branches in time twisted and grew round the skeleton 
until now nothing more of it can be seen. It was a 
handsome tree and close on the shore, and I thought 
would make a pretty sketch, so went down to take it. 
I suddenly heard a splashing of oars and saw a canoe 
with eight natives in it, with merely the local airy 
costume of fringes on them ; they had come from some 
of the islands off the New Guinea coast, and they looked 
as if they would not have been above giving me a quiet 
knock on the head if an occasion offered. I did not 
finish the sketch that day, and I did not even give them 
a chance of seeing me, as I quickly slid away under 
bushes and through the long grass, utterly regardless 
of snakes or any other kind of reptile in my quick 
endeavours to get away from them. I daresay they 
were perfectly harmless, but I cannot get over my fear 
of them. 
Some of the young girls are very graceful, with 
