59 
"remarkably light bronze colour,” of some of the natives of the up- 
per Fly river. 
I obtained a small vobabulary — principally substantive nouns — 
from the Sambregi tribes, immediately to the northwest of Mount 
Murray, in the hope that it would contain sufficient information to 
enable philologists to determine if the language was Papuan or Mela- 
nesian; unfortunately, this was lost with all other papers in the 
Kikor river. 
By exercising great forbearance and patience, we were fortu- 
nately successful in making friends with these bushmen everywhere. 
As they had never seen white men before, our arrival caused great 
excitement. At the first small communal dwellings we reached they 
all turned out with their bows and arrows, and stood shouting their 
war cries. They naturally thought we were a marauding party, and 
naturally, and rightly they were prepared to defend their wives and 
children and homes. While they were in this condition of extreme 
excitement our party sat down, and, although our arms were ready 
for any emergency, appeared to take no notice of them, except to 
hold up some red cloth. They then retired, and, when some presents 
were sent up to the house, we found that they had all fled, the hostile 
demonstration being probably to allow the women and children time 
to get away into the jungle. Great care was taken that nothing was 
touched, and a tomahawk, a knife, and some red cloth were left in 
the house. Not seeing them return, we started on our march next 
morning, and in the afternoon were overtaken by the natives, who,, 
when they found that we had no desire to hurt them, evinced the 
greatest joy, and made us presents of food. After that for some 
days we experienced little trouble in establishing friendly relations 
with the natives we met. Possibly, by some bush telegraphy they 
had notified the other tribes that we had no desire of injuring them. 
In many instances the friendship of the natives was of great service 
to us. Not only were we able to buy food, but they showed us native 
tracks, and, in one instance, took the whole party over a wide river 
in their canoes. 
The inhabitants of the Sambregi villages were particularly 
interesting as they live at an elevation of 6,000 feet above the sea- 
level, the highest elevation, I believe, of any Papuans so far visited. 
The physique of some of the young men was magnificent, the Kagi 
men of the main range approaching most closely to them in this, 
respect. While the tracks between the villages of Sambregi were in 
wretched repair, and the houses below the standard of native dwellings 
in Papua, these people excelled in drainage schemes. The gardens- 
in the rich low-lying portions of the valley are drained into the Sam- 
bregi creek by water channels varying in depth with the contour of 
land. In some cases the drains are as much as 8 feet in depth ; no 
water lodges in them, and they are kept in excellent repair. With 
the exception of the native irrigation channels near Dogura in the 
Eastern Division, in no other part of the territory do the natives- 
show such knowledge of channel construction. Although it is most 
