12 SISSANO. 
supply was particularly poor. While at the mission stations in Huon Gulf 
they drink exclusively rain-water which is caught on the corrugated-iron roofs, 
Schulz’s hut was roofed with sago leaves, from which the rain-water pours 
down dark brown and quite undrinkable. For our drinking-water we had 
to depend on a small pool behind the house, an aquarium of mosquito larve 
and frogs and other small animal life and a bath for the dog. ‘The green 
fluid could be used in only tea or coffee. 
The landscape produces quite a different impression from that in the Huon 
Gulf region; a broad, flat coastal strip which is only occasionally interrupted 
by outcrop of rock and which is covered with scrub and coconut palms. 
Behind this small zone composed of beach-sand deposits lie swamps and 
lagoons filled with fish; it is not until one goes farther inland that the moun- 
tains begin to arise. On this coastal strip dwells a somewhat dense population 
which lives principally on sago and fish. Since the lagoons abound in more 
ducks than one may count the European gormandizes in meat. Our carte 
de jour read: morning, stewed wild duck with coffee; noon, stewed wild duck 
with tea; evening, stewed wild duck with coffee. About once a week a parrot 
or a Savory pigeon added variety to the succession of meals. Schulz assigned 
three cartridges of bird shot every morning to his gun boy. If he did not bring 
home by noon at least six ducks he got a manual reminder, for one could feel 
sure that on the score of friendship he had left too much of his game in the 
villages. 
Near the residence of my host lie eight Sissano towns (Nimas, Wakel, 
Reindschen, Meinerek, Amsohr, Meinah, Bruno, Meinraun) with a total of 
some 1,000 inhabitants. Schulz, who had acquired some of the language of the 
people, got along with them famously and gave them to understand that I was 
a good friend of his and that they must not harm a.hair of my head. With 
great skill and dexterity he knew how to make them comprehend my object 
in making collections and taking photographs, and certainly I should never 
have obtained so much had not Schulz stood always faithfully at my side ready 
to give his assistance. Among the ethnographic objects there he brought to 
my attention a most remarkable piece. In scraping the pith out of the sago 
stem the blacks use adzes in which the sharp stone blade is replaced with . 
blunt, round polished stones. All at once there appeared many tools of this 
sort which were mounted, not with a stone, but with a round piece of metal. 
This had the following explanation: In order to bring the hostile Sissano to 
reason the government set in operation one more of its punitive expeditions 
and shot up the beach towns with a few dozen small shells. But somebody 
neglected to charge the shells properly and they fell without exploding or 
doing any sort of damage to the soft sand. ‘The Sissano were greatly delighted 
at the presentation of such fine pieces of metal and had no more pressing 
occupation than to dig them up and set them into their adzes in place of 
stones. Apparently there had been a short time earlier at least two dozen 
such shells in use. The attempt was made to buy them up secretly. Schulz 
had the last specimen. 
This recalls another happening where the shells of a punitive expedition 
did really go off, but quite in another spot from that which was intended, 
namely, in the ground far from the hostile towns. Whereupon the natives 
held a thanksgiving festival because their fields had been so finely dug up 
and they themselves spared the painful toil of breaking up their hard soil. 
Near Sissano is the Waropu Lagoon, where there was a sudden sinking of 
the earth’s surface in the night of December 15-16, 1907. 
In order more closely to examine the sunken district I boarded with Schulz 
one of the canoes without outriggers for the extremely uncomfortable trip 
across the Waropu Lagoon, which is of considerable extent and in which 
