The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Isle of Vanishing Men, by W. F. Alder This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Isle of Vanishing Men A Narrative of Adventure in Cannibal-land Author: W. F. Alder Release Date: September 9, 2018 [EBook #57881] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN *** Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN “Uhumen!” From their manner it is evident that we are de trop THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN A NARRATIVE OF ADVENTURE IN CANNIBAL-LAND BY W. F. ALDER ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1922 Copyright, 1922, by The Century Co. PRINTED IN U. S. A. TO MY WIFE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I We Leave Ambon 3 II The Paradise-Hunter 13 III The Kampong 32 IV The Assistant and the Nautilus 45 V We’re Off! 53 VI Shipwrecked Among Cannibals 67 VII We Establish Diplomatic Relations 85 VIII We Take Up Quarters in the Kampong 97 IX The Story of the Swiss Scientist 116 X Our Consolation Prize 129 XI The Feast 140 XII The Head Dance 148 XIII A Kangaroo Hunt 160 XIV The Bird of Paradise 167 XV The Coming of the Burong Mas 173 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS “Uhumen.” From their manner it is evident that we are de trop Frontispiece FACING PAGE Malays bringing on board their varied possessions 16 As the last of the praus was cleared of baggage they clustered on the gangway, shouting adieus 16 The prison-yard in Merauke, New Guinea 24 Each of the men has perforated the septum of his nose to permit inserting a pair of boar-tusks 33 A pair of alligator-teeth make a wonderful nose-ornament 33 Enormous nose-tubes of bamboo which entirely close the nostrils, making breathing possible only through the mouth 36 The women wear in many cases a tiny breech-clout but no other covering 36 A long platform which entirely encircles the kampong 45 During the day the men occupy the sleeping-benches, while the women sit upon the sandy floor of the shacks 45 Seated at a discreet distance, watching our camp-making intently 80 There had been a disagreement in the village 80 Those who failed to get a package come to the dead-line and asked for one 85 They may be friendly at one moment and turn upon one the very next 85 We made presents of tin jewelry to the natives, but what they wanted was tobacco 92 Feathered head-dresses moving through the tall grass told us of the natives watching our progress toward the kampong 92 Twice we encounter stalwart warriors standing like sentinels, as though disdainful of concealment 97 The body is placed in a sitting position after being gaily decorated for the funeral 97 The native climbs a cocoanut-palm in a series of humps and stretches, like a giant inch-worm 100 Making fire. A piece of hard wood is rotated by hand while in contact with a softer piece 100 One little fellow takes great delight in hearing his mother describe the battles in which his father collected his trophies 109 After the heat of midday the men gather in the shade to discuss the latest scandal or politics 109 Eating mud! That’s it, just plain dried mud 112 “Little Playmate” readjusts his nose-tubes 112 The hairdresser plaits long strands of raffia into the kinky wool of the Kia Kias 116 The shiny inner surface of a Malay tobacco-box serves them as a mirror 116 The deserted Jesuit mission which formerly was the pride and hope of its unfortunate builder 125 In the early evening the women sit around on the copra-drying-platforms and watch the sunset 125 They are very proud of the scar-patterns 129 The weals caused by the infection of the cuts sometimes stand out nearly an inch from the surrounding flesh 129 The men occupy their time with revision of their toilets, rather than in doing the chores 133 Sarah 133 The kapala kampong presents us with human skulls, the highest token of their esteem 136 A young and very fearsome Kia Kia spends a great deal of his time with her 136 The circle breaks up and a dance takes place for our entertainment 140 They sang for us at the top of their leather lungs 140 Long into the night the mad festival continues. To exert themselves in any productive occupation to a like extent would kill them 144 The drums are tuned in a peculiar manner. Having no strings fastened to the heads with which to tighten them, they place small lumps of resin mixed with clay on the heads to produce the desired sound 144 The Head Dance. Two girls begin it by slowly walking up and down in the center of the circle of onlookers 148 The Dutch officials punish them severely for indulging in these practices 148 Under the influence of the wady, exhilarated by the wild dance, the men finally take part 157 They again threaten the men with total exclusion from all intercourse with their families 157 This man confessed to having eaten many human beings. To accurately estimate the number was beyond his power of reckoning 161 The sharp-edged stone war-club in the hands of such men as these makes quick work of a victim 161 The skipper is a jolly fellow with a countenance that beams good nature, mixed with a shrewdness that speaks of business ability 176 He beats a gong briskly and chants a prayer in Malay, while the rest of the crew add their prayers to his petitions 176 THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN T CHAPTER I WE LEAVE AMBON wo bells tinkles within the master’s cabin, and the quartermaster on the bridge repeats the announcement of nine o’clock with two strokes upon the bronze bell near his station at the wheel. It is sailing-time. The townspeople have turned out en masse to bid us farewell, and the open spaces on the new concrete wharf are ablaze with color. The chatter of a thousand voices comes to us as we stand upon the deck looking down on the scene. Every one seems happy. The great whistle on the ship’s funnel, after a preliminary gargling of its throat, shatters the tranquil air with a peremptory warning. The screw churns up a maëlstrom beneath the overhanging stern, and we swing out into the channel amid a storm of adieus spoken in a dozen tongues. We are off for the land of the cannibal Kia Kias,—the Isle of Vanishing Men. As the ship gathers way, Amboina, spice-scented “Ambon,” drops into the mists of the morning and we look around the deck for company. We are alone. Then we remember the information given us by the First Officer yesterday. We are the only first-cabin passengers on board, this trip. Few people find their way to the Isle of Vanishing Men. It offers little to the business man. The commercial traveler never goes there. Merauke, our destination, has but five white inhabitants, and their wants are few. One steamer a month carries to them the things they need and the mail from home. We shall spend our time for the next few days in lazy languor, playing an occasional game of chess with the chief engineer, chatting now and then with the very amiable captain, or, as one learns to do in the Indies, just draping ourselves over most comfortable steamer chairs and daydreaming for hours on end. The air is like silk. The piping falsetto of the deck-hands as they sing at their work lulls one into reverie, and life glides by with a smoothness that takes no count of time. There comes the day when the captain greets us at breakfast with the news that we shall arrive this evening. As he selects from the heaped platter of sliced sausage his favorite variety he tells us that we shall sight land at one this afternoon. We are agog with excitement. The cannibals are not far away now. We ply him with questions and as he spreads his bread with marmalade he tells us of the Kia Kias and what their name means. To be kikied, he avers, is to be eaten; the natives are eaters of men; hence the name. He regales us with reminiscences of his former visits to the island and roars with merriment as he relates how on one voyage a few months ago he was accompanied by his wife. The natives thronged the little wharf, clad in their birthday suits, to witness the arrival of the ship. Some of them were allowed on board, where they were awed by the marvels of the white man’s great proa. The captain’s wife was the first white woman they had ever seen, and one of the natives—a son of a chief, by the way,—became enamored of her. He immediately offered the captain two fine pigs for her. The captain refused the offer, saying it was not enough. The man withdrew, his brow wrinkled with deep thought. He left the ship and was lost in the throng that strained the underpinning of the little wharf. Two hours later he returned, accompanied by several of his friends. Each of these carried a pig trussed up with rattan hobbles. He had sold his wife and three daughters for five pigs and was raising his ante, so the captain’s story ran, and was much put out when he learned that the price offered was still inadequate. The lady in question was the object of so much attention from the well-meaning if somewhat amorous natives that she found it expedient to retire to the privacy of her husband’s cabin, whence she was able unseen to observe the visitors. The little saloon in which we breakfast overlooks the main deck and the men there are making ready the winches and rigging preparatory to the unloading of cargo manifested for Merauke. Their work interrupts the captain in his narrative, for the rumbling remonstrances of the rusty machines make the morning hideous. We hasten to the upper deck, where after doing our customary half-mile constitutional we busy ourselves with the packing of our dunnage. This will take us an hour and we look forward to a comfortable snooze before tiffin. By that time, or shortly after, the coast-line of New Guinea will have risen to view out of a murky horizon in the northeast. There is nothing to do until then. Our letters to those at home will not be written until the very last moment before the steamer sails, for we shall want to describe Merauke in them. It will be two months before the steamer calls again. In those two months we shall have visited the tribes living far from the little trading-station of Merauke and its very friendly population of five whites, many Chinese, a few Malays, and a hundred or so Kia Kias. The missionaries have brought these last from the interior and they live outside the town in kampongs or villages, the nearest of which is an hour’s walk from the dock. The chief engineer—who, by the way, is a real character and something of a philosopher— disarranges our plans for forty winks. He has spent about forty-three years on the ships that ply the waters of the Indies, and has many tales to tell; for he loves to relive his earlier days, when the native girls were more beautiful to him than now. With the on-march of years the enervating climate and the demoralizing life of the kampongs have exacted a toll, and the overdrafts he made in those never-to-be- forgotten times have been collected in full by the Bank of Nature. The old roué boasts of his conquests among the golden-skinned vahines of the Southern Islands and tells us now with shocking candor of the doubtful virtues of Nasia, an old flame of his who lived in Ambon. He sees her now and then in Saparoea, where she is the reputable wife of a half-caste government employee. To the native, marriage means that respectable status which permits of clandestine meetings with the wife, censured only by the husband. All others aid and abet the liaison, for does it not furnish delightful gossip in an otherwise somnolent community? He tells of a night when he and his chief (he was second engineer then) went in company with some others to a kampong back of Dobo in the Arus and 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 proceeded to kiss all the girls in sight. The girls must have taken kindly to the demonstration, for they unearthed “square-face” gin in plenty and with dances and what not regaled the white Tuans (masters) until the east turned from violet to rose. We cannot find it in our hearts to censure the chief, for the “custom of the country” has made its insidious way deep into his soul and has warped his point of view. One has to spend much time in the Indies fully to appreciate how this can be. Here life is stripped of many superfluities and conventions and love of life and of love become paramount factors. He shakes his head at what he calls our “Long Hair” ideas and tells us we should have brought with us two girls from Ambon, to keep house for us while we are in New Guinea. The Ambonese girls, he tells us, are much more comely than the Kia Kia girls. “Wait till you see Reache’s girl in Merauke,” he says; “or the Controlleur’s up the coast,—Nona is her name. She came from Ambon. She is nineteen and as saucy a little trinket as you’d ever want to see.” Thereupon the chief laughs immoderately. Seeking further information on the subject, we question him regarding certain eventualities had we made “temporary” matrimonial arrangements such as he recommends, and he waves a deprecating hand at us. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. “When you get ready to leave ’em give ’em a new sarong, a little money, a ticket home, and they’ll bless you forever and maybe cry a little into the bargain because they hate to lose a good thing. In a week or two, though, they will be deep in a new affair and they’ll forget. Don’t let them fall in love, though, or they might get nasty. Best way is to tell ’em you’re going about ten minutes before you leave. It saves a lot of powwow an’ palaver. Otherwise it’ll cost you twice as much to save your face.” The chiming of eight bells closes the engineer’s dissertation, as he stands watch until four in the afternoon. He leaves us reluctantly, for he regards us as babes in the woods who need much assistance and advice in this very interesting but usually taboo subject. Mayhap he is right, but, as the Englishman says, “We’ll muddle through somehow.” Somehow we can’t quite divest ourselves of our “old-fashioned” ideas. While we talk over the chief’s code of morals, we wonder about many things. The sort of life he has led has been led by many white men, for four hundred years, in the Indies and every one seems happy and contented. True, there are many brown-skinned people with blue eyes and just as many fair- skinned ones with warm, dancing eyes of sloe black, but on the lips of each and every one of these there is a smile. They seem to know no trouble. The warm air makes us drowsy. Tiffin isn’t till one-thirty: why not take that snooze we planned for? 10 11 12 I CHAPTER II THE PARADISE-HUNTER t is four o’clock in the afternoon. The ship’s launch is wallowing toward the wharf, carrying with it ourselves and two of the ship’s officers. Moh—our Javanese boy, cook, majordomo, and general nuisance—is busily engaged in gathering our barang together, preparatory to getting it ashore. No one ever thinks of calling baggage anything but “barang” after a few months in Malay waters. We just must show our command of the vernacular and thereby escape classification as common tourists. As we near the wharf a motley crowd greets us with a variety of expressions. The throng is composed for the most part of Malay-speaking Javanese or Ambonese, but here and there one sees pajama-clad Chinese and over there near the godown, or warehouse, is the white-clad figure of a white man. He is approaching us rapidly. We scramble up the rickety, slippery stairway to the dock and find ourselves in a chattering gang who clamor to be allowed to carry our barang to the passangrahan or resthouse, which in these Dutch possessions is the only shelter available to the stranger. It is maintained by the Government for this purpose and in it one finds every convenience, but one must supply one’s own servants and food. We arrange with a Chinaman, who seems to be a sort of “straw boss” of the coolies, for the transfer of our luggage, and dismiss the matter from our minds. He will care for it and will not worry us, for the whole bill will not be over two guilders, or about sixty cents. There are twenty-two pieces to be moved. If we cared to argue the matter out we might get the job done for one guilder, but it’s too warm for an argument. The white-clad figure is close to us now. He evidently is worried about the arrival of something or other that he expects the boat to bring him. He does not notice us, but goes directly to the ship’s officer who is giving orders to the men lightering the cargo ashore. They engage in an animated but good- natured conversation. Farther down the dock a scuffle is taking place. The crowd thins out rapidly, and we can glimpse the combatants now and then between the intervening onlookers. They are slashing at each other with knives and whole-souled abandon. They are Malay stevedores. From the lower end of the mole a grotesque native policeman espies the affray and shouts to the battlers to desist,—this with wild waving of his arms and dire threats of punishment. His shrill admonitions do not seem to have the desired effect, and he suddenly projects himself (that is the only word for it) in the general direction of the mêlée. His old navy cutlass flashes in the waning sunlight as he draws it with a great flourish and comes bouncing down the wharf. The scabbard disconcertingly inserts itself between his legs and he performs an absurd contortion to regain his footing. By miraculous intervention of Providence he maintains his footing and arrives. Smack! smack! and the belligerents depart in opposite directions. The policeman’s cutlass has accomplished its purpose. The fighters have been spanked into peace with the flat of the blade. As the pair separate a gentle voice beside us is raised in soft-toned remonstrance. It is directed toward the misguided policeman. “Gad, man!” it says, “don’t stop ’em; let ’em fight.” Then turning to us, the speaker continues, “I just love to see the blood fly.” Our jaws drop. We turn to scan the ferocious one and look him over in amazement. Before us is a little man of somewhat uncertain age, clad largely in a huge Vandyke that rambles in a casual fashion over his face. His voice is soft, soft as a girl’s, and his eyes as we look into them lose their bloodthirsty, anticipatory glint, and sparkle with kindliness and good- fellowship. Malays bringing on board their varied possessions As the last of the praus was cleared of baggage they clustered on the gangway, shouting adieus He extends his hand, a hand wrinkled and seamed like a last-year’s apple and brown as a claro from Sumatra. “My moniker’s Reache,” he tells us, and we tell him our names. He continues: “You are Americans, eh? Well, put ’er there! I like the way you fellows handled the railroad situation in France. Here for long? Wait: stay here a moment while I see the mate there, and I’ll take you over to the club for a drink. We’ll spin a yarn and get acquainted. Can’t spin a yarn or get chummy sudden, ’less there’s some square-face in sight; that’s solid. Back in a minute.” As we watch him go we smile. So there is a club in Merauke! Five white men,—and a club! It is proper. Where there is a club there must be a bar. The barkeeper draws a salary, after a fashion. He must be kept awake to lend an air of liveliness to the institution, so the members foregather of an evening and sing raucously in the wee sma’ hours expressly for that purpose. True, the club is but a palm-thatched edifice with a slightly corrugated floor and reputation; nevertheless it is a club. Nondescript furniture ungraces its airy spaciousness and mud-wasps’ nests now and then fall upon one’s head as some fly-hungry chick chack lizard carelessly dislodges them, but it is still “The Club.” It being “The Club,” one must always remember to wear his coat therein, for the etiquette of fleshpots is brought to this land of the stewpots and observed with due reverence. No matter how deep in his cups the superior white man may be, he must never appear at “The Club” in negligée. It isn’t done. The native may wander in the simmering heat of midday clad in what approximates nothing, but 13 14 15 16 17 18 the Tuan, being superior even when most satisfyingly inebriated, to maintain his proper dignity must wear at all times a coat over his regulation soft-collared shirt. Of course we Americans are not really bound to do this, for our many eccentricities are passed over without undue comment. When one of those who really “belong” does make some allusion to one of our—what shall I say?—indecorums, one of his fellows offers the all-sufficient excuse or explanation, “Oh, he’s American.” This always suffices; and, too, it is said as though the speaker expected as much and would have been disappointed otherwise. And despite all this they like us. They really like our devil-may-care expediency, and I think secretly envy us. In this they “have nothing on us,” though, for it seems to be a human tendency to envy something in the other fellow. Reache joins us in a few moments, and we are soon ensconced in rather rickety chairs on the veranda of the club. Between tumblerfuls of square-face gin and long draws at an excellent Dutch cigar, he entertains us with tales of bird-of-paradise hunting, which avocation he follows somewhat successfully. He now and then makes our flesh creep with a particularly hair-raising recital delivered somewhat in this fashion: “You fellows know, I guess, what I’m here for. It’s paradise. Not the country, no! The country is hell and no mistake, but the birds,—that is what I go after, and get, too. I outfitted in Moresby and when I got my hunters together and plenty of petrol for the launch I headed for the upper Diegul. It’s way up in the interior where we get the best birds. It’s bad country up there, and no mistake, for the natives have a little habit of lunching off one another when pig becomes scarce. The governor warned me that I was taking my life in my hands, but I don’t know any one else’s hands I’d rather have it in, so I went inside. My crew of hunters was as ripe a gang of cutthroats as one would wish to see and they tried cutting a few didoes among themselves, but after I’d knocked a couple of them cold they took to behaving and I let things go at that. “You want a gang like that for hard going. They’re necessary. The only way to keep them happy is to give them plenty of work or, what they like best, plenty of scrapping. Then they haven’t time to brood over differences of opinion amongst themselves. I loaded a couple of bushels of shells like that nigger out there has on. They wear them for pants. One shell and Mr. Cannibal is all dressed up. Well, I use those shells for currency. One first-class shell which costs me about ten cents Dutch money buys a bird-of- paradise skin that is worth twelve hundred guilders a cody,—that is, twenty skins,—or, as it figures out in real money, forty dollars a skin. It’s a fair margin of profit.” Here Reache grins and absorbs another tumblerful of square-face. “Well,” he continues, “we went inside,—I, seven shooters, and some other Moresby boys for packers. Soon we had all the shooting and trading we wanted. Everything went all right for a time and there was no trouble with the natives. I gave them one nice shiny shell for one prime skin and they were as pleased as possible. The trouble started over some fool thing that one of my boys said or did to one of the native women and soon matters began to tense up a little. There was a Chinese outfit inside, too, that were doing some trading and they tried to take advantage of the natives. They gummed the game that season. The natives stood for the Chinamen for a time, but pretty soon the old women of the tribe called all the younger women and girls aside and told them that the men were taboo till the Chinamen were put out of the way, and as usual the younger ones agreed to what the old women said. (They always have their way.) One fine evening the Kia Kias had a little dinner-party to celebrate the resumption of domestic felicity attendant upon the demise of the Chinese. “The Chinamen were the guests of honor. They had been roasted to a turn. Next day I visited the place and when I saw the kampong clearing I knew what had happened. This piece of jade was the only thing left of the Chinamen that I could see. The rest was eaten. I took this from one of the children, who was playing with it. My gang were pretty sore about it. I don’t think it was on account of the Chinese, particularly, but because they had missed a good scrap, and they began to grouch. The next day one of the natives came to the launch with a couple of skins. Ula was working on the engine. The rest of my gang were all away in the jungle, shooting. The skins were a little ruffled up, but I think what made Ula angry was the fact that the native had on a pair of Chinese trousers. He never collected for the skins, for Ula picked up a spanner that he’d been working on the engine with and tapped him with it. Then he tossed him into the kalee alongside to drift down the stream for the crocodiles to dine on. “The other natives all cleared out and that night we heard them singing and beating drums in the jungle near their kampong. There was trouble in the air. My boys began to rifle the barang for some heavier shells and a couple of them built a big fire in the center of our clearing. About ten in the evening one of them had walked out across the circle of the firelight to throw on some more wood, when he stopped, straightened up, and then collapsed in a heap. “I jumped for my gun. A Kia Kia ten-foot spear had finished him. A minute later hell broke loose. The natives did a queer thing for them. They rushed us. Man, it was a beautiful fight! There was a sick sort of a moon trying to see what was going on and the fire gave us a little light, so we just lined up along the bank of the kalee and let them come. Ula was a bird of a fighter. I’ve never seen more methodical slaughter. He and I were lying a little apart from the rest and as each bunch of howling painted devils came for us across the clearing we would let them have it. “They shot clouds of arrows at us, but as we were lying down in the tall grass they all went high, though some of them whizzed by uncomfortably close. When they ran out of arrows they came at us with stone-headed clubs and we’d let them have what was in our twelve-gauges at thirty feet. It was bang! bang! bang! along the bank of that kalee, like a clay-pigeon trap match. The prison-yard in Merauke, New Guinea 19 20 21 22 23 24 “Before long I noticed that things were pretty quiet over to my left where the rest of my boys were, and I rose up to look. As I did so I heard Ula grunt, “Look out!” and I swung around just in time to stop a burly Kia Kia who was planning to do me with a stone club that would have killed an elephant. Then Ula went down. They were coming at me from both sides, for I could see the grass moving slowly where they were sneaking up on me. I reached into my pocket to get some more shells and got the shock of my life. I had shot my last one. My gun was empty. There was nothing to do but get away, and I turned toward the spot on the bank where the launch was tied. I had taken maybe a dozen steps toward it when I heard a couple of plumps from the engine and then she caught on and got to hitting regular. “I rose up from the shelter of the tapa grass and made time toward the sound. Ammed, the only one of the boys left, had started the kicker and was pulling out. He saved my bacon that night. We didn’t waste any time in getting down the river,—just kept going.” Reache turns and shakes his head. While his hand gropes for the bottle of square-face he sighs and concludes, “I lost some fine guns that night.” We look at each other in speculation. The story sounds all right, but— “Ah, here he comes!” exclaims Reache. “Here comes the Controlleur.” Reache rises and goes to the railing of the veranda and calls to a brown-skinned, black mustached, military-looking fellow. After a moment’s conversation the Controlleur comes in with Reache, greets us cordially, and tells us that he has the passangrahan ready for us. The Resident in Ambon has sent a letter by our steamer, telling of our coming, and has ordered things done for us. It is the way these kindly Dutch officials always treat the visitor. The Controlleur informs us—much to his embarrassment, however—that there is a government charge of what equals thirty-four cents a day for our accommodation. Much as he regrets it, he says, there are no exceptions to this rule. We drown his embarrassment with a liberal libation of Reache’s square-face and, escorted by both of our new friends, go to inspect our quarters. We shall be here in Merauke several days before proceeding up the coast, so we must be very comfortable, they say. As we near the passangrahan we take note of a group of sheet-iron buildings surrounded by a high wire fence. It is the jail and watching us intently are a score of prisoners. As we look in their direction they break into smiles and call to us in Malay. They are asking us to secure them for additional servants during our stay and, noting our surprise at this, the Controlleur assures us that he will loan us all the help we want. Later he makes good his word, for he sends several of the prisoners over to the resthouse where we have taken up our abode. They are accompanied by a native sergeant, who sits in the shade all day, smoking. He never bothers about what the prisoners are doing and they dutifully report to him at meal-times. In the evening, when their house-cleaning and grass-cutting are over, they line up and return to the jail. We even send them on errands, which they do conscientiously but not at all hastily. The Controlleur and Reache leave us—to get our things straightened out, they say—and promise to call again to-morrow. They also say that we must meet the other Europeans who are connected with the little trading-company. We shall not be able to see the Assistant Resident on business until the steamer sails, we are informed, for he has many reports to forward to his chief in Ambon. These are always made up at the last moment and the rush is terrible. The assistant is even now writing the first of the two. One of them is to tell the chief that Merauke is still in New Guinea, and the other that we have arrived and are being well cared for. He must rest from this labor for a day; then he will receive us with the formality due the distinguished guest. He will inquire with solicitous concern as to our health, and what we most desire to do, and will grant our every wish, after due deliberation. Things of such weighty nature as our coming on a little friendly visit must be treated with painstaking consideration. It is too warm to decide too much in one day, for then judgment might be erroneous, and—oh, well! why talk business when there is so much else to talk about? There hasn’t been a stranger in Merauke for months, and we can’t blame them, can we? No! We shall let the purpose of our coming go hang, and just sit down and be entertained for the best part of a week. They will enjoy it almost as much as we, so why not? At the passangrahan we find that Moh has dinner ready. He shows us where the bath-house is and we go there and revel in the cool splashing of the water upon our perspiring bodies. The mode of bathing, here, is new to us, but we feel we shall come to like it. The bath-house is exactly like all others found throughout the Dutch East Indies. It is placed right alongside the cook-house, which is detached from the main bungalow, that the heat and smell of cooking may not invade the domain of the Tuan. Within the palm-thatched room are several great jars of rain-water, a wooden grid to stand upon, and a tin dipper of gallon size. One drenches himself from head to foot, lathers thoroughly, then sluices down with more gallons and the bath is complete. It is quick, easy, and exhilarating. We are told not to try it much after nightfall, however, unless we wish to be eaten alive. There are cannibalistic mosquitos here that will charge en masse, drive in their lances, and bear you away in chunks. They are nocturnal in their habits and we are profoundly thankful that this is so, for at night one sleeps behind a protecting klambu or mosquito curtain which completely enshrouds the bed. There one falls into slumber secure from their attacks and lulled by their incessant droning. Now and then some persistent fellow manages to find entrance and one becomes aware of a more shrill note in the general hum that increases in pitch until it is punctuated with a hesitant quaver followed by a red-hot stab,—upon almost any spot, but generally on the temple, where it accomplishes most. This is the occasion of two things. The first, a hunting-expedition with a lighted wax taper, which ends in the incineration of the intruder, and an angry determination to murder Moh the very next morning for leaving an opening in the folds of the net. Justly or unjustly, Moh always serves as scapegoat. He thrives on it. Dinner over, we hunt up a tin cigar box to serve as an ash-tray and take it to bed with us. It is too early to go to sleep and too mosquito-y, if I may use the term, to be up and around. In New Guinea one hides from these pests as soon as darkness falls. Moh, though he has a leather skin, builds a great smudge of cocoanut husks. The smoke of it makes him weep and gasp, but he persists in his friendly gossip with a man from Java lately come to Merauke, telling him the latest news and of his latest wife. The other listens with sparkling eyes and rapt attention to Moh’s description. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 T CHAPTER III THE KAMPONG o-day the assistant is resting. The steamer is gone. We shall go hunting adventure on our own. Four miles inland there is a kampong where live about fifty Kia Kias. As the day is warm we will put on the lightest clothing we have and go there. We cannot miss the way, for the only road of which the country boasts passes the place. It leads to a deceased missionary’s little plantation about three miles farther on. Each of the men has perforated the septum of his nose to permit inserting a pair of boar-tusks A pair of alligator-teeth make a wonderful nose-ornament The last building we pass on our way through the outer fringes of the little town is a rambling whitewashed structure. It is the government hospital. We must see this place, for in it they are striving to save the Vanishing Men. We are met at the little office door by a nurse in modest white. She is the only one on duty now, for nurses are hard to obtain in this out-of-the-way corner of our old footstool. She is half white and half Chinese. She speaks five languages fluently, we find, for as we converse with her she lapses into French now and then, with sprinklings of Malay and Dutch. It is a habit linguists have, for they find finer shades of meaning in varied tongues. Her English is perfect and we take for granted the purity of her Pekinese, for she tells us she was born in the Celestial Empire. In the wards she shows us the patients in her care. Here we find the curse of civilization stalking like a grim specter. Statistics, she informs us, give the Kia Kias fourteen years more to live. Once the race numbered a hundred thousand, but now with the coming of the strangers the venereal scourge is upon them and their ill-nurtured bodies cannot withstand the heroic treatment necessary for successfully combating the disease. The mere confinement in the hospital kills some of them. Before the coming of the strangers they were a healthy race that thrived and prospered. True, they ate one another, but their diet seemed to agree with them. It was the greatest pleasure they got out of life. These dinner-parties are taboo now and the poor devils within reach of the punishing whites have nothing for which to live. They are a race without ambition, lacking zest of life, and seek excitement in excesses that take toll of hundreds where the roasting-pit claimed but a comparative few. In early days there was tribal organization, which was necessary for survival. Now they live in less dread and great sloth, their idleness breeding indulgence in the only thing left to them, unrestricted sensuality. True, the tribes that live in the remote fastnesses of the jungle still maintain the old customs and they are contaminated only slightly with the scourge; still, it has found them. With mixed emotions we leave the hospital. The advice of the engineer comes to us with new significance. Every ship or schooner that plies the islands has been freighted with the scourge, gathered from the four winds and brought here. Then come the missionaries further to darken the sky, for do they not lift hands, eyes raised askance, at the naked savage and force him to don clothes? The childlike and untutored natives do not know that in rain-soaked clothing there lurks a menace. Their naked skins shed the water and they never become chilled, but those whom the missionaries have clothed are one and all subject to pulmonary troubles that are making further inroads on the race. The road winds into the jungle where the silence is absolute. A mile from town it has dwindled to a mere foot-path. As we brush the close-growing shrubs that border it, we dislodge clouds of midges and mosquitos which, with the moist heat and the perspiration that soaks us, become intolerable. However, we have set out for the kampong, and shall go there. After an interminable hour, we come to a clearing where we find a palm-thatched shack. Three naked children are sprawling on the ground, chattering baby talk. They do not notice our approach until we are close to them, but as we say “hello” they bounce to their feet and disappear in the bush with wild cries of alarm. They are just like any of the wild things that live in the jungle. We laugh at their sudden fear and call to them to return, while their mother inside the shack peeps furtively at us through a crevice in the wall. Evidently she is not much frightened, for she comes to the door and greets us with, “Tabe, Tuans,” the stock greeting of the Malay-speaking native. She is clad in her birthday clothing, as naked as on her natal day save for a heavy necklace of shells wound twice around her neck. She approaches us with easy grace, wholly unconscious of her nudity. Though she wears no covering whatever, she is clothed, for the dignity with which she moves and her utter lack of self-consciousness form a garment that drapes her pleasingly. Enormous nose-tubes of bamboo which entirely close the nostrils, making breathing possible only through the mouth The women wear in many cases a tiny breech-clout, but no other 32 33 34 35 36