For some time people had been coming down from the hills and asking that a teacher might be sent to live with them. They were suffering severely from raids by their enemies, and were anxious for peace and protection. Fortunately there was a Samoan widower, who had no fixed station, and I told him to visit such villages as he could get at, and try to make peace. He had taken up his temporary quarters at a village called Korona, and he and the people were anxious that we should visit them. The road, they admitted, was a rough one for an English lady to travel, but as they had gone to the trouble to clear parts of it, so they said, Donisi Hahine decided to accept the invitation.

To have the help of the rising tide an early start was made on the Tuesday morning. We were in the boat by four o’clock, while it was yet dark.

People may ascend Snowdon or the Swiss mountains to view the sunrise, but they could never see one more beautiful or more impressive than on that particular morning in Galley Reach. All around was the great expanse of water, so calm that it reflected the clouds. Away on either side, and right ahead, were the low banks covered without a break by the fresh bright green of the mangroves. Then when the eyes were lifted higher came the hills wrapped in mist as in fleecy cotton wool, and behind them tier above tier rose the peaks and ridges of the Owen Stanley Range. As the light became stronger the peaks, over 12,000 feet high, stood out with wonderful distinctness. Then the pale glow turned to gold and rose, as the sun came up behind the mountains, and as it mounted higher and higher, the lower peaks on our side of the range were lit up one after another like so many great electric lights. The white mists curled further up the range, and though details were lost, the effect was grandly harmonious.

The change from the dark stillness, broken only by the cry of a bird and the rattle of the oars in the rowlocks, to the full blaze of the light was much more rapid than the coming of the daylight at home, and reminded one that it was not necessary to wait till near midday to feel the sting of the tropical sun.

Several large rivers flow into Galley Reach as well as a perfect network of smaller streams and creeks. Into one of these we turned. Then into a smaller one, and again into a smaller one still. It was wonderful how the boy in charge knew which of the many openings—all alike—he was to take. At last the creek so narrowed that the whale boat could go no further, and the first stage of the journey was over. It was ten o’clock when we landed under some giant trees, and no time was lost in getting breakfast for all hands, and taking his with him, one of the teachers went ahead to try and find carriers to help with the baggage. Our own boys could manage it well enough on the flat, but when climbing the hills they would need help.

Strange things were all around us, but strangest of all were some of the giant trees. Very high, very big round, they had roots which came out like giant buttresses. By putting roofs on, five or six stables could have been made at the foot of each tree.

So far there was no sign of any track having been cleared, and a boy had to go ahead armed with a big knife to cut away the vines. Some of them were the “wait-a-bit” thorns, and well did they deserve their name, for if once the thorn was hooked in the clothing then the person wearing that clothing had to wait till released from the unwelcome grip, or leave a memento behind him.

Progress was very slow, and it was well after midday before we reached a clearing on the bank of a rippling stream as clear as crystal, and the coldest water I have tasted in Papua. Here the Korona people were making a garden, and Naiti had been fortunate enough to meet some of them and secure their services to help us to reach their village.

One was tempted to linger at this spot. It would have made an ideal camp for a summer holiday. We had to pass on, and made use of the native bridge. One of the large trees that grew on the bank of the stream had been felled so that it lay from bank to bank, and to save themselves trouble when doing the work the woodmen had built a staging round the tree some ten feet from the ground and so got above the greatest girth.

On the other side of the stream the ground began to rise, and in places gave some stiff climbing. After a time the question arose, “How much further is the village?” Not far was the answer, and another start was made. Then the way seemed blocked by fallen trees, but the guide clambered over them, and following his lead we found ourselves in a sweet-potato plantation. What the water-lily is to the swimmer that the sweet-potato is to the walker. How many times one and another of the party was thrown down, or brought to a standstill, it would be a puzzle to say. To add to the trouble piles of felled trees continually blocked the way, and had to be surmounted. Again the question was asked, “Is the village far?” and again the guide, through an interpreter, answered, “Just a little.” His idea of “a little further” was like that of an Irishman who was once my guide in Ireland. The little further was just an indefinite distance in front. Then again the guide was accustomed to that kind of travelling. Our party was not, and there was plenty of grumbling amongst the boys as the sun got low, and there were still no signs of the village. At last the guide gave a coo-e and from the side of the next hill came an answer. One more scramble down, and one more scramble up, and there was the village in sight.

Few of our party had ever seen a stockaded village. It was my first. The site was well chosen on the crown of a small hill, so that the ground fell away on all sides. The houses which were on high stumps, almost like stilts, faced inwards, and the stockading was really a continuation of the outer walls of the houses right down to the ground, with the spaces between the houses filled in the same way. The defence would have been poor against an enemy armed with Sheffield steel, but would hold at bay one attacking with bows and arrows and clubs, and the only entrance was a puzzle-like stile at one corner. No need for the defender to say with brave Horatius, “Now who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?” One could easily defend it.

Over and through this stile, one at a time, we clambered, and at once looked for quarters for the night. Any house in the village, or the club house, would have been placed at our disposal, but—— The people never wash; never clean their houses; and by both look and smell one would judge that they never cleaned the centre of the village.

The camp was made on the hill, and to the windward side of the village. Five poles were soon cut and the home-made calico tent fixed. Supper was soon over, and no one wanted rocking to sleep that night. All had been on the move for seventeen hours, to say nothing of the time spent in packing and getting into the boat at Morabi. God’s own peace seemed to brood over the hillside, the camp, and the village, and it seemed strange almost beyond belief, that amidst such surroundings the women and children had withdrawn into the forest for fear there might be a night attack.

Next morning there was more time and more energy for getting into touch with the people, but unfortunately that had to be done through an interpreter.

Sitting by the side of Naiti on the Dubu platform was a little toddler, who seemed loth to let go his hand. She was too young to do more than return love for care and affection, or she would have known how much she owed to Naiti. Her mother had died when she was a few weeks old, and her father, according to native custom, took the child into the bush and left it there to die. Fortunately Naiti found her, nearly dead from starvation and covered with sores, and took her to the village. He had no wife to tend the child, and no milk to give her, but he had his gun, and there were birds around. Some of these he shot and made broth for the little one, in which he soaked pieces of his hard biscuits; not perhaps according to the latest theories as to how a child should be fed, and Naiti, big man that he is, was not a dainty little nurse in cap and apron, but he managed grandly, and showed us the child with pride.

Many of our teachers have rescued little children in this way, but in most cases by taking them out of the grave of the dead mother, with whom they were to be buried, and rarely does the father take any notice till the child is grown enough to be useful and then he claims it. Another of our teachers found a Korona boy abandoned in the bush because, owing to a large ulcer on his foot, he was unable to keep up with the party on a journey.

The season was a good one for food, and the people were determined we should not go hungry while staying with them. Yams, sweet-potatoes, pumpkins, and sugar cane were brought from the gardens, and piled in front of the Dubu where we were sitting.

Then the pig was brought. He was a lively customer, and objected to the manner in which he was handled, and no wonder. It took three men, sitting on his back, to keep him down, and even then he had the better of it in the matter of voice. The men could not silence him, and he sadly interrupted the speech of the chief.

I should have liked to have recorded the whole incident in a picture, but, alas! my camera was at the bottom of the sea off Maiva, and I can only deal in words.

When all was ready the chief stepped down from the Dubu, and with the village people looking on from the verandahs of their houses, and the pig violently protesting, began his speech. Some natives are very demonstrative when they talk. They use their whole body, and it was not difficult to follow part at least of what the old man was saying, though none of us knew his language. It all had to be translated later on. First there was the welcome, and then the typical native regret that he and his people had no food to offer us. They had managed to provide “sisina hona” (a very little bit). Their idea of little in quantity seemed as elastic as their idea of the village being near on the previous day, for try as they would our boys did not manage to get through that “little bit” during our stay in the village, and had to get the donors themselves to help them. It was a present, the old man said; but presents are expensive luxuries in Papua, for they cost two or three times as much as if bought in the ordinary way. It was so in this case by the time the return present was completed.

I was expected to kill the pig, but not caring for the job, with due courtesy I trust, in any case with emphasis, I informed the old man that I was not in that line of business, and turning to Naiti asked him to be my deputy. The pig had to be killed in Papuan fashion and Naiti did not relish the business, so handed it on to Kone.

Then came the explanation as to why we had been asked to visit the village. Becoming very dramatic the chief received from his wife a small basket, out of which he took a human skull. This he held in one hand and a tomahawk in the other. The skull, he said, was that of his brother, who together with two of his wives and some of his children had been killed by people living on yonder hill. He showed how the tomahawk fitted into the holes in the skull and asked me to request the Governor to take vengeance (payment, he called it) for that murder, and then to send him a teacher to “teach him and his people peace.” No forgiveness. Revenge first, and then peace; but it was something that the desire for peace was there at all.

I felt sad, for I had neither the men nor the money to comply with the old man’s request. The sadness was the deeper when I remembered that down on the beach, not many miles below us, was the spot where the Christian teachers had landed as long ago as 1872, and yet till the arrival of my wife and myself the previous day, these people had never seen a white face in their village. Friends in England have since offered to support a teacher in the village, but dysentery has practically exterminated the people. The opportunity was lost.

Scramble in front of Timoteo’s House.

See page 127.