of drawing the Horraforas from their cover on the verge of a
forest. His appearance was any thing but prepossessing. He was "a giant of
a man, hair and beard powdered with chalk, face painted black, and body
white all over!" Connel implored his allies to render him a great service
by picking off this ugly heathen, and inquired who was the best shot.
Trainer named the doctor, who "had really no wish to pull a trigger,
except in actual self-defence." But Trainer and Connel pressed him to
fire, and at last overcame his scruples. With charming modesty, he avoids
naming himself as the man who made the huge Papuan magpie bite the dust.
"Thus urged by Connel," he says, "_one of our party_ rested his gun on the
lower branch of a tree, took deliberate aim, and fired!" This "one of our
party" was of course the doctor, the sailors being armed with short
muskets, incapable of carrying so far. The shot took effect. Whitepaint
ceased his capering, "stood fixed and upright like a daubed statue," and
"was about receiving another shot (from the doctor's second barrel, we
presume) when he fell heavily forward and lay motionless." Whereupon the
Whitepaints advanced, and the six Englishmen "set to work in real earnest
popping" off the cannibals. And soon becoming "madly excited by the scene,
we continued to load and fire as fast as we could, accompanying almost
every shot or volley with a Hurra! nearly as wild as the savage yell." Dr
Coulter had got rid of his scruples, and Trainer and the seamen appear
never to have had any. The latter "were eager to run down the mound for
the purpose of enjoying a bayoneting match; but Trainer would not permit
such folly, and told them to amuse themselves firing at them from where we
were, which they did with great perseverance." The unfortunate Whitepaints
were totally defeated, their tribe cut up root and branch, their women
taken to wife by the victors, and themselves slung upon poles like rabbits
and carried off to be buried, as Connel expressed it, in "the infernal
stomachs" of their cannibal conquerors. The doctor and his companions
being by no means anxious to witness the abominable feast, moved on with
Connel, and, after a visit to the Whitepaint town, or rather rookery, the
houses being built in trees, like those of the Horraforas, paddled down a
river, through beautiful scenery, which Dr Coulter indicates, rather than
describes. He is a poor hand at description, the worthy doctor, although
evident