a native, weak-looking toes. This
last feature was still more noticeable in the woman, whose toes were
long and slight and stood out rigidly from the foot as though they
possessed no joints. The feet of both the man and the woman seemed to
rest on the ground something as wooden feet would do. The skin above
the knees of the man was in loose folds, and the sinews and muscles
around the knee were not well developed. The muscles of the shin were
much better developed than those of the calf. In the ordinary native
the skin on the loins is smooth and tight, and the anatomy of the body
is clearly discernible; but the Ahgai-ambo man had several folds of
thick skin or muscle across the loins, which concealed the outline
of his frame. On placing one of our natives, of the same height,
alongside the marsh man, we noticed that our native was about three
inches higher at the hips.

"I had a good view of our visitor, while he was standing sideways
towards me, and in figure and carriage he looked to me more ape-like
than any human being that I have seen. The woman, who was of middle
age, was much more slightly formed than the man, but her legs were
short and slender in proportion to her figure, which from the waist
to the knees was clothed in a wrapper of native cloth.

"The houses of the near village were built on piles, at a height of
about twelve feet from the surface of the water, but one house at the
far village must have been three or four feet more elevated. Their
canoes, which are small, long, and narrow, and have no outrigger, axe
hollowed out to a mere shell to give them buoyancy. Although the open
water was several feet deep, it was so full of aquatic plants that
a craft of any width, or drawing more than a few inches, would make
but slow progress through it. Needless to say that these craft, which
retain the round form of the log, are exceedingly unstable, but their
owners stand up in them and, pole them along without any difficulty.

"These people are very expert swimmers, and can glide through beds
of reeds or rushes, or over masses of floating vegetable matter,
with ease. They live on wild fowl, fish, sago and marsh plants,
and on vegetables procured from the Baruga in exchange for fish and
sago. They keep a few pigs on platforms built underneath or alongside
their houses. Their dead they place on small platforms among the reeds,
and cover the corpse over with a roof of rude matting. Their dialect
is almost the sam