nt _Cordyline terminalis_,
they passed their lives in a state of stark nudity. Their dwellings
and canoes were of the poorest description, but their plantations and
gardens were highly cultivated, and marvels of incessant and intelligent
labour. For human life they had no regard; in fact, a pig was worth more
than a man, except among those tribes where a man who weighed more than
a pig would be more valuable as food. At the present time things have
improved on the Gazelle Peninsula, but along the coast-line, which to
the westward stretches for over two hundred miles towards New Guinea,
matters have not changed. As for their personal appearance, it is simply
hideous. Take the biggest anthropoid ape, stain his teeth black and his
lips scarlet, stick a wig of matted greasy curls on his head, and put
half a dozen slender spears in his right paw, and you have an idea of
a New Britain nigger--a 'brand,' according to missionary ethics, who
should be plucked from the burning, but whom the Christian of ordinary
intelligence would cheerfully watch burning until he was reduced to a
cinder.

Just as we had finished breakfast, Bobaran came in and squatted on the
flour. Being a man of rank and influence, he was privileged, and allowed
to carry his arms with him inside the trader's house. These consisted
of five spears, one long-handled ebony-wood club, with a huge jade head,
and a horse-pistol, which was fastened to a leather belt around his
naked waist. His fuzzy wool was dyed a bright brick red colour and
twisted into countless little curls which, hanging over his beetling and
excessively dirty black forehead, almost concealed his savage eyes, and
harmonised with his thick, betel-stained lips and cavernous, grip-sack
mouth. Around his arms were two white circlets of shell, and depending
from his bull-like neck a little basket containing betel-nut and lime.
He certainly was a most truculent-looking scoundrel. Nevertheless,
I shook hands with him cordially, and he agreed, for certain
considerations, to look after me, find me in food, warn me of any danger
that might impend, and also to murder anyone with whom I might feel
annoyed, for a fixed but very small remuneration. In proof whereof of
this alliance, and as a token of amity and goodwill, Parker (the
trader) presented him with a small tin of ship biscuit, four dynamite
cartridges, a dozen boxes of matches and a bottle of a villainous German
liquor called 'Corn Schnapps.' Then the