are getting on
very slowly. I fear we are six weeks too late for the Kupele district,
and shall have to leave it for another season. It would be awkward to
get in and not get back until the end of the wet season. I find our
friend the chief, Poroko, has had two wives; one he killed lately. She
was in the plantation, and some young fellows coming along, she sat down
with them to have a smoke and get the news; Poroko heard of it, and on
her coming home in the evening he killed her. A woman at Favelle said,
"Oh, the Koiari man thinks nothing of killing his wife." The word for
"sneeze" in Koiari is _akiso_. When they are leaving for a journey or
going for the night they call out _kiso_, and often from their houses
they shout their good-night to us, _kiso_. There is a woman in deep
mourning for her daughter. She has hanging round her neck all the
ornaments once the property of the deceased, and along with them the
jawbone. The headless body she visits occasionally, and rubs herself all
over with the juice from it!

18_th_.--We have a great crowd of natives in from Kupele, the nearest
district to Mount Owen Stanley. They are the same race of people as at
Meroka--some very dark, others very light-coloured. Their weapons are
the same as the Koiari, as also is their dress. Two men are in mourning,
and are wearing netted vests. The chief is rather a fine-looking fellow,
and dressed profusely with cassowary feathers. They all have a wisp of
grass bound tight at one end, and hanging from a girdle behind, to be
used as a seat when they sit down. It is a stretch of imagination to say
it looks like a tail. They are very anxious we should accompany them on
their return, and say they will show us plenty of villages and people.
Yesterday we had great feasting in the villages on yams and taro. To an
Eastern Polynesian it would be ridiculous to call it a feast, seeing
there was no pig. In the evening we had a good deal of palavering with
spears and shields, fighting an imaginary foe, and at times retreating.
Their movements are swift and graceful: advance, retreat, advance,
pursue, ward off to the right, to the left, shield up, down, aside,
struck on knee, a shout, all gone through, with the greatest alacrity,
and I am not at all astonished at so few being killed or wounded in a
fight. They value shields that bear the marks of spears.

19_th_.--Our old friend Oriope came in to-day, and handed us the
tomahawk, stolen b