ADVENTURES IN PAPUA

New Zealand Tablet, 18 September 1913, Page 9

ADVENTURES IN PAPUA

By Beatrice Grimshaw.

.—» WITH THE CATHOLIC MISSION (Reprint of A.C.T.S. Publication.)

(Concluded.) IV. After Dilava came the last and worst stage of the journey—the walk on to Mafulu, a thousand feet higher, and five and twenty miles away, across I do not know how many ranges, rivers, and gorges. I was to sleep at Deva-Deva, the half-way point, in "a village inhabited by people who had been the most violent of cannibals ten short years ago. My carriers, engaged about Oba-Oba, all little mountaineers with pouterpigeon chests and sinewy, hand-like feet, had been .cannibals too, not so very long agoat least, the elder iT>nes had. Now, they were entirely amiable and wellmannered, behaved quite angelically during the two days' march—which is saying much for New Guinea carriersand one or two of them even addressed me

in halting English and broken French. ... To hear a wild-looking, naked savage, who has eaten human flesh within the last few years, say: ‘ Merci, ma Soeur, 7 when you give him a bit of tobacco, is to experience one of the oddest sensations offered even by this oddest of countries.

One of the Fathers caught me up on the way, and walked with me a few miles, leaving me at Deva-Deva, which I reached with my carriers about 12 ', o'clock, thus winning the daily race with the rain by a handsome margin. The track was beautiful, s but heavy for walking. It began by a descent of a thousand feet or more; then ran up to four thousand two hundred without a break, the climate changing as we climbed, the exquisite bamboo-liana beginning to drape the forest in garland of feathery green, pink and. scarlet begonias coming out along the track, the air beneath the damp arcade of trees growing •so chill that one dared not stop to rest, all heated as one was with climbing.- Now crimson honeysuckle, and balsams, scarlet, yellow, and white, and flowers like quaint carvings in Chinese ivory shone out among the green; wild raspberries skirted the track, strange fruits—blue, purple, red, and yellowstrewed themselves upon the way. .. . . The pass was gained, and down we went from four thousand two hundred to one thousand five hundred, in loop after loop of winding tracks, out of the sheer walls of; the mountain side. Thirteen miles or so in alland here was Deva-Deva, a cluster of low brown huts, set (for once) on a small bit of level, and carefully fenced in v with strong bamboo fences. Here I pitched my calico tent and fly for the night, being constrained to sleep in the village by the fear of wild boars, which are. very plentiful in the deep forests surrounding the village, and often run about at night, attacking anything they may see. As it was, I thought well .to keep my lantern burning all night; it seemed fairly clear that two thicknesses of calico were'hot enough to stop a charging boar, if the worst came to the worst. The village houses were quite. as much black beetle as house, and not even the fear of wild boars could constrain me to sleep in one. Soon the people came home from the gardens, and (of course) made a stampede for the new arrival, crowding into the tent, fingering my belongings, begging for all they saw, pushing, staring. They had seen the Sisters once, when the latter passed through to visit Mafulu; but that was All They Knew of White Women. The village begged to see my hair let down, because they had learned that the strange white woman had peculiar hair, like the tail of. a bullock, and they wanted to know if this lie could possibly have any foundation in fact. . - It kept them amused for a good -hour, until I grew tired of the exhibition, and of the howls and hoppings on one leg that greeted it. Thereafter, I put. a bar across the door of my tent by the simple method of tying a strand of grass from pole to pole, and not a native crossed it. When it grew dark, the funny little pigmy folk - cooked their sweet potatoes, and ate them in the different houses, before composing themselves to rest. They have a pretty fashion of singing themselves to sleep with lullabies, murmured softly and more softly as the sleepers drop off one by one; but on this particular night they were too excited for singing, and I heard none. Instead, I heard bitter sobs from one of my own carriers only one who had come through from the coast—and, on inquiring the reason, was told that a strange chief had come into the men's guesthouse, and the people told him it was the man who had tried to kill the Bishop, some years before. The timid lowlander was afraid that the man would immediately kill and eat himself, and required much persuasion before he could go and sleep in the guest-house.. I never heard whether his story were true or not, but in any case the chief, if he had been there, was one of the very best friends of the Mission, and much more likely to feed one of its carriers with the best he had than to eat him. v '" . .; ,

Next morning, I rose before daylight, and got the carriers off in good time, for the walk to Mafulu was a hard one, and the race with the rain might be difficult to win. It was thirteen miles or so again to-day, and even the carefully made track could not make, the journey an easy one. A year or two ago, when a native track was the only means of communication, it used to

take twenty-four hours to get through from Mafulu to Dilava. Now the active and practised Fathers can do it in seven hours at a pinch, and even an untrained stranger like myself did not take more than ten, making about- five for each half, with the stop at Deva-Deva between. This second half of the journey lay • Through Perpendicular Cliff Forests, and into and out of I do not know how many gorges, and through the Kea River, luckily not in flood, just where a magnificent waterfall, near three hundred feet in height, flung itself down from the verge of an overhanging cliff. The Kea is hard to cross when flooded, and even the hardy natives cannot swim it once it turns to a torrent. Yet they get across, by a way that is '' almost incredibly strange. They load themselves with heavy stones, and walk over under water, on the bottom of the river. The Fathers have seen a native who was taking a letter across disappear altogether under the water, all but his hand, which progressed slowly across the raging stream, holding aloft the precious paper. By and by we came out on high windy ridges, where the cloak of forest was growing thin, and the air became suddenly cool, and great green and orange hornbills aeroplaned across blue gulfs, making a droning noise like an engine as they went. The pines began to appearthe great pines of Mafulu, that have built the station and the church, and keep the sawmill fed with fine timber. We were in the high country; the track ran along at four thousand feet, and none of the surrounding peaks was less than six or seven. • The black, narrow gorges opened out, and one saw wide, pleasant valleys, full of grass and sun ; great pines stood out alone like monuments, and the fresh winds of the hilltops blew down cheerily to tell one that one was not tired. . . . Could this be Papua of the dense, luscious-scented, steamy forests, the \ warm, enervating rain, the intolerable sun It was a new country up there, and one well worth visitingbut one that would never be visited, save by stray travellers like myself. The barrier of the Roro and Kuni country stands between Mafulu and the outer world for ever; it will remain what it is—a sanctuary of the hills, '.the world forgetting, by the world forgot.' The Mission was almost in sight, but not quite, when we reached the sawmill. Here, in the heart of unknown Papua, at the end of a track that can carry nothing but horse and mule loads of goods, There Was a Mill in full working order (not on the day that I saw it, for they were shifting the machinery), with a race running down the slope above, where they had harnessed the nearest torrent to take the place of steam, and huge trunks lying about, and oxen, great, powerful, gentle creatures, drawing more and more trunks in from the forest. The machinery was all of wood, save the saw itself, but it worked as well as if it had been forged in Birmingham, and the piles of clean, fragrant planks lying about were just like any plank turned out by any mill in a manufacturing town. Two Fathers and a Brother were working here this morning, in worn clothes and boots; they are very anxious to replace the little church at Mafulu station by one that is made altogether of sawn boards, and everyone takes a hand in the work-.

I had been expected here; they left off work when they saw me, unyoked the oxen from the logs, and set out with me for the station, delightedly showing off their valley, and their district, and their new-made road, and their beautiful scenery, as we went. Small wonder that the Fathers feel as if the Mafulu country were indeed their own. They were the discoverers, the the cartographers, road-makers, bridgebuilders, cultivates of the district, and they are pushing out their influence on every side, year by year, into the still unknown and uncivilised country that lies higher up and beyond.

How Gay They Were, These French and Swiss , Fathers and Brothers, here at the end of the world—here alone with the savages, dressed like workmen, poorly fed and

housed, utterly divorced from all amusement, news, luxury, relaxation! What jokes they had. each otherwhat allusions, nicknames, light-hearted schoolboy fun! What bright intellects flashed like swords from these worn scabbards of hard-worked frames! Surely, in this out-of-the-way, hard, hidden life, the best material was being used—not the odds and ends and left-overs, but men who would have made a mark anywhere. Too good for the work The Catholic Mission does not think anything too good for it; the missionaries themselves do not think they are good enough. Half an hour brought us —at lastto Mafulu, the end of the long, long journey. Beyond this I did not intend to go; time far led me, for, once off the Mission track, one can never tell how long a journey will take, and I was only provisioned for a week or two. Here Was the End of My Excursion. It was a little brown house, standing tiptoe on the top of a peak four thousand feet high, set in the midst of a ring of splendid mountains six, seven, and eight thousand feet in height, with the ten thousand foot sugarloaf of Moutat Yule showing faint and blue in the distance. Clouds are always floating and wreathing about these mountain tops; the mission house itself is constantly buried in cloud. And the blues, ■ the greens, the magnificent hyacinths,-the heliotropes, the turquoises, purple-satin colors of the high, encircling peaks, no peta could describe, and I think no brush save that of Turner could paint. Many of these peaks have never been climbed or visited; the Fathers only go where there are inhabitants. Often enough their work leads them into country where white men have not only never been seen, but never even been heard of. I heard enough wild adventures during the two or three days I stayed at the Mission to have filled half a library. The very last time that my hosts had fared forth into the unknown country, they had chanced on villages of dead people—whole towns piled up with corpses higher than the Fathers' heads, and polluting the air for miles. They have often interfered with cannibal feasts; often stepped in, unarmed, between hostile natives wild with the lust of blood. That none of them have been killed is something very like a miracle. Perhaps a little more than very like. ■ Listen to a Story. Eight years ago, Bishop De Boismenu came up to this very spot. It was the most dangerous place in Papua to visit just then, for Baiva, the great cannibal chief of the district, had given out that he would kill the first white man wh'o dared to pass a certain fiigtree. In that fig-tree .were hung up the unburied bones of Baiva's only brother, whp had been killed by Government troops, in punishment for a raid made on the missionaries. The missionaries had done all in their power to keep the Government from avenging their wrongs, but without effect. So it was that Baiva's brother died, and that Baiva made his vow. Father C told me the whole story, standing beside me under the shade of the great fig-tree; the bones were still in the branches, the valley looked as it had looked on the day eight years ago, when the Bishop came up, alone, to the fatal tree, and confronted Baiva. The savage chieftain barred the way behind him were his men in panoply of war—painted, feathered, armed with clubs and spears. 'He came up to them unarmed said the Father, ' here where you stand, and said that he only wished for peace. And Baiva said that he had vowed to kill the first white man who dared to pass that tree, and now the white man had done it, and he would kill him where he stood. And he took his war club in. his hand. As for Monseigneur, he thought that he had failed in his mission of peace to Baiva, and that the end had come: so he commended his soul to God. And there was silence; not a warrior stirred, but Baiva did not strike. All in one moment he stretched out his hand to Monseigneur, and said: " I have changed my mind ; I do not wish to kill you. I am your friend, and I will give you the best piece of ground T have, for nothing, to build your house on." -

What do you call that, Father I asked. The Father spread out his hands, silently. 'I think so, too,' I said. ■-/ - ■ " On Mafulu -Station, when we arrived, the afternoon mists were beginning to gather; rain was not far away. How cool it was! How fresh and bright and invigorating ! Between the waves of cloud, how far one could see, across purple peaks and black-green belts of pines, right into the untrodden country that lay beyond ! How very, very far from all the world and its vain strivings was the little brown house of Mafulu, out on the verge of the great unknown! It was pleasant and restful, by and by, to lie in the neat room of sawn boards that had been allotted to me, and listen, while evening crept down, to the singing of the wild Mafulu mountaineers, making their way from peak to peak in the distance. They sang beautifully in unison, with strange high notes like the mountain winds, and deep booming notes like the torrent waterfall. Outside my window the six or seven tiny children who are cared for by the Fathers were running about in the absurd little petticoats which (I suspect) the good Fathers themselves had made for them, calling out in French and English. They are rescued children for the most part, taken from the villages where their lives were threatened for one cause or —death of a mother, leaving the child on the hands of unwilling relatives, is the commonest cause. They had been brought up in the Mission, and were one and all amazingly like white children of the same tender age, all but the color. Later on it is hoped that the Mission may start a small village for these rescued children to serve as a model to the villages round about, and act as a good influence generally. In the meantime they are the darlings of every petted by the whole Mission, and As Happy as Little Children Can Possibly Be. /■: On the next day the fattest calf was killed for me (literally), and its meat in various forms made feast after feast, during my short stay at the Mission. They are very, very poor up here, but generous to a fault, as every one of the few whites who have passed through can testify. What a feast the Brother who was skilled in the kitchen made for my arrival! Out of what poor materials, yet with what kindly ingenuity.of resource! The French menu that ushered it inthe stately serving—the wit, the anecdote, the gaiety that accompanied its disposal, the songs of far-away France that they sang on the verandah afterwards, while the little brown children, in their pen-wiper petticoats, ran about and sucked bones, or gnawed happily on lumps of cakes —what a festival it all was! Then, all in a moment, the i Fathers and Brothers vanished away for prayer, the little brown pen-wipers were whisked off to bed—evening was over. Sunday followed after, and long before Mass, the wild folk of the mountains began marching in,.singing soldierly melodies as they tramped down the hills. The women were much like those of Dilava, quite as unclothed, as shy and timid, wearing beads and dogs' teeth braided into their tiny plaits of hair, like the tribe I had left. They were a little taller, however, and seemed of a milder type. In the Mafulu district, the natives were not quite such determined murderers and cannibals as they were in Dilava a few years ago, though they are, strange to say, less impressionable to the doctrines of the Church than the fiercer Dilava tribes. Both men and women were bent back from the waist as if they had been forcibly seized by neck and hips, and made to lean as far backwards as possible their feet were all corded with strong sinews, and the >*fcoes were far separated. One could see that they used the foot continually for grasping and holding on.

At Mass They Behaved Decorously, even devoutly, and some few of the converts received Holy Communion. They love the little church, and think its simple decorations the greatest wonder of the world. A beautiful statue of our Lady and the Holy Child, painted in colors, nearly sent the valley out of its mind when it first arrived. Tribe after tribe came

from far away to see the wander; they danced before it to show their delight, and one old woman shrieked and slapped her stomach in ecstasy, demanding to know the white woman did not speak ' Hush, you foolish thing I' admonished a neighbor, who thought herself better instructed, ' you cannot expect her to speak to us till she has had time to learn the language In their journeying through the wild country that lies behind Mafulu, the Fathers are often called upon to settle disputes,. and make treaties between hostile tribes of cannibals. The natives have realised that the Fathers' presence brings only good, and many are the messages they receive from far-away tribes who have never even seen them, begging them to come and make a station. Very willingly indeed would the Fathers concur with such demands, but -there is not money enough. It costs something to establish stations, and they have not always got the something. How much does it need—to build the tiny native material church, set up a little house for the Fathers, and begin work in a new district? Twelve pounds! No more. Twelve pounds will start a new station any day, a place to be visited regularly by the Fathers on their rounds, stayed at as often as possible, and used as a centre of good for the whole district round about. Fifty pounds would start four, and leave something over. But twelves, and fifties, are not plentiful. So new stations are seldom made, and the Fathers, from their eagle-nest at Mafulu, look out upon fields that are white to the harvest, where yet they may ..not reap. ' Not long before I came, a message had been sent down to the station from one of the far-away tribes, begging the Fathers to come and make a church and a house there. They wanted the good white men to make peace for them with their enemies, and stop themselves from fighting. They wanted to stop, so they said, but they could not trust themselves. If the Fathers would come, they would be able to do what other tribes had —make peace for good, > and have leisure to cultivate their lands, hunt, dance, enjoy their lives, instead of living under the shadow of constant murder. But the Fathers cannot come yet. When they have the money they will. A New Central Station is now being made at Ononghe, four days' walk further inland than Mafulu, and much higher, nearly seven thousand feet. This will do much for the lesser known folk of the far interior— a few scattered secondary stations in its neighborhood would do still more, if they could be started. The Fathers hope they may unexpected gifts have been known to arrive. After a rest of a day or two. it was time to go, if I was to catch my steamer down at the coast; so the swags were packed again, and a couple of huge bullocks were brought up to carry them for me, and Father F and I started out in the cool of the early morning for Deva-Deva once more. It meant a twenty-five mile walk for the Father, who had more business on his hands than he could well get through, and could not have wanted to add this extra load; but he was doing a kindness to somebody, and that was enough, as it is enough for any Father, Sister, or Brother in the Mission, when there is a question of taking trouble, giving things away, or doing without. So the loads were put on the bullocks, and the Father and I each took a stick to drive them, and back we went along the long track to the half-way house of Deva-Deva. This time the way was not long, for the wonderful things done by these mountain-bred bullocks climbing like goats, scrambling down gorges and up precipices, sitting down like huge dogs and sliding where there was a landslip, marching unmoved through deep rivers, where the current would have been too strong for any horse—these kept me constantly astonished and amused. And when we came to the long pull up towards Deva-Deva, I fastened a pair of puttees to the girth of Mambu, the biggest beast, who was lightly loaded, tied them to my own belt, and made him haul me up the weary trackwhich he did with the utmost politeness, being, like every animal

belonging to the Mission—cow, bullock, horse, or dog —gentle, amiable, and ready to do his best whenever asked. ■ - § '.;'." : . v ; '■"-■'.• " >,^; Next 'morning, with seven little women to carry the goods I had left at Deva-Deva, and take on the load of the bullocks, I said good-bye to the Father, and crossed the ranges back again to Dilava, where the Sisters received me like a long-lost relative, cleaned and fed me (I needed both), and made me at home in their little stick house, till the horse came up again from the plains, and I started back to civilisation once more, One went down quicker than one came up. I was at the horse-farm of Kubuna in two days. Here I stopped the night, had a swim in a river pool which was infested by an alligator, and did not enjoy it at all, though the Father in charge of the station assured me that the alligator was quite a gentle one, and would hurt nobody, pitched my tent in the paddock and put up a mosquito net, because somebody said the place was 'full of tiresome' death-adders'; dined on part.of the leg of an enormous cassowary that had been shot the day before, and was entertained with roast wallaby; got away in the early morning, and reached Bioto on the coast, twenty odd miles away, before noon. % Now Came the Last Stage. One had to get back to the head station at Yule Island by boat, and the tide did not suit for a daylight start, and the natives of the village were all away hunting, so a proper crew was not to be had. . ' . It ended in my starting in the dark of a moonless night, with a lame man and two small boys as crew, down a creek that is notorious for alligators. They had actually chased away the inhabitants of the vilage from the bank, where the town was originally built, and obliged them to build further inland —such were the nightly raids upon dogs, pigs, and children, and the frequent toll exacted of incautious men and women, going to get water out of the creek. They had eaten a Mission horse only three weeks before. And the dinghy was none too large, and the creek was winding, and it was pitch dark. It took an hour or two to creep down Bioto Creek, cautiously avoiding snags and shoals, where one might be upset, and to get out into the big main stream, where, indeed, alligators were as numerous, but the chance of being swamped was much less. Then the tide began to fall and swept us, with our feeble oars, swiftly down through the starry dusk, between the stately shadows of the cocoanut palms on the banks, down to the open, fresh, salt-smelling sea. Yule Island was not an hour away now; we reached it by midnight. And when I knocked the convent up at that unholy hour, and brought half a dozen Sisters out of their beds to find a bath and a supper and a bed for me, everyone smiled as if it were just the, one thing they loved best to do in the world. It was pleasant to rest a day or so at Yule Island, before the steamer called; to see once more the beau-

tiful open meadows where the Mission herd of cattle feeds, and the clean, white wooden buildings of the convent, and the schools, and the Fathers’ house, and the little cottage, standing, away by itself, that is known as the Bishop’s ‘ palace ’ —to look in at the schools where nearly ninety little brown children were being taught, and to wonder again how fourteen or fifteen Sisters manage to teach, wash, cook, sew, and generally ‘ do for ’ the whole busy place (for that is all there are at Yule Island) to hear Mass in the small, simple, pretty church, and talk to the Fathers about the history of the Mission, and compare the Reverend Mother yet again in my mind to the great English General whom she so strongly resembles, in feature as in character ; ,to go out and see the-little school at the village, a mile or two away, where a Sister lives and works, bringing up the rising generation to habits of decency, kindliness, and order; to see, in short, the heart of the Mission beating, here at the chief station, where work is arranged, workers sent out, retreats gone through, confirmations, ordinations held, and where the little, all too little,

income is apportioned to its many needs.

The journey was over; my steamer was in the bay. I said good-bye to Yule, and to the Mission. The white light of the wonderful world in which I had lived for many weeks was growing dim in common daylight once —the window opening on another world was closed. . . But one will not forget.