Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/145

Rh makes a delicious stew—so I am told, but I am never likely to know if it is true.

The women bring these fruits and roots to market in baskets slung on their back by a band across their foreheads. A young pig costs more to buy than a young girl. [What do the “suffer-it-yets” think of that?] Smart women in New Guinea do not go in for Pekinese or other little wheezers, the fashion with them is young pigs. These they nurse tenderly, and such a thing as a woman suckling a pig has been seen! The young girls sow their wild oats before marriage and carry on with whom they please, and “belong all boys.” After marriage they become the property of their husbands. If one man takes away another’s wife, of course there is a row, but it generally ends in his paying for her. The old women have a great deal to say in matters; their weapon is the universal one of woman—the tongue. The young men have to go through all sorts of tomfoolery when they attain puberty, and there are many extraordinary and strict customs which must be obeyed.

The sago palm supplies thatch for their houses, ivory-nuts, and the sago they are so fond of. The trees in some places, especially high and dry ones, attain to 60 or 70 feet high. The tree is cut down, pith extracted and torn up into small pieces, placed in a trough made out of a hollowed branch, the troughs tilted up so that water runs from one to the other, and the fibrous part is washed away, whilst the sago remains at the bottom. It is dried over a fire and left in the sun to let all moisture evaporate. They have also pumpkins and sugar-cane, so can have a varied menu, to say nothing of their passion for human flesh.

Their houses are generally built of bamboo