Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/146

110 framework on posts, the roofs and sides thatched with pandanus or cocoanut palms. Some are small and conical, others large, high, and gabled, and in places are built in trees or over the water. They generally have a stage in front, are sometimes divided into two compartments, and the sleeping-places are mats on the floor or on a low ledge. A chief’s house can be 80 feet long, 50 feet in breadth, and 30 feet high, and some villages have a street of quite imposing houses. Their “temples,” or tambu houses, are decorated with carved and painted figures, and sometimes the war-canoes, most beautiful structures, are kept in them, and often a large wooden shark with a human skull inside it. Pigs’ jawbones, human skulls, and bones add to the decoration. The men lounge about outside as a sort of club, but it is taboo to the women.

When anything is tambu, or taboo, it is sacred or holy, and they protect their houses or land by sticking crossed sticks in the ground, or by erecting tall, carved, painted posts. This is sufficient protection, and to be taboo covers everything.

On the coast they have, of course, fish, and now sometimes fish with dynamite, thereby getting quantities of fish.

They are, naturally, great believers in witchcraft, ghosts, and spirits, and make a great fuss over the Duk-Duk, a spirit which comes at certain times. In the islands two Duk-Duks come, in New Guinea itself a number. It is all stage-managed by the old men for their own benefit. The Duk-Duks arrive in canoes, yelling, shouting, and dancing, dressed in conical plaited basket arrangements which leave only the legs visible— sort of pantomime bogies. The young men— who are terrified—are drawn up in rows. The Duk-Duks come along and beat them, they show-