ceiling. Here I lived pretty comfortably for six weeks,
taking all my meals and doing all my work at my little
table, to and from which I had to creep in a semi-horizontal
position a dozen times a day; and, after a few severe
MY HOUSE AT BESSIRV, IN WAIGIOU.
knocks on the head by suddenly rising from my chair,
learnt to accommodate myself to circumstances. We put
up a little sloping cooking-hut outside, and a bench on
which my lads could skin their birds. At night I went
up to my little loft, they spread their mats on the floor
below, and we none of us grumbled at our lodgings.
My first business was to send for the men who were
accustomed to catch the Birds of Paradise. Several came,
and I showed them my hatchets, heads, knives, and handkerchiefs;
and explained to them, as well as I could by
signs, the price I would give for fresh-killed specimens. It
is the universal custom to pay for everything in advance;
but only one man ventured on this occasion to take goods
to the value of two birds. The rest were suspicious, and
wanted to see the result of the first bargain with the strange
white man, the only one who had ever come to their
island. After three days, my man brought me the first
bird—a very fine specimen, and alive, but tied up in a
small bag, and consequently its tail and wing feathers
very much crusheef and injured. I tried to explain to
him, and to the others that came with him, that I wanted
them as perfect as possible, and that they should either
kill them, or keep them on a perch with a string to their
leg. As they were now apparently satisfied that all was
fair, and that I had no ulterior designs upon them, six
others took away goods; some for one bird, some for more,
and one for as many as six. They said they had to go a
long way for them, and that they would come back as soon
as they caught any. At intervals of a few days or a week,
some of them would return, bringing me one or more birds ;
but though they did not bring any more in bags, there was
not much improvement in their condition. As they caught
them a long way off in the forest, they would scarcely