It seemed a bit
curious that these wild cannibals should exhibit such a taste for
these gay and brilliantly coloured leaves and flowers, which they
had evidently transplanted from forest and jungle to their own village.
We continued our way through bush and open country, our police having
slight skirmishes with small bands of natives. One big Dobodura rushed
at Sergeant Kimi with uplifted club, but Kimi coolly knelt down and
shot him in the stomach when he was only a few yards off. The round,
sharp stone on the club being an extra fine one, I soon exchanged it
with Kimi for two sticks of tobacco (the chief article of trade in
New Guinea, and worth about three half-pence a stick).
Toku, Monckton's boy, and a brother of my boy, Arigita, who carried
his master's small pea-rifle, shot a man in the back with it as the
man fled, and thereafter was a hero among the boys. Arigita wished
to emulate his brother, and begged hard to do some shooting on his
own account with my twelve-bore shot gun, which he carried, and he
seemed very much hurt because I would not allow it.
We passed through many more villages, embowered in palm groves, and
in each village we saw plenty of human skulls and long sticks with
human jawbones hanging upon them.
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